alexdg

Oil: Supply and Demand? Hardly!

"Bring on a “W” recession and poof!, thatpremium disappears, as it did last year." <-- totally agree.

Next quarter gdp numbers won't be as rosy. National sentiment is getting worst on the economy front. Double dip is as probable as recovery at this moment.

On Oct 30 08:41 AM Mad Hedge Fund Trader wrote:

> cgy Crude has been trading like a 3X short dollar ETF. If you look
> atpure supply/demand considerations, oil should be trading in the
> $40-$50range, not the $85 that we have seen. That means that a $35speculative
> premium can be laid purely at the door of the big hedgefunds. The
> big oil producing countries, seeing Obama’s policies leadingto a
> weak dollar for as far as the eye can see, are also ditching theirbucks
> as fast as they get their hands on them. That is why the Gulfsheikdoms
> were one of the biggest buyers of crude near last year’s $148peak.
> This leaves industry insiders clueless about the price directionof
> their products, not an easy way to run a business. They understandrig
> counts, tanker deliveries, and depletion rates, not commitment oftraders
> reports, Bollinger bands, and Fibonaccis. No doubt it was theircarping
> that brought regulators to pressure Deutsche Bank to shut downits
> double long oil ETN (seekingalpha.com/symbo...). Of course,
> this all means the consumeris getting shafted, paying $3.39/gallon
> at the pump, instead of $2.This premium is causing a drag on the
> economic recovery as well.Europeans and Japanese who are paying up
> to $10/gallon are wonderingwhat we are bitching about. Bring on a
> “W” recession and poof!, thatpremium disappears, as it did last year.

Google Should Make Apple Beg for Maps Navigation

Wouldn't consider this Nav software as a killer app.
Google maps is okay to checkout stuff before you leave home/office or actually get on the go. Try driving on a highway at a relative speed and expect good uninterrupted 3g coverage, good luck!

Google has a lot of crapps, but Search and Gmail are the only that actually make a diference. All gathering data, and making Google Ads pay the bundle.

Earth, Wave, Finance, Documents, are just gadgets and experiments.


On Oct 29 10:42 AM scottg wrote:

> Your premise is that Google actually makes good applications? Besides
> search and maps, what are you talking about? Google Earth? Comes
> in handy if i'm hanging with Lewis &amp; Clark.
>
> Google needs Apple more than Apple needs Google. How else will they
> know what to copy Apple with?

Is the Chinese Stock Market Bust Here?

But who cares about the SSEC? Please analyze the HSCEI.

At $30, Microsoft's a Steal - Barron's

What do you mean these products are weak on their own? What kind of real alternatives are their to Office? And please don't give me the opensource talk, I've used Linux + OpenOffice since they've been around and MSFT products are clearly better and set the industry benchmark; Macintosh OSX you say?... well sure it's a great OS, but I have to buy into to the hardware also... tough luck. So now we're in the "web services" era, and MSFT is afraid this future wave could set the trend to cut off their cash cow on Office... so they've started Windows Live projects etc etc. But really, have you ever used Google Office Apps or any web Office app for that matter? It's like going back into time, and discovering a web version of Wordpad; gimme a break! Windows + Office will keep on selling for a long time, and every new PC sold (with DELL + HPQ worldwide growth > 10%) means good business for MSFT; and the only webservices companies worth buying these days would be Salesforce.com and Netsuite (which has Oracle as an investor). So MSFT is buying into Yahoo! to get all the internet related stuff it failed miserably to obtain : Good Web Search and market share, Online Ads revenue, Online Video, powerful Webmail (Hotmail is okay I guess), Auction site, worldwide brand etc.. So the way I see it, with this bid, MSFT is saying "hey look, we give up trying to fight Google on our own, we spent several bil. of dollars on our MSN.com, Windows Live, Maps, you name it, projects and it didn't work, quarter by quarter Google is getting better and bigger, so we either grab n#2 and gang up on n#1, or we are out of ideas". I think it's a smart move by MSFT in making sure it doesn't fade in to a new IBM, and allow Google to become the new MSFT; this move keeps them in play in all fronts.

The Golden Age of Global Investing

Anyways, these figures represent the last 5 years of the current bull market, what kind of performance can you expect during a bear market (is it official yet for the Dow? it might be for financials and home construction, see ITB - topped in Aug/05)?

The Golden Age of Global Investing

Y07Q04 was down for most ETF's, so get ready for Y08Q01. Do you think the Dow in 2008 (atleast during the first half) will beat its historic max of 14200? Doesn't look like it will, and I seriously doubt any emerging market ETF will outperform the Dow in that regard. When the Dow tanks, these ETFs tank 2 fold. But I have to hand it to EWZ, it has been holding itself quite well (probably due to energy and mining stocks?), I guess China got oversold and Brazil was left behind regarding BRIC investments.

Apple Can't Hold $200; Wii 'Best of 2007'

The markets (DJIA) performance this week as down -0.63% on very light volume, but dare I say the sentiment seemed to be bullish, and only to be offset by negative news (rising oil prices on PKK/Turkish skirmish, Butto assination, and poor housing data for Nov, etc.), but looking at yesterdays DJIA intraday chart you can see a reasonably powerful 170 points recovery from midday onwards. Given the unexpectedly (?) poor housing data, this recovery could suggest a bullish sentiment for the first week of January. If this is the case, AAPL seems poised to be a front runner, after all it's currently at $199.83, and this week alone gained 3.05%.

Predicting a Recession: Apocalypse When?

Nice comment Reinko.

ETF Performance Overview

Is it just me, or has PGJ outperformed FXI lately?

Imminent Visa IPO Tantalizes Investors

What is a good valuation? Same P/E ratio as MA? That'll probably be the higher value of the interval the IPO will be trying to set for its stock. Will this IPO reinforce MA current value? or devalue MA because investors will want to spread their money between MA and V?