Is Deflation already here?

Is a Crash Coming? Ten Reasons to Be Cautious

Excerpt:

Deflation is already here. Consumer prices have fallen for three months in a row. And, most ominously, it's affecting wages too. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that, last quarter, workers earned 0.7% less in real terms per hour than they did a year ago. No wonder the Fed is worried. In deflation, wages, company revenues, and the value of your home and your investments may shrink in dollar terms. But your debts stay the same size. That makes deflation a vicious trap, especially if people owe way too much money.

What Deflation Means for Your Money

Excerpts:

In deflation, cash wouldn't be king. Income would be king.

Investors would be struggling to find safe, dependable sources of income.

So top-quality bonds, which provide that income, would boom. Bond prices would rise, and the yield, or interest rate, falls. (In Japan, at one point, long-term government bonds yielded nearly nothing).

That would be good for Treasurys, especially longer-term bonds, as well as for better quality municipals and corporates.

Cash would still be prince, though. If a savings account earns you zero percent interest, but prices fall 2%, you've still made 2% in real terms. And it's tax free. (Contrast that with earning 4% interest in an era of 2% inflation).

...

If income would be king and cash would be prince, in an era of deflation, debt would be the devil.

Your credit card bill. Your car and student loans. Your mortgage. As incomes and prices fall, the bills stay the same, which means they grow in real terms. It gets harder and harder to pay them off. "You're paying down debts but your income is falling," says SG strategist Albert Edwards. "So you have to pay down your debt even more quickly. You get into a vicious cycle."

Comment: Is Deflation already here? No sure. But two good articles about the dangers of. I've long considered "debt to be the devil" (not speaking theologically!)

On dividend paying stocks

High Dividend Stocks: An Alternative to Fixed-Income Investing

Excerpt:

These stocks may not outperform gold in a runaway inflationary scenario. However, if central banks miraculously restore the economy without causing inflation, gold will dive, but these stocks should hold up well, inflation or not.

Comment: I personally could not invest in a tobacco company but there are some others that interest me: the pharmaceutical companies mentioned and CenturyLink

The "Dollar" stores

Dollar stores face challenge in recovery - Super-discounters have drawn more business in recession

Excerpt:

Dollar General, Family Dollar and Dollar Tree. The small-box retailers generally have seen sales pick up in the recession and their market has expanded beyond their traditional lower-income demographic. But as the economy improves they could face a problem hanging onto some of their newest customers, analysts say.

The companies will have to pay attention to areas where they sometimes have been lacking, including keeping stores clean and aisles clear. And in a rebounding economy they will have to overcome the perception that their goods are lower quality or less trustworthy.

“When you’re not feeling quite as financially strapped, you might get a little fussier about what it’s like to go into the store,” said Meredith Adler, a senior research analyst with Barclays Capital Equity Research.

Still, Adler said the dollar store segment is likely to benefit from the difficult economy for years to come, because many Americans are still struggling and others have adopted thriftier habits.

Comments:

• Family Dollar Stores Inc. (FDO)
  
• Dollar Tree, Inc. (DLTR)
  
• Dollar General Corp. (DG)
  
• Charted together
  

I don't think I've ever been in any of these stores. But look how the stock has gone up since January!

A "B" instead of an "M"

Stock Selloff May Have Been Triggered by a Trader Error

Excerpt:

In one of the most dizzying half-hours in stock market history, the Dow plunged nearly 1,000 points before paring those losses—all apparently due to a trader error.

According to multiple sources, a trader entered a "b" for billion instead of an "m" for million in a trade possibly involving Procter & Gamble, a component in the Dow. (CNBC's Jim Cramer noted suspicious price movement in P&G stock on air during the height of the market selloff.)

Sources tell CNBC the erroneous trade may have been made at Citigroup.

Comment: Interesting

What changed peppercorn from a spice you could pay a month’s rent with, to something that is given away free in small paper packets?

What Do Ancient Spice Traders and the Modern Financial Industry Have in Common?

Excerpt:

In the ancient world, the Arabs controlled most of the spice trade. They ran secret trade routes from the Indies and other eastern countries. The spices they gathered were then sold and traded for extremely high prices to the Greeks and Romans in Alexandria, the Wall Street of its time. The Europeans knew many of the spices came from the Indies, but they weren’t exactly sure where the Indies were and how to find the actual spices. This allowed the Arab traders to capitalize on the lack of information.

