Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Armageddon Trade of the Day (10/1/08)

Back by popular demand, we present our Armageddon Trade of the Day (I may need to come up with a graphic for this....)

Our original trade emphasized canned food and taser guns on an absolute basis, but this time around we're getting fancy and moving to relative value trades involving a long and short (though we may not be able to short ANYTHING soon). Again... anything I'd go long are stocks that will do well, should the civilization screech to a halt, while those I'd go short... well you get the drift.

And the Armageddon Trade of the Day is.... Long Paper (hey we need to keep track of food rations somehow) / Short Computers (rule #1 when the world screeches to a halt... there is no electricity).

Btw- my original post was picked up by Prospect and Reason and some great suggestions include cheap booze, ammo, cigarettes, and my personal favorite... cat food. However, the best analysis comes from Joshua Corning who compares the advantage of hunting rifles over M-16's...
M-16 is an elegant high maintenance weapon that requires way to much in overhead. In the long run deer hunting rifles have an advantage.
One day, EconomPic Data too will have a funny message board (Jake slowly wipes tear from eye)...

2 comments:

  1. I you are trying to hunt for food, a hunting rifle wins out. However, an M-16 is a much better weapon for handling civil disorder. Note that the civilian version is the AR-15. See AR15.com.

    The M-16 design has been much improved over the years. The Vietnam era problems are long gone. Militaries all of the world use it, including many that don't have to.

    The AK-47 is more rugged than the M-16. However, that is only advantage if your country's army is made up of soldiers with very low levels of education. Otherwise, the M-16 wins out.

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  2. There aren't enough animals to hunt in North America to make much of a difference. Any sane model of food-supply breakdown, and the populace turning to hunting, takes game animal populations to near zero very, very quickly.

    Which doesn't make it a bad trade, it's a good trade predicated on people rushing to an obvious but bad plan.

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