LoneRngr

Wheat Crisis: The Next Black Swan?

something interesting to keep an eye on but the markets don't seem to care. wheat traded over $12/bu last year, today it's $5.87/bu and recent price gains pale in comparison to soy's rally. If Ug99 is a serious near term threat someone forgot to tell the markets...

How Kindle Will Kill the Book Star

a good article, as it's designed to provoke thought and stimulate debate. no one knows for certain how the kindle will change author compensation. one thing we do know is that there will always be a need for content. the medium doesn't matter as much as the content. personally i'm having a hard time trying to reconcile the purchase price of a kindle, at $300+ for the device, plus $10 per title, you need to be a big reader to make the economics pay off. the kindle also won't make people read any faster, so i don't buy the argument for more purchases on the kindle. eventually though the kindle (or knockoffs) will catch on and bring device prices down. the potential to revolutionize the newspaper and magazine industry is huge (publications that are generally thrown out immediately after reading), but i digress.

i know the industry will find a new model that works, and publishing costs will come down. traditional paper publishing is a dying business. thanks to lower barriers to entry more authors will be able to come to market. self-publishing ("glamor press") is becoming easier and easier. the new choice however could overwhelm readers and dilute the existing talent pool of published works, with a likely outcome causing polarization of authors - some could earn a bundle thanks to "best-seller" lists, where number of downloads are tracked, and a great many could earn next to nothing. in the end, a redistribution can take place and life will go on...

Sugar's Fundamental Shift?

looks like a bitter dose of humble pie. :-) i admire your candid admission of trading results. as for trends in the sugar market, stevia is the new "in" thing, it's an all-natural calorie-free sweetener. two stocks to play in this space include PURE (London) and GLG (Toronto), although neither is cheap by conventional metrics!

9 Reasons Why CF Should Reject Agrium and Acquire Terra Industries

i'm with you BS. while i don't know which way this will turn out, AGU has a strong track record at making accretive acquisitions. they have been eyeing CF since before the IPO and chose now to pounch, squeezing all the merger arb players in the process. on the conference call it seems they have done their homework, and see really clear synergies to the deal as the 2 players come up against each other in the marketplace all the time.

i don't know that a player like CF deserves a 15x multiple, as the nitrogen business is hugely volatile and margins can swing.

as for potash prices, suprisingly they haven't fallen as much as most other commodities. US cornbelt prices are only down about 18% from the highs, and the China price just ticked up 20% to about 4000 RMB. not many sales though as all eyes are on the potash negotiations due to conclude soon.

on the surface it seems like a good deal to me. cash component of the deal is only $1.5b and CF has about $1.0b on the balance sheet. OPM (Other People's Money) works for me! i think AGU is smart to buying when others are selling, time will tell...

POT: The Commodity Surprise of the Year

All good observations, but note that potash prices in the US cornbelt are down ~13% from their peak this summer. The Japan deal was a surprise but all eyes are on the Chinese negotiations, due to conclude by end of Q1 09 or sooner... Still at about 3.5x next years' earnings i tend to think much of this has been priced in.

Commodity Collapse

why does the article reference 1956 but the table shows the shorter decline taking place in 1984?