Mid-Year Report: Is a Summer Turn-around Still Possible?

 

I did an Index Round-Up way back on December 31st, last year where I said the following:

"Although the Dow, Nasdaq and the NYSE are well up since (my August review), we’ve lost ground on the Transports, S&P and SOX so our mission for January is clear - will the top three come down or will the bottom three come up (the Russell is our tiebreaker)."  Obviously, our leaders have turned down to meet the bad boys, all off about 15% EXCEPT the transports, who surprisingly are up slightly for the year.

I also noted: "It will only take the smallest bit of bad news to push us to retest the 2007 lows around 12,500 whch is how I agree, yet disagree with Stuart Freeman (BusinessWeek’s market forecast winner of ‘07) as he sees the Dow bottoming in the summer in the low 12,000’s but I see it going lower now and topping in the summer, perhaps close to 15,000 but we both see the year ending around 14,500."  Well, so far I’m right about it going lower than 12,000 in the first half - but can I still be right about us turning it around in the summer?

MSFT did not spur a tech rally with Vista and the SOX are not leading us out of trouble and our OPEC friends have not helped us get the price of oil down (I’ve given up even thinking that the administration will do anything) and, of course, there has been no turnaround in the financials (quite the opposite) due to a similar lack of action to address the foreclosure crisis, which marches on and on and on and on…

It doesn’t sound at all good does it and, if I were a foreign investor, I wouldn’t touch this banana republic with a 10-foot pole - and they didn’t!  Foreigners have been panicking out of US equities since last fall and have driven the Dow back to it’s post 9/11 lows at 7,200.  No, I’m not on another investing planet, on the left is a chart from Seeking Alpha of the Dow adjusted for Euros since 2001 - not a pretty picture is it?

What it is though, is a good place for a bottom hopefully as we have a solid 30% sell-off in the past 9 months and even the Hang Seng bounced off the 30% line, as it slipped from 32,000 to 22,000 early this year.  After testing 26,000 (a 33% retracement) the Chinese index is back at the lows again BUT, still up 50% in 2 years.  The Nikkei, the BSE and the Shanghai Composite are all in similar straits.

In Euros, the S&P is sitting at 8.05 on a relative scale to the May ‘07 (not October!) highs of 11.53, that’s 30% on the button, right where we were in the March sell-off before recovering back to 9.2 (a 50% retrace).  That is going to have to be our breakout goal for earnings season, back over 1,400 or bust!   Of course this will all be relative to the dollar but, if we haven’t found a bottom here at 72, then it’s time to buy gold again anyway…

Even London’s FTSE, when priced in Euros, is also retesting that March low here.  What we have is a global correction when measured against a real currency and NOTHING MORE THAN THAT.  The whole world is suffering from the same disease - oil which, even when measured in Euros, is up just under 100% in 12 months. 

What’s really shocking is the chart I mentioned last week, the S&P in terms of a barrel of crude.  Down from 26.88 barrels in Jan of ‘07 to 8.59 on Thursday - that’s 68% in 18 months.  How low can we go?  The Hang Seng is down 60% relative to oi, the Nikkei is off 72%, the BSE is off 65%, the DAX is down 65%, the CAC is down 72%.  Only the FTSE is "holding up" because the UK exports oil, but even they are off 32% over this 18-month period.

This is just a review so I will refrain from mentioning that the speculators have effectively sold the industrialized nations down the river in exchange for their 30 pieces of silver and that they have enabled Iran (for example) to use their 2Mb a day of exports to buy twice as many shares of nuclear engineering SGR as they could last year (they could own the entire company with 16 day’s output) or Iran could take their $280M a day and buy CCJ in 50 days.  Every 4 days we send the poster boys for the axis of evil ONE BILLION DOLLARS, and that’s just a very small portion of the 12 Billion US dollars that are exchanged for barrels of oil, which are burned, every single day - that’s $4.380Tn a year up in smoke, with 25% of those dollars being sucked right out of this country!

