WHAT WE FOUND

We had lunch the other day with three fellows who follow the markets pretty closely.
It was one of those little Italian places with red and white check tablecloths, a single white vase with a single artificial rose in the center, cubby holed in a strip shopping mall not far from LAX.

All three it turns out shared with us a recent common thing that happened to them. Bizarre you might even say.The first one who actually started the subject said he looked up the word parse in the dictionary owing to some peculiar urge he said just came over him one afternoon at the office. He said the definition of what he found surprised him:  "Just below 2%."

The second fellow chuckled and said he had a peculiar incident too. But his happened early one morning after he came out of the shower and flicked on the television noting the market was in one of its ugly moods. He said he looked up the term hedge and there it was:"Just below 2%."

We almost hesitate to tell you what the third guy told us when he looked up the word prayer. He denied having any weird urges, just saying he's a dictionary freak.The funny thing is he's not even religious. Life is not always random, you know. But here's what he told us with a straight face only a high stakes Las Vegas poker player would appreciate:  "Prayer: ECB, just below 2%."

This might also surprise you. That started off a rousing discussion of what is "just below 2%?" So all three of us decided to check the dictionary one more once. And this is what we found.