The Long Road to Recovery
by ilene - September 19th, 2010 1:26 pm
The Long Road to Recovery
By David Galland, Managing Editor, The Casey Report
Last week the government released the latest unemployment data. Bloomberg, always ready to roll up the sleeves to help its friends in government (get reelected), was running a headline that “Companies in U.S. Added 67,000 Jobs in August.”
While I haven’t had time to go through the minutiae of the report, I find myself scratching my head at Mr. Market’s rather positive reaction to the report, given the bullet points:
- Manufacturing payrolls declined by 27,000.
- Employment at service-providers fell by 54,000.
- Retailers cut 4,900 workers.
- State and local governments gave walking papers to 10,000 people.
- The federal government cut 111,000 jobs (mostly temporary census workers).
- The number of “underemployed” – people who want full-time work, but have given up and are now working part-time, increased again, from 16.5% to 16.7%.
The fine folks at Chart of the Day just published their take on the numbers. You may see something cheerful in this snapshot, but if so, it eludes me…
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Interestingly, a week ago ADP, a company that does real-time payroll processing for about one in every six U.S. workers, and whose data – because it is based on hard data and not surveying – has tended to be accurate, released its report for August employment. Based on ADP’s data, they had forecasted that the construction industry had actually cut 33,000 jobs in August.
Their data pointed to an overall decline in the work force of 105,000 jobs, worse than the government’s numbers that showed overall unemployment rose by 54,000 – moving the unemployment rate from 9.5% back up to 9.6%.
At all times, but especially ahead of an election as important as November’s, you can count me skeptical in the extreme when it comes to government data. Especially when it flies in the face of the clear trends in motion. Even with the government’s stimulus funds still coursing through the economy, in the second quarter U.S. gross domestic product fell by more than half, to an annualized rate of just 1.6%. Without the government’s supercharged spending, it’s been calculated that actual GDP would have been halved again.
So, where are all these new private-sector jobs coming from?
The construction industry was reported to have hired 19,000 people – a good number of whom, I suspect, are working on government-subsidized projects. At least in this neighborhood –…
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DiggChina and India: Still Hungry for Coal
by ilene - September 10th, 2010 7:29 pm
China and India: Still Hungry for Coal
By Marin Katusa, Chief Energy Strategist, Casey Research
One can only hope that the “Don’t shoot the messenger” adage is still popular in the international community.
UK-based consultants M&C Energy Group have become the latest to join the chorus of voices asking the international community to increase the pressure on China and India to switch to cleaner energy sources.
As far as energy analyst David Hunter is concerned, it is the Western businesses that are carrying the financial burden of reducing carbon emissions. China and India, on the other hand, are benefitting from much cheaper energy, and their companies don’t have to bear the costs of reversing the effects of global warming.
Mr Hunter, however, should steel himself for disappointing news. Industry experts are expecting anything but a cut in coal demand for the foreseeable future.
By their analysis, global coal demand – already at a record high – will remain strong even as the recession cuts down on oil and gas use. And the numbers are certainly matching up to these expectations.
India’s coal demand is expected to reach 653 million tonnes this fiscal year, with only 572 million tonnes expected to be produced in the country. The China National Coal Association expects demand to grow by 4-6% in 2010 and the coal consumption to expand to roughly 3.4 billion tonnes.
And with power-starved economies to feed and millions of people to lift out of poverty, neither country is going to take kindly to any interference with its energy agenda.
There are two different types of coal – in fact two different types of demand – when it comes to the coal market. Though they can’t be considered to be totally separate, the criticism levied against these two Asian tigers becomes somewhat blunted when we take this angle.
The first is for thermal coal, the cheapest and most popular way for emerging economies to produce electricity. Almost 75% of China’s electricity comes from coal-fired plants, but this picture is rapidly changing.
