Gold and Silver Manias Updated
A couple of weeks ago I had two posts (here and here) outlining the mania in precious metals. Then starting early Monday of this week silver started to blow up, see the chart below. As I mentioned in the second post, I got some push back from some comm...
Cinco de Mayo!
Yesterday I stumbled across two unrelated posts that each offered important thinking points.The first was from Niels Jensen via Credit Writedowns. Jensen had been very bullish on crude oil for many years starting in 2004 but now expects a meaningful dr...
Silver Price Collapse in Asian Trade
Silver dropped 12% in just a matter of minutes in early Monday trading in Asia. Right now it is down 9.3%. We'll see if this turns out to be real or not but the decline shows on the chart as a vertical drop.
An Entire Assortment
Barry Ritholtz posted a video that was all about being wrong which was useful to watch. As I view a big part of portfolio management as being about mitigating the consequences of the times I will be wrong it served as a confirmation of some of what I b...
Success Requires Flexibility
Yesterday I stumbled across a series of articles that I think all tie into the need for flexibility in portfolio construction and cycle navigation along with the need to understand that all aspects of this business evolve. Sometimes evolution is slow b...
Exploring Bubbles
Later this morning I am due to be interviewed by the WSJ about "scarcity" as an investment theme which I think means water and ag-related equities. As an amusing coincidence Robert Shiller is calling out farmland as the next bubble. Pragmatic Capitali...
Inflated expectations and spare capacity concerns
As Nicolas Sarkozy has noticed, worries about global inflation have picked up in the first weeks of 2011.And according to two notes out on Monday this is not just down to rising commodity prices;...
Sunday Morning Coffee
A bit of a catchall post.First up is a reiteration about why domestic banks are still best to be avoided. We heard earlier this week about another round of stress tests for 19 banks. On top of that is the issue of put backs which Barron's goes into in ...
Another Commodity Under Pressure – Rubber
Rubber production in...
All Things In Moderation, Even Commodities
This might whip a couple of people up but yesterday I was reminded of point I have made quite a few times in the past and thought it would be worthwhile to revisit again. Yesterday I read an interview with someone generally thought of as an ETF expert ...
The Big Picture for the Week of July 25, 2010
Businessweek posted a lengthy article called Amber Waves of Pain which is about the extent to which investors are not getting what they expected from commodity based ETFs. Obviously the US Oil Fund (USO) and US Natural Gas (UNG) have gotten the most at...
Correlation of Commodities?
Jonathan Bernstein has a post up exploring whether commodities still offer a low correlation to US equities. There is room for debate here, there was some level of disappointment in the concept from the market panic of 2008 when correlations appeared t...
