InterOil: What The InterOil Math Teaches Us
by ilene - September 22nd, 2010 2:12 pm
InterOil: What The InterOil Math Teaches Us
Courtesy of Roddy Boyd, THE FINANCIAL INVESTIGATOR
In the world of finance theory, a credible suggestion that you are being forced to raise cash at exorbitant rates or are internally valuing your assets sharply below where the market appears to value them is traditionally a death sentence for your share price. The reasons for this are straight forward enough: Investors hate desperation but not as much as they hate making an asset play and being wrong on the value of the assets.
Then there is InterOil.
A Cairns, Australia- and Houston, Tx-based oil and gas producer that has been touting in one form or another a potentially epic find in the wilds of Papua New Guinea for more than a decade now, it recently raised cash at exorbitant rates and appears to be internally valuing its assets way below what the market appears to think they are worth.
Yet all is well in the share price department.
The story is none too complicated: InterOil, a company whose shares are seemingly made of titanium, is paying rates for cash that only credit cards aimed at those with bad credit can obtain. Better still, the person pulling InterOil’s eyeballs out is its long-time sponsor and key investor, Clarion Finanz AG and its controversial chief, Carlo Civelli.
[Civelli’s record as a broker, investor and promoter of a series of often troubled energy enterprises drives skeptics somewhere north of berserk. He and InterOil have loudly proclaimed that he is little more than an investor and advisor, although the power dynamics of this picture would seem to indicate otherwise. When having your company feted at the NYSE, it is customary to have the CEO or the company’s founder/guiding spirit ring the bell at the opening. Civelli, in the picture, is the one reaching over to ring the opening bell.]
To call InterOil a battleground stock is to be droll. The dispute over the proper level of its valuation and prospects in every sense of the word is analogous to the sanguinary trench combat of the First World War’s Western Front. Short-sellers, critics and investigative reporters raise more and more questions about management disclosures and candor but the stock continues to enjoy robust support. To follow through on…
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Ponzi “Shark Loans” Fuel China’s Housing Bubble; Home Sales Plunge 44% in Xiamen; Bubble Busts in Tianjin
by ilene - July 21st, 2010 3:09 pm
Ponzi "Shark Loans" Fuel China’s Housing Bubble; Home Sales Plunge 44% in Xiamen; Bubble Busts in Tianjin
Courtesy of Mish
China’s property bubble is now on the verge of collapse. Transaction volumes are significantly down and declining volume is how property bubbles always burst. In simple terms, the pool of greater fools eventually runs out.
In China’s case, the pool of fools is heavily involved in "loan shark" schemes where speculators hope property values rise fast enough to cover the interest.
Ponzi Loan Shark Operations Fuel Bubble
Please consider The Secret Engine Behind China’s Housing Bubble- The Ponzi Shark Loan Finance
In this article we will show how the ponzi shark loan scheme works and why we think the regime in China will fall. Our research is based on sources INSIDE CHINA
This is how this Ponzi scheme works:
Local officials, [required by] the government to produce double digit GDP growth numbers, give real estate developers permits to build housing projects in return for bribes. They also get bribes in return for allowing the shark loan companies to operate under their jurisdiction. Some of them are active partners in shark loan businesses. Every scheme has a ring leader whose job is to collect money from all the participants in the Ponzi scheme. When some of these Ponzi schemes blow up, the party leaders always get bailed out first.
Most of the funds that are collected in this classic Ponzi finance go to local land purchases and real estate development. Part of the funds are used in order to pay back the rolling loan. The short term interest rate in this black market is very high and ranges between 20%-150% annual rate. The sources of the Ponzi funds are diverse, as ordinary citizens, banks with corrupted bank officials, and state enterprises play the game.
A reader wrote to us this email two weeks ago, which triggered our in depth research:
“My hometown is Zhejiang, now I live in shanghai, my sister pledged her home to bank, she lived in Hangzhou, she bought her home around 500,0000rmb five years ago, now her home worth 2 million RMB, so she can get huge loan from bank, she gave this loan to a shark loan company with 30% return every year, she has been doing and living on this for 4 years, she is a middle school
…
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Are the Losses of Fannie and Freddie Now “National Policy”?
by ilene - May 27th, 2010 4:25 pm
Are the Losses of Fannie and Freddie Now "National Policy"?
Courtesy of Trader Mark, Fund My Mutual Fund
Barry Ritholtz and Dean Baker discuss a concept I’ve advanced – effectively Fannie and Freddie (or as we call them around here, FanFredron) are being run for loss to create a false housing economy via subsidization. They do put forth an additional point that I have not harped on as much: one added benefit of this ‘policy’ is our financial oligarchs win…. again.
If we ever do get back to a world where the private sector is truly a part of financing the housing market it is going to be mighty interesting to see what true mortgage rates will settle at, now that ‘strategic default’ is part of the American lexicon. The higher risks involved will create an increase in costs to every future mortgage due to this exciting new fad. But with government now supporting some 95%+ of all financing this is an issue that won’t face us for many years. Thankfully the government does not price in any risk and gleefully backs mortgages of almost any kind (still). Until some far in the future reform date, more below market rates offered by the 2 institutions that can gladly lose money forever – ponzi style.
(Amazing fact I heard the other day, Fannie
6 minute video
The Senate on Tuesday rejected a Republican sponsored measure that would effectively cut off support to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in two years. The government-sponsored enterprises, now in conservatorship, have already cost the
And there’s no limit to how much more they can ask for for the next two years!
Fannie Mae lost $11.5 billion in the first quarter while Freddie Mac lost more…
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First, Let’s Kill the Angels
by ilene - April 17th, 2010 5:28 pm
First, Let’s Kill the Angels
Courtesy of John Mauldin
First, Let’s Kill the Angels
Equal Choice, Equal Access, Equal Opportunity
Some Quick Thoughts on Goldman
La Jolla and Dallas
When you draft a 1,300-page "financial reform" bill, various special interests get language tucked into the bill to help their agendas. However, the unintended consequences can be devastating. And the financial reform bill has more than a few such items. Today, we look briefly at a few innocent paragraphs that could simply kill the job-creation engine of the US. I know that a few Congressmen and even more staffers read my letter, so I hope that someone can fix this.The Wall Street Journal today noted that the bill, while flawed, keeps getting better with each revision. Let’s hope that’s the case here.
Then I’ll comment on the Goldman Sachs indictment. As we all know, there is never just one cockroach. This could be a much bigger story, and understanding some of the details may help you. As an aside, I was writing in late 2006 about the very Collateralized Debt Obligations that are now front and center. There is both more and less to the story than has come out so far. And I’ll speculate about how all this could have happened. Let’s jump right in.
First, Let’s Kill the Angels
I wrote about the Dodd bill and its problems last week. But a new problem has surfaced that has major implications for the US economy and our ability to grow it. For all intents and purposes, the bill will utterly devastate angel investing in the US. And as we will see, that is not hyperbole. For a Congress and administration that purports to be all about jobs, this section of the bill makes less than no sense. It is a job and innovation killer of the first order.
First, let’s look at a very important part of the US economic machine, the angel investing network. An angel investor, or angel (also known as a business angel or informal investor) is an affluent individual who provides capital for a business startup, usually in exchange for convertible debt or ownership equity. A small but increasing number of angel investors organize themselves into angel groups or angel networks to share research and pool their investment capital.
Angels typically invest their own funds, unlike venture capitalists, who manage the…
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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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