Credit inflation, Deflation: Prechter Interview

[Finster]

Re: Credit inflation, Deflation: Prechter Interview

Finster,

I am glad I asked the question, and I cannot be more sincere in saying "Thank you" for your time to explain your perceptions. I need to read several more times all you wrote in order to better digest it. Clearly you appreciate this is not an argument, but rather an attempt for me, and any others wishing to advantage themselves, of gaining more insight, becoming a bit smarter, or a bit less dumb. Your shoulder must be improving. Good.

I absolutely do appreciate that, Jim. And hope that you don't take my argumentative style as a real affront. It just often seems to work best for getting to the crux of issues, not to mention providing a little tongue-in-cheek sporting humor at the same time. And thanks ... my shoulder is improving ... so please understand if I sound increasingly cranky as time passes ... ;)

[Jim Nickerson]

Re: Credit inflation, Deflation: Prechter Interview

Bigcharts will display a lot more data than stockcharts in free mode.

http://bigcharts.marketwatch.com/def...seen&dist=ctbc

Bart,

What happened on my machines, and I do not think it is they that are amiss, is I can no longer get Interactive Chart button to give me the interactive window. That is, I can no longer access those charts where one could select a time frame of "all available data." Are you experiencing the same thing? I can only access Basic Charts and Advanced Chart using Firefox 2.0 or IE 7.0.

If you can access Interactive charts then, the problem is at my end.

Thanks, hoping you get back to this.

[bart]

Re: Credit inflation, Deflation: Prechter Interview

Bart,

What happened on my machines, and I do not think it is they that are amiss, is I can no longer get Interactive Chart button to give me the interactive window. That is, I can no longer access those charts where one could select a time frame of "all available data." Are you experiencing the same thing? I can only access Basic Charts and Advanced Chart using Firefox 2.0 or IE 7.0.

If you can access Interactive charts then, the problem is at my end.

Thanks, hoping you get back to this.

I just checked and have no trouble with Interactive charts on IE6, IE7, FF 1.5.0.7, FF 2.0, Opera or Torpark. It may be an out of data Java issue, or perhaps a Java bug or even some kind of malware issue?

[SeanO]

Re: Credit inflation, Deflation: Prechter Interview

Finster,

Would love to see your response to Jim's question re-written as the start of a new thread. I doubt many folks followed this particular thread this far down. While I completely get that the value of cash is not constant, my use of the dollar as a unit of account was still blinding me to the bigger picture. As such I found your post quite enlightening.

Thanks,
Sean

[Finster]

Re: Credit inflation, Deflation: Prechter Interview

Finster,

Would love to see your response to Jim's question re-written as the start of a new thread. I doubt many folks followed this particular thread this far down. While I completely get that the value of cash is not constant, my use of the dollar as a unit of account was still blinding me to the bigger picture. As such I found your post quite enlightening.

Thanks,
Sean

Good suggestion, Sean. We've long left the original topic of this thread anyway! I've got a lot on my plate the next couple of days and am getting a little behind on my correspondence, but hope to at least start a new thread devoted to these issues later this week when it can receive the proper attention.

Meanwhile, you are far from alone on this. Like you, I've long been aware of the distorted picture we get by assuming the constancy of currency, but it is so pervasive I practically have to force myself to remember that what looks like up may not necessarily be up and down necessarily down. Even to the point of creating my own index of the real value of the dollar and using it to adjust everything in else, including my investments and historical data, to real terms. You get a remarkably different view of the financial landscape and it's had a profound effect on my perceptions of risk and returns. Hope you will join the discussion!

[Jim Nickerson]

Re: Credit inflation, Deflation: Prechter Interview

Wow Jim, you are in top form here! Okay, let’s roll up our sleeves and really dig into the issue.

I’m going to address your points on several fronts. Let me know if I’m losing you at any point along the way.

1) The basic concept here is a takeoff on the "Permanent Portfolio" as set forth in Harry Browne’s excellent book, Fail Safe Investing. In it Browne advocates an all-season asset allocation of 25% cash, 25% bonds, 25% stocks, and 25% gold, along with a rebalancing algorithm. Rather than attempt to lay out the case for his model, I recommend reading the book. It is a short book, easy to read, and elegantly simple in concept and application. Harry Browne, by the way, also wrote the book How You Can Profit In A Monetary Crisis over 25 years earlier, which despite its title is one of the best economics texts ever written and which formed the basis of my conception of finance and economics as a teenager. Browne, who just passed away a few months ago, was a master investor and also was twice the Libertarian Party nominee for President of the United States. He is also well known for his book How I Found Freedom In An Unfree World.

