02 Mar
There’s 2 forces at work in the US. On one hand you’ve got the US government bailing out companies left and right and at the same time the financial institutions aren’t willing to lend money. So which force is going to win? Will the printing press eventually overwhelm the credit destruction or is credit being […]
Posted in Ben Bernanke, interest rates by: arnie
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15 Jul
There have been a lot of things happening in the markets recently but it all goes to support the stagflation is here argument. It seems every inflation indicator shows that inflation is getting worse (i.e. higher) regardless of which country is reporting. At the same time, most countries are also reporting weak growth. Today was […]
Posted in Earnings, Investor implications, Oil, interest rates, options by: arnie
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01 Jul
I’ve done a number of trades (see below) in the last few days, as a result of all the trades, my exposure to the oil patch is only the call options on Nexen Inc, as I sold heavily overweighted positions in Petro-Canada positions as well as my Nexen stock positions for gains.
If you’ve been following […]
Posted in Investor implications, Oil, Stock portfolio change, natural gas, options by: arnie
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02 Jun
Economics:
The US ISM (a manufacturing index) in May showed some slight improvement, but still showed the sector was contracting with a reading of 49.6 up from 48.6…any reading less than 50 indicates contraction. Not surprising, the employment sector had another weak reading of 45.5 and the prices paid component hit an 87% which is […]
Posted in Economics, Inflation, Investor implications, Portfolio by: arnie
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04 May
Should North American investors be investing based on an economic environment that is recessionary or inflationary?
As mentioned previously, the US economy seems to be in a bull market as bad news (such as housing or employment stats) results in rising stock markets. If the market responds to bad news by pushing up the stock […]
Posted in Agriculture, Ben Bernanke, Commodities, Economics, Energy, Fertilizer, Housing, Inflation, Inflationary Policy, Manufacturing, Oil, Portfolio, Stagflation, interest rates, natural gas by: arnie
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14 Apr
Recap:
The TSX was up 55 and the Dow Jones was down 23 after another big bank (Wachovia) reported a quarterly loss and cut its dividend. It’ll be interesting to see how many more write-offs are coming and how many banks report lower earnings or even losses. I expect there will be many more.
Economics:
Retail sales in […]
Posted in Inflationary Policy, Portfolio by: arnie
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