chistletoe

Ethanol vs. Natural Gas or Coal: Comparison Not Even Close

Hi Joseph,
Nice summary about this issue and some putred behavior.
Here's a photo I took recently -- evidently even ethanol
from sugar cane has some financial drawbacks, somewhere:
www.flickr.com/photos/...@N00/4083011570/in/set...

-chiz

Investors' Thinking: Time to Hedge Gold Stocks

seems to me,
its a lot more important to be hedging "cash" right now than gold ...

Options Trader Monday Outlook: Is Momentum Shifting?

Phil,
according to the dept of energy inventory report, americans have actually been using MORE gasoline recently than a year ago ...
the only sense I can make of it is that there are all these people collecting unemployment benefits, driving around all day either looking for a job or looking for an open store.

Shorting the Double Dip

thanks.

I'm already short BC.
someone pulled off a nifty short squeeze on this company;
they lost over a billion dollars last year, $13 per share,
but their share price has gone from $2 to $12 in the last three months. A juicy plum, ripe for the picking!

When the Fed Takes the Punch Bowl Away

Here we have the belief that money is value, therefore,
creating more money creates more value, growth.
This is the same belief as wearing lapel pins or flying
US flags made in China, promotes patriotism.
It is the same belief as posing in public in a physical position of devotion promotes spirituality and compassion.

Yesterday I heard on the radio news that my state is raising its taxes on small businesses by the maximum amount in order to continue to pay more unemployment benefits. Does no one understand that this is not a formula for recovery??????

(disclaimer: I am short, short, short!!!)

The Hole in the FDIC

another superb job, John.
many thanks.

Options Trader: Thirty-Three Percent Thursday

The only sense that I can make of it is,
"What's different this time" ... is that there are so many of us out
here who are a lot more sophisticated than there were in 1929.
Its a whole lot easier and better understood for the little guys to take short positions. There's a whole lot more pessimism and its freely available all over the Internet.
In the twisted way that the markets work, its that pessimism which is holding up the markets right now.
We all know its gonna break. Most of us believe that we can turn around and go short when it does. Is that really true?
Or is there something else coming, that no one has ever seen before?

Options Trader: Toppy Tuesday Morning

I appreciate your frustration ... have been known to rant and rave myself upon occasion ...

don't fret too much about the numbers that are trotted out just before a statistic ... in this country, if you look hard enough you can find some expert to "predict" exactly what you want, no matter how crazy,
so that the "surprise" will make the market go the direction you want it to go ...

Options Trader Friday Outlook: Up, Up and Away

okay mac.
I voted for Gore, I voted for Kerry, I publicly predicted Obama would win the white house in june, 2006.
I put all my portfolio in oil before the Iraq war because I understood the lies.
I took it out and shorted the market last year because ... I understood the lies.
I fervently hope that Obama is being fooled by people like Bernanke, Gensler and Geithner, I hope he really believes in what he is doing. I'm not fooled.
I cannot call the short term ups and downs. But I am as sure that the USA will never, ever recover the wealth of the last 20 years as I am that the sun will set tonight.

Global Farmland Disappearing at an Alarming Rate

disclaimer -- I am long DBA

Extrapolating global warming is extremely questionable statistical technique. In fact, for the past 18 months, due to an unexplainable weakening of the sun's output as well as unknown changes in deep ocean currents (we are too cheap to pay to collect the inforrmation), the earth has actually been cooling.
Of course, cooling will have a much more dramatic impact
on agriculture than warming.

Extrapolating population gains and food production losses at the same time is more than silly and needs no comment.

Massive new acreage in southern Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay
being applied to grain production, also needs to be taken into account in your thinking.

Forecasting the future takes some imagination and reasoning --
merely extending current trends is extremely lazy and not likely to be worth the trouble.

-chiz

PowerShares Agriculture ETF Waits on a Possible Disaster

Do a study on "sunspots"
and pay attention to the "Maunder Minimum".
Check out what happened to Argentina's agriculture last winter.
The disaster is already happening ...
but thanks I guess to disinformation from the environmentalists, few people have yet noticed....

Why Do CNBC and Bloomberg Report Operating Earnings?

many thanks ...

Lower Credit Card Fees = Lower Credit Card Profits

For as long as I can remember,
credit card companies have been falling over themselves
trying to push credit cards onto people who were clearly bad risks.
This is not an industry which needs to thrive.
They will do very, very well to start checking their applicants out more carefully
and to stop wasting money on promotions and advertising.

The Agriculture Re-Boom Is Coming

I've been saying this for months
and quietly booking profits in DBA, ADM, and Bunge.
There may be even more of a crisis developing in wheat than in corn. Across the northern plains, the weather has been too cold and wet for many farmers to plant. Also, the credit crunch has inspired others not to plant. Meanwhile, across the middle east and into central asia a new variety of plague, yellow stem rust, named Ug99, is devastating whole fields.

Its not pretty... while I am making money,
I know that there will be many, many people starving to death later on this year ...

As the Dollar Continues to Collapse, Where Will You Put Your Money?

Where to put one's capital, in this scenario,
really, is not the right question.
I started my planning by considering that all investment and capital assets are going to zero.
Those people who rely on money for their well-being -- are going to die.
The people who survive will be people who have skills, who have tools, and who have hard assets stockpiled. People who enjoy working and
taking care of the people around them.
The rich are all doomed. Which is no less and no more than what they deserve.