In an act of unpardonable hubris, I’ve modified Browne’s recommendations somewhat. His is really the true "sleep like a baby" portfolio. The overall volatility and risk of loss is practically minuscule, even over time frames as short as a year or two. My version is more oriented towards longer time frames and aims to provide greater returns at the expense of somewhat higher short term volatility and risk.

2) I’m not sure I fully understand your historical interpretation of my recommendation. You are using other funds or indexes as surrogates for the ETFs I cite before they became available? In any case, the deviations from the actual funds could be quite significant.

Finster, you understand I used other funds because the ones you are using did not exist 6 years ago. No doubt what they did could be quite different, but what is one to do? I believe even you use surrrogates in your website when you show how various indices have changed since the 1800's. Its no big deal for the point of illustration or either what are the alternatives?

3) As far as I can tell, you are looking exclusively at price performance, and not taking total return - including interest and dividends - in account.

You are absolutely correct, it took a relatively long time just to get the data in the table as I put it up. Interest and dividends would result in less than the 18.6% loss in the table.

4) In addition, it appears you have not allowed for rebalancing during the time frame in question. Since the rebalancing regimen is an integral part of the concept, it is not a realistic test.

Right you are again, I did not rebalance because I did not know that was an option.

5) My allocation targets are dynamic. See the chart I posted way back on Page 2 of this thread (#28). The fixed targets themselves would give you better performance than most investors, due to the common tendency to buy after something has already risen greatly and sell after it’s already fallen greatly, but in my view it is possible to improve further on that with an intelligent dynamic asset allocation target. Note for example that the allocation target swung rather dramatically from stocks toward bonds in 1999-2001.

Boy, if anything has my name on it, then your comments here do. Even the losses in the table with all the shortcomings noted above performed much, much better than I personally did during that period, i.e, I lost a whole lot more. Seeing how "your" portfolio as I tried to derive in the table performed drives home to me the potentially true significance of asset allocation along the lines you have put forth.

6) You have selected as your control time frame a truly extraordinary period in financial history. The deepest bear market in stocks since the Great Depression. This is surely a very tough hurdle for any investment program … a once in three generations, six standard deviations, event! If you are expecting it to be repeated in the next few years, then you are surely placing an outlier of a wager.

For one thing, that period is still fresh on my mind and will be until I die, not in lament, but in lessons taught, whether I actually have learned from them is yet to be determined. I likely am getting in over my head here, but for all the excesses that existed at the 2000 top, have they been "cleansed" from the system? Based on what others have written, it seems Greenspan stopped what perhaps should have happened in the way of the markets correcting themselves. I expect if I looked hard, even you may have made some similar observation on these pages, but that is a guess.

If there is still too much speculation and liquidity in the system, how unreasonable is it that it still is to be corrected?

I would simply urge you to consider that the nature of your argument is highly analogous to someone making a similar argument in 1936. He bases his analysis on the time frame extending from the top in stocks in October 1929 to the bottom in July 1932. Quite logically, he concludes that one should never, ever, own stocks. Of course, such logic would also keep him out of the single best performing investment for the next seven decades!

I do not think I was arguing against your proposed asset allocation model, I was attempting to raise what I thought was a good question, which based on your answers was a pretty good question, in that it drew out from you the point of "dynamic asset allocation."

7) This final point may be the most subtle of all, and yet the most important. You have erroneously assumed that cash is constant. It most certainly is not!

Right you are again, it was so subtle, I did not vaguely consider it. That sort of proves the depth of my thinking compared to yours, and that is why I keep trying to pick your brain.

This error is tantamount to taking any of the other components as constant; for example, assuming that the S&P 500 is fixed. If you were to then use that as the unit of measure for your portfolio performance you would see cash rising dramatically in value during the time period in question. But as Einstein might say, it’s all relative. Your error is very common - practically universal - due simply to the fact that we use our currency, the US dollar, as our unit of account. But aside from sheer force of habit, I would challenge you to defend your tacit assumption. Just try and justify a position that the value of the US dollar never changes!