According to Herodotus in some of his fifth-century B.C. writings, the Arabs led the Greeks and Romans to believe gathering cinnamon was a matter of life or death. The story was told that Arab traders and merchants had to dress in full body suits of ox-hide to protect themselves from terrible winged creatures. They would have to leave a sacrificial cow to lure the winged monster bird off of its nest made of, wait for it…cinnamon. As the Arabs told the story, the winged creature would inevitably knock portions of their nest on the earth below as it flew to claim its offering. The merchants would then risk their life to grab the few pieces of cinnamon stick nests they could gather before the winged creature attacked them.

Herodotus also recorded stories of the Arabs regarding frankincense and ginger. According to the legends, frankincense grew in the tops of trees and was guarded by flying snakes. Arab traders would then cheat death by driving the flying snakes from the treetops while other merchants would quickly gather the frankincense they could. Ginger supposedly washed from the Garden of Eden.

What was the purpose of these ridiculous fantasies? Not only did the Arabs control the supply, they also manipulated the perceived value of their product and services by controlling all of the information of their origins. But the barriers of information in the spice trade began to fall around 120 B.C.

According to Tom Standage, business editor at The Economist, here’s how it went down: In 120 B.C., a ship wrecked in the Red Sea. One survivor was found and taken to the court in Alexandria. He told them he was on a ship traveling between India and the Red Sea and it went off course and wrecked. The court sat speechless because as far as they knew, there was no direct route from the known western world to India. (Common belief at the time was that to reach India, ships would have to hug the shore, sail all the way around the Arabian Peninsula, up the Persian Gulf, and back down towards India, past Persia and Pakistan.) The stranded Indian trader bargained to show the Alexandrian court this “secret” direct route if they give him a ride home.

Within a few years the new, shorter routes are known to all of the Europe, and the fantasy stories were found to be nothing but myths used to inflate prices and scare away those who may want to find the spices themselves. In time, the Romans industrialized the spice trade and flooded the market with spices. This changed peppercorn from a spice you could pay a month’s rent with, to something that is given away free is small paper packets in fast food restaurants today.

Comment: I learned a valuable lesson last year after I foolishly paid a broker a high commission to sell some stock - hey I can do it myself!

Why sTocks go into the dryer and never come out

When Stock Prices Drop, Where's the Money?

Excerpts:

Have you ever wondered what happened to your socks when you put them into the dryer and then never saw them again? It's an unexplained mystery that may never have an answer. Many people feel the same way when they suddenly find that their brokerage account balance has taken a nosedive. So, where did that money go? Fortunately, money that is gained or lost on a stock doesn't just disappear. Read to find out what happens to it and what causes it.

...

So, if you purchase a stock for $10 and then sell it for only $5, you will (obviously) lose $5. It may feel like that money must go to someone else, but that isn't exactly true. It doesn't go to the person who buys the stock from you. The company that issued the stock doesn't get it either. The brokerage is also left empty-handed, as you only paid it to make the transaction on your behalf. So the question remains: where did the money go?

The most straightforward answer to this question is that it actually disappeared into thin air, along with the decrease in demand for the stock, or, more specifically, the decrease in investors' favorable perception of it.

But this capacity of money to dissolve into the unknown demonstrates the complex and somewhat contradictory nature of money. Yes, money is a teaser - at once intangible, flirting with our dreams and fantasies, and concrete, the thing with which we obtain our daily bread. More precisely, this duplicity of money represents the two parts that make up a stock's market value: the implicit and explicit value.

On the one hand, money can be created or dissolved with the change in a stock's implicit value, which is determined by the personal perceptions and research of investors and analysts. For example, a pharmaceutical company with the rights to the patent for the cure for cancer may have a much higher implicit value than that of a corner store.

Depending on investors' perceptions and expectations for the stock, implicit value is based on revenues and earnings forecasts. If the implicit value undergoes a change - which, really, is generated by abstract things like faith and emotion - the stock price follows. A decrease in implicit value, for instance, leaves the owners of the stock with a loss because their asset is now worth less than its original price. Again, no one else necessarily received the money; it has been lost to investors' perceptions.

