This thread is for information and discussion about the markets, prices and outlooks for oil and gas.
Latest IEA Outlook - here are the links
powerpoint presentation for the press
Special Offer: Invest like Buffett, Slater and Greenblatt. Click here for details »
Some discussion of the IEA material in posts 34 et seq below.
Disclaimer:
The author may hold shares in this company. All opinions are his own. You should check any statements that appear factual and seek independent professional advice before making any investment decision.
- « Previous
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
You can track all @StockoChat
comments via Twitter
78 Posts on this Thread show/hide all
Sorry ee, I re-read my post and it does come across as a bit aggressive. Thanks for your thoughts.
In reply to arkleseizure, post #58
No. I think that hedgefunds and other interested parties are attempting to fan the flames of (well-justified) concern in order to make a stack of money by breaking up established systems. There is little difference in moral terms between the destructive activities of a very small number of well-funded investors and the destructive activities of the mob on the streets.......alll the hedge funds would like to replicate Soros's returns when he forced the pound out of its ERM tracking! Its rather like nicking tellies from High Street shops in that their actions impoverish the rest of us.
ee
Morning EE
"There is little difference in moral terms between the destructive activities of a very small number of well-funded investors and the destructive activities of the mob on the streets......."
Have you read "A week in December" by Sebastian Faulks? I thought the amoral hedge fund manager it portrayed was a rather over-blown caricature, but if you are right it might have been an accurate depiction.
T
A contrarian view might be that we should be grateful to Soros for helping keep us out of todays Euro mess, and that he was trading off the inevitable outcome of politicians trying to buck reality (as traders are doing today). Equally the rioters were created by the welfare state, minimum wage and immigration laws that make the creation of an unemployable underclass inevitable. Again a political construct that is starting to crack. Sorry again for being gratuitously off topic.
I actually think that the hedge funds are quite often the good guys - because they expose the truth in a tyranny of lies, mark to make believe (mark to model), moral hazard and Enron accounting. They keep corrupt corporations and banks "honest", and when the corporatocracy has reached the corrupt levels that it has today, they are the last line of defence in this regard.
No doubt they take things to extremes from time to time in order to make a buck, but I would rather they are there than not, and at the end of the day their presence in the market creates opportunities for others (remember Porsche/VW?)
Tom.
PS - Just watch JPM over the next few months ;)
Hmmmm.... came on here looking for some discussion on oil prices :0(
In reply to marben100, post #64
Apologies.. I have a habit of going off into the long grass.
Perhaps we need a "pub" thread where anything goes?
In reply to macroeconomix, post #65
You can always start one. ;0)
Done! New pub thread here: http://www.stockopedia.co.uk/content/the-stockopedia-tavern-another-pint-please-59051/
In reply to tournesol, post #61
No I haven't. But the classical hedge fund fee structure gives the hedgie 20% of any upside over a hurdle rate of return - so you can absolutely guarantee that morals don't interfere with the pursuit of all dimensions of greed.
Re macroeconomix point about the usefulness of hedgies' functions, I completely agree that they can often be useful - but NOT when they push the market into an enormously destructive systemic frenzy (as I suspect that they have in recent weeks).
Anyway - returning to topic - oil prices seem nicely settled, with Minas trading in the $110-112 range ;-)
ee
I had a jolly good laugh today, listening to the business section on Radio Five Live Drive.
Drive's "business correspondent" Steph McGovern had clearly decided that the big story of the day was "the fall in oil prices following the news from Libya".......you can listen again to it here - it starts about 48 minutes in with Steph going into breathless excitement about how Libya production was going to recover from 50,000 bopd to the 1.6mn bopd it previously produced......and she batted straight into Neil Atkinson from Datamonitor, demanding to know "just how much the price of oil had fallen today and how significant it is".