I do not see it so much as a "tacit assumption" as I do seeing it as an unconscious error. One about which I do not mind being reminded. I appreciate the fact of bonar depreciation, but as you said not doing so is "practically universal," and I appreciate your efforts to keep me or us thinking about the reality of bonar depreciation. How many times did my parents correct me from saying "yeah" or "uh-huh" for "yes" and for not saying "sir and "ma'am"" TNTC=too numerous to count. One for whatever reasons in guiding others has to stick with it.

On what grounds, for example, do you assert that in fact the real value of cash did not change and that it remained fixed as in stone as the stock market declined, rather than rising as the stock market remained fixed as in stone?

The real truth is neither.

But this is not merely an academic point. In fact, in the 1929-1932 experience, a great deal of the apparent losses in the stock market were in fact a phenomenon of a rising value of dollars. That’s why we call it a deflation. Not only did cash rise against stocks, but it also rose against real estate, commodities, groceries, and just about everything else. If you held a portfolio of 50% stocks and 50% cash, and the stock portion declined by 90%, by your logic you would conclude that your overall loss was 45%. I strenuously object, however, countering that your cash gained in value - you just failed to acknowledge that fact by assuming cash to be constant and using the cash as your unit of measure.

It happened again in 2000-2002. Of course this time the Federal Reserve intervened with a massive, historic, inflationary effort before the slow-to-respond consumer prices went deep into the negative. We did briefly dip into CPI deflation in during that period, but the underlying deflation was cut short before it could really affect consumer prices to an extent resembling 1929-1932. Nevertheless, the assumption of constant cash value is unjustified.

For me to remedy the errors you point out, I would have to refigure all I tried to figure and deflate them by the FDR. Not enough time left for me to do that, but your points are clear and I accept them.

This is a crucial point behind my FDI work. In fact, the main application I use it for is as the unit of account for my own portfolio performance. If the value of cash rises, I see it happening in my spreadsheets. If it falls (the more normal circumstance!) I see it declining. And if stock prices are merely reflecting inflation, the declining value of the dollar, then I am not lulled into thinking I am turning a real profit when in fact I’m just treading water. If you were to do the same with the portfolio I cited - and include dividends and interest, the effects of rebalancing, etceteras, you would find that even in this historical outlier of a financial environment, you would have done far better than the vast majority of investors and then gone on to do so in the subsequent environment as well.

I know I would have done better, far better. I have proved that to myself from having tried to put up a back-test using the table, despite it being wrong in all the ways you have stated.

Do you now see the fallacy inherent in your question about a financial environment when almost everything is going down? When you examine the historical record, and evaluate the performance of a portfolio such Browne’s in real terms, you simply do not find any protracted period where such a thing happens. Something is always going up. It’s just that when it happens to be cash, your use of cash as a unit of account leads you to fail to notice.

Finster, I take your points. The net result being that despite all that was factually wrong with my thinking, it succeeding in bringing forth the next question: how does one go about tracking, in a practical sense, all the asset classes into which one might "dynamically" rebalance the asset allocation in such a portfolio? Refering back to Bart's post #121, the asset classes in his chart were: financials, consumer cyclical goods, consumer cyclical services, information technology, general industrials, basic industries, resources, non-cyclical consumer goods, non-cyclical consumer services, and utilities. Whether that list includes gold under "resources" I do not know, and the same for bonds perhaps under "financials." A better mind may even come up with several more.

And when I look at the original porfolio you put up in post #44, to me in some manner it is broadly diversified with regard to the equity stock portions both in the US and internationally, but perhaps narrowly diversified in the commodities and hard money portion. No doubt that perception could be wrong, but what other broad asset classes exist into which one might from time to time "dynamically" adjust the allocation? Likely obvious to you, but nearly totally obscure to me.

And thanks ... my shoulder is improving ... so please understand if I sound increasingly cranky as time passes ... ;)

Finster, you are not one generally prone to errors in what you write, but the latter part of your statement here seems to be a non sequitur.

Finster,

Would love to see your response to Jim's question re-written as the start of a new thread. I doubt many folks followed this particular thread this far down. While I completely get that the value of cash is not constant, my use of the dollar as a unit of account was still blinding me to the bigger picture. As such I found your post quite enlightening.

Thanks,
Sean

Last night I went back and re-read a lot of this thread. It wore me out, and I did not actually re-read every post. To me being in so many, if not most, ways a novice even after 20 years or trying to look after my own money, there is a lot of value, Finster, in your perspective (and Harry Brown's as you cited). I do not know how many visitors and members have had the tenacity to follow this thread, but in my opinion probably a lot of investors could benefit from your insights. It is too easy to suggest to anyone that they should do more work on something, but I empathetically appeal to you to consider Sean's recommendation.

