I don't know how anyone, in all good conscience, could invest in Brazil and then decry the destruction of the Amazonian rain forest. People truly are retarded when it comes to following through on the logical consequences of their investing decisions.
Another ridiculous stereotype. You make these silly statements that are probably based on a program you saw on PBS last week. There are many legitamate industries in Brazil and the rain forest is largely being depleted by pirates selling hardwood to foreign buyers.
What stereotype have I used here? Looks like you discovered the word "stereotype" on PBS, and don't know how to use it.
If you try the 5$ trick the chances are that you will be arrested for attempted bribery ,
don't even think to try this if you haven't been there before and got to know the local " do and don't "
Beside , I have some sad news for you .. those days in south east - Asia 5 $ would be consider either as a joke or an insult
.
I have friends who've been to Vietnam and they tell me that's how the system works. This is not a joke.
The customs agent WANTS that $5. For a country we're the average person makes less than $300 a month.....some government agents make more money off brides than they do from their "official" salary. As for the "paper work" that is nothing but pretext for a bribe. The paper work they want you to fill out is basically a declaration of what you're bringing into the country or so they say. If you don't give them the $5, they boot you to the back of the line and make you wait longer.
Like I said before I've got friends who've been there. So I'm NOT making this up.
Posted: Sat Apr 19, 2008 9:44 am Post subject: Re: Trader's Corner 2008
I've turned completely chicken crap! I sold my BCE yesterday so essentially I am 83% cash.
I bought BCE and NXY last year at this time and regretted it all year. I lost 250$ on 25K getting out so I am feeling ok. (actually I'm even if you include my dividends)
As for the chicken bit, I was watching the talking heads on CNBC and they were going "RA, RA, RA, let the party begin..."
How can we be partying with 116 dollar oil?
How can we be partying with a 12% downturn in US house prices?
How can we party with record grain prices?
How can we.......etc...?
So I bailed.
I stood to make 1800 on the BCE if the deal went through, and a loss at minimum of 3200 if BCE returned to the pre-buyout price of 30$per share.
Posted: Sat Apr 19, 2008 5:41 pm Post subject: Re: Trader's Corner 2008
I've been a little paranoid about stop loss orders. I should use them more though. A few years ago I was buying and selling enough CEF.A to move the price a little. (it was trading at 90000 shares/day and I was buying 3000) Anyways I put in a stop loss, and a few days later the price went down right below my stop loss and then right back up. My dad said brokers would do that. (he was a broker) I had to buy the stock back at a premium.
Posted: Sat Apr 19, 2008 10:29 pm Post subject: Re: Trader's Corner 2008
drew wrote:
I've been a little paranoid about stop loss orders. I should use them more though. A few years ago I was buying and selling enough CEF.A to move the price a little. (it was trading at 90000 shares/day and I was buying 3000) Anyways I put in a stop loss, and a few days later the price went down right below my stop loss and then right back up. My dad said brokers would do that. (he was a broker) I had to buy the stock back at a premium.
Drew
I recommend "Reminiscences of a Stock Operator".
The story is supposedly about Jessie Livermore and the wild days of investing / speculation during the good old days before they had things like government regulations. Imagine the wild west but instead of (cowboys and guns) it was (speculators and ticker tape machines) trying to "outsmart" each other sometimes through wit or less "honest" means. *smirk* Technology may have changed over the years but human nature doesn't. You're not going to get rich from reading the book but it might prevent you from becoming poor!
North Sea supply disruptions keep international prices firm
Global natural gas markets remain tight ...
Global gas markets remain tight, as a combination of late-season cold temperatures in the United Kingdom and North Sea supply disruptions tightened the NW European supply/demand balance. In addition, the recent shut down of natural gas production at the Independence Hub field (900 mmcf/d) in the US Gulf of Mexico due to a leak has been further tightening the US balance. This was underscored by the US storage numbers announced April 24 by the US Department of Energy (DOE), which came in tighter than average on a weather-adjusted basis.
... lending further support to international prices
The recent supply disruptions in the United Kingdom have led to a rally in UK natural gas prices, with NBP closing above 66 p/th ($13.05/mmBtu) on April 24, further widening the already significant NBP-to-NYMEX natural gas price differential from roughly $1.50/mmBtu to more than $2.00/mmBtu. As we emphasized in our April 17 Natural Gas Watch, such low US natural gas prices relative to the rest of the world do not motivate many LNG suppliers to send cargoes to the United States. Even though NYMEX natural gas prices have continued to rally, underscoring the current tightness in the market, we maintain that current price levels are not yet competitive against the rest of the world. We therefore continue to be positive on US natural gas prices and argue they will likely converge to European prices in the near term.