Even gold has dropped 50% these past 18 months when measured against a barrel of oil.  Even the CRB is off 40% to oil (and oil is a part of the CRB!).  It is sheer madness to say that this isn’t a speculative frenzy as gold is subject to all of the same geopolitical and currency concerns that oil is and that IS relevent to this review as it ALL hinges on what happens with oil over the next few months. 

If we continue to let the energy speculators run the global markets - we are doomed.  The economic engines of this planet are being held hostage and forced to pay an outrageous premium for the oil we can’t function without.  Still, other than the Transports and selected other industries, I do expect earnings to NOT be reflective of a 68% sell-off in the past 18 months.  I would rather have a share of IBM or AAPL for the next 20 years than a barrel of oil, I would rather buy an IPod than a tank of gas, I would rather eat than drive and we can expect those choices to be made planet-wide for the remainder of the year.

click to enlarge

 

 

 

As I wrote back on March 11th in "$200 Oil - Who’s Going to Pay For It?": "We are talking about the destruction of the very fabric of our society here, not a "rally."  The rise of oil is a crisis and needs to be treated as such as it will do more to destroy your way of life than a hundred terrorist attacks could possibly hope to do and it won’t change unless you demand that it change.  Our "leaders" set their agendas based on the polls, maybe it’s time we start setting the agenda…"  At the time oil was at $105 and the Dow was at 12,000.  We stand now about halfway to Goldman’s hoped for $200 mark and I think the evidence is bearing out my premise - there simply isn’t enough money in the world for oil to go up another 35%.

The G8 meets this weekend and I simply can’t believe that the leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and Russia are all willing to turn over the keys to OPEC and the speculators.  Of course Russia, Canada and the UK are all oil producing nations as well.  Russia’s 12% inflation rate is running in tandem with their 14% growth rate but Fitch recently raised concerns that their economy was overheating.  We’ve already discussed the FTSE’s drop to a barrell of oil and the TSE (Toronto 300) is also surprisingly off 60% to a barrel of crude.

In short, the price of oil is helping no one but a very, very select few in the World and it’s a sad, sad state of affairs if we are powerless to oppose them now that the pain is being felt on a global scale.  That has been my position for the past three weeks and we’ve poured considerably more cash into postions as it was my call that $140 oil would not hold.  While it has certainly not been fun, it sure will be if I turn out to be right!

If I am wrong, and we break through $150 oil and we are not saved by earnings next week.  Then it will be time to make some very serious changes in our portfolios.  It’s been a very good year and we are poised to take advantage of a market rally or even a bounce that retraces as little as 20% of our losses (back to 11,600).  It’s crunch time next week and we’ve been more than patient.

We have closed very few positions, despite the pain and have rolled down a lot of the Long-Term Portfolio plays, moving more cash off the sidelines than at any point in the year so far.  This is the difficult part of following this strategy - you must buy or roll when the market is down so you’d better love your positions, as you may be stuck with them for a while! 

We took a 14% hit in our Long-Term Portfolio and our Stock Club Portfolio is also down 20% now on this 2,000-point market dive.  Our $25,000 Portfolio, dropped 29% in this short week and the $10,000 Portfolio held flat but is still down 7.4% overall.  Of course our more flexible Short-Term (up 8%) and  Day Trading  (up 49%) Portfolios did well - we don’t care which way the market goes for swing trading, as long as it goes somewhere!  Stocks and Complex Spreads were flat for the week and, for the year, our overall performance is as follows:

• Short-Term Portfolio (Initiated Jan 1st) - Up 416%
• Long-Term Portfolio (Jan 1st) - Up 114%
• Stocks Portfolio (May 19th) - Up 9.7%
• $10,000 Portfolio (June 23rd) - Down 7.4%
• $25,000 Portfolio (Feb 19th) - Up 10%
• Day Trading Portfolio (May 19th) - Up 79%
• Complex Spreads (Jan 1st) - Up 350%

• Stock Club Portfolio (April 7th) - Down 20%

  To say this has been a rough quarter would be a tremendous understatement.  I will remind members that our first $10KP of the year was down as much as 40% and ended up more than doubled and our first $25KP of the year more than doubled in January so I’m not ready to crawl into a hole and wave a white flag just yet - if oil does get to $150 a barrel, we can make plenty of money going short on… everything!

