[Moshe..]

I wonder if any of the americans here are players. I've been obsessively worrying & stressing out this month about what to do with my (admittedly very modest!) american assets. The american economy is a bit scary right now. I moved out my nasdaq and dow-jones index-funds last month - thankfully it was on the day after the markets rallied due to that beautifully timed interest-slash announcement following the credit-crunch. I barely got burned (about 0.8-9% to the bad). I've temporarily put everything into silver commodities (but that's obviously not a long-term solution for my small but important high-risk portion of assets). Currently, the silver demand from china and india is accelerating away nicely (the hunger for silver being a result of the vast capacity expansions of the electronics industry). Unfortunately, the EU, Japanese and American governments have been matching that demand by selling off their silver stockpiles, thus keeping the price gains relatively modest. I am nonetheless going to keep most of my funds there for safety (85% I think! However, if inflationary expectations start to pick up, I'll have to move most of it into the bond-markets in order to catch the inevitable spike in bond yields), but I want to do something moderately high-risk with my remaining 15%.

I am thinking american energy-futures now (Alaskan oil reserves? Also, oil-futures speculations in the gulf of mexico?). The basis for my (original) masterplan is the american government's strategic stockpiling policies. The huge expansion of the american strategic petroleum reserve (it will be doubled in the next few years according to the whitehouse) will guarantee american demand is higher than it should be. Moreover, the american domestic oil industry is going to be continuously subsidised (and given regulatory breaks) during this expansion for obvious geo-political reasons (reduced reliance on the middle-east + russian). Finally, even if the forthcoming situation changes radically (i.e. stability in iraq; iranians behave themselves and act nice; russians cheer up and stop drinking illicit industrial chemicals), the stockpiles will only be happily drained off to private american oil companies at discount rates (very very profitable for chevron stock ect!). And, basic macro-economist that I am, I know that this lucrative discount selling will be far more likely to happen in a few years if we have an economic slow-down (due to the political desperation caused by otherwise decreased government revenue flows). (So far as I know nobody else in finance has thought this stuff through yet!).

The alternative is to move it out of america altogether. This is what my brother's doing. He's putting his high risk portion (never more than 15%) into some very risky emerging markets. The remaining 85% is split: 45% super safe bonds, 40% medium-safe hard-commodities. He has some ridiculous mathematical justification for spreading his risk across the extremes. I believe too much in economic fundamentals to dare play the chinese and russian markets (and gov bonds, safe as they, are not very much better than a goldman-sachs savings-account). Foreign capital investors into russia were completely decimated less than a decade ago. And the chinese 'free-market style' institutions are built on quick sand. Of course, some kids would argue that this is still a mathematically acceptable level of risk so long as you keep moving that 15% in and out very quickly (almost like you do when playing the forex markets - which is, at least, good entertainment and divertissement!).