Irritated by the “world’s biggest energy consumer” sticker, Beijing is investing heavily – US$736 billion – into clean energy investment plans. The aim: increase the non-fossil fuel supply component to 15% of the total primary energy demand by 2020. So really, Mr Hunter’s desire for a less coal-intensive China might just come true. As for India,…
Florida – Much Worse Problems Than the Oil Spill
by ilene - August 13th, 2010 10:11 pm
Florida – Much Worse Problems Than the Oil Spill
By Doug Hornig, Senior Editor, Casey Research
Media coverage of the oil spill’s effect on the Gulf focusing on tourist income lost by the waterfront towns – with footage of empty beaches, restaurants and T-shirt shops – dominates the news. Interviews with devastated business owners are heart rending. But they always end with references to somehow hanging on until “things get back to normal.”
Trouble is, things are not going to “normalize.” Not for the Panhandle of Florida, and probably not for the rest of the state, either.
Projections suggest that Florida can expect oil all along its west coast, and possibly throughout the Keys and up the east coast as well. Yet even before BP’s well began spewing crude, pressures within the state’s economy were building. It was an explosive situation awaiting a match.
Oily beaches and dying wildlife are likely that match.
Take unemployment. Statewide, it ballooned from 3% in 2006 to a peak of 12.3% in February 2010. Though it’s backed off, it remains in double-digit territory at 11.2%. ”Officially” – though official numbers understate the problem. Illegal immigrants, some 4.5% of Florida’s population, aren’t counted; the long-term unemployed and aging workers are regularly purged, even if they’re still looking for work.
This in a state already confronted with the worst of the coming healthcare/taxation crunch. It has the second oldest population in the nation, and as its citizens retire, their earnings fall off, causing tax revenues to drop. At the same time, healthcare bills rise, stressing social service budgets.
Florida is ground zero for Baby Boomer demographics. With 600 seniors for every 1,000 workers now, and the number trending inexorably higher, soon every employed person in the state will essentially have to adopt one senior to care for out of his or her paycheck.
Housing? Naturally, rising unemployment amplifies the difficulties of maintaining homeownership. With further negative effects from the oil, we can only expect the situation to worsen. A tsunami of defaults and foreclosures – and bank failures – would not be a surprise.
Florida is mortgaged to the hilt. It ranks second only to California in total securitized non-agency mortgage loans, 10% of the national total. Of those, half are 60 days or more…
The Nuclear Option
by ilene - May 18th, 2010 4:40 pm
The Nuclear Option
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By Marin Katusa, Chief Investment Strategist, Casey’s Energy Opportunities
Earlier this year, the Obama administration announced large new federal loan guarantees for the nuclear energy industry – totaling about $54 billion, or more than triple the current level of funding. Philosophically, we abhor government subsidies to any industry, but we also recognize that they’re a fact of life these days, with an inordinate influence on markets. So even though we’d prefer the government didn’t pick industry winners and losers, we must be mindful of what Washington is doing if we expect to reap profits as investors.
In this instance, the ramping up of government support means boom times are coming for the nuclear energy industry, which is about to awaken from a three-decade long sleep. And if you correctly position your energy investment portfolio, you can benefit from a comeback that’s baked in the cake.
Power is all about the numbers. Consider the illustration below, which shows how current electricity generation technologies stack up when it comes to producing energy (cost is in dollars per megawatt hour). Solar and wind generators are not cheap and don’t work when it’s dark or calm. They’re competitive only with heavy government subsidies and even then, will never contribute much juice to the grid.
Source: EIA. Adapted from http://www.investingdaily.com/tes/17201/sell-wind-and-solar-energy-stocks.html
Hydro, biomass, and geothermal fare much better, easily competing with more traditional technologies, and there are good investment opportunities among them that we’re following. But again, in the larger picture they’re minor players.
In terms of bang for the buck, it still comes down to coal, gas and nuclear, and Washington realizes we’re going to need all three to meet our future energy needs, especially as electric vehicles begin to replace those that run on gasoline.
