Will We Hold It Wednesday – $100 Oil Edition
by phil - April 30th, 2014 7:35 am
Wheeeeeeee! Down goes oil!
That's $5,000 per contract in your pocket if you followed our lead on Wednesday, the 16th, when my comment right in the morning post (which you can have delivered to you pre-market, every day by clicking here) was:
In yesterday's post, I reminded you we were shorting oil at $104 and we caught a $500 per contract move back to $103.50 but then (also live in the Webcast), we decided to wait for $105ish to re-short today (/CL Futures). This morning, I posted early (6:22) to our Members that we had our shorting opportunity at $104.95 and already (8:06) we're back to $104.65 and that's good for $300 per contract after a hard morning's work – plenty of money for breakfast!
We're still expecting a much bigger drop, probably not until after the weekend though, as Ukraine tensions are keeping oil high. Rather than play the volatile Futures over the weekend, we have SCO and USO plays set up for our Members to take advantage of the potential correction. Today though, we can still have fun with the Futures (stop at $104.75 at the moment) into inventories at 10:30.
As you can see from the Futures chart above, we hit it right on the nose and caught a fantastic drop right away but, of course, we've stuck to our guns on those short positions and, just yesterday, in our Live Weekly Webinar, we discussed the merits of leaving our SCO position on the table to take advantage of a further fall in crude.
If not for the continuing nonsense in the Ukraine, oil would be much lower at the moment as we print record US inventory storage today (10:30 is the official report) without near-record supply and nowhere near record demand.
In fact, if the crooks at the US energy cartel weren't EXPORTING 1.7 MILLION BARRELS PER DAY out of the country to create an artificial shortage, we'd be piling on an additional 12M barrels a week or 618M barrels this year alone. In other words, the criminal organizations (allegedly) that control the energy trading in America are sending the equivalent of the entire Strategic Petroleum Reserve out of the country each year…
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THE PATH TO DEFLATION: JAPAN VS THE USA
by ilene - November 22nd, 2010 11:56 pm
The Pragmatic Capitalist looks at THE PATH TO DEFLATION: JAPAN VS THE USA
Here’s a longer perspective of the chart I’ve often referenced in the past showing how similar our current inflation trend is to Japan’s in the 90′s. As the housing double dip takes hold in the coming months, it’s likely that inflation will remain very low and concerns about deflation will reemerge (via the NY Times):
“The latest figures, released this week, showed that overall inflation in consumer prices was 1.2 percent in the 12 months through October, while the core
inflation rate — excluding food and energy — rose just 0.6 percent. The previous low for that index, of 0.7 percent, came in the 12 months through February 1961, when the economy was in recession.
As the accompanying chart indicates, the core inflation figures are charting a path roughly similar to one shown in
Japan 15 years earlier. That has been true despite a much stronger reaction by the American central bank, which was determined not to make the same mistakes the Japanese made.Deflation is feared for several reasons. If consumers come to expect it, as happened in Japan, there is a strong incentive to delay purchases while waiting for a lower price. That can restrain economic activity and increase unemployment. In addition, deflation places downward pressure on asset prices, worsening the situation of those who are indebted.”
Source: NY Times
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Burning the Food Supply
by ilene - October 30th, 2010 8:20 pm
Burning the Food Supply
Courtesy of Joshua M Brown, The Reformed Broker
Farmer Brown here…if no one else is going to tell this story, then I might as well.
We do some stupid stuff here in America – playing ultimate frisbee on skis, deep-frying Oreos, calling in to vote for televised dance show contestants…I could go on and on.
But of all the stupid things we do, one of the most dangerous is this ethanol nonsense, in which we gleefully burn up our corn supplies. For very little in the way of environmental impact I might add.
First, look at the December 2010 corn contract, then I’ll give you some insane stats on the demands of ethanol:
You wouldn’t believe it, but according to the most recent estimate from the USDA, corn use for ethanol for the 2010-2011 corn crop will be 37 percent of the projected total harvest. More than a third of our corn supply will be refined for energy use. We’re talking about 4.7 billion bushels of the corn that would normally go to animals as fodder and to our own diets.
