fatpitch2

High Gold Prices: It's the Oil, Stupid

Michael:

Matt Simmons, not a dumb-bunny, is pushing NH3 (Ammonia) as an alternate fuel source for transportation. His claim is that the current fleets can be converted to run on NH3 at a reasonable cost, and that NH3 can be mfg. from clean energy sources (wind, solar, wave, ....).

Have you any thoughts on this?

Three Asset Classes that Can Actually Outpace Coming Inflationary Price Increases

Nice article, thanks.

I'm just going to toss out some random stuff here:

1) Indeed returns on gold do not seem to be well correlated with inflation but perhaps more correlated to periods of "unrest". So even without inflation on the horizon gold is not a bad place to park some cash?

2) Inflation vs. Deflation ... can't we have BOTH?
It seems to me it's not as simple as one or the other...
Certainly some assets/classes will be suffering "deflation" for years to come ... residential and commercial RE seem to have large inventories to work off for example. On the other hand it seems we could be in for shortages of ag. commodities, energy, and other "hard" assets. The stuff that the BRIC needs to build out their countries?

3) oil being held off the market - well I guess that could be the case, but a VLCC holds about 2M bbls, and with worldwide consumption at 80M+ bbls/day could there BE enough tankers willing to sit at anchor to really make a big difference???

Hedge Fund Redemptions May Crash Q1 Markets

I guess I wonder what is left to redeem?

Tudor Investment Group had $5.7 billion invested at June 30 as disclosed in its 13-F. Its September 30 filing shows only $453 million.

Atticus Capital, another much-celebrated hedge fund, went from $8.1 billion to $510 million.

SAC Capital, run by the Steven Cohen, went from $14.4 billion to $7.7 billion.

Vinik Asset Management, led by Jeffrey Vinik, who once ran Fidelity Magellan, went from $11.8 billion to $1.8 billion!

These numbers are as of September 30. So they do not include the awful months of October or November, so current assets at these funds would be even lower now, but if you are already down 90% .... who cares?

The reduction is of course the combination of selling to meet redemption requests, and a decline in market value of existing positions, if these funds are anywhere close to "typical" I have to conclude that downward pressure on the market on a go-forward basis has got to be minimal as ... well as they are all pretty much out of money....?

Bye Bye Greenback

I am current shareholder of both the Prudent Global Income Fund (PSFAX) and the BEARX fund. While the income fund has not done amazingly well it has held up in "relative terms". BEARX on the other hand I am pleased with....

Unfortunately the take over by Federated Investments results in the funds now becoming front-end load funds which is very disappointing for folks that are not current shareholders -- current no-load shareholders as of date of conversion are grandfathered into the no-load shares even for additional purchases ... at least as I understand it.

Inflation on 'Sale' as Deflation Dominates Markets

Deflation AND inflation - why not both...

I would vote that we have both Deflation AND inflation spread across different sectors....

As others have pointed out, I think much RE will continue to DEFLATE, as will lots of luxury goods (Coach handbags, private jets, .....)

On the other hand, the essentials of modest everyday living are likely to respond to all this money printing by going up in price ... Why will the middle east want to continue to sell oil @ $45 USD/bbl when there are twice as many USD in the world as there was just a short time ago?

Why won't the price of food head north?

I suspect that many will not have their cake and not eat it either....