Now that we've covered the somewhat "unreal" characteristic of money, we cannot ignore how money also represents explicit value, which is the concrete worth of a company. Referred to as the accounting value (or sometimes book value), the explicit value is calculated by adding up all assets and subtracting liabilities. So, this represents the amount of money that would be left over if a company were to sell all of its assets at fair market value and then pay off all of liabilities.

...

For instance, in February 2009, Cisco Systems Inc. had 5.81 billion shares outstanding, which means that if the value of the shares dropped by $1, it would be the equivalent to losing more than $5.81 billion in (implicit) value. Because CSCO has many billions of dollars in concrete assets, we know that the change occurs not in explicit value, so the idea of money disappearing into thin air ironically becomes much more tangible. In essence, what's happening is that investors, analysts and market professionals are declaring that their projections for the company have narrowed. Investors are therefore not willing to pay as much for the stock as they were before.

So, faith and expectations can translate into cold hard cash, but only because of something very real: the capacity of a company to create something, whether it is a product people can use or a service people need. The better a company is at creating something, the higher the company's earnings will be and the more faith investors will have in the company.

In a bull market, there is an overall positive perception of the market's ability to keep producing and creating. Because this perception would not exist were it not for some evidence that something is being or will be created, everyone in a bull market can be making money. Of course, the exact opposite can happen in a bear market.

To sum it all up, you can think of the stock market as a huge vehicle for wealth creation and destruction.

Comment: The stock market is now in the destructive phase!

NYTimes: Calculate Your Financial Comeback

Calculate Your Financial Comeback

Excerpt:

Has your portfolio plummeted? So has ours. Use our Comeback CalculatorSM to calculate when your investments could return to their peak levels.

Comment: Quick calculator from the NYTimes

Stocks are unreasonably cheap now

Is Buffett Insane?

Excerpts:

In the midst of economic chaos, Warren Buffett recently made a bold prediction. He said that now is the time to buy American stocks.

...

1974: Stagflation


The years 1973 and 1974 were two very bad ones for the market. OPEC had started flexing its muscles, causing oil to quadruple. This resulted in a long recession, with inflation spiking to 12.3% in 1974, while real GDP growth fell by 0.5%. America experienced stagflation -- the ugly combination of a recession and high inflation rates -- and people were terrified. The situation was even worse in the United Kingdom, where the government was bailing out banks after real estate crashed. Over those two years, the S&P 500 plunged by 42%.

It was then, on Nov. 1, 1974, at the height of the pessimism, that Buffett made his first well-publicized bullish market call. He noted that he was well aware that the world was in a mess, but that stocks were simply too cheap. "If you're only worried about corporate profits, panic or depression, these things don't bother me at these prices."

To be totally clear, Buffett made one of the most direct predictions of his entire career: "Now is the time to invest and get rich." Buffett himself was buying shares of The Washington Post (NYSE: WPO) and advertising agency Interpublic (NYSE: IPG).

It worked out pretty well for him. The market jumped 32% in 1975, and another 19% the next year. Even today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average's 38% gain in 1975 stands up as its biggest increase since 1955.

Comment: Unreasonable Pessimism has replaced Irrational Exuberance. Time to keep investing!

Warren Buffett: BUY!

Buy American. I Am

Excerpts:

A simple rule dictates my buying: Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful. And most certainly, fear is now widespread, gripping even seasoned investors. To be sure, investors are right to be wary of highly leveraged entities or businesses in weak competitive positions. But fears regarding the long-term prosperity of the nation’s many sound companies make no sense. These businesses will indeed suffer earnings hiccups, as they always have. But most major companies will be setting new profit records 5, 10 and 20 years from now.

Let me be clear on one point: I can’t predict the short-term movements of the stock market. I haven’t the faintest idea as to whether stocks will be higher or lower a month — or a year — from now. What is likely, however, is that the market will move higher, perhaps substantially so, well before either sentiment or the economy turns up. So if you wait for the robins, spring will be over.

A little history here: During the Depression, the Dow hit its low, 41, on July 8, 1932. Economic conditions, though, kept deteriorating until Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in March 1933. By that time, the market had already advanced 30 percent. Or think back to the early days of World War II, when things were going badly for the United States in Europe and the Pacific. The market hit bottom in April 1942, well before Allied fortunes turned. Again, in the early 1980s, the time to buy stocks was when inflation raged and the economy was in the tank. In short, bad news is an investor’s best friend. It lets you buy a slice of America’s future at a marked-down price.

