December 8, 2009
Featured Trades: (RISK), (GOLD), (GLD),
(DGP), (HBD.TO), (MEXICAN GOLD PESO), (DOLLAR)
QUOTE OF THE DAY
?We are going to have to work harder as a country,? said Jeff Imelt, CEO of General Electric.
Global Market Comments
December 4, 2009
Featured Trades: (SILVER), (GOLD), (ABX), (CDE), (SLW), (HL), (HEDGE FUND RADIO), (JAPAN)
NOTE TO SUBSCRIBERS: I?m taking a research day on Monday, December 7, so the next letter will be published on Tuesday, December 8.
2) I just want to pass on the torrent of? rumors that came flooding back to me inspired by my GOLD SPECIAL ISSUE two days ago (click here for the full report). The major gold producers, led by Peter Munk?s Barrick Gold (ABX), very publicly and with great fanfare took off their hedges and ceased all forward sales, turning themselves instantly into leveraged long gold funds. Now they are deliberately withholding spot supplies from the market in a brazen move to squeeze prices higher. Then the black swan flew in from Dubai (click here for the full story), confirming everyone?s worst fears about the incompetence of all governments, and delivering the parabolic move that took the barbaric relic up a gob smacking $80 in a week to an all time high of $1,220. Whether this is actually true is anybody?s guess, but the market certainly buys it. The yellow metal is starting to look overheated by me, but I?m just an old fart looking forward to his first social security check. I like buying the steak and selling the sizzle, after I?ve ripped a few chunks of red meat out for myself, of course. But who knows, gold could keep flying until year end, and my government check will probably bounce anyway.
3) Given the barrels of ink spilled about the Dubai?s troubles, (click here for full report). I thought I?d update readers about the Emirate?s largest US asset, which I recently visited.? One can?t help but be overwhelmed by a sense of history walking by the Las Vegas City Center; without a doubt one of the worst commercial real estate disasters in human history. The glitzy, ultra modern, Cesar Pelli designed, 16.8 million square foot, 63 acre complex occupies the quarter mile on the city?s fabled Strip between the Bellagio and the Monte Carlo Hotels, and will unquestionably become one of the Wonders of the World, if it is ever finished. It includes the Mandarin Oriental, Aria, Veer, and Harmon Hotels, offering 4,000 rooms and 2,600 condos. The 57 story Vdara condo-hotel opened just this week, despite the fact that many original investors have sued to recover their deposits.?? They will be adorned by two casinos, a convention center, a new theater for the Cirque du Soleil, an gargantuan shopping mall, and parking for 6,900. The finished project will employ 12,000. But strikes and overruns sent costs soaring to $8.5 billion, and the project is now hopelessly behind schedule. Equity in the mammoth project is now widely believed to be worth zero. I saw a total of one worker in a cherry picker working on the project with a screwdriver. The other guy going up in an elevator turned out to be a lender contemplating a jump off the top. Kirk Kerkorian wanted to build the ultimate Sin City destination resort when his MGM-Mirage partnered with Dubai World. The relationship has soured, with Dubai World filing a suit against its partner for negligence and mismanagement, which it later withdrew. Who is going to stay in all these rooms? Those who financed trips to Vegas with home equity loans or subprime credit cards definitely are not coming back. If the project grinds to a halt, it will leave a gigantic eyesore at the heart of the city?s tourist area, becoming a monument to excess in a city of excesses. Unfortunately, what happens in Vegas doesn?t always stay in Vegas, as a financial collapse would send shivers through the industry globally.