The Obama administration is all for going as “green” as possible, but realizes that wind and solar are not going to cut it. Thus, after thirty years in the doghouse, the nuclear option has regained the respectability in America that it enjoys among nations such as China, where ten new plants per year are proposed (our last new construction project broke ground in 1977).
Despite lingering doubts among those who remember Three Mile Island, uranium has been dusted off and presented to the public as a safe, environmentally friendly, cost-effective source of power. And the new generation of plants is all of those…
What If Doug Casey Is Right?
by ilene - May 17th, 2010 7:57 pm
What If Doug Casey Is Right?
By Jeff Clark Editor Casey’s Gold & Resource Report
Gold is once again above $1,200 and making new highs. And yet, Doug Casey thinks we’re just getting started, estimating gold could touch $5,000 before this is all over. A titillating thought, to be sure, but… how likely is that?
Gold’s latest rise stems from mounting fear that the Greek bailout will be followed by other euro-area countries queued for a me-too handout. In other words, gold is serving its historical role as a safe haven, a store of value, and an alternate form of money when governments recklessly plunge themselves heavily into debt and abuse their currency.
“But Jeff, $5,000 gold is a long way up,” the skeptics observe. “If you step back and look at the big picture, isn’t the gold price bubbly here?”
One way to test Doug’s thinking is to look at other simmering trouble spots that would similarly impact gold should they boil over. So, let us indeed review the big-screen events I believe could send gold a lot higher. See if you agree.
ONE: The PIIGS are not done squealing.
Greece’s Gordian Knot of public debt has not been solved. In fact, Moody’s is considering downgrading Greece’s debt to junk status, stating that the announced €750 billion aid package will be “inadequate to stabilize the problems…
Sell Now, Buy Later – the ABCs of Short Selling
by ilene - April 15th, 2010 1:47 pm
Sell Now, Buy Later – the ABCs of Short Selling
By Jake Weber, Editor, The Casey Report
The catch phrases “Buy low, sell high” and “The market fluctuates” are probably the two most frequently used clichés of the investment world. The latter statement is hardly astute, and the former far easier said than done. What both of these simplistic ideas overlook is a third concept largely ignored by the investing public, “Sell now, buy later.”
The idea of selling something that you don’t yet own is a foreign concept to many. However, in a powerful bear market, it’s an important strategy to understand and utilize, though for reasons I’ll discuss below, only as a relatively small and closely watched speculative portion of your portfolio. The concept I’m referring to, of course, is short selling.
The basic mechanics of selling short a stock are not complicated, but, as with any investment, there are risks involved, and it requires discipline to execute these trades successfully.
What Is Short Selling?
If, after carefully scrutinizing a security, you conclude that there is nowhere for the stock to go but down and want to put your money where your brain is, there are a couple of different alternatives. One way to go is the options route, selling calls or buying puts on the stock. This is certainly a viable route with plenty of opportunity to profit; however, with options, not only do you have to be right about the direction, you also have to be correct about the timing and strike price.
The other alternative is to open up a margin account and sell the stock short. That requires posting a margin – cash or securities – in your account. With that condition met, your broker will undertake to borrow the stock from someone that owns it. Once your broker has acquired it, either from another client or another brokerage firm, he or she will sell the stock and deposit the proceeds into your account. What you own now is a liability to purchase back, or “cover,” those same shares at some point in the future, hopefully at a lower price. Because there’s a loan involved with this transaction, you’ll be charged an interest rate on the amount borrowed, likely in the area of about 4.5% annualized these days.
With a short sale, your maximum gain is capped at 100%,…
Why Are Silver Sales Soaring?
by ilene - April 9th, 2010 11:59 am
The best way to play a bubblemania is to get in at the beginning of course. So is silver headed towards a bubble? The folks at Casey Research seem to think so. – Ilene
Why Are Silver Sales Soaring?