And while yields and production are up, corn races to ever higher prices. There’s a good reason for that – industry experts say that we now need to produce 13 billion bushels each year just to keep prices restrained.
The stats above are mind-blowing and to me they represent the bull case for agriculture stocks and commodities in general.
They also represent a society that has become oblivious to the danger right in front of its face. I believe that resource competition between the developed and emerging nations is a given for the coming decade. While many believe this competition will center around oil, I’d be more concerned about the global demand for more and better food.
One of the most important determinants of animal protein prices is the corn fodder that supports production. And we’re mixing this critical element of the food supply into our gas tanks.
One might ask "but if it comes down to it, we can adjust in time, right?"
And the retort might be "if we’ve learned anything from the economic earthquakes of the recent past, it’s that we almost never adjust until it’s too late."
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
h/t David D
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Future Chaos: There Is No “Plan B”
by ilene - October 16th, 2010 1:27 am
Future Chaos: There Is No "Plan B"
Courtesy of Chris Martenson
Note: This article builds on my recent report, Prediction: Things Will Unravel Faster Than You Think. It explores the coming energy crunch in more detail by looking at existing government planning and awareness, and the implications of what international recognition of Peak Oil as early as 2012 might mean.
The hard news is that there is no "Plan B." The future is likely to be more chaotic than you probably think. This was the primary conclusion that I came to after attending the most recent Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas (ASPO) in Washington, DC in October, 2010.
The impact of Peak Oil on markets, lifestyles, and even national solvency deserves our very highest attention – but, it turns out, some important players seem to be paying no attention at all.
ASPO conferences tend to start early, end late, and be packed with more data and information than should be consumed in one sitting. Despite all this, I was riveted to my seat. This year’s usual constellation of excellent region-by-region analyses confirmed what past participants already knew: Peak Conventional Oil arrived a few years ago, and new fields, enhanced recovery techniques, and unconventional oil plays are barely going to keep up with demand over the next few years.
But there were two reports that really stood out for me. The first was given by Rear Admiral Lawrence Rice, who presented the findings of the 2010 Joint Operating Environment (a forward-looking document examining the trends, contexts, and implications for future joint force commanders in the US military), which spends 76 pages summarizing the key trends and threats of the world. "Energy" occupies six of those pages, and Peak Oil dominates the discussion. Among the conclusions (on page 29), we find this hidden gem, which uses numbers and timing that are eerily similar to those that I put forth in my April 2009 report, Oil – The Coming Supply Crunch:
By 2012, surplus oil production capacity could entirely disappear, and as early as 2015, the shortfall in output could reach nearly 10 MBD.
While there are two "coulds" in that statement, the mere possibility that such an imminent arrival and massive shortfall could be true should give every prudent adult a few second thoughts about what the future may hold. If surplus production capacity disappears…
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The Overlapping Crises of Neoliberal Global Capitalism
by ilene - September 10th, 2010 9:04 pm
The Overlapping Crises of Neoliberal Global Capitalism
Courtesy of Charles Hugh Smith, Of Two Minds
Conventional wisdom holds that today's global financial crises are political rather than systemic to Neoliberal Global State Capitalism.
It is tempting to place the blame for the U.S. economy's deep woes at the feet of our corrupt, captured political system of governance and those who captured it via concentrated wealth and power. But that would avoid looking at the crises unfolding in global capitalism itself.
From the "progressive" ideology, the "problem" is inequality of income and wealth, and the "solution" is to take more of the wealth and income away from "the rich" (i.e. those who make more than I do) and redistribute to the "have-less" citizenry.
From the "conservative" ideology, the "problem" is that the Central State, in cahoots with public unions and Corporate Overlords, grabs an ever-larger share of the national income to redistribute to reward its cronies and favorites. In so doing, it mis-allocates the nation's capital away from productive investments and strangles free enterprise, the only real engine of wealth.
There is of course a grain of truth in each point of view. As I describe in Survival+, there is a positive feedback in the process of concentrating wealth and thus political power: the more wealth one acquires, themore political influence one can purchase, which then enables the accumulation of even more wealth as the State/Elite partnership showers benefits and monoplies on those who fund elections, i.e. the wealthy.
