The used airplane market has historically been much simpler. Overlay the Nasdaq and offset about 90 days to clear the books of deals already in process and you'll be close. It is well-documented that selling higher-priced planes is easier in a good economy than selling the same planes for much less during a recession.
Agreed Wayne. But I put the monetary cycle square in the "reindeer games" category. Booms and busts are driven by greed and fear waves.
And NASDAQ!? Should'a used the S&P index if you didn't want me to get cranky. Market Makers indeed. NASDAQ. There's some shady stuff going on there. Tech companies love NASDAQ. Of course, NYSE isn't exactly clean either.
Real world story of "reindeer games" today:
Sat through another 401k sales pitch today at work. I qualify now that I've been there a year. Been looking forward to this latest sales pitch, since I've been through tons of them with all the company name changes. Wanted to see the offering.
Of course, first off... It always struck me as interesting that companies would allow employees to sit around for a couple of hours getting pitched by salespeople for something that costs them money in down productivity and what-not.
Funny how they never mention that the amount "IRS defined high earners" in a company can contribute -- is directly related to how many dollars the "low earners" put in. Hmm. Motivation, defined.
Or that the "company match" was probably paid for by the last round of layoffs so there's an enticement to suck more of those "low-earner" dollars in. (Most companies will say their match is to remain competitive with their competitor's compensation. What they don't say is that they're talking about the "high-earner"'s compensation.)
They also pooh-poohed the idea of self-directed investments inside a 401k. Gosh, funny... I have that in my old one. Was one of the people who pounded the table with HR for it too.
Strike one against rollover! Haha.
But they suuuuure wanted my name on that "might be interested in a rollover" list. Mo' money "under management" for them. More fees. Nothing new here. Moving along...
No mention of any analysis to see whether leaving it where it is would better, Net/Net. Lots of mentions of intangibles like having less statements to keep track of.
Strike one for true customer service.
It even took someone in the crowd to mention that one should NEVER have the rollover disbursement paid out to oneself personally to avoid IRS nightmares. They didn't bring it up at all other than to flippantly say they'd "take care of everything... just put your name on the list. Droid 135431. Hush. You're scaring the newbies."
This one even pitched a "fully managed" option where they do ALL of the choosing of what you're invested in inside the 401k and charge you a significant management fee to do it. Nice. Making money on both ends. The fees were rediculous.
I almost laughed out loud when their PowerPoint slide came up. At least I was sitting close enough to read the tiny fine print at the bottom.
"Of course this is all detailed in the four-color bound book you all received but won't read... Oh and we don't detail whether or not the funds in the book have any short term trading penalties, but you can look that up on our website."
That woukd be the website where you have to sign up and have an account to access them. Or you can call on the phone for a paper prospectus for the 25 or so funds they had in the offering... LOL! A little light reading material.
There were quite a few folks with "deer in the headlights" looks at this point. The "you're going to work forever" scare slides went by earlier. Technically accurate, so no beef with those. They assumed 3.5% inflation over 20 years according to the fine print. My eyeballs love fine print on PowerPoint from across a room.
And there were a few who were challenging the pitch man about his pitch. He glossed over and kept moving. "Talk to me later."
Then a new one I hadn't seen before. A little rah-rah about "Equal Value" funds for "very conservative" investors. Ooh. Yay. A fund that beats bank savings, but is earning two points below the average inflation rate!
Sign me up!
Losing money slowly is apparently "conservative".
Strike two, customer service category.
This company is known as one of the better ones. P.T. Barnum would have been proud. Thus... Reindeer games.
These people were hucksters of the modern variety. They pitched every single fee based configuration of a 401k plan that they could. Death by a thousand paper cuts.
The guy had a nice Oxford shirt and Tweed jacket though. He must be a financial genius just waiting to make me money. Hahaha.
(They also unsuccessfully tried to cover up that the poor guy was in training. His handler... ahem... peer... sat front-right and filled in the SEC required stuff that he forgot.)
Markets are driven by these people's bosses and financial company owners. Reindeer games.
Jamie Diamond is going to "apologize" to Congress I hear for the recent JP Morgan behavior.
Aww. Isn't that sweet?
So...
All that to say "you're right". It's a timing game. But that timing too often favors the hucksters. They pitch the long side to average investors while they play the long side and the short side. I didn't see any short side investment opportunities for proper hedging available in their pitch.
..