Jeff Clark, Senior Editor, Casey’s Gold & Resource Report
The U.S. Mint just reported another record, but this time it wasn’t for gold. The Mint sold more Silver Eagles in March and in the first quarter of the year than ever before. A total of 9,023,500 American Silver Eagles were purchased in Q110, the highest amount since the coin debuted in 1986.
While this is certainly bullish, there’s something potentially more potent developing in the background. Namely, how this matches up with U.S. silver production. Like gold, the U.S. Mint only manufactures Eagles from domestic production. And U.S. mine production for silver is about 40 million ounces. In other words, we just reached the point where virtually all U.S. silver production is going toward the manufacturing of Silver Eagles.
Yikes.
This is especially explosive when you consider that roughly 40% of all silver is used for industrial applications, 30% for jewelry, 20% for photography and other uses, and only 5% or so for coins and medals.
To be sure, mine production is not the only source of silver. In 2009, approximately 52.9 million ounces were recovered from various sources of scrap. Further, the U.S. imported a net of about 112.5 million ounces last year. (Dependence on foreign oil? How about dependence on foreign silver!) So it’s not like there’s a worry there won’t be enough silver to produce the Eagle you want next month.
Still, why so much buying? The silver price ended the quarter up 15.5% from its February 4 low – but it was basically flat for the quarter, up a measly 1.9%. We tend to see buyers clamoring for product when the price takes off, so the jump in demand wasn’t due to screaming headlines about soaring prices.
I have a theory.
For some time, silver has been known as the “poor man’s gold.” Meaning, silver demand tends to increase when gold gets too “expensive.” The gold price has stubbornly stayed above $1,000 for over six months now and spent much of that time above $1,100. You’d be lucky to pay less than $1,200 right now for a one-ounce coin (after premiums), an amount most workers can’t pluck out of their back pocket. But Joe Sixpack just might grab a “twelve-pack” of silver.
What would perhaps lend evidence to my theory is if gold sales were down in the face of these higher silver sales.
The U.S. Mint reported a decline in gold bullion sales of 20.8% this past quarter vs. the same quarter in 2009. Further, other world mints have seen sharp declines…
In the Shadow of the Castle
by ilene - March 18th, 2010 4:24 pm
In the Shadow of the Castle
Courtesy of David Galland, Managing Director, Casey Research
These days it takes very little to set me off on yet another rant against the American political class – a proxy for governments the world over.
On occasion, I’m tempted to apologize for these rants. Not so much for the message, but for the frequency.
Unfortunately, when surveying the landscape on which our hovels rest, the king’s castle looms large in the foreground.
I am not an envious person by nature and so wouldn’t begrudge the king his fine trappings, provided they were honestly earned.
But therein lies Ye Olde Rub.
Ever more frequently these days, the drawbridge comes down and a troop of the king’s finest sallies forth to extort from me more than half of my crops, and to read new royal proclamations whose net result is to add to the daily burden of trying to provide sustenance for family and jobs for workers.
Should I protest, say, by grabbing a pitchfork and telling the soldiers to clear off my land, or refuse to fill their wagons with the best of my crops – each leaf of which represents time and investment on my part – they would grab me by the shoulders, drag me to the king’s dungeon, and confiscate my property.
In fact, all that has changed since the days of yore is that the king’s knights tend to no longer rape, as well as pillage.
To be fair, the annals of history contain rare instances of kind and intelligent monarchs, the sort who understand that overburdening the peasants ultimately reduces crop production, leading to unnecessary and unproductive hardship and, in time, even revolt. Though, by temperament, I resist authority of any description, I suppose I could live comfortably under the rule of a fair and benign monarch.
The problem with that notion, of course, is that the corruptive nature of power leads to the near certainty that Baldash the Not So Bad will be followed by Norbit the Nasty.
