JohnniePhenom

Wells Fargo: Being Bearish Paid Today

Dear Plumber 250, Sorry for not running spell check before posting my comment, God forbid you ever make a mistake. And if you're basing investment decisions on gramatical errors then maybe you should rethink your investments.

tshk1221 and Mr. Supervisor, thank you for the positive comments, they are much appreciated.

I was only giving my 2 cents, and that is all.

Wells Fargo: Being Bearish Paid Today

I recently had the opportunity to be offered a position with Wells Fargo. Through the recruitment and interviewing process I was very interested in learning how they planned to be profitable in such an environment, and thus what the positives and future potential of taking the position with the company would be. No one would want to be hired into a failing company. What they could tell me is that basically they were more conservative and protective with the subprime lending they took part in. with WFC you didn't see massive surges in profits like with other banks, and you (until recently) haven't seen a great decrease in their value. With the aquisition of Wachovia they've increased they're business footprint and will be able to off a more diversified portfolio of products and services to existing and potential clients. I see JPM, BAC, and WFC emerging as some of, if not the best, banks when we come out of the other side of this crisis. Maybe w/ WFC my opinion is some what biased by my new association w/ the company, but I wouldn't have seeked employment w/ them if I did not see them emerging on top of the banking industry at the end of all of this...down the road people will look back and see that certain financial companies were among the best investments at the bottom IMHO

Is Goldman Sachs Heading to $20?

Great article. I'm also in agreement on shorting GS. Not only for the reasons stated above, but also looking at a GS chart shows it still has some key levels of long term support that it hasn't tested yet (namely lows of 2002 and 1999). If not all the way down to $20-$30, I think it can at least fall to ~$50 imho.

A $40 Bottom in Oil?

ps. the price of $100 for Iran and Venezuela is what they "need" to maintain their economy not "have to have." that's why Iran wanted to cut production by more than 2.5million barrels a day....as logicalthought mentioned above supply and demand play the largest roles, so in attempt to manipulate demand and stifle destruction they decrease supply, but we'll see how long demand at it's current levels.

A $40 Bottom in Oil?

I have a hard time believing oil will make it to $40, much less stay below $80 due to a few reasons. First you have the global demand aspect. Although the global economy has slowed, asia is still growing at ~7%, this region and the rest of the developing countries will require oil, coal, etc...as economies pick back up to continue economic growth and increased infrastructure development. The second being OPEC. you have a large discrepency in what the price is that countries need to, or are willing to, accept in order to maintain their economy and infrastructure. The above mentioned $40 maybe true for Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi etc...but it's probably closer to ~$50+ if anything (although Saudi Arabia is playing more of political game in regards to prices and demand destruction). But countries like Iran and Venezuela must have prices at $100+ a barrel to sustain their infrastructure as 95% of venezuela's export earnings come from oil and 85% of Iran's government revenue comes from oil (50% for gov't rev. for venezuela). On the complete opposite side you have quatar who only needs $10 a barrell to keep a positive trade balance (but this is also due to the fact they are sitting on one of the largest natural gas deposits in history and the possible formation of a natural gas cartel, plus they don't have much influence on oil prices). Next you have to take into consideration that oil is priced in dollars. As the valuation of the dollar drops the price of oil will tend to increase (generally the same inverse relationship seen with the dollar and gold). A decrease in lending and capitalization has caused the recent increase in dollar valuation, as the bailout money pours in there will be an increase in the supply of dollars in circulation resaulting in a decrease in the value of the dollar, which can inturn put upwards price pressure on oil......