...

Equities will almost certainly outperform cash over the next decade, probably by a substantial degree. Those investors who cling now to cash are betting they can efficiently time their move away from it later. In waiting for the comfort of good news, they are ignoring Wayne Gretzky’s advice: “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it has been.”

I don’t like to opine on the stock market, and again I emphasize that I have no idea what the market will do in the short term. Nevertheless, I’ll follow the lead of a restaurant that opened in an empty bank building and then advertised: “Put your mouth where your money was.” Today my money and my mouth both say equities.

Comment: We continue to invest in our 401K's as well as Sharebuilder.com. I like the DIA EFT (Diamond Trust)

The 401-Keg Plan

If you had purchased $1000.00 of Nortel stock one year ago, it would now be worth $49.00.

With Enron, you would have $16.50 left of the original $1000.

With WorldCom, you would have less than $5.00 left.

If you had purchased $1000.00 of Delta Air Lines stock you would have $49.00 left.

If you had purchased United Airlines, you would have nothing left.

But, if you had purchased $1000.00 worth of beer one year ago, drank all the beer, then turned in the cans for the aluminum recycling refund you would have $214.00.

Based on the above, the best current investment advice is to drink heavily and recycle.

This is called the 401-Keg Plan.

START NOW!

Comment: Sent to me by a friend!

My broker called and ...

For all of you with any money left, be aware of the next expected mergers so that you can get in on the ground floor and make some BIG bucks.

Watch for these consolidations in 2008:

1. Hale Business Systems, Mary Kay Cosmetics, Fuller Brush, and W. R.Grace Co. will merge and become: Hale, Mary, Fuller, Grace.
   
2. PolygramRecords, Warner Bros., and ZestaCrackers join forces and become: Poly, Warner Cracker.
   
3. 3M will merge with Goodyear and become: MMMGood
   
4. Zippo Manufacturing, AudiMotors, Dofasco, and Dakota Mining will merge
   and become: ZipAudiDoDa.
   
5. FedEx is expected to join its competitor, UPS, and become: FedUP.
   
6. Fairchild Electronics and Honeywell Computers will become: Fairwell Honeychild.
   
7. Grey Poupon and Docker Pants are expected to become: PouponPants.
   
8. Knotts Berry Farm and the National Organization of Women will become: Knott NOW!
   

Comment: Sent to me from my Brother. He had another one that was too risque for this forum: Victoria's Secret and Smith & Wesson ... will become ___________

Add your own suggestions in the comments.

Taking away our dividends

Don't Kill Our Dividends

Excerpt:

In May 2003, President Bush signed into law the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act (JGTRRA), which reduced the tax rate on qualified corporate dividends and long-term capital gains to 15% (in most cases). Without an act of Congress, however, JGTRRA will not last beyond 2010.

The effects of the act have been the topic of much debate, but here are three facts to help you decide for yourself. Between January 2003 and December 2007:

• Dividends paid by S&P 500 companies increased by 70%.
• The average yield of the S&P increased to 1.89% from 1.61%.
• Tech stocks such as Applied Materials (Nasdaq: AMAT), Xilinx (Nasdaq: XLNX), and Jabil Circuit (NYSE: JBL) began paying regular dividends.

Because JGTRRA reduced the dividend tax from the individual's ordinary income tax rate to a maximum of 15%, it lessened the adverse effects of "double taxation," where a corporation pays taxes on its earnings and then investors pay yet another tax on the distributed earnings. Now that the dividend tax has been reduced, corporations have been more willing to distribute dividends -- and investors have been more inclined to receive them.

Comment: You may think this will have little impact on the small investor, but if you have a 401K plan, it will impact you if this is not extended

Banks: 'still peeling back the onion'

Some Banks (Yes, Banks) May Be Back in Favor

Excerpt:

But how safe are big investment banks that stand knee-deep in the securitized mortgage crisis? Determined to avert a bank failure that could reverberate through the economy, the Fed has made available hundreds of billions of dollars — which may eventually come out of taxpayer pockets — in low-interest loans. Many big banks also benefited last week from a capital infusion as a result of the shares they were able to sell in the $18 billion initial public offering of Visa. Can investors now safely assume that the fever has broken?