Source: Goldman Sachs Commodities Research
April 25, 2008
EURCAD Chart
Quote:
Window for a spring pullback closing fast
Paradoxically, the US oil market is the strongest in the world despite weak demand and a slowing economy, while the rest of the world is pricing much weaker fundamentals. We believe that in the near term, the global weakness is likely to spread to the US, but the window of opportunity is closing fast.
Is the bull-bull market back? In the US it is.
Oil prices continue to break new highs, settling above $117/bbl on Monday, as signs of tightening near-term fundamentals and continued escalating costs have lent further support to timespreads and long-term oil prices. The bull-bull market that had characterized most of last year, with a cyclical bull market overlaid on a structural bull market, seems to have regained momentum despite declining US oil demand and slowing economies.
Global markets are much weaker, which keeps open the window of opportunity for a spring pullback
Recent US inventory declines stand in sharp contrast to the most recent data from the rest of the OECD economies, where, at the end of March, inventory levels remained well above the ten-year average. As a result, Brent and other grade timespreads are much weaker, reflecting less robust fundamentals outside the US. Going forward, we believe that as the system enters the peak of the seasonal build this May, imports into the US will likely rebound, particularly given the currently strong US prices relative to the rest of the world, which will soften the US balance before the seasonal increase in demand this summer. Looking into the second half this year, given the current fundamental tightness, we believe the risks
are substantially skewed to the upside once the fiscal and monetary stimulus begins to have an impact and stabilize US demand growth.
Rolling our short WTI long-dated timespreads trade
Given that we expect a rebound in US petroleum imports in the coming weeks to rebalance US inventories, putting some downward pressure on WTI long-dated timespreads, we are maintaining our short WTI long-dated timespreads trading recommendation, rolling its front month from May 2008 to June 2008 and keeping the December 2010 contract.
Source: Goldman Sachs International
EnergyWeekly April 22, 2008
Gold in Euros Chart _________________ The organized state is a wonderful invention whereby everyone can live at someone else's expense.
Posted: Tue Apr 29, 2008 7:37 am Post subject: Re: Trader's Corner 2008
Basis Trading = Cash - Futures
Quote:
Fund-Buying Gains
Index-fund investment in CBOT corn, soybeans and wheat has increased 66 percent to the equivalent of 902,105 futures contracts, a record, since January 2006, when the government began collecting the data. Each contract represents 5,000 bushels, about what Niemeyer reaps from every 22 acres of corn planted.
Investments in grain and livestock futures have more than doubled to about $65 billion from $25 billion in November, according to consultant AgResource Co. in Chicago. The buying of crop futures alone is about half the combined value of the corn, soybeans and wheat grown in the U.S., the world's largest exporter of all three commodities. The U.S. Department of Agriculture valued the 2007 harvest at a record $92.5 billion.
Commodities are in their seventh year of gains, with oil rising to a record $119.90 a barrel on April 22. Copper and gold reached their highest prices ever this year, and rice has more than doubled in the past year to $24.18 per 100 pounds.
Crops and raw materials have ``become an asset class that institutions use to an increasing extent,'' billionaire George Soros said April 17. ``On top of that, you have specific factors that create the relative shortage of oil and, now, also food.''
(con't)
The increased risk boosts the cost of buying grain.
Michlig AgriCenter Inc. in Manlius, Illinois, a grain handler with 6.5 million bushels of storage capacity, often buys crops before they are produced and uses the CBOT to manage its price risk. The cost to set hedge positions for corn delivered in December, after the harvest, is three times higher than a year ago, said Scott Stoller, a Michlig grain merchandiser.
Dell Princ, 51, general manager at silo owner Midway Cooperative in Osborne, Kansas, said the monthly interest to finance his hedges tripled to $150,000 in the past year as the exchanges in Chicago and Kansas City demanded more money to cover any potential losses on his positions.
The additional expense can add 15 cents to 40 cents a bushel to the cost of handling wheat, compared with 5 cents to 10 cents on sales in years past, he said.