This process eventually leads to over-reach, when the nation's capital and income are so concentrated that the economy become precariously imbalanced and thus vulernerable to devolution and collapse. Returns on favoritism and capital become marginal, and it take more complexity and capital to wring ever-smaller profits and power from ever-greater investments.
It is also true that the State and the Power Elites mask their massive redistribution to the wealthy and powerful behind politically popular redistributions to the lower-income and/or unproductive citizenry, garnering their loyalty and complicity.
It is also true that as the State and its private-sector Elites channel an ever-larger percentage of the national income to the Central State and its fiefdoms, both public and private, then the productive…
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China 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,…
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In The Headlights
by ilene - September 7th, 2010 5:21 pm
In The Headlights
Courtesy of James Howard Kunstler
The toils of summer are bygone now. The days grow shorter and America stands in the darkling road of its own prospects like a dumb animal frozen in the blinding light of approaching fury. The White House must be a strange place these days with the management of the USA turned over to astrologasters, alchemists, prayer-wheel spinners, fakirs, viziers, necromancers and other visitors from occult realms unaffiliated with the dominion of reality.
One of these characters, Ms. Christina Romer, at a luncheon celebrating her departure as chief of the White House Council of Economic Advisors (i.e. readers of spilled goat innards) even blurted out that she had no idea what’s been going on in banking and business and how come America can’t be more like it was in 1999. Don’t cry for Christina. A cushy chair awaits her at the Hogwarts Berkeley outpost where she can repose in a trance of unknowing until California slides into its own tar pit of default and disintegration.
It’s all a mystery in Washington. Nobody can figure out what happened to their green-eyed champion called Growth, that savior who rights all wrongs and insures our eternal exception from the sad fates of other less-blessed empires. Isn’t there a book of conjures somewhere in the Harvard Business School that guarantee perpetual growth — even if there are different tomes around the campus that describe the essential tragic nature of life, viz., that there is a beginning, a middle, and an end to everything. And while this might not be the end of the human project in North America, it is certainly the end of the cheap oil abbondanza, and everything spun off of it in the way of mass consumer luxury, with air-conditioning and a cherry on top.
My own view — I might be wrong-- is that we are going through an epochal compressive contraction, which is the opposite of growth. Money is disappearing because debts are being welshed on in such a volume that all the digital dollars conjured out of chief wizard Ben Bernanke’s magic booty box are but empty spells cast into a hurricane of broken promises. This is no Hurricane Earl – which stared into the discharge tube of Lloyd Blankfein’s cappuccino machine and skidded off whimpering into the fogs of Newfoundland. This…
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Skidding Toward Fall
by ilene - August 2nd, 2010 11:22 pm
Skidding Toward Fall
Courtesy of James Howard Kunstler
This economy has a destination for sure, but it’s not in the direction where all eyes are trained in moist hopefulness: that glimmering horizon of longed-for growth. You will not get that kind of growth — the kind that increases the overall wealth of the organism in question. A few people will make more money than they did before, but overall we are in an epic contraction. More people and organizations will go broke than will thrive. It will seem very unfair.
The true destination of the US economy is to get smaller and for two reasons mainly: 1.) Capital ("money") is vanishing out of our system steadily and rapidly due to a massive collective failure to repay money owed on loans, mortgages, debts, and assorted obligations. 2.) Access to the primary resource we depend on for powering the economy (oil) is increasingly beyond our control — even worse, under the control of people who would like us to eat sh*t and die.
We really have a choice between two ways of dealing with this. We can downsize and re-scale consciously and coherently, or we can continue to chase after the phantom of growth and allow the nation to fall into a shambles of desperation. So far into this long emergency of an economic fiasco, we seem to have chosen the pursuit of a phantom. That’s what President Obama was doing last week in Detroit, shilling for a new electric automobile which, he said, will make us "energy independent." If Mr. Obama believes this, then it isn’t a very good advertisement for an Ivy League education.