And all of a sudden, instead of politely requesting I kick in some reasonable percentage of my crops to help maintain a constabulary, courts, and maybe the highways, Norbit’s men are kicking in my doors and we’re back to ox carts full of my produce being confiscated to provide a new set…
The Big Dead-Cat Bounce
by ilene - March 14th, 2010 11:00 am
The Big Dead-Cat Bounce
Courtesy of Doug Hornig, at Casey Research
It’s now been a year since the dark days of early March 2009, when, although no one knew it at the time, the stock market hit rock bottom. From there, all of the indexes went on a tear through the rest of the year, moving almost uninterruptedly higher before easing slightly in the first two months of 2010. At this writing (March 5), the Dow is still up 60%, the S&P 500 68%, and the NASDAQ 83%.
Virtually no one was calling for this kind of rally a year ago. But it happened. So investors are either seeing the “green shoots” supposedly sprouting from the moribund economy or believe that they’re about to break ground any day now. That sentiment is continually reinforced by government officials and media talking heads who almost universally proclaim that “the worst is past,” “we’re back from the brink,” or other words to that effect.
It’s often said that stock market action is a leading indicator, reflecting what investors think the economy will be like six or nine months down the road.
Are they right? Will good times soon be here again? Or is this just a big dead-cat bounce?
Jobs: Now here, we’ve clearly turned the corner. Everyone says so. For evidence, all we need do is look at the declining rate of job loss in the country. Uh-huh.
Perhaps it’s rude of us to point this out, but a declining rate of job loss is still a job loss. It is not the same as job creation.
The hard reality behind February’s “encouraging” numbers is that 14.9 million people remained out of work. 8.4 million jobs now have been lost since the start of the recession. In addition, there is a net need for 100,000 new jobs a month, just to keep up with first-time entrants to the workforce.
Even if the economy were suddenly to start churning out new jobs at the robust rate of a half-million a month – and the chances of that range from zero to none – it would still take nearly two years to return just to pre-recession employment levels.
(Near-term employment figures may blip up, as the government hires one and a half million people – who knew we needed so many? – to help take the census. That could lead…
What’s More Important: Price Per Ounce or Ounces Owned?
by ilene - March 5th, 2010 2:04 pm
What’s More Important: Price Per Ounce or Ounces Owned?
By Jeff Clark, Casey’s Gold & Resource Report
In a recent conversation with a fellow gold analyst, he was emphatic that the price one pays for physical gold should be ignored. “What’s far more important,” he insisted, “is how many ounces I own in relation to the total value of my assets.”
Building a core position in gold bullion is a smart goal, to be sure, and a strategy Casey Research has been advising for years. However, ignoring the price you pay for gold could be seen as foolhardy; sure, it’s insurance, but isn’t price part of the consideration when you shop for insurance?
So, who’s right?
The World Gold Council just released their 2009 annual report on gold trends. From the densely populated pages of interesting data, there’s one compelling tidbit I gleaned that may shed some light on the buying behavior of gold investors.
Overall investment in gold was 7% higher in 2009 than 2008. This is significant when you consider that demand in the fourth quarter of 2008 – during one of the worst financial meltdowns in history – was so great that shortages of physical metal abounded everywhere. And yet investors bought more gold in 2009 when investor fear about global financial uncertainty was subdued.
Further, 2009 total funds invested in all forms of gold exceeded 2008 by 20%, and the average price was 11.6% higher. In other words, investors were buying gold even though the price wasn’t necessarily “low.” To be sure, that’s a broad statement. But the fact remains that year-on-year, more gold was purchased at higher prices when the markets were less scary, than when the price was lower and Hank Paulson was on CNBC every 15 minutes pontificating on how to save America’s financial system.
This isn’t to suggest one shouldn’t pay attention to price. And the data doesn’t identify how many of those who purchased gold last year were first-time buyers, as certainly there were newcomers to the sector that contributed to higher demand. But it begs the question, who would continue to buy gold when the price is higher?
Whoever doesn’t own enough, that’s who. The gold I bought last month was certainly higher priced than what I paid in 2008. But I’m trying to position my assets for protection from eventual dollar debasement and…
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the Favorites backup site
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