Not quite, Mr. Ellison said. “The earnings prospects are still declining,” he said. “And loan growth won’t be there.”

He and other skeptics wonder whether more nasty surprises are to emerge from balance sheets. “Full disclosure only happens when things are good,” Mr. Ellison said. “Even now, we’re still peeling back the onion.”

But Richard Bove, a financial strategist at Punk, Ziegel & Company who was among the first to lower ratings on the banks last summer, now says he thinks the selling has gone too far. “ I personally believe that investors should dramatically overweight their portfolios with bank stocks,” he said.

Assets have been devalued and earnings reduced, but most banks — even those like Citigroup and Bank of America that have taken large write-offs — still have positive cash flow, he said.

Going strictly by the numbers, Derek Rollingson, manager of the quantitative ICON Financial fund, concludes that financial stocks are trading at 45 percent less than true value. “We’ve priced in all the bad news,” he said. “Has the market overreacted to the news? In the case of the financials, we would say yes.”

Comment: Wells Fargo announces earnings next Wednesday.

Avoiding shattered nest eggs

Don’t Paint Nest Eggs in Company Colors

Excerpt:

“I used to think Enron was the poster child of what not to do with company stock,” said Mike Scarborough, president of an investment advisory firm based in Annapolis, Md., referring to the energy trading company whose collapse shattered the nest eggs of employees who held so many of its shares.

“But it may ultimately turn out to be Bear Stearns, because money and investing is their business — and it still turned out badly.”

To be sure, the situations of Bear Stearns and Enron are different in many ways. For starters, just in terms of company stock, top executives at Enron encouraged workers to load up their 401(k)’s with company shares. That wasn’t the case with Bear.

Nevertheless, the rapid collapse of the investment bank’s shares — they fell to about $10 from $70 in around three weeks — offers yet another reminder of the risks associated with making concentrated bets on your employer’s stock, even if it appears to be a blue-chip investment.

Conventional wisdom says company stock isn’t that big a problem now. Thanks to the bear market and blow-ups at companies like Enron and WorldCom at the start of the decade, as well as the Pension Protection Act of 2006, retirement investors aren’t as concentrated in company stock as they once were.

In general, the numbers bear this out. In 2001, when Enron filed for bankruptcy, investors in 401(k) plans that offered company stock held 28 percent of their retirement account in employer shares, on average, according to Hewitt Associates, the employee benefit research firm. By the end of last year, that figure had dropped to 16 percent.

But many financial planners say 16 percent is still way too much to invest in a single stock, let alone that of your own employer. Think about it: $100,000 invested in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index would have shrunk to $90,760 since January. But had a Bear Stearns employee invested 16 percent of his money in company stock — with the remainder going into the S.& P. 500 — his account would have fallen to below $78,300. This at a time when his job may be in jeopardy.

Mr. Scarborough, whose firm advises workers on managing their 401(k)’s, recommends investing no more than 5 percent in employer stock. This is especially true for employees of a large company whose stock is widely held, because they may already own some of its stock indirectly. “A lot of diversified mutual funds in their 401(k)’s probably own those shares,” he said.


Comment: Many 401K programs match the employee contribution with company stock.

Buffett buying WFC

Buffett's Subprime Bets

Excerpt:

In fact, Berkshire Hathaway has been buying. For years, Berkshire has been sitting on a huge mound of cash, but it's now starting to deploy that money. Berkshire's purchases have been consistent with Buffett's statements that he doesn't expect a depression. For example, the company bought Burlington Northern Santa Fe (NYSE: BNI) -- a cyclical railroad that would definitely be affected by a slowing economy.

Berkshire is also looking for bargains among the lenders. It's been purchasing Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) and US Bancorp (NYSE: USB), two companies with excellent balance sheets and conservative management. While these firms did do some subprime lending, their balance-sheet strength should take them through this crisis.

Gold's waxing and waning allure

Gold’s Quirk: It’s Volatile, but Holders Feel Secure

Excerpt:

James K. Galbraith, an economist and public policy professor at the University of Texas, however, cautioned that investors who are considering a gold purchase now, either to hold or trade, should “be prepared to take a bath.” They should know, he said, what happened to those who waited in long lines outside shops on Jan. 21, 1980, eager to pay more than $900 apiece for coins containing an ounce of gold.


