Mostly: Classical

[Frank Pembleton]

Chilling predictions for 2004
By J. Christoph Amberger
The Taipan Group’s 247profits e-Dispatch

***Here are a few things we’re likely to see in 2004:

*The Dow will hit 11,000 between March 2 and April 26, 2004.

*The NASDAQ will hit 2,900 in Q3 2004.

*Gold prices will erode 25% to 30% by December 31, 2004.

*The US dollar will fall to US$1.37 vs. the euro before February but trade near parity at the end of the year.

*China’s functionaries will start rereading Max Weber’s “Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” when they realize productivity is declining as labor costs increase.

*George Bush will be reelected with the broadest mandate in recent history.

*An Iraqi court will try Saddam Hussein. He’ll have at least one French lawyer on his defense team who will claim an alcoholic grandmother and childhood emotional trauma in his defense. He’ll be found guilty and condemned to death. The sentence will be harshly criticized by the UN and the Europeans but not carried out until Saddam has ceased to be of intelligence value… in, say, 2029.

*Osama bin Laden will be caught alive - albeit barely. The Vatican and German government politicians will harshly criticize the imperialist American doctors treating him for wearing belts made of pigskin, thus offending his religious sensibilities.

*At least three major terrorist attacks will rock the stock markets of Asian countries. Our short list of potential targets: Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. Each market will drop up to 11% in the immediate aftermath, to recover within less than six weeks.

*Oil prices will continue to increase through the first half of the year. In the second half, additional supplies coming out of Libya will level out prices.

*India’s projected economic growth will falter as water shortages once again take a bite of its 25%-of-GDP agricultural sector.

*Two prominent Enron figures will be sentence to prison terms. Both will convert to Islam a day before their incarceration.

*IPO’s will come back with a vengeance, increasing demand for the analytical expertise of our very own Siu-Yee Ng.

*Our managing editor Ned Humphrey will run out of Anglophile nicknames for Martin “Desk of Denholm” Denholm.

*Our friends at the Daily Reckoning will double their intake of Maalox and wormwood as the equity markets power ahead.

*Adam T. Lass, Gandalf of Gains and WaveStrength oracle, will submit a contribution to the e-Dispatch that is less than twelve paragraphs long.

All right, I’m going out on a limb here… but stranger things have happened. Yet if there’s one thing I am absolutely certain of, it’s this:

*The Taipan Group editors will turn each and every one of these events into profitable recommendations for our members.

With my best wishes for a profitable and successful New Year,

J. Christoph Amberger
Publisher, The Taipan Group
And the entire Taipan Team

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