Now is a poor time to be in cattle, hogs or chickens. Farmgate prices are low, while costs are high and rising. Anecdotally neighbors are now paying $70 per bale of hay; fertilizer prices are high; fuel prices are rising; and land is expensive. It will take some time before any sort of equilibrium returns to these markets. In the meantime it is only the grain specs that are long and loving life! _________________ The organized state is a wonderful invention whereby everyone can live at someone else's expense.
Joined: Oct 15, 2004 Posts: 2185 Location: Arkansas
Posted: Tue Apr 29, 2008 7:50 am Post subject: Re: Trader's Corner 2008
Mr. Bill,
What do you think of Toshiba in general, and, more particularly, recently there is news they are moving into nuclear development. For example, they are apparently bidding to build or help build some reactors in the US as well as apparently marketing a new "micro reactor" for power generation.
Posted: Tue Apr 29, 2008 8:02 am Post subject: Re: Trader's Corner 2008
seahorse wrote:
Mr. Bill,
What do you think of Toshiba in general, and, more particularly, recently there is news they are moving into nuclear development. For example, they are apparently bidding to build or help build some reactors in the US as well as apparently marketing a new "micro reactor" for power generation.
Hi Seahorse, I do not know much about Toshiba, in general, except that I specifically am not too happy with my laptop! ; - ))
What I dislike about Asian conglomerates is that they are soup to nuts manufacturers and not pure plays. Therefore, I never know what exactly I am buying and what sort of transfer pricing games are going on behind the firm's fascade.
That said, even a pure play like Areva is really a majority-owned French government firm where all sorts of corporate governance issues take a back seat to political concerns.
Toshiba is working with Westinghouse or have they bought-out Westinghouse? I am not sure the extent of their cooperation, but I must say I like the concept of decentralized, micro-generation for solving a whole host of problems even if slightly less energy efficient.
I have seen the micro-reactor articles come-up. Toshiba, but also the Russians that proposed using them on floating barges for water desalination, etc. It sounds very reasonable, but one has to worry about the security aspects?
If you have more information then please let us know? I am still waiting for more details about the reactor planned for Peace River in N. Alberta. Thanks. _________________ The organized state is a wonderful invention whereby everyone can live at someone else's expense.
What I like from the article is the statement that they are installing the first one this year in Japan. If so, they must have security and safety issues in control or, at least enough to satisfy the gov't there.
My personal opinion is that military bases, gov't entities, big manufacturers etc would love to install these things and get off the grid for lots of reasons. I believe safety and security issues can be dealt with, but lack of energy or expensive energy cannot be so easily dealt with, especially when we are all tied together in an archaic failing grid system.
Posted: Wed Apr 30, 2008 1:22 am Post subject: Re: Trader's Corner 2008
I agree 100%! Think about the export land model in the context of decreasing energy and you see the commercial and strategic logic to use micro-reactors to produce electricity instead of burning natural gas to produce synthetic oil, run airconditioners in the desert or desalinate seawater.
On a personal note, I leave tomorrow for Dubai, but at the moment my family is here from Alberta. I found out from them that our neighbor is going to install a heat exchanger to tap into geothermal. He calculates the cost will only be around $20.000. I had thought it would be double that? In any case, if this is successful we may follow suit.
We already have hotwater heating and we are connected to natural gas as a back-up, but it would be nice to be off grid as well. Maybe a propane tank just for emergencies? Now if we could install a giant mast on our large hill behind the house (the highest in the area) we might even be able to sell power back into the neighboring grid? Another piece of the energy independence puzzle falls into place! _________________ The organized state is a wonderful invention whereby everyone can live at someone else's expense.
Joined: Feb 20, 2005 Posts: 2779 Location: Uppsala, Sweden
Posted: Fri May 02, 2008 7:54 pm Post subject: Re: Trader's Corner 2008
Toshiba bought Westinghouse from BNFL for 5 or 6 billion dollars. They really believe in nuclear. _________________ Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
Posted: Sat May 03, 2008 2:44 am Post subject: Re: Trader's Corner 2008
Starvid wrote:
Toshiba bought Westinghouse from BNFL for 5 or 6 billion dollars. They really believe in nuclear.
Like most other industries nuclear energy goes through boom and bust cycles. (no pun inteded )
Without a doubt nuclear energy is hot right now.
The political situation has changed quite dramatically since Chernobyl.
And with a weak US dollar that should give Westinghouse an advantage over Areva with its EPR reactor.
I don't think Westinghouse has any technical advantage over Areva, it's purely economic:
weak US dollar == cheaper for the US to export it's nuke plant
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