Traders Expo notes

I spoke at the Traders Expo in NY Sunday and wanted to share some observations:

1- The place was packed. Evidently traders are still interested in trading.
2- Only two presentations I could tell were focused on "surviving the bear market"
3- One guy who presented "How to profit every hour of the trading day" drew such a huge crowd to the main stage that people were spilling over the stairs at the back of the elevated platform. I had to find a place to see by standing on my toes. And this guy was not mainstream famous on TV, either.
4- There were at least 9 forex exhibitors. That seems huge for an event of this size.
5- Futures representation in the exhibitors was rather low
6- There were 4, maybe 5, news only vendors exhibiting. Also huge.

In talking with colleagues, two ideas came up:

1- The stock market is experiencing a buyers strike. There seem to be positive happening but everyone is saying, "you buy first."
2- The next bubble is not in gold but in forex. (See above). It was everywhere at the show and someone said they were offered leverage of 200 to 1. Two hundred to one! Sounds like no money down, no income check real estate to me.

The problem with a forex bubble is that there is no one currency to deflate. Pop one currency and by definition others soar. So what might this mean? Either a blowup of the industry (hey regulators, are you listening?) or a popping of the bubble in terms of the one currency that is not forex - gold.