LA

12 Comments

    • ON: Sat Sep 20th 09:05 AM
      Commented on:
      Have We Reached a Near-Term Bottom?
      I agree with John. This administration is buying time until the elections. Should the market truly collapse, the Republicans would be in a very difficult position.

      Interestingly, if you look at Friday volumes for some ETFs, they are all much lower than Thursday. And a short selling ban is a desperate measure that could potentially increase instability, and not reduce it.

      Most of all, whatever the plan is, it will do nothing to address falling consumer spending, falling housing prices, and higher unemployment. Banks are not going to rehire those who were laid-off over the past few months and manufacturers are not going to see a surge in demand. Ultimately, in my opinion this is why the market has been falling. The collapse of part of the banking system is only part of the bigger picture
      View article »
    • ON: Fri Sep 19th 13:07 PM
      Commented on:
      No Happy Endings in the Credit Crisis
      The plan only needs to support the market until the elections. Each time the market drops, Obama gets closer to McCain and of course Bush is not happy about that.
      The question is: what are the consequences of this huge liquidity injection? Inflation. We are already in a global inflationary environment and this will just make it worse. High inflation + flat salaries + increased unemployment = depression?
      View article »
    • ON: Fri Sep 19th 13:06 PM
      Commented on:
      No Happy Endings in the Credit Crisis
      The plan only needs to support the market until the elections. Each time the market drops, Obama gets closer to McCain and of course Bush is not happy about that.
      The question is: what are the consequences of this huge liquidity injection? Inflation. We are already in a global inflationary environment and this will just make it worse. High inflation + flat salaries + increased unemployment = depression?
      View article »
    • ON: Fri Aug 1st 15:14 PM
      Commented on:
      Everyone Wants the Commodity Bubble To Be Pricked
      Salman, you make some valid points. However, I believe it's important to differentiate among commodities. In my article Not All Commodities Are Created Equal (the link is: seekingalpha.com/artic...), I point out that people need to eat, and gold and copper cannot be eaten. Population is growing, and that's a fact, while arable land remains basically the same. Moreover, climate changes affect agricultural commodities and such a way that the increase in production simply cannot meet additional demand.
      View article »
    • ON: Thu Jul 31st 11:30 AM
      Commented on:
      Do Oil and the Market Still Have a Lot of Downside?
      I got hit by Natural Gas like many and can only blame myself for holding on way too long. I agree with the call about a stock market on the edge of the abiss, but then again the timing is hard to pick. Funny how the less people make and the more jobs are cut, the more those same people spend.
      I'm long SPY 2010 puts and planning on adding more as soon as November comes.
      View article »
    • ON: Sat Jul 26th 10:51 AM
      Commented on:
      Is Natural Gas Down for the Count?
      The point about the impact of the leak is valid: it was announced on April 7 and it wasn't until June 16 that production reached again 900 mill cubic feet/day. In that period price went up by roughly 35%. However, in the period Jan 1-April 7, before the leak, price had already increased by 25%. In my opinion, the leak doesn't seem to explain the whole story.
      View article »
    • ON: Mon Jul 7th 18:11 PM
      Commented on:
      Oil and Gas: Perfect Investment Tsunami
      Great article. Well worth reading from start to finish.
      Here're my two cents: if you don't have time to investigate single stocks, don't rry to guess: futures or ETF can do the job pretty well. With declining oil supply, eventually there will be a shift: probably from oil to gas, perhaps from oil to nuclear.
      View article »
    • ON: Thu May 15th 18:51 PM
      Commented on:
      ETF Update: Oil Service ETFs, Natural Gas Plays
      Great heads up on PKN.
      Thanks.
      I didn't know about it.

      On May 15 10:06 AM lminsky wrote:

      > I'm starting to hear more about nuclear energy. I see that Invesco
      >
      > has a new ETF, PKN - a global nuclear energy fund. Any chance you
      > could give us a sense of where we are with nuclear and potential
      >
      > future profit directions?
      View article »
    • ON: Thu May 15th 18:50 PM
      Commented on:
      Oil and Natural Gas Due for a Pullback?
      UNG and GAZ have been walking hand in hand, but UNG has much better liquidity.
      3M average volume on GAZ is about $1.5M vs. UNG $65M.


      On May 15 10:40 AM Tomas T wrote:

      > Check ticker GAZ, I did very well for the past 2 weeks (10% +), (from
      > user 193917)
      View article »
    • ON: Tue May 13th 18:46 PM
      Commented on:
      General Discussion on UNG
      Can anybody help me understand why there is a discrepancy between UNG (Natural Gas ETF) which should track front-month futures, and the Continuous Contract Index quoted on the NYMEX? Although the correlation seems to have improved over time, over 1-year period is all over the place. Today for example UNG was +1.3% and the index I believe was +0.08%.
      Thanks
    • ON: Wed May 7th 18:34 PM
      Commented on:
      We're Nearing Crunch Time for Oil
      Interesting articles, as most of the comments it triggered.
      However, I think as the conversation progressed some lost sight of the point the author was making.
      In my view, this is not about how large potential oil supplies might be. As all the above comments suggest, people have different, often conflicting opinions. The truth is that we don't really know, not does it matter. What does matter is the perception that the (negative) spread between supply and demand is widening. But even that is not really the point. The issues, I think, are:
      1- At what price are we going to see a real shift from traditional to new sources of energy?
      2 - Who is going to pay for the research?
      3 - How long will the entire process take?
      Question 1: At what price? Europe has been paying for decades almost four times what we pay in the US, and still not that much has happened there in terms of a serious changes
      Question 2: Who is going to pay? Well, not the oil companies, who would have the resources, but not the interest. Not the auto industry, which might have the interest but not the resources. And not the governments, at least until they are buries under a pile of debt.
      Question 3: How long? Your guess is as good as mine.
      On one point I think most of the above comments seem to agree: natural gas looks like a good bet.
      View article »
    • ON: Fri Apr 25th 12:47 PM
      Commented on:
      Not All Commodities Are Created Equal: A Look At Agriculture
      Richard,
      Thank you for your comments. You are absolutely correct in pointing out the importance of current stockpile levels. I have gathered the following data: At the end of 1999 the world grain reserves covered 119 days of consumption. Today, we are looking at 50 days for corn and 70 days for wheat. During the period 2000-2005 cereal reserves covered 18 weeks on average. Today we are at 12 weeks, with corn at 8 weeks. The most striking aspect of these numbers is, in my opinion, the velocity at which reserves are contracting despite slightly increase in production.
      As far as the relationship between foodstuff prices and commodity prices, it was my intention to point out that the correlation is less intuitive than one may expect due to a variety of factors, such as labor and transportation costs. Thus, commodity prices are not always a satisfactory leading indicator of where Food CPI inflation is headed.
      View article »
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