4) My guest on Hedge Fund Radio this week is Ed Merner, CEO of the Atlantis Japan Growth Fund (LSE-AJG), who has long been rated the number one stock picker in the Land of the Rising Sun. Ed?s fund, which trades on the London Stock Exchange, is up a stunning 54% from the March bottom. When the ink was barely dry on the US Japan peace treaty in 1950, Ed?s father uprooted his family from rural Truckee, California, and moved them to Tokyo Japan. That gave him a front row seat to the economic miracle that followed in the fifties and sixties. Ed started managing money in Japan just a few years before me, in 1970. He toiled away as a portfolio manager at Schroeder?s & Co. in Tokyo for 25 years and then launched his own firm in 1995. Ed, who is a fascinating individual and a genuine nice guy, will discuss the long term opportunities for investing in Japan and Korea. Hedge Fund Radio is broadcast every Saturday morning at 12:00 pm Eastern time, 11:00 am Central time, 9:00 am Pacific Coast Time, and 5:00 pm Greenwich Mean Time. For pilots and the military, that is 17:00 Zulu time. For the online link to the live show, please go to www.bizradio.com or click here , then click on ?Listen Live!?, and click on ?Houston 1110 AM KTEK.?
? For archives of past Hedge Fund Radio shows, please go to my website by clicking here .
ATLANTIS JAPAN GROWTH FUND
QUOTE OF THE DAY
?There are people who can?t get used to the idea that the country is being run by a black guy living in public housing. Obama is only half black, so I guess that makes him our ?starter Negro,? said political commentator Will Durst.
December 3, 2009
Featured Trades: (DUBAI), (EEM), (EDZ), (JOB OFFER),
(HEDGE FUND RADIO)
1) Who did Dubai's emir, Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, think he was kidding? He launched one of the biggest construction booms in history, erecting the Burj Dubai, which at 161 stories is the world's tallest building. He built artificial islands in the Persian Gulf with lofty names like 'The World' that are so big they are visible from space. He bought the legendary Queen Elizabeth II, a ship that holds many fond memories of transatlantic crossings for me, to convert into a floating hotel at unimaginable expense. The spending didn't stop there. His spending binge went global, taking a partnership role in the Las Vegas City Center, which became the worst commercial real estate project since the Tower of Babel. The problem is that all of these acquisitions were done on credit, with only a fig leaf of equity, and the wind is now blowing with hurricane force. Dubai property values have slid 50% in a year, and the plunge shows no sign of abating. No surprise then that development arm Dubai World has defaulted on $59 billion in debt. The spendthrift emir spent way too much time on horse racing and not enough on research. Sure, turning Dubai into the next Hong Kong was a laudable goal, but did anyone think this through? While the former crown colony is backed by the sweating masses of China, tiny Emirate is surrounded on two sides by 2,000 miles of sand and on the other two by the not so friendly maritime neighbors of Iran and Iraq. Oil, you may ask? My Caesar salad has more oil than Dubai. Haven't they heard of peak oil? I always thought Dubai would revert to a ghost town once the neighborhood ran out of Texas tea. Now that Dubai's debt has been correctly marked down to junk the big question is who else this hubris gone wild is going to take down. The shareholders of the UK's Standard Chartered Bank and HKSB, the lead lenders, are going to take a body blow, and a rash of hickies will spread among the many syndicate members. Greece and Ireland could be next, as the premiums for their credit default swaps have skyrocketed. Things could get ugly in Dubai when the country's 360,000 migrant Indian workers find out they aren't going to get paid. How do you say 'domino theory' in Arabic?
2) As the markets get increasingly elevated and overpriced, I am widening my search for cheap disaster insurance. Today I'm looking at a hedge for those with substantial emerging markets exposure, which pretty much should be everyone who reads this letter. Take a look at the Direxion Daily Emerging Markets Bear 3X Shares (EDZ) (click here for details), which is a triple inverse ETF on the emerging stock markets. In theory, a 10% drop in the emerging markets would produce a 30% gain in the ETF. In reality, the trip can be much more rocky. To say these markets have simply gone up is a gross understatement. The major components of the EDZ include short positions in shares from China, which has risen this year by 94%, India, up 95%, Brazil, up 116%, and Russia up a mind boggling 183%. No surprise then that the EDZ has had its face ripped off, down a gut churning 92%. You can buy $33,000 of EDZ to imperfectly hedge $100,000 worth of emerging market longs, or scale in here at $5 with a view to a quick double early next year when the inevitable profit taking hits. I'll throw in a cautionary warning that if we enter a prolonged period of grind sideways, the EDZ could very well get dragged down to zero by its internal cost of carry. In flight school they always teach you to wear a reserve parachute when engaging in high level aerobatics. Best to apply this philosophy to your portfolio.