I was thinking the other day, though you take your time to make very worthwhile comments on a lot of the threads in iTulip, I did not recall that you had begun even one thread--then, by Jove, you did.

Whether you take Sean's suggestion or not, I would like to learn more on the issue of "dynamic asset allocation" as you think about it, if that is something you are willing to discuss. Hopefully it is. And "thank you" again for your comments.

[bart]

Re: Credit inflation, Deflation: Prechter Interview

Finster, I take your points. The net result being that despite all that was factually wrong with my thinking, it succeeding in bringing forth the next question: how does one go about tracking, in a practical sense, all the asset classes into which one might "dynamically" rebalance the asset allocation in such a portfolio? Refering back to Bart's post #121, the asset classes in his chart were: financials, consumer cyclical goods, consumer cyclical services, information technology, general industrials, basic industries, resources, non-cyclical consumer goods, non-cyclical consumer services, and utilities. Whether that list includes gold under "resources" I do not know, and the same for bonds perhaps under "financials." A better mind may even come up with several more.

As you observed earlier, that particular chart was incomplete in its coverage of possible assets. It was from my investing "hat" page and the following chart is actually my original that shows all major "normal" asset classes and then some.



(from http://www.NowAndFutures.com/investing.html, for context)

Finster, you are not one generally prone to errors in what you write, but the latter part of your statement here seems to be a non sequitur.

Ah yes, grasshopper... but the Finster has been known on more than one occasion to throw out real zingers and tweaks. In other words, when he's feeling good - beware of being setup to be zapped by logic. ;)


By the way Jim, well done again on hanging in there with all this stuff. Its unquestionably very difficult to deal with it since it rattles so many pieces of false and conventional "wisdom".
Do not assume that either Finster or myself have not had our cages seriously rattled - we both have had many moments of confusion over the last few years since 2003 or so as we've taken our different paths towards trying to resolve the riddles and conundrums.

[Jim Nickerson]

Re: Credit inflation, Deflation: Prechter Interview

Do not assume that either Finster or myself have not had our cages seriously rattled - we both have had many moments of confusion over the last few years since 2003 or so as we've taken our different paths towards trying to resolve the riddles and conundrums.

Thanks for putting up the table, good one I have seen somewhere before, perhaps at your site. It is relevant to this discussion.

Bart, you add a lot to these fora, but if I recall correctly, and I may not, you seldom say anything about your own investment approach(es). There is no doubt in my mind you are a smart fellow, and compulsive beyond any good descriptors of which I can readily think, but I wonder how do you see all this stuff from whatever is your perspective? Is that too intrusive into your personal affairs? I hope not, and if so I withdraw the question, if not, how do you see allocation in some general sense?

[Finster]

Re: Credit inflation, Deflation: Prechter Interview

… a little tongue-in-cheek sporting humor at the same time. And thanks ... my shoulder is improving ... so please understand if I sound increasingly cranky as time passes ... ;)

Finster, you are not one generally prone to errors in what you write, but the latter part of your statement here seems to be a non sequitur.

Ah yes, grasshopper... but the Finster has been known on more than one occasion to throw out real zingers and tweaks. In other words, when he's feeling good - beware of being setup to be zapped by logic. ;)

Thanks Bart!

You just saved me from having to attempt to explain an apparently failed attempt at humor ... :rolleyes:

;)

[bart]

Re: Credit inflation, Deflation: Prechter Interview

Thanks for putting up the table, good one I have seen somewhere before, perhaps at your site. It is relevant to this discussion.

Bart, you add a lot to these fora, but if I recall correctly, and I may not, you seldom say anything about your own investment approach(es). There is no doubt in my mind you are a smart fellow, and compulsive beyond any good descriptors of which I can readily think, but I wonder how do you see all this stuff from whatever is your perspective? Is that too intrusive into your personal affairs? I hope not, and if so I withdraw the question, if not, how do you see allocation in some general sense?

Me? Chart and Fed and Central Bank and insouciance compulsive? ;)


That chart, plus my work on inflation prediction and direction, actually *is* my approach to asset allocation and investing. My investing 'hat' page truly is a description of what I do, from a high level.