Atkinson replied "about $1 per barrel - not very significant in the great scheme of things". You can tell from the tone of her voice that this wasn't the answer she wanted to hear......and it didn't get much better, as she tried to find a Plan B for the interview. She ended by asking Atkinson: "Do you think we're going to see any more fall in the price of oil then?" .....to which Atkinson replied "I don't think the price of oil is likely to fall again significantly in the near future" (big stress on the word "fall"! ;-)) Cue for a seriously disappointed-sounding Steph to wrap up her "big story" :-)
I'm guessing they won't be troubling Atkinson for an interview next time that Steph has decided what the big business news of the day is going to be....... :-)
ee
In reply to emptyend, post #69
The surprise for me is that you bother listening to this kind of drivel at all!
This should probably belong in the "pub" but ... The BBC have pretty much a monopoly on radio broadcasts, and 5 live is perhaps the least ugly girl in the room IMO.
One wonders at times why one pays one's license fee.
As for Steph McGovern, she is pretty cringe-worthy regarding the lack of financial/economic/business nous (but so are pretty much all of them). At least they *sometimes* get some fairly interesting interviewees! (such as the one ee mentioned above) but they normally quickly disappear, never to come back, when they fail to match the BBC's "world view".
I'm longing for the day when all car radios are linked to the interweb, where radio programming can be judged by the free market, and ex-monopoly programmes fail to draw the listeners. Though I suspect 5 live would still thrive for the sport more than for anything else!
I found a very interesting thread on Al Jazeera's Blog this evening, about Russia's and China's massive investments in Libya, and their prospects of recovering their money, following their refusal to support us and the Libyan people against that brutal tyrant, in the UN and elsewhere.
http://blogs.aljazeera.net/liveblog/Libya
I will post full details on my ideas and news thread.
MD
In reply to macroeconomix, post #71
Having just caught the BBC's Breakfast "business reporter" claiming this morning that oil prices were falling whilst she stood in front of a graphic showing that Brent had risen to over $109, I have complained to the BBC. It is bad enough to suppose that maverick air-head "reporters" are inventing their own stories - but it is beginning to look as if the BBC News Editors are trying to spread propaganda that "oil prices are falling due to the developments in Libya", when they plainly aren't (anytime soon, anyway)..
As Nigel intimates - there are better things to do, so I'll now be getting on with them.....
ee
In reply to emptyend, post #73
The problem with the BBC is the staff appear to have a socialist agenda.
In reply to kinkell, post #74
It does increasingly look that way. Peston's latest "revelation" about Andy Coulson receiving contractual severance payments over the period of his previous NoW contract is another case in point. Peston's by-line at the BBC is "Business Editor" - but in fact he seems to be a roving maverick willing to give prime time publicity to any story that people give him, without much thought as to their motivation (or whether it is actually "business" - or in fact more like "politics"!)
Anyway....got some real work to do - but it makes one mad!
ee
Just for the record (and apologies for the off-topic), complaining to the BBC is a waste of time.
Like many public organisations they have an "official" complaints process which is little more than a marketing exercise and appears to exist merely to provide a coat of whitewash.
I share the view that the BBC is leaning towards being a propaganda machine for a certain set of "accepted" political viewpoints - but I'm not sure what the answer is.
I suspect it needs to start with complaints directed to either one's MP (there is an easy online process for this at http://www.theyworkforyou.com/) or to Chris Patten himself.
ftf
PS - don't have an agenda here, but I share the frustration with the BBC's apparent reporting bias
The problem with the BBC is the staff appear to have a socialist agenda.
Whether this is true or not, and personally I think it's drivel, it has absolutely nothing to do with the example under discussion. EE's example doesn't in any way show a political bias amongst the Beeb's reporters, it just reflects the general low standard of journalism across the board and the endless concentration on a good soundbite story at the expense of worrying about trivia such as facts. That has nothing to do with the political viewpoint of the reporters or their editors - sadly it's a general issue for the media whatever the political viewpoint.
Peter
It looks as if the first serious Atlantic hurricane of 2011 may be starting to form....which would be Hurricane Maria.
Currently only very early stages of formation and not even classed as a depression - but the starting point SW of Cape Verde Islands quite often spawns hurricanes/storms that track into the GoM (eg Hurricane Ivan in September 2004, which took two weeks to reach the Gulf coast after forming a tropical depression off Cape Verde). You can follow the forecast track of "Maria" from this site.....though the very early forecasts today are extremely vague and not worth looking at.
ee