   

As I wrote back on the 22nd, we can always be dull and safe and make 20% a year - I certainly intend to allocate a good portion of my hedge fund to a nice, conservative strategy like that - these portfolios are risk capital and we are either sitting at the entry of a great market opportunity or in the middle of possibly the worst stock market correction since the great depression.  Our dot-com collapse from 2000 to 2003 knocked 4,000 points off the Dow (35%).  At least that took 3 years!  This market is off 3,000 points in just 9 months - 2 years and 3 months more of this nonsense and we’d better learn Farsi!

To predict the markets you sometimes have to step back and look at the big picture and, as I often say, we don’t have an economic crisis in this country so much as a crisis of leadership.  We already see new leaders rising to the challenge, people in Congress, people in Finance, State Governors, other World Leaders… are not going to sit idly by while the whole world falls apart and polls suggest the American people aren’t going to stand for it either. 

Japanese Admiral Yakamoto is reported to have said, after the bombing of Peal Harbor: "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve" and I know many of our members and many people I speak to in business and in politics are waking up and are resolving to make changes happen.  We have been lulled into a very false sense of security after 30 years of low oil prices and this country hasn’t had something to get behind in quite some time.  I think we’re going to see a lot of changes over the next few years, whether oil comes down in price or not and I’m very excited about that.

As investors though, it’s going to be a long, hard road to turn things around if we have to fight our way out of triple-digit crude prices.  There’s a $4Tn oil industry that is ripe for being taken over by solar, nuclear, biofuels, wind, wave, goethermal and chemical industries and who knows what other industries that don’t even exist yet - that should provide a reasonable incentive to reignite the entrepeneurial spirit.  After all, we really can become as rich as kings (or at least Sheikhs) if we shift those profits from OPEC to the Nasdaq!  We’re not going to get ahead of ourselves, but it’s a very exciting time to be a long-range investor…

In this very short week we mainly stood around like people watching a car crash - it’s horrible but there’s not much you can do to help until everything stops moving.  We closed just 28 positions for a 42% average gain - mainly short positions we had sold against longer contracts.  We went into the weekend a little more cautious than we had wanted to be but, after getting beaten up 3 weeks in a row, we’re more interesting in surviving than thriving for the moment.  It’s going to be a very exciting week - cash is still king but we’re 2/3 invested in the LTP and, since we are up 100% for the year, we have close to 3 times as much money invested now as when we began in January, with the Dow at 13,100.  If things go well, we could put up some really stunning numbers!