I’d like to know how many Americans believe that electric cars run on virtually free energy (but I don’t have pollsters on my payroll). I’d bet a lot of them do, including President Obama. Sorry to rain on this uplifting parade. At best, such a car fleet would run on coal — that is coal-fired electric power plants — but even that is a ridiculous fantasy when you actually pencil-out the details. Not to mention that a nation full of people with dwindling or vanishing incomes won’t be in a position to fork over forty-grand for one of those new pseudo "green" vehicles. Also not to mention — wait for it — that due to rapidly…
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Technicals vs. Fundamentals: Which are Best When Trading Crude Oil and Natural Gas?
by ilene - July 23rd, 2010 7:50 pm
Technicals vs. Fundamentals: Which are Best When Trading Crude Oil and Natural Gas?
By Elliott Wave International
If "fundamentals" drive trend changes in financial markets, then shouldn’t the same factors have consistent effects on prices?
For example: Positive economic data should ignite a rally, while negative news should initiate decline. In the real world, though, this is hardly the case. On a regular basis, markets go up on bad news, down on good news, and both directions on the same news — almost as if saying "talk to the hand cuz the chart ain’t listening."
Unable to deny this fly in the fundamental ointment, the mainstream experts often attempt to reconcile the inconsistencies with phrases like "shrugged off," "defied" or "in spite of."
That begs the next question: How do you know when a market is going to cooperate with fundamental logic and when it won’t? ANSWER: You don’t.
Take, for instance, the first three news items below regarding the July 22 performance in crude oil, versus the fourth headline, which occurred on July 23:
- Crude prices surge nearly 4% in their sharpest one-day percentage gain since May. The rally was "aided by fears that Tropical Storm Bonnie will enter the Gulf of Mexico over the weekend and disrupt oil production." (Wall Street Journal)
- "Oil Prices Soar As Gulf Storm Threat Looms" (Associated Press)
- "The storm should keep oil prices bubbling if it continues to strengthen and remain on track." (Bloomberg)
vs.
- "Oil Slips From Surge Despite Storm Threats" (Commodity Online)
Unlike fundamental analysis, technical analysis methods don’t rely on the news to explain or predict market moves. They look at the markets’ internals instead.
*****
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Suburbs: the Dispersal Defense Against Nuclear Attack
by ilene - July 11th, 2010 1:52 pm
Suburbs: the Dispersal Defense Against Nuclear Attack
Courtesy of Charles Hugh Smith Of Two Minds
The roots of suburbia extend deeper into Cold War policy than most of us know.
The built environment (roads, railways, structures and towns/cities) is integral to any understanding of energy, resiliency, fragility, society and the economy. Any discussion of energy consumption must include the fact that roughly half the energy consumed in the U.S. is used to heat and cool buildings. No discussion of transport or economic strength is integrated without an understanding of rail and seaports, and their vast efficiencies.
To mention one example out of hundreds: the construction and marketing of distant suburbs (exurbs) as the ultimate extension of the suburban lifestyle has strained the American family to the breaking point via crushingly long commutes; wage-earners have no time to spend with their children because their waking, productive hours are spent getting to work, working and then crawling home exhausted.
Thus the built environment has a direct causal effect on divorce rates, teenage alienation and the "bowling alone" isolation and ennui that characterizes so much of American life.
A long-forgotten, underappreciated aspect of encouraging widely dispersed suburbs was rooted in Cold War defense against nuclear attack.Planner/correspondent Tom Christoffel alerted me to this fascinating connection between military/defense policy and the effective abandonment of cities in favor of suburbs in the poast-World War II era. Here are Tom’s comments:
RE: The Future of Cities (June 17, 2010):
I think you’d find interesting: The Reduction of Urban Vulnerability: Revisiting 1950s American Suburbanization as Civil Defence by Kathleen A Tobin, Purdue University, Cold War History, Vol.2, No.2, January,2002.
This is an unrecognized if not forgotten history of the roots of sprawl in the U.S. as a defensive measure. The outcome of the defense was similar to that of the attack it was meant to survive – a cratering of the cities.
Although incorporation of the automobile into city design began early in the century, it has been since the 1950’s that American housing, retail and employment sites – the business campus, have been designed for the automobile. Distances are unwalkable and very often there are no sidewalks to connect buildings.
There are very few cities where owning an automobile is optional. Jurisdictions are cities in name and legal structure only. New urbanism is simply an attempt to accommodate the car.
There are
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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 site