3) You can now access the archived shows of Hedge Fund Radio on my website by clicking here . Hedge Fund Radio is a weekly program featuring one-on-one interviews with the titans of the hedge fund industry. The show is broadcast every Saturday morning at 12:00 pm Eastern time, 11:00 am Central time, 9:00 am Pacific Coast Time, and 5:00 pm Greenwich Mean Time. For pilots and the military, that is 17:00 Zulu time. For the online link to the live show, please go to www.bizradio.com or click here , then click on 'Listen Live!', and click on 'Houston 1110 AM KTEK.'
'Until you get small business back on their feet, you're knocking out about 20% of GDP' said Camden Fine, CEO of Independent Community Bankers of America.
JOB OFFER OF THE DAY
Precious metals trader and dealer, Millennium Metals, is looking to hire an experienced professional to manage their gold, silver, and platinum retail business. The firm is looking to grow its share in the national market for coins and bullion. In depth knowledge of precious metals and industry experience a plus. You can work either at our headquarters in Green Bay, Wisconsin or from home anywhere in the US. Please email your resume directly to Rick Renard at cpdrp@aol.com , and mark the subject bar with 'resume'
December 2, 2009
ANOTHER SPECIAL GOLD ISSUE
Featured Trades: (GOLD), (GLD)
(HARD ASSETS INVESTMENT CONFERENCE)
2) I thought I'd visit the front trenches of the gold boom by dropping in on the Hard Assets Investment Conference in San Francisco. I planned on spending one hour, but stayed eight. It proved incredibly fertile ground, not just for gold bugs, but also of enthusiasts for silver, platinum, uranium, rare earths, and base metals. A nearly football field sized conference hall was filled with booths from over 100 participating companies. Of course the coin dealers were out in force, flogging maple leaves, silver eagles, and krugerands. The gold miners alone had reps from Africa, Canada, Peru, Brazil, Argentina, Guyana, Mongolia, the Congo, and Burkino Faso.?? I gravitated to the tables manned by grizzled old mining engineers with dirt under their fingernails who gave me the hard data on yields, processes, and costs that I was looking for. I pawed ore samples and core drillings of every possible description. The newsletter publishers also had a large presence. It turns out that there is no environmental movement without rare earths, and we are entering the golden age of nuclear power. One guy even offered to drink the runoff from pure yellow cake to make his point. The financial leverage of the junior miners is spectacular if the price of the barbaric relic keeps going up. I even learned about the fascinating world of collectable gold nuggets. By the end of the day my back finally gave out, and I went cross-eyed poring over a topographic map of lithium deposits in Chile's Atacama Desert. I'll delve into each of these areas in detail in the coming weeks, once I have had a chance to sort through the wheat from the chaff. The early preview: the price of everything is going up. The next conference on May 10-11 at New York Marriot should be a real whopper.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
'Central Banks are sewing gold into their lapels,' said Philip Gotthelf, president of Equidex, a foreign exchange dealer
November 25, 2009
Featured Trades: (HEDGE FUND RADIO),
(PLATINUM), (PGM), (PTM)
2) Since you?ve been romancing gold, you should check out platinum, her younger, racier, and better looking sister, who wears the thong and the low riders. The white metal has risen by 67% this year compared to the more sedentary 44% appreciation seen in gold. While gold has made a hard fought new all time high, the Pt has to rise a further 50% from here just to match its 2008 high of $2,200, suggesting that some catch up play is in order. I have always been puzzled by the fact that platinum is 30 times more rare than gold, but at $1,500 an ounce, trades at a mere 30% premium to the barbaric metal. You have to refine a staggering 10 tons of ore to come up with a single ounce of platinum. The bulk of the world?s 210 tons in annual production comes from only four large mines, 80% of it in South Africa, and another 10% in the old Soviet Union. All of these mines peaked in the seventies and eighties, and have been on a downward slide since then. That overdependence could lead to sudden and dramatic price spikes if any of these are taken out by unexpected floods, strikes, or political unrest. While no gold is consumed, 50% of platinum production is soaked up by industrial demand, mostly by the auto industry for catalytic converters. Only last week, no lesser authority than Jim Lentz, the CEO of Toyota Motors Sales, USA, told me he expects the American car market to recover from the current 10 million units to 15-16 million units by 2015. That?s a lot of catalytic converters. Jewelry demand for platinum, 95% of which comes from Japan, is also strong, as the global pandemic of gold fever spreads to other precious metals. You can trade Platinum futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange, where a margin requirement of only $6,075 for one contract gets you exposure to 50 ounces of platinum worth $75,000, giving you 12:1 leverage. Email me at madhedgefundtrader@yahoo.com if you want to learn how to do this. For those who like to get physical, the US mint issues Platinum eagles from 1997-2008 in nominal denominations of $100 (one ounce), $50 (?? ounce), $25 (1/4 ounce) and $10 (1/10th ounce) denominations. Stock traders should look at the ETF?s (PGM) and (PTM).
