For over 200 years it was an accepted medical practice to perform bleeding on sick folk to help cure their ills.  This was preformed by barbers and the pole was used as a sign to indicate that bleeding was done at that location.  Some of you may not recall seeing barber’s poles; they were red and white in a spiral and the pole rotated.  The red for the blood and the white for the clean white bandages.  This practice was later found to do very little good and was discontinued.  However, since it did deplete the blood in the body, the red bone marrow would immediately start to manufacture new blood and this process would add new fresh blood that carried more oxygen to the heart and other organs so it DID make the patient FEEL better, thus the reason it lasted so long.

The Chinese have a torture that is called "death by a 1000 cuts".this was administered in an on-going process and caused the victim to ever-so-slowly lose blood. In this process unbelievable pain was caused and the person finally died.

The current economic atmosphere is somewhat similar in nature.  We have these great moves up in stocks, oil, gold, silver, copper, wheat, zinc, tin, coffee.  Everyone gets TOO excited about these AND PAY TOO MUCH—for example HOUSING.  These prices absolutely must correct as you will eventually have TOO MUCH for the demand and then an over supply and prices come back to earth. This is the way it has always been and always will be.  There is nothing wrong with this process.  It is actually very, very good as it allows markets to properly adjust to the correct supply/demand balance.

Now the big question is which would you rather have, the "death by 1000 cuts" (slow, long, drawn-out correction) or a quick and over with "bleeding" down at the barber shop?  My years of experience tells me very strongly that the quick move down and adjust in order to again move up in a stair-step fashion is by far the better of the two.

THIS IS WHAT IS HAPPENING AS THIS IS WRITTEN.

I REALLY EXPECT THE LAST HALF OF THIS YEAR AND FIRST HALF OF NEXT YEAR TO BE THE BEST IN ANY OF OUR LIVES.

We are well positioned to actually gain from the current decline by way of options, cash and great buying opportunities.

Happy New Year to One and All.

Jack