Hi John. I hope all is well with you, my friend.
Sophia is a wonderful and beautiful Greek woman. My cousins introduced me to her. She is from Dallas, so for the last year or so, we did the long distance relationship. She is great. Very outgoing and a very happy person. I always wanted to marry a Greek. I am very blessed.
We are hoping to take her parents out to Vegas later in the fall. Her father has been rather ill with a chronic blood disorder. If that clears up in time, we really want to get him out there as he has never been and has always wanted to go. I will let you know.
Yeah, the market - especially the real estate stocks - finally crashed. This wasn't that hard to see, but hard to predict WHEN it would happen. Greenspan should be hung for the liquidity he ridiculously maintained in the system. Pathetic.
Looking at oil and US dollars. I read some fascinating research papers on Oil Prices vs Demand vs National GDP. It turns out that the demand for (and therefore price of) oil is about 10 times more sensitive to a nations GDP rather than the forces of supply/demand. This has been a consistent relationship over the last few decades. The article posited that as the global recession spreads, GDP's of nations will decrease. They even think the estimates of GDP growth for nations have been too high. This downward-adjusted GDP will have further downward pressure on oil-prices. Fascinating stuff. If anyone wants a copy of that article, I am happy to email it to you.
We used that data, along with an article on the oil phenomenon of "Contango", to trade DUG (oil short ETF) for some really nice profits.
I think moving forward, we will continue to see the dollar hold its strength. It has already had a nice move in the last month or so. The European Central Bank is going to have to move rates in response to a worsening economy. this will only help the dollar further.
We shall see....
-peter