3) I guess it?s a sign of the times when the comedy show, Saturday Night Live, pokes fun at America?s trade deficit with China. In an imaginary press conference, President Hu Jintao told Obama he was not allowed to pay off the US debt to the Middle Kingdom by giving them the 750,000 clunkers he bought with last summer?s stimulus program. He then asked how many jobs his program has actually created, and Obama had to give the sorry answer that it was none. China?s president then asked how the $1 trillion health care plan for 31 million uninsured Americans was going to cut the deficit, while China?s 1.3 billion went without coverage. I won?t tell you what happened next, except that China?s president complained he wasn?t being taken out to dinner and a movie first. Where is the Federal Communications Commission when you need them? Have America?s economic policies become the laughing stock of the world? I never thought I?d see the day when out budget and current account deficits became a target for popular culture, but here we are. Better take another look at the TBT.
4) The Mad Hedge Fund Trader is taking a break to have Turkey with the family. I ate an entire pumpkin pie last night just to give my digestive system notice that some heavy lifting was on its way. The next letter will be published on Tuesday, December 1. I am the oldest of seven of the most fractious and divided siblings on the planet. No doubt by brother will show up in his new Bentley Turbo R, flaunting his outrageous bonus check from Goldman Sachs. My born again Christian sister will be bemoaning Sarah Palin?s drubbing at the polls last year. The gay rights activist sister will be arguing the case for same sex marriage. A third sister does humanitarian work visiting the many American women held in Middle Eastern jails. Don?t even think about pulling out of Iraq! Sister no. 4, who is making a killing in commodities in Australia, and is up to her eyeballs in iron ore, will be missing. My poor youngest sister took it on the nose in the subprime derivatives market, and is holding on for a comeback. She is the only member of the family I was not able to convince to sell her house in 2005 to duck the coming real estate collapse because she thought the nirvana would last forever. My two Arabic speaking nephews in Army Intelligence will again delight in telling me that they can?t talk about their work or they?d have to kill me. Another nephew will be back from his third tour in Iraq with the Marine First Division without a scratch, God willing. My oldest son won?t be able to make it because they don?t have a Thanksgiving break in China, and he is trading shares like a demon anyway. We all be thankful that my yougest son wasn?t arrested in the latest round of rioting at the University of California at Berkeley. Reading the riot act will be my spritely, but hardnosed mother, who at 82 can still prop herself up on a cane well enough to knock down 14 out of 15 skeet with a shotgun, although we have had to move her down from a 12 to a 410 gage because of her advanced age and brittle bones. Suffice to say, that we?ll be talking a lot about the weather. I?ll be rejoining you next week. That i
s, if I survive.
?I think we?re headed towards VAT taxes. It?s only a question of how long it takes for them to wake up and figure it out. You can?t tax the wealthy enough to close the budget deficit we have,? said Leon Cooperman of hedge fund Omega Advisors.
