As the week comes to a close, there’s a lot on which to reflect. Violence in Libya continues, with NATO forces in the air and the CIA on the ground. The Japanese earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown disaster is now stretching into its 3rd week, with the Fukushima 50 working tirelessly to contain radiation seeping […]
Category: Off Topic
01
Apr
2011
29
Mar
2011
Silver Run Deja Vu
Interesting chart comparing the Silver run from March 25th, 2010 to March 25th 2011 (+119%) to the dot.com bubble era Nasdaq run of +117% between March 10th, 1999 to March 10th 2000 via Reformed Broker by way of Market Anthropology. [Source: Market Anthropology]
28
Mar
2011
Best Sign Yet We’re Entering Bubble Territory for Commodities…
I guess we shouldn’t be surprised… but it looks like we now we have financial engineering making its way into the commodities space. We came across EverBank’s MarketSafe Diversified Commodities CD today, which combines the promise of upside for commodities with the principal protection common with a bank CD (Certificate of Deposit). A CD which can’t […]
25
Mar
2011
Weekend Reads
This week was certainly not short on crazy. Portugal is running into the arms of the EU, Canada just passed a vote of no confidence, oil keeps on surging and the Middle East is going up in flames. Only time will tell what the future holds. For now, take a break from staring at numbers […]
23
Mar
2011
And the Winner is…. Silver
In a tight race with Crude Oil…. Silver is the winner in the “which commodity will go back to new 2011 highs first following the Japan earthquake sell off” contest. Will other commodities follow? After the Egypt/Libya/Japan led stock and commodity sell off since mid February, most markets remain -4% to -15% below their 2011 […]
21
Mar
2011
$4 Billion more into the pot…
Seems ‘Joe Public’ continues to plow money into long only commodity ETFs and Funds (see Reuters article here) despite the well publicized problems with several of them (USO and UNG specifically). We’ll take the opportunity to update our charts comparing the Crude Oil, Natural Gas, and now Corn cash and futures markets versus their ETF […]
18
Mar
2011
Weekend Reads
It’s been a week of uncertainty, with massive drops in the Nikkei followed by small gains and a whole lot of speculation over what the future holds. As we type this post, government officials in Japan are reporting that the nuclear reactors are melting down. Since we don’t have a crystal ball to consult for […]
18
Mar
2011
Managed Futures Second Fiddle as Billionaires
DealBreaker.com recently parsed the Forbes Billionaires list to find which of those on it are in alternative investments, finding an impressive 65 out of 1200 names are (PS – is it a little bit crazy that there are 1200 billionaires in the world?!). With managed futures now the strategy with the highest assets under management among […]
16
Mar
2011
Is natural gas the new flight to quality investment?
We have been noticing Natural Gas rising on big ‘risk off’ days, and saw the same thing yesterday. With everything down except flight to quality plays Yen, Swiss franc, US Bonds, and the USD, is the once highly volatile and only for the wild west cowboys of the trading world Natural Gas market the new […]
14
Mar
2011
Japan Quake Setting Off Market Aftershocks
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock all weekend, you all know the news out of Japan. While initial reports indicated that the nuclear facilities in range had been secured in time to prevent any major damage, subsequent explosions on site have caused near panic as news of radioactive leaks have spread. No one knows […]