Stock	Description	Type	Basis	Open	Sale Price	Sold	Gain/Loss	%
$RUT	10 Jul 2008 670.00 $RUT CALL [RUYGN]	LC	$  22,010	7/2	$  24,990	7/1	$     2,980	14%
AAPL	5 Jul 2008 170.00 AAPL CALL [APVGN]	SC	$    3,760	7/1	$    3,740	7/2	$        (20)	-1%
AAPL	20 Jul 2008 175.00 AAPL CALL [APVGO]	LC	$    8,530	6/24	$    9,380	7/1	$        850	10%
AMZN	20 Jul 2008 75.00 AMZN CALL [ZQNGO]	SC	$    2,710	7/5	$    5,990	7/1	$     3,280	121%
ANF	8 Aug 2008 67.50 ANF CALL [ANFHU]	LC	$    5,360	5/23	$    1,726	6/30	$    (3,634)	-68%
BA	100 Jul 2008 70.00 BA CALL [BAGN]	SC	$    4,710	6/25	$    4,790	7/1	$         80	2%
BAC	80 Jul 2008 25.00 BAC CALL [BACGE]	SC	$    2,810	6/27	$    4,790	7/3	$     1,980	71%
BHP	20 Jul 2008 80.00 BHP PUT [BHPSP]	SP	$    2,610	6/28	$    5,290	6/30	$     2,680	103%
BIDU	10 Jul 2008 320.00 BIDU PUT [BDUSC]	LP	$  11,010	7/3	$  12,990	7/3	$     1,980	18%
BIDU	10 Jul 2008 320.00 BIDU CALL [BDUGC]	LC	$  11,010	7/2	$  13,990	7/1	$     2,980	27%
CCJ	20 Jul 2008 40.00 CCJ CALL [CCJGH]	SC	$    2,810	6/28	$    3,890	7/3	$     1,080	38%
CHL	10 Jul 2008 70.00 CHL CALL [CHLGN]	SC	$      410	6/20	$       690	7/2	$        280	68%
CROX	20 Sep 2008 8.00 CROX CALL [CZLIK]	LC	$    4,750	6/3	$    2,390	6/30	$    (2,360)	-50%
DIA	300 Jul 2008 112.00 DIA PUT [DIASH]	SP	$  39,010	7/1	$  68,990	7/2	$   29,980	77%
DIA	300 Jul 2008 113.00 DIA PUT [DIASI]	SP	$  48,610	6/28	$  70,480	7/2	$   21,870	45%
FSLR	20 Jul 2008 270.00 FSLR PUT [HJQSZ]	LP	$  32,010	6/16	$  69,990	7/3	$   37,980	119%
FSLR	20 Jul 2008 290.00 FSLR PUT [HJQSV]	LP	$  53,010	6/16	$  73,490	7/3	$   20,480	39%
GOOG	10 Jul 2008 520.00 GOOG CALL [GOPGV]	LC	$  31,610	6/26	$  28,390	7/1	$    (3,220)	-10%
IBM	10 Jul 2008 120.00 IBM CALL [IBMGD]	SC	$    2,260	6/20	$    5,490	7/1	$     3,230	143%
MRVL	30 Jan 2009 10.00 MRVL CALL [ULJAB]	LC	$    8,560	2/22	$  23,990	6/30	$   15,430	180%
POT	20 Jul 2008 220.00 POT CALL [PJNGD]	SC	$    9,010	6/27	$    9,990	7/3	$        980	11%
SIGM	160 Jul 2008 15.00 SIGM CALL [MQNGC]	SC	$    5,620	6/27	$    7,180	7/1	$     1,560	28%
THQI	30 Jul 2008 20.00 THQI CALL [QHIGD]	SC	$    2,380	6/25	$    2,990	6/30	$        610	26%
UNH	10 Jul 2008 25.00 UNH PUT [UHBSE]	SP	$      310	6/24	$       670	7/2	$        360	116%
VLO	10 Jul 2008 42.50 VLO CALL [VLOGV]	LC	$    2,470	6/20	$    1,090	6/30	$    (1,380)	-56%
WFMI	25 Jul 2008 25.00 WFMI CALL [FMQGE]	SC	$      635	6/28	$    2,355	6/30	$     1,720	271%
XLF	100 Jul 2008 21.00 XLF CALL [XLFGU]	SC	$    4,010	6/25	$    5,990	7/1	$     1,980	49%
XOM	60 Jan 2009 95.00 XOM PUT [XOMMT]	LP	$  64,750	4/14	$  82,790	7/2	$   18,040	28%

Comments

[CPST1:]

If one is going to speculate in energy then why not anticipate an energy revolution? One that goes in the right direction to begin with...

2008 Jul 06 07:37 AM

[Carlibra:]

Fight big oil: get out of your car and use a bicycle, a public bus or train! Geez, you act like you're a slave to oil and you're not unless you're just brainwashed that you are!

2008 Jul 06 09:40 AM

[jjason:]

I agree with Phil. Please contact your US Congressmen and Senators to do something to solve this problem. Copy:

www.star-telegram.com/...

and send it to everyone you know.

2008 Jul 06 10:07 AM

[300mph:]

Very nice wrap-up Phil. I also share your concerns and guarded optimism.

2008 Jul 06 11:14 AM

[John Lounsbury:]

Everyone should read the link posted by jjason. In addition to the obvious conclusions it provides about the ICE problem, there is an additional troubling aspect. The Fed is now in a position to fund oil speculation and drive oil prices higher.

