Castrese Tipaldi

Natural Gas ETF Suspends New Shares: Are There Alternatives?

Speaking of tracking NatGas, why nobody ever notices GAZ?

I guess it's just too cool bidding up the price of an ETF like UNG to double digit premium to its NAV, a total non-sense!

An ETF structured like UNG is just a gigantic wealth transfer from retail investors (other than aggressive traders) to the Wall Street finest.

Just think about the constant roll over: all other futures traders know what it has to do and when it must do it.
Amazing!

Long GAZ, short UNG!

U.S. AAA rating is not in jeopardy, Moody's says. Despite the rising debt load (did someone say $100T?), America's diverse and resilient economy, strong government institutions, high per-capita income, and central role in the global economy should allow it to emerge from the crisis "without major impairment."

"moreover they could shut us down if we'd say differently......."

Four Stocks Selling Below Cash

Did you ever hear about a thing called debt?

Natural Gas Companies Increasingly Important

Couple this with the fact that they are selling two processing plants to the joint venture for $12 million each........
----------------------...

Actually it's ATN selling those plants to the JV, not APL.
Anyway, it does not change that much. I'm of the same feeling as the auhor here: APL is a multi-bagger from the current price.

Sorry if some people is not comfortable with "feelings", but I can add that our feelings are educated ones.............

Distressing Details of the UltraShorts

There are anyway some of them delivering what they promise in their name even in the long term.

Starting from the beginning of 2008 and accounting also for the distributions, as of today SDS has delivered a gain of 79.1% against a SPY loss of 41.3% (SH +48.4% in the same period). Quite consistent!

Even TBT, in the same period, has lost 36% of its value against a TLT gain of 17.2%.

Maybe it's really the volatility to blame for the abysmal performance of the other DoubleShorts, but we can't say we had no volatility in the broad equity market. Actually we saw an all time record there this last year.

Could we say that's just depending on the managers' skill?

Ambac, MBIA: Moody's strikes again

What is really disturbing of the current financial crisis is the substantial impunity surrounding the main culprits.

Apart from politics (they are irresponsibles by definition), you can confidently put the blame of the current financial chaos on inept, greedy and corrupt banks managers, and the rating agencies.

As penalty the first ones got liquidations that ordinary people should work for centuries to get, while the second ones keep on belching their useless and harmful analysis, adding fuel to the fire they roused.

I’d strongly urge Paulson et al to insert a few lines in the bailout package they’re working on, to put an end on their unbearable legal monopoly to utter financial nonsense; they are one of the main source of market instability.

Look at the Lehman rating when it collapsed!

Risk/Reward Analysis Makes Financial Insurers a Buy

Yeah, sure! Who needs cash?

Going back ten years ando more, almost every insurance company has delivered tons of free cash, EVERY YEAR, with high and low of course, but never presented a cash loss. That time span includes catastrophes like 9/11 and 2005 hurricane season. Some others have had cash burned one or two years, but still a little part of what they delivered before and after those years.

I don't think it will be that much different for financial insurers. They will probably burn some cash in the next few years, but their current stock prices more than discount those losses, which moreover I expect to be much less than it's currently assumed.

By the rest, there's no better contrary move than going the other side of what the rating clowns say.

Forget $100 a Barrel - Oil Will Plummet to $30

This man has no clue.

Someone should explain him that extraction cost for oil today are not less than 40-45 $ for barrell (add about the same amount for exploration cost), and only for the most efficient companies.

Moreover all the oilsands and deep water oil, even a lot of the oil in actual producing fields, would be gone with the price under 65-70 $, becoming uneconomic to extract.

Oil at 30 $ would mean just one thing: no oil in the market!

Another guy with no knowledge of that constant of our contemporary life: inflation!
(passing over all his other groundless assumptions)

Am I Crazy to Own Gannett?

They tie up capital this quarter/year, they'll free it next quarter/year. At the end those changes annullate themselves as time goes by. Moreover, those capital requirements almost always are satisfied through lending facilities.
I consider them just noise most of time, and I think it's better to dismiss them when you want to know a company's (other than insurance and banking companies) real operating cash power. At the same time I add back capital cashing (proceeds from PPE sales) to get the real FCF.
Of course, I don't dismiss them completely. The real operating cash power is just one the aspect when you analize completely a company (the most important anyway, as I think); I consider them for other aspects.