While gold is a hot commodity now, the demand by average investors is still far from what it was then. That was the top of the previous gold bull market, which had begun in January 1975, after President Gerald R. Ford signed a bill legalizing private ownership of gold coins, bars and certificates.


Gold ownership had been illegal since 1933, when, to forestall Americans from demanding that banks give them gold for their dollars, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order prohibiting it. (In the early 1970s, President Richard M. Nixon severed the last remaining links of the so-called gold standard that had made currency redeemable for actual gold.)


The early gold buyers in 1975 included Kenneth J. Gerbino, 62, who now manages private accounts and a hedge fund of gold mining stocks and who profits when buyers push up gold’s price.


“I could see that when the federal government prints money to pay its bills, inflation always results, and buying gold was the best way to keep up with it,” recalled Mr. Gerbino, whose business is based in Beverly Hills, Calif. “I’d go to a coin shop, give a guy $1,000 and get some coins.”


Gold started climbing strongly in 1978. In January 1980, with inflation nearly 14 percent, average investors afflicted by gold fever jumped into the market. So did experienced sellers like Anthony Calcagno, who was dealing rare coins in San Francisco. Less than six months earlier, he had purchased many South African Krugerrands for around $300 apiece.



Comment: Gold (or silver) may be purchased at Apmex.com or Ebay. I personally had a bad experience buying silver coins via Ebay where the seller cleverly accepted my order for 20 Silver American Eagles and then sent me ONE and used the shipping documentation as proof that that he had completed the sale. Ebay ultimately (after 90 + days and much documentation and communication) reimbursed me for the failed purchase. My own recommendation is not to make gold or silver a major portion of one's investments.

Investopedia

Forbes Investopedia

Comment: Investopedia is a helpful site for investment terms and topics. Unfamiliar with this acronym: CDO? Or "ad valorem"? Investopedia has the answers. (Eg. The $ 500 car article has the term "ad valorem")

Investing: Understanding the "payout ratio"

Be Smart About High-Dividend Stocks

Excerpt:

In general, a payout ratio higher than 100% means that over the long term, it's unlikely that the company will be able to sustain current dividend levels without extraordinary growth.

The payout ratio is also a useful tool for comparing companies in the same industry. For instance, both Washington Mutual and Wells Fargo have suffered losses from the ongoing mortgage crisis. Yet while Washington Mutual's large dividend seems unsustainable, Wells Fargo's more modest payout isn't straining the company's finances as of yet.

If you're just getting started, high-dividend stocks can be a great way to introduce yourself to stock investing. Just make sure you do your homework before you buy, and you can help yourself avoid the nasty surprise of a dividend cut.

Comment: Wells Fargo's payout ratio is 46%. How to calculate: WFC. Divide the dividend into the EPS (Earnings per Share). In the case of Wells Fargo it is: 1.24/2.64 = 46%

ING acquires Sharebuilder

ING Direct to Acquire Sharebuilder

ING Direct will spend $220 million in cash to buy Sharebuilder, a unique Bellevue, WA-based discount brokerage, with upwards of 2 million accounts across 660,000 customers ....

Many (most??) of Sharebuilder's accounts have come through co-branded programs with 40 banks and 140 credit unions including National City Bank and Boeing Employees Credit Union. It's biggest brand name partner is Wells Fargo, which not coincidentally, is also an investor in the company.

Comment: Wow! Sharebuilder is a great service!

Wells Fargo investor presentation

Wells Fargo: Investor Presentations

Select:

Merrill Lynch 2007 Banking & Financial Services Conference
Presentation by John Stumpf
President & CEO
November 15, 2007

Comment: If you are interested in banking and investments, this 46 page PDF (of a Power Point presentation) is very interesting.

---

Life:

1. Kathee and I were at the Metro Womens Center annual event tonight. Very good speakers, testimonies, special music, and fellowship.
   
2. MWC elected new board members and we are privileged to have two exceptional young women join the board.
   
3. Kathee and I have the day off tomorrow. I hope to make an email conversion of the MWC email over to Gmail. I think I have it all set up and the conversion should be simple.