A major unregulated market for oil futures is ICE and ICE is backed by several oil companies and investment banks, including Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. With the new Fed policy orchestrated in the Bear Stearns rescue, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs can borrow from the Fed window. Whether they do this or not to fund oil speculation is immaterial, because they have the window available to back up futures bets when needed. Thus, they can risk more in this arena because they have the Fed back-up available if ever needed. Conclusion: oil futures prices are being driven higher by the "full faith and credit of the U.S. government".

If there is any consolation, even the "full faith and credit of the U.S. government" is unlikely to support a bubble forever. Thus, there will be a sharp reversal in oil prices at some point. The perpertrators (the backers of ICE and other unregulated "dark" markets) will be able to control their losses. Pension funds, mutual funds, endowments and individual investors may not. And, in the case of investment banks, the losses, if any, can be mitigated at the Fed window.

Seldom have so many suffered at the hands of so few! And the suffers are, through the Fed, providing financial support to their tormentors.

2008 Jul 06 11:15 AM

[sagesteve:]

I own three Hummers, a Lambo and a AC Cobra clone (625 horse....REEEEEEALLY fast!!) My gas econo is a Lotus. I just don't care about the gas prices. I'm REALLY rich and I just don't care. I run the AC on my house in Arizona ALL the time (6,200 sq ft home). I water all the time. I basically fart money...I DON'T CARE!!!!! Do like I did and get out and WORK. I semi-retired when I was 32 and retired when I was 43...I'm 61 now. Guess what? My money is going to my kids and they're just like me! Get over it.

2008 Jul 06 11:19 AM

[John Lounsbury:]

User 80322 - Congratulations on your success. I hope you find true happiness "burning" your money.

2008 Jul 06 11:25 AM

[Edward Janeck:]

The market will end the year down. Maybe we will have a crash latter in the year. I think we will see another 1%-10% down from here. Eli Broad thinks this is the worst recession since WWII.

2008 Jul 06 11:27 AM

[Jim Hawthorne:]

Those who blame the speculators just haven't done their homework and are lapping up the BS the politicians are so quick to dish out rather than face the music. Remember "Tricky Dick" Cheney's secret meetings with his oil-patch cronies to establish an energy policy back in the early days of this administration? The sad truth is that the chickens are simply coming home to roost!
BTW, Phil; whatever happened to that Market Bottom you called back on June 13th???????

2008 Jul 06 11:56 AM

[BrunoT:]

More "predictions" pulled out that are either right or wrong, yet these guys never stop trying to make short term predictions. I note how they never crow about being wrong. It's a sad profession, relying on claims of being great prognosticators to get people to use your services.

Anyway, I can tell he doesn't compltely understand gold and oil. He says gold has fallen 50% vs oil. Maybe true. But doesn't he understand that the world runs on oil, not gold, and that that fact means that while investors may want gold, the vast majority of the earth with nothing to invest wants oil NOW, and given a choice of buying gold or oil, has to buy oil now, so it will rise faster, and gold will only catch up later.

And all asset classes can be seen in short term snapshots and given a distorted meaning. Last summer he could have been crowing about US stocks with the Dow being over 14,000. That doesn't mean they'll stay there. Just as it doesn't mean the ratio of oil-gold will remain the same. Which one today has more upside potential? The one that ran up dramatically or the one that stubbornly rose much slower?

2008 Jul 06 12:39 PM

[BrunoT:]

It's Admiral Yamamoto, not Yakamoto. And the story of him saying that is apochryphal.

www.japan-101.com/hist...

2008 Jul 06 12:42 PM

[twad:]

Thank you Bruno. I could have said that, but probably not as well

2008 Jul 06 12:49 PM

[CPST1:]

It's not the speculators so much as the need to force change in the energy sector to alternative energy sources. Price can be driven by those that seek to gain from the evolution in order to gain a presence of this market share economy by providing alternative energy products.

On a local level, sure, some can buy/sell heating oil and make mega bucks. Only, at the same time more home owners are switching to other sources for heat and heaving the oil burners... It's a scenario that is often repeated where local energy supply can better supplement the past standards of fossil fuels.