The basic differences between Finster and I are that I'm a very active (trend or momentum following) trader, do much futures trading, do very little with specific stocks and also use mutual funds for IRA purposes (its not legal to trade futures with IRA money).

Right now for example, I'm about 75% cash, 15% physical metals and gems and other 'hard' assets, and 10% in futures positions. I'm currently lightly long in both Dec '06 gold and Nov '06 soybean futures contracts, and usually use no more than 3-5:1 leverage but have been know to go as high as 10:1 leverage.

I do actually practice what I chart - the various Fed and Bank of Japan charts were very key in my exiting 2/3 of my mining shares mutual funds and 100% of any other stocks in mid May '06 as another example. The thread and article I wrote on the temp repos and TIO 'manipulation' guides much of my S&P 500 futures positions.

Did that answer your question and curiosity?
My positions and opinions are not something terribly private but I generally avoid talking about it so as not to take too much attention off the fact based nature of my site and work, and my general goals of education and false data stripping.

[Jim Nickerson]

Re: Credit inflation, Deflation: Prechter Interview

Me? Chart and Fed and Central Bank and insouciance compulsive? ;)


That chart, plus my work on inflation prediction and direction, actually *is* my approach to asset allocation and investing. My investing 'hat' page truly is a description of what I do, from a high level.

The basic differences between Finster and I are that I'm a very active (trend or momentum following) trader, do much futures trading, do very little with specific stocks and also use mutual funds for IRA purposes (its not legal to trade futures with IRA money).

Right now for example, I'm about 75% cash, 15% physical metals and gems and other 'hard' assets, and 10% in futures positions. I'm currently lightly long in both Dec '06 gold and Nov '06 soybean futures contracts, and usually use no more than 3-5:1 leverage but have been know to go as high as 10:1 leverage.

I do actually practice what I chart - the various Fed and Bank of Japan charts were very key in my exiting 2/3 of my mining shares mutual funds and 100% of any other stocks in mid May '06 as another example. The thread and article I wrote on the temp repos and TIO 'manipulation' guides much of my S&P 500 futures positions.

Did that answer your question and curiosity?
My positions and opinions are not something terribly private but I generally avoid talking about it so as not to take too much attention off the fact based nature of my site and work, and my general goals of education and false data stripping.

Good, and fair enough. Thank you.

[Finster]

Re: Credit inflation, Deflation: Prechter Interview

Finster, you understand I used other funds because the ones you are using did not exist 6 years ago.

Of course, Jim.

No doubt what they did could be quite different, but what is one to do? I believe even you use surrrogates in your website when you show how various indices have changed since the 1800's. Its no big deal for the point of illustration or either what are the alternatives?

I’m not necessarily saying you should have done anything different; just simply pointing out that it’s not possible to draw completely firm conclusions. It wouldn’t be even if you had data for the exact securities mentioned; as they say, "past performance is no guarantee of future results". The best we can do is observe what has happened in the past, and make educated guesses about the future.

Right you are again, I did not rebalance because I did not know that was an option.

Not only is it an option, but essential. Just for instance, if you had 25% in stocks, and stocks went down 40%, you no longer have 25% in stocks! Browne recommends checking his portfolio once a year, and rebalancing only if certain criteria are met. You could go two years if the markets are fairly quiet and then not have to worry about missing the one-year long-term-capital-gains cutoff by one day. In any case, the huge swings in the markets during that time frame would have triggered activity.

Boy, if anything has my name on it, then your comments here do. Even the losses in the table with all the shortcomings noted above performed much, much better than I personally did during that period, i.e, I lost a whole lot more. Seeing how "your" portfolio as I tried to derive in the table performed drives home to me the potentially true significance of asset allocation along the lines you have put forth.

An awful lot of dot.com fans, too!

For one thing, that period is still fresh on my mind and will be until I die, not in lament, but in lessons taught, whether I actually have learned from them is yet to be determined. I likely am getting in over my head here, but for all the excesses that existed at the 2000 top, have they been "cleansed" from the system? Based on what others have written, it seems Greenspan stopped what perhaps should have happened in the way of the markets correcting themselves. I expect if I looked hard, even you may have made some similar observation on these pages, but that is a guess.

If there is still too much speculation and liquidity in the system, how unreasonable is it that it still is to be corrected?

