WINNING BEFORE THE GAME IS PLAYED or COUNTING THE CHICKENS BEFORE THEY HATCH

as predicted and promoted by the various interested parties, the market is greeting the start of war with a rally. in fact, its playing out exactly according to the gulf war 'playbook'. so far, the market has tacked on about 9% from the intra-day low of 7418 on march 12th without a shot being fired or a U.S. troop in bahgdad. with its special x-ray vision its seeing through all the risk and uncertainty to a better day. once the troops begin the assualt oil will drop to $25/brl, gold will fall back into oblivion below $300/oz., and business will resume to pre-war levels. whew. glad thats over with. all this waiting and wondering how and what will happen was killing me. only thing i dont understand is how and what will REALLY happen and how it will REALLY effect the world or the U.S. economy. so far its just alot of guess work as nobody knows the actual outcome of the impending conflict.

throughout my life i've been cautioned not to count on things happening the way i foresee prior to them happening, thus the cliche', "dont count your chickens before they hatch". obviously, this does not apply to wars conducted by the U.S., as victory has already been declared and the equity markets are 'chicken counting' already. problem is the chickens havent yet hatched!?!

detatils, details. why worry about that when we've been told what to expect and that we can handle whatever happens, even though we dont know what will happen, in the process of dethrowning saddam. so now that we have the uncertainty of actual hostilities behind us we can look forward to "normal" economic news flows and business news that will not blame war fears for earnings shortfalls, now we will have war outcomes to deal with. we can take it a step further if we want, and the market seems to want to, and foresee that businesses will spend again, rehire fired workers and stop cutting employee benefits. the resolution to the iraq situation will also allow pensions to become over-funded again, automobile manfacturers will eliminate incentives, airlines will fill up all the seats, retailers will see mall traffic improve, unemployment will head back to 4%, bankruptcies will fall back to normal levels, and we may even go to a blue terror alert. the list of potential positive results goes on and on but none of them have occured yet.

all i know is that i'd like to get this result from all my personal endeavors...i.e. winning prior to playing. not the usual course of events but nevermind that, just put a notch in the 'win' column and lets move on to the next game.

have a grateful day!

larry