We might be on the verge of a conspiracy where the work place is compromised in order to keep more Dads’ at home. The more choice that is given to values and the cost of those values, then the means to attain them will be the efficiency sought. (energy tax credits and grants)

The mid-year report is good only left inconclusive. It fails to mention a target and the goal for the year. The positions have to lock on a goal to properly hedge the valuation of the work place in which they must earn their livelihoods or risk cost that are greater than the risk reward they are positioned within now.

How can a 42% return be applied to restructuring their company’s energy needs, and how much will restructuring cost, is the ultimate value of their investments return. Right now, based on today’s returns your energy dollars might see you through to next spring.

2008 Jul 06 02:03 PM

[cynic69:]

Phil - Have you read about King Hubbert and his peak oil theory? www.hubbertpeak.com/Hu.../ It doesn't sound like you have. King was a scientist, not a politician. Our civilization could have solved the energy crisis with conservation and ingenuity but we behaved like stupid sheep and let the oil industry and the Republicans convince us that cheap oil would last forever and there was no reason to change our wasteful ways. It's too late now. There is nothing anyone can do to make a dent in the 86 million barrels of oil that are used every day to fuel the 800 million motor vehicles that are on the road today. The problem with the price of oil is well documented, it's a declining resource and as such the price will go up for the rest of time and there is nothing anyone can do to stop it! Here are some events to watch out for in the near future: food riots, energy riots, death by freezing, hoarding of oil and coal, chaos and war. I think you should stop trading and put in some canned beans and ammo, things are going to get pretty nasty.

2008 Jul 06 02:31 PM

[Kunst:]

"we can always be dull and safe and make 20% a year"

Yeah, that would be so boring, barely at a Warren Buffett level.

2008 Jul 06 04:08 PM

[Kunst:]

sagesteve: Come the revolution, baby, up against the wall!

2008 Jul 06 04:09 PM

[Bobco23:]

Blame the congress, the president, Republicans, big-oil?

Come on. Grow up. The world is far too complex and competitive for any one group to create or manage this situation, let alone be able to change its course. The world changes; sometimes by a lot. This is one of those times.

You would all be better off to stop whining and lean to trade the short side.

2008 Jul 06 04:54 PM

[lksseven:]

Phil, you say "we don’t have an economic crisis in this country so much as a crisis of leadership. We already see new leaders rising to the challenge, people in Congress, people in Finance, ... are not going to sit idly by while the whole world falls apart and polls suggest the American people aren’t going to stand for it either." ...............
Who, exactly, are the new leaders in Congress who are NOT sitting idly by ? What exactly have the "new leaders" (Phil-speak for "Democrats") in Congress accomplished in the last 2 years they've been in control? Which party is calling for drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf, in ANWR, and fast-tracking new nuclear power plants, new refineries, as well as big pushes in solar and wind? (hint - it isn't the Democrats). It's too bad Congress (both Democrats and Republicans) in 2001 didn't heed VP Cheney's energy plan - we'd be enjoying tremendous prosperity now, and much much lower oil prices, and much less dependence on foreign oil ... witness www.usatoday.com/news/...

Vice President Cheney offered a preview Monday of a Bush administration energy plan that will be long on increased development of domestic oil, natural gas and nuclear power, but short on conservation.

Also missing will be what he called "quick fixes which never fix anything": price controls, use of strategic reserves and new federal agencies.

Among Cheney's proposals:

• Increased domestic production of crude oil.

• Stepped-up construction of natural gas pipelines.

• Massive expansion of the electrical power grid.

• Renewed construction of nuclear, hydroelectric, oil- and coal-fired power plants.

Cheney, a former oil services company executive, called alternative fuels such as ethanol or solar power promising but still "years down the road."

He said the administration will push for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. He said advances in technology drastically reduce the risks of harming the environment. But getting that oil to market will likely be years down the road as well.

"As a country, we have demanded more and more energy. But we have not brought on line the supplies needed to meet that demand," the vice president said.