November 24, 2009
Featured Trades: (PCY), (LQD), (TM),
(TM), (BEN BERNANKE)
2) Last September, I suggested emerging market sovereign debt ETF?s as safe, high yielding investments in which to hide out in case the equity markets swoon again (click here for the link). Well, the stock market hasn?t swooned yet, so let?s see how they performed. The Invesco PowerShares Emerging Market Sovereign Debt ETF (PCY), which has 40% of its assets in Latin American bonds and 31% in Asia, rose by a modest 3% before pulling back to unchanged. The two year old fund now boasts $340 million in market cap and pays a handy 6.20% dividend. This beats the daylights out of the one basis point you currently earn for cash, the 3.40% yield on 10 year Treasuries, and still exceeds the 5.38% dividend on the iShares Investment Grade Bond ETN (LQD), which buys predominantly single ?A? US corporates. The big difference here is that PCY has a much rosier future of credit upgrades to look forward to. It turns out that many emerging markets have little or no debt, because until recently, investors thought their credit quality was too poor. No doubt a history of defaults in Brazil and Argentina in the seventies and eighties is at the back of their minds. With US government bond issuance going through the roof, the shoe is now on the other foot. A price appreciation of 125% over the past year tells you this is not exactly an undiscovered concept. Still, it is something to keep on your ?buy on dips? list.
3) I managed to catch up with David Wessel, the Wall Street Journal economics editor, who has just published?? In Fed We Trust: Ben Bernanke?s War on the Great Panic. I doubted David could tell me anything more about the former Princeton professor I didn?t already know. I couldn?t have been more wrong, as David gave me some fascinating insights into the inner soul of our much vaunted chairman of the Federal Reserve.?? Bernanke was the smartest kid in rural Dillon, South Carolina, who, through a series of improbable accidents, ended up at Harvard. He built his career on studying the Great Depression, then the closest thing to paleontology economics had to offer, a field focused so distantly on the past that it was irrelevant. Bernanke took over the Fed when Greenspan was considered a rock star, inhaling his libertarian, free market, Ayn Rand inspired philosophy in great giant gulps. Within a year the landscape was suddenly overrun with T-Rex?s and Brontesauri. He tried to stop the panic 150 different ways, 125 of which were terrible ideas, the remaining 25 saving us from the Great Depression II. This is why unemployment is now only 10.2%, instead of 25%. The Fed governor is naturally a very shy and withdrawing person, and would have been quite happy limiting his political career to the local school board. But to rebuild confidence, he took his campaign to the masses, attending town hall meetings and meeting the public like a campaigning first term congressman. The price of his success has been large, with the Fed balance sheet exploding from $800 million to $2 trillion, solely on his signature. The true cost of the financial crisis won?t be known for a decade. Now that having pulled back from the brink, the biggest risk is that we grow complacent, and let desperately needed reforms of the system slide. How Bernanke unwinds this bubble will define his legacy. Too soon, and we go back into a real depression. Too late, and hyperinflation hits. That?s when we see how smart Bernanke really is.
?The whole US market is pretty much low quality these days,? said Richard Bernstein, of Bernstein Capital Management.
November 20, 2009
Featured Trades: (LUMBER), (TBT), (ZIMBABWEAN DOLLARS), (GOLD), (SILVER)
(HEDGE FUND RADIO)
2) I want to thank the many readers who have been mailing in gold and silver coins in appreciation of my efforts to get them in at the beginning of the year at $800/ ounce for gold and $10/ounce for silver. Gold hit a new high today of $1,155, while silver tickled $18,75. The guys who leveraged up made an absolute killing, and they have numbers like $1,300, $2,300, and $5,000 dancing in their dreams. Hardly a day goes by without the mailman knocking on the door, a heavy but compact package in hand, smiling and winking while I sign. I also want to thank the reader who I got into the TBT in January. He had never heard of the thing, the ETF that bets on falling Treasury bond prices, but managed to ride this bucking bronco from the high thirties to $60 before pulling the ripcord. He sent me $300 trillion Zimbabwean dollars in cash in three crisp new $100 trillion banknotes hot of the printing press. He gave that amount because that is what it now costs to buy a cup of coffee in the hopelessly mismanaged African country. I see the TBT is back down to $45 handle again. Hmmm, looking at Obama?s latest deficit spending plans, I wonder if it is time to take another bite out of the apple?