You really need to start giving yourself more credit, Jim! That is an insightful observation. (Not to mention dangerously close to getting back on the topic of this thread!) I believe the Greenspan Fed short-circuited the corrective mechanism and ultimately left us with much more trouble ahead, when otherwise we could already have had it behind us by now. The stock bubble, housing bubble, soaring oil prices, and all-time record trade deficits are all part of the Greenspan Fed’s inflationary legacy.

I do not see it so much as a "tacit assumption" as I do seeing it as an unconscious error. One about which I do not mind being reminded. I appreciate the fact of bonar depreciation, but as you said not doing so is "practically universal," and I appreciate your efforts to keep me or us thinking about the reality of bonar depreciation. How many times did my parents correct me from saying "yeah" or "uh-huh" for "yes" and for not saying "sir and "ma'am"" TNTC=too numerous to count. One for whatever reasons in guiding others has to stick with it.

You bet. This is why I continually put myself at risk of being seen as a one-trick pony with my tiresome emphasis on this phenomenon. ;) It is incredibly simple, yet devilishly difficult to really get one’s arms around. It is a deeply ingrained habit of thought that gives rise to all sorts of illusions, and forcing myself to stay conscious of it has helped me tremendously.

I do not think I was arguing against your proposed asset allocation model, I was attempting to raise what I thought was a good question, which based on your answers was a pretty good question, in that it drew out from you the point of "dynamic asset allocation."…

Finster, I take your points. The net result being that despite all that was factually wrong with my thinking, it succeeding in bringing forth the next question: how does one go about tracking, in a practical sense, all the asset classes into which one might "dynamically" rebalance the asset allocation in such a portfolio? Refering back to Bart's post #121, the asset classes in his chart were: financials, consumer cyclical goods, consumer cyclical services, information technology, general industrials, basic industries, resources, non-cyclical consumer goods, non-cyclical consumer services, and utilities. Whether that list includes gold under "resources" I do not know, and the same for bonds perhaps under "financials." A better mind may even come up with several more…

And when I look at the original porfolio you put up in post #44, to me in some manner it is broadly diversified with regard to the equity stock portions both in the US and internationally, but perhaps narrowly diversified in the commodities and hard money portion. No doubt that perception could be wrong, but what other broad asset classes exist into which one might from time to time "dynamically" adjust the allocation? Likely obvious to you, but nearly totally obscure to me…

Whether you take Sean's suggestion or not, I would like to learn more on the issue of "dynamic asset allocation" as you think about it, if that is something you are willing to discuss. Hopefully it is. And "thank you" again for your comments.

Jim, as Sean suggested, we should probably have a thread just for this issue, and can address these points more fully there. For now, let me just clarify that the term asset class is not totally uniformly used in finance. When I use the term, it’s generally in a very broad sense, such that equities, bonds (long and short term), cash, commodities, and real estate are pretty much all inclusive. Equities, for example, would cut across all capitalizations and geographies. You could even fold real estate into a more general "equity" class. Cash could even be considered the limiting case of a zero-maturity bond. Or going the other way, you might consider commodity futures separately from commodities themselves. But all told, there would be perhaps only three to five fundamentally different investable asset classes. Personally, for asset allocation purposes, I use three major classes and further subdivide those into fourteen subclasses. But the important point is not the exact classification you use, but the concept of dynamic asset allocation and the opposing principles of concentration and diversification, and the maximization of return and minimization of risk. Again, we’ll hopefully discuss this more fully in an upcoming thread on the topic.

[bart]

Re: Credit inflation, Deflation: Prechter Interview

...
The best we can do is observe what has happened in the past, and make educated guesses about the future.
...

Now you've gone and done it... do not forget the essential factors like crystal balls and *magic*: ;)

[Finster]

Re: Credit inflation, Deflation: Prechter Interview

Now you've gone and done it... do not forget the essential factors like crystal balls and *magic*: ;)

You mean like those charts a certain dude keeps posting on these here walls?



Bart And His Latest Chart


(Stagecraft Included)

;)

[bart]

Re: Credit inflation, Deflation: Prechter Interview

You mean like those charts a certain dude keeps posting on these here walls?



Bart And His Latest Chart
http://www.nowandfutures.com/grins/m...genie_ball.jpg

(Stagecraft Included)

;)

Oh the temptations to comments on the curves and aesthetics of certain "charts"... ;)


By the way, damn nice job on explaining your approach and the basics of the FDI, etc. and avoiding using the dollar as a benchmark, etc.