The plan was called "shortsighted" and "leaning too heavily to the oil side" by Rep. Jerry Costello, D-Ill., a member of the House subcommittee on energy. "We need to conserve energy and explore alternative fuels such as ethanol and clean-coal technology."

Speaking in Toronto at an annual meeting of the Associated Press, Cheney outlined what may be the most ambitious energy plan since the late 1970s when President Carter promoted conservation to combat Arab oil embargoes.

Cheney said telling Americans to do more with less is not enough. "Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy," he said.

Democrats and environmentalists say Cheney's energy plan is more about rewarding contributors to the Bush campaign. Reps. John Dingell of Michigan and Henry Waxman of California have asked federal Comptroller General David Walker to investigate whether private interests are influencing Cheney's Energy Task Force, which has been meeting in secret.

2008 Jul 06 05:23 PM

[mjg1231:]

BrunoT - a little slack pls, the 'k' and 'm' keys are so close...but all authors should proof-read or enter in MSWord with spellcheck.

good article and discussion, btw. I am long AMAT and their SunFab tool...give them a year or two and $1/W will be old news.

2008 Jul 06 06:15 PM

[Ant1967:]

sagesteve: money certainly doesn't buy wisdom as your behavior evidences.

2008 Jul 06 06:38 PM

[Mr. Wynn:]

I think sagesteve is hilarious. I also think he's b.s.ing us just to get a rise, which he did.

2008 Jul 06 09:05 PM

[DonaldRay:]

As investors can you blame President Bush or our Vice President Cheney or those almost billionaire Congressmen, who are all lawyers or at least a law degree as credentials....come on, get over the stripes of red, white, and blue, apple pies, chevys and kissing babys....that is for suckers.........just keep electing your own party member and the same ole congressman/woman/othe... in case of California and say it is everyone else party and congressmen who is the problem.....Go America....

2008 Jul 06 11:06 PM

[ValueHunter:]

It's not the Republicans and it's not the Democrats, it's us. We want to hear a bedtime story, while sucking on a lolly pop and they give it to us while helping their friends sell us down the river. I'm sure sagesteve will continue to do fine, his sons will be in charge of the Chinese Reeducation Camps Corporation (Symbol CRCC in the SSE), Iksseven will be teaching Conversational Chinese and denying he ever liked Dick Cheney and Phil's mantra will be Nancy Who?

I hope Phil is right and Americans refuse to use any more oil but that which is absolutely necessary during a break neck transition to all the alts mentioned, but I doubt it. We've become, fat and lazy, have an absurd feeling of entitlement and are ripe for any demagogue to lead us to perdition with reassuring fairy tales.

2008 Jul 06 11:50 PM

[Bhakta:]

I do not agree that oil is rising due to speculation. There is certainly the law or supply and demand in effect; Anyone who can't see this must be blind. Also, there are so many trillions of USD sitting in far away places, earning nothing and seeing their buying power go down moment by moment. Is it not wiser to buy something you can use, whether it be iron, manganese, oil, wood, cement, anything is better than the USD

2008 Jul 07 07:13 AM

[David M:]

lksseven must be drinking a lot of that "Koolaid" if he believes what he just posted.

Unfortunately the Democrats do not have a veto-proof majority. If they did we would not have had Senate Republicans halt a $32 billion package of tax breaks for renewable energy that would have been financed mostly by new taxes on big oil, on June 21, 2007. President Bush threatened to veto the final legislation because, he argued, it discouraged domestic oil and gas production, and increases the tax burden on the oil industry

Opening up ANWAR and the OCS is literally a drop in the bucket; not even a good stopgap measure. "Opening up offshore areas to oil exploration...might cut the price of gas by 3 to 4 cents a gallon at most, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council."

www.time.com/time/busi...

The right wing of the Republican party is only starting to talk the renewable talk because it is good politics. They don't have a history of walking the renewable walk.

The only way we'll stop sending $700 Billion of America's net worth EVERY YEAR to the oil exporters is to change the politics in Washington. Based on track record Republicans are for more of the same, which is hurting our economy.

2008 Jul 08 09:35 AM