3) There will be no letter on Monday, as I will be speaking at the San Francisco Hard Assets Investment Conference. No doubt things will be hopping this year. They say they have fascinating metal called ?gold? which magically levitates without the aid of hidden wires and pulley?s. I can?t wait to learn all about it. I?ll be reporting back. MHFT
?The real problem is that the subprime foreclosure crisis is mutating faster than our ability to keep ahead of it. You have not just a second wave, but a third wave coming, as well,? said Howard Glasser of the Glasser Group, a real estate consultant.
?Forget the stock market. I am putting everything into whisky, gold, and ammo,? said a reader of the Diary of the Mad Hedge Fund Trader to me yesterday.
Global Market Comments
November 19, 2009
SPECIAL BOND MARKET ISSUE
Featured Trades: (EUROPE), (JGB), (JNK), (PHB), (HYG)
2) The bond market vigilantes are gathering up for a lynching in Japan. Five year credit default swaps have jumped from 38 to 78 basis points since September, a move similar to the one that took AIG down last year, as institutions scramble to buy insurance before the house burns down. The rating agency Fitch?s is reaching for the Dramamine, threatening to downgrade Japan?s AA-?? rating as it sees the beleaguered country?s national debt soar from the current 180% to 227%, thanks to the new Hatoyama government?s policies. That would inflict a body blow on the bond market, and send the yields on ten year bond soaring from the current 1.42%. The big hedge funds are circling, with Greenlight Capital?s David Einhorn accumulating a major short in Japanese government paper. Remember him? He?s the guy who almost single handedly drove Lehman into bankruptcy a year ago. For more depth on the fundamentals behind this trade please, check out my ?End of Japan? piece? by clicking here. The only way to take advantage of this is to put on a short futures trade in Tokyo or Singapore, which trade from 6:00 pm to 3:00 am Chicago time, or to short the yen. If you want to know how to do this, e-mail me at madhedgefundtrader@yahoo.com, and I?ll get you set up.
3) One of my flock of canaries in the coal mine is the junk bond market, which is a great leading indicator of global risk taking. At the beginning of the year I stampeded readers into junk bond ETF?s like (JNK), (PHB), and (HYG), because the market was discounting a default rate of 18%, while I was expecting only 12% (click here ). These highly leveraged securities always overshoot on the downside when panic grips the herd. Believers reaped substantial returns, with JNK bringing in 65% since then. Now what? If you don?t get a double dip recession that default rate could fall to as low as 4%, as yield hungry institutions pile into the most leveraged companies with long term bonds yielding as high as 9.5% to 28%. That would cause JNK to double again from current levels. If we do plunge back into the Great Recession, as many hedge fund managers believe, then we could give up a chunk of this year?s gains. Let me know which one it is, will you? Even with the worst case scenario, I don?t think we will hit new lows. There was, after all, only one Lehman.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
?The ?new normal? never went away, it just went into hiding, and now it?s back,? said Vince Farrell, CIO of Soleil Securities.
CROSS CULTURAL MIX UP OF THE DAY
When Obama reviewed the troops during this week?s state visit, the Chinese Army Band played ?I Just Called to Say I Love You? by Stevie Wonder.
November 18, 2009
Featured Trades: (CALIFORNIA DEMOCRACY ACT OF 2010),
(VCV), (NCP), (NVX), (LITHIUM),
(SQM), (CVX), (BIOFUEL), (XOM)
2) It?s 1910, and I?m trying to get you to buy a company that refines gasoline, just before the number of cars in the world explodes from 1.3 million to 250 million. That?s what I?m trying to accomplish when I pile investors into Sociedad Quimica Y Minera (SQM), the Chilean company that is the purest play on lithium production (click here for their website). Early believers have booked a 60% gain so far, and there is a lot more to go (click here for my call). The Electrification Coalition, an industry trade group, says that the number of electric cars on the road is about to go ballistic, with a dozen companies planning all-electric model launches in the next two years.?? The first 120 million vehicles will shrink our oil imports by 8 million barrels a day to nearly zero, cutting our bill by $250 billion annually, and no doubt putting a major dent in the price of oil. Fire departments are even training first responders on how to deal with huge lithium batteries in car accidents with ?hazmat? teams. A battery charge is 75% cheaper than filling up a tank with gas, meaning our transportation costs are about to fall dramatically. SQM has to increase its production by a factor of ten, or face a takeover by a much larger company looking to move into the alternative energy space, possibly from an American oil major. Is anyone at Exxon (XOM) or Chevron (CVX) listening?
