mkreisel

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  • Crude Oil Inventories: I Can Tango, Can You?
    Contango will slowly bleed USO to death.

    If crude oil stays flat this year or next, USO will be another trap for retail investors, who rarely venture into the real world of futures trading.
    Jan 08 13:36 pm |Rating: 0 0 |Link to Comment |View article
  • Satyam Scandal: India's Claim to Ponzi Fame
    India's legal system is a lot better than China's.

    Now that one of the major Indian companies is hit with something like that, what can people conclude about Chinese companies, or Russian ones?
    Jan 07 14:46 pm |Rating: +1 -1 |Link to Comment |View article
  • Retail Investor Oil Consensus for 2009
    Oil could very well move within a range this year, and USO will slowly die the Contango death.
    Jan 06 18:01 pm |Rating: 0 0 |Link to Comment |View article
  • Exxon Apostasy: A Closer Look at the Oil Giant's Real Valuation
    My feeling says that this bear market will finally offer long term value investors a chance to buy XOM.
    Jan 06 03:29 am |Rating: +1 -2 |Link to Comment |View article
  • Paulson: The Exit Interview
    If the Fed and the Treasury started doing those things back in March 2008, US Treasury yield, gold, oil would be going through the roof, and US$ would be falling through the basement.
    Jan 05 17:20 pm |Rating: +2 -1 |Link to Comment |View article
  • Firefox Browser Share Tops 20% in November; Microsoft Still Number One
    Microsoft is the IBM of 1988. The day of reckoning will come in a few years.

    Bill Gates knows this, and he's bailing out before his own creation destroys his legacy. That's also why he's selling MSFT like there is no tomorrow.

    When was the last time Microsoft delivered any decent product? One can feed off a monopoly only for so long.
    Jan 04 22:52 pm |Rating: +4 0 |Link to Comment |View article
  • Citigroup's Derivatives Reduce Bailout to a Non-Event
    So far the only idiot in town who failed to hedge its derivatives properly is AIG. Big banks such as BAC, C, JPM, WFC all seem to have equal derivative assets as liabilities.

    Berkshire Hathaway also has about $10 billion worth of credit default swaps as pure liabilities, but Buffett has almost $30 billion in cash, and he got $4 billion premium for selling $10 billion of insurance in the first place.
    Jan 04 22:39 pm |Rating: +2 -4 |Link to Comment |View article
  • Margin Debt Down 37.6%; Is The End of Selling Near?
    The market turns long before the employment does.

    If you were waiting for better job numbers, you would have missed all the great bottoms in 1932/33, 1939, 1957, 1970, 1974, 1982, 1990, 2003.

    I vividly remember how difficult it was to get a job in June 2003, when S&P 500 had already run up from 800 to about 1000.

    I also remember how lousy job numbers undid Bush I in 1992 when S&P had gained 50% and Nasdaq had doubled from their 1990 lows.
    Jan 04 14:53 pm |Rating: +1 -1 |Link to Comment |View article
  • Recessions and Consumer Spending
    Addicts will not give up their habits, especially if stopping these habits will cause more psychological depression during an economic depression.

    The danger facing PM is that emerging economy people will swap premium brand cigarettes for cheaper alternatives. We don't know whether this is happening, but PM's results for the next 2 quarters will certainly tell us the answer.
    Jan 04 14:28 pm |Rating: +2 -1 |Link to Comment |View article
  • What was Buffett Doing in 1974? How About in 2008?
    Buffett's original quote in 1974 was "I feel like an oversexed man in a harem!"

    Let's wait until the first Friday in March and see how much money Berkshire Hathway has committed in equities.
    Jan 04 14:10 pm |Rating: +2 -1 |Link to Comment |View article
  • Expert Commodity Picks for 2009: Jim Rogers and Marc Faber
    Speculating in agriculture commodities is like playing against the god: the weather will either make you or break you. Besides, food production yield can increase lot in many emerging economies if they use more fertilizers and machines. For example, Ukraine's wheat production yield increased 71% last year!

    Thus, I would rather buy oil which is finite and whose well production yield drops with each passing year.
    Jan 04 14:04 pm |Rating: +11 -4 |Link to Comment |View article
  • Don't Miss the Coming Gold Bull
    Against conventional wisdom, I expect dollar and gold both to go up in a deflation. During this bear market, gold seems to perform the best when there is PANIC going around, not when CPI or PPI are going up.

    The gold chart itself is quite bullish, although I'd like to see it holding above the 860 level for several weeks. As for GLD, I don't think you can trust it too much since no independent audit has ever been performed on it. What happens if it turns out to be another scam?
    Jan 04 13:58 pm |Rating: +1 0 |Link to Comment |View article
  • Nine Ways to Profit in 2009
    If you want to short China, don't buy FXP -> it's a scam:

    During 2008, FXI dropped from 60 to 30; FXP dropped from 75 to 35!
    Jan 03 22:30 pm |Rating: +3 0 |Link to Comment |View article
  • Broadband: Why Government Investment Is Justified Now
    It was government's over-stimulation of private consumption that led us to this mess in the first place.

    The dilemma now is that it's also the only institution that can get us into a different direction unless Americans are ready for Great Depression II and perhaps World War III. But should our government succeed in turning things around (which I think it will this time), it will have burdened itself with humongous amount of debt; and if the government does not reduce the debt significantly by the time the next bubble bursts, collapse will be unavoidable.
    Jan 02 20:44 pm |Rating: +6 -2 |Link to Comment |View article
  • Turning Nothing Into Something
    I don't think people should blame everything on Mr Bush. The root of the problem started way back during the Reagan times when this country embarked on a consuming spree. So was Reagan to blame? Actually no, because Americans' savings rate was astronomical during the late 70s and early 80s. Only as late as 1992, Americans had put more into equities than in savings and liquid investments.

    Here are some numbers from Federal Reserve's Flow of Funds (all numbers in billions):
    Year, Total Household Financial Assets, Equities & Mutual Funds, Cash Assets
    1981, 6951, 958, 1737
    1992, 17054, 3893, 3290
    1999, 34554, 12665, 4078
    2007, 49457, 14272, 7352

    You can clearly see that too much money went into equities during the late 90s under Clinton's watch. Then Bush had no better idea than to stimulate consumptions even more to counter the 2001's recession. Once personal consumption exceeds 70% of the GDP, you know that our country has put too little into investment for the future. So what Bush did was simply continuing what made Reagan and Clinton successful, but every good thing has its limit, and stimulating US personal consumption has reached its limit in 2007.
    Jan 02 14:30 pm |Rating: +2 0 |Link to Comment |View article

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