3) Since we?re on the topic of oil major diversification, let?s take a look at Exxon?s (XOM) biofuel program. As a former research biochemist at UCLA, I have long viewed biofuel as a huge waste of time, because there are not enough hamburger stands in the whole world to generate the needed grease for recycling. Ethanol was never more than expensive pork for corn producing swing states, and it?s no surprise they are going bankrupt, even with large subsidies. That?s ignoring the fact that they were burning food to power our chrome wheeled Cadillac Escalades, driving up prices for the starving masses in emerging markets. But when the progeny of John D. Rockefeller (I knew his grandson David) commits $600 million to move algae from the realm of science fiction to mass production, I have to sit up and pay attention. This is not a company that is interested in tree hugging or saving the world, but in the hardnosed business of finding and selling energy for a profit. There is no law confining them to the oil business, and it is wise for them to find alternatives while they have the bucks to do it. Never underestimate the power of pond scum. Algae have been used for centuries to produce agar and additives for food, cosmetics, and medicines. You?re probably already eating more than you realize. According to Exxon, one acre of algae also has the ability to produce 2,000 gallons of fuel per year, compared to 650 gallons from palm trees, 450 gallons from sugar cane, and 250 gallons from corn. As any marine biologist will tell you, these simple organisms accomplish this by absorbing massive amounts of carbon dioxide and turning it into oxygen, killing two birds with one stone, from an environmentalist?s point of view.? The catch is that no one has ever tried to do this on an industrial scale, and the production problems are certain to be formidable, with enormous inputs of water and nutrients required. You probably wouldn?t want to live next door to where this is happening either. But if we have to hold our nose to beat the next energy crisis, so be it.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
?There is still that great sucking sound of liquidity coming out of the market,? said Meredith Whitney of the Meredith Whitney Advisory Group, an independent research boutique, who is recommending aggressive sales of bank stocks.
November 17, 2009
Featured Trades: (BAC), (GOLD)
2) Gold punched through to a new all time high today of $1,137/ounce. Occasionally I hit the nail on the head so precisely, it's worth a replay. So here is my September 10, 2009 story, which turned out to be the day that it was off to the races for the barbaric relic. For the link, click here . Yes, I know that a broken clock is right twice a day, that if you fire buckshot long enough you will eventually hit a barn, and even a blind man finally pins the tail on the donkey, but look at the chart of the yellow metal's move since then.
'The precious metals markets were stunned with Barrick Gold's (ABX) announcement that it will float a $3 billion public offering to retire its gold hedges in the futures markets. This means that the world's largest producer is cashing in its downside protection and gearing itself for a ballistic move up in the price of the barbaric relic. The timing of the announcement, the day that the yellow metal broke $1,000 for the first time since February, couldn't have been more auspicious. I have been a huge fan of Peter Munk's ABX all year, cajoling readers into the stock at $27 in January before its 56% run (click here for report ) . South Africa's largest gold miner, AngloGold Ashanti's CEO, Mark Cutifani, says his company put its money where its mouth is, taking off its hedges some time ago. 'People are doing what they have been doing for 5,000 years, and that is buying gold as the only hard currency,' opines Cutifani. In the meantime, the Street Tracks gold ETF (GLD) announced that it has $34 billion of gold holdings, making it the largest ETF of all, and the fifth largest owner of gold in the world after four central banks. If you want to buy gold bullion or coins for the tightest spread over spot, check out Millennium Metals by clicking here.'
' The oil era will end in 30 years, as it is replaced by alternatives, offshore, and tar sands,' said Ahmed Zaki Yamani, the former Saudi oil minister, who invited me on his private jet for a trip to the kingdom so I could conduct an exclusive interview during the seventies.
