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Action on KCL starting to look better... still watching the tape here.
This take was interesting:
http://siliconinvestor.advfn.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=24553306
Listen up Fellas. We have some important levels here.
In a bull market, the 200 day moving average acts as support and in a bear market, the 200 day ma is resistance. The 200 day was breached in late 2000 and not recaptured until 2003. We're nearly at the 200 day right now.
Goldman near $200, Giggles near $600, SPX near the 200 day. It looks as though SPX can roll over anywhere between now and 1435.
I'm looking for a close above the 200 day at around 1420 and a full capitulation by the shorts. You'll know when you see it. We haven't seen it yet. We've seen lots of tight sphincters but not all out throw in the towel short covering.
We should see that once the SPX pokes above the 200 day just slightly. I'm playing for the Pop and Drop.
That means back up the truck short at 1425 and keep shorting more until 1438 and put a stop in at 1445.
Anything past 1445 likely means we're heading to a new all-time high this summer.
just back from lunch.. yep.. looking much more constructive here..
Watching to see what happens when bump up against those 230 lots on sale @ 2.55.
FEED looks to be coming back strongly.
3 sell order @ 3.24 for a total of 6 lots ??? geesh
As soon as the depth looks good a 10K or so sell appears... the paper should be out I'd expect except for the the next batch expiring near end of May
We are down around where you initially said you'd buy back in :O)
Looked at SEDI reports the other day ... only see warrants selling so far no other big selling it seems
Coxe pushing agri stocks again yesterday on BNN
Everyone else under their desks or out ???
zero here tonight... Toronto. no snow/rain
I agree... That's why I'm in ... That makes two of us now Ed :o)
Got eaten up... quickly ... that's good sign finally...
big order selling @ 3.35.
I should know by now... when the PF hits a new ATH SELL the chit out of it...
KCL recovering here..
still a little thin on the bid though
1/3 of the corn used goes to the feed lots as a by-product, Yes I found that out a ways back. It's not an insignificant amount..
I guess on the feed corn issue the supposition is that it supplant other crops including corn for human consumption..
Trying to see all sides here so I don't get blind sided one day ...
Pro:
http://www.biofuelsdigest.com/blog2/2008/03/27/us-corn-exports-rose-6-percent-in-2007-3-billion-ethanol-subsidy-reduced-crop-support-payments-6-billion-reduced-us-trade-deficit-more-than-20-billion/
« 110 Mgy Red Rock Renewable plant approved in Iowa
India’s Finance Minister condemns ethanol policies of West as “outrageous”; Petroleum Minister announces doubling of Indian ethanol content requirment »
US corn exports rose 6 percent in 2007; $3 billion ethanol subsidy reduced crop support payments $6 billion, reduced US trade deficit more than $20 billion
The Ethanol Promotion and Information Council responded to a recent report that US ethanol production had led to Haitian villagers being forced to eat mud pie.
In its response, EPIC noted that US corn exports in 2007-08 market year were 2.25 billion bushels, 6 percent more than in 2006-07 and the highest since 1990, and that the largest increase in sales went to Mexico, “one of the very nations that we are supposedly starving to death.”
EPIC also noted that US ethanol subsidies, totaling $3 billion, have resulted in a $6 billion reduction in crop price supports and a $15 billion drop in US oil imports. EPIC said that the true reason for rising food prices was rising labor, packaging and fuel costs, and rising wealth and demand from China and India.
The Agriculture Department will release its projection of acres planted later this month, while Chicago grain trader Dan Brophy told the Chicago Tribune, “personally, I don’t think there are enough acres to satisfy the demand in all these commodities”. The US Agriculture Department projected farm-grown exports at $101 billion in the 2008 fiscal year, a 23 percent increase over 2007 that would result in a $24.5 billion agricultural trade surplus. The trade balance has improved $10 billion since November, despite a falling dollar. However, the American Bakers Association warned that wheat reserves fell to a 27 day supply, compared to the historic average of 90 days.
In Washington, John Podesta, CEO of the Center of American Progress, said that fossil fuels account for two-thirds of the cost of producing and transporting grains, and blamed the 129 percent increase in fuel costs for the increase in food prices.
Lester Brown, director of the two-thirds of the Earth Policy Institute, recently wrote that ethanol grain usage has increased 27 million tons between 2006 and 2007. However, the chief scientist at BP said that crop prices have been rising because the emerging world is consuming more food, noting food grains demand increased by 28 million tons, and that ethanol uses only 4 percent of world grain production.
Crop failures in the Ukraine and Australia, as well as yield problems in China, have exacerbated the situation. Professor Garth Taylor, of the University of Idaho, identified Brazilian, Argentine and Australian droughts as well as increased Third World demand for the run-up in prices. He also said that the weak dollar, US drought risk, low interest rates and the unsigned Farm Bill have impacted prices.
In Mexico, as many as 100,000 farmers took to the streets in Mexico City to protest the end of corn tariffs, saying that the United States would put Mexican corn out of business. On January 1, tariffs on sugar, milk, beans and corn were eliminated under the NAFTA agreement. The US sugar industry and Mexican corn industry are considered to face the greatest risk from this round of tariff eliminations. Last year, food riots erupted in Mexico over the rising price of white corn, which is produced primarily by Mexican producers for the domestic market. Last year’s protests in Mexico sparked the “food vs. fuel” debate over ethanol.
Corn futures at the Chicago Board of Trade have increased to $5 per bushel, prompting expectations of another big spring planting of corn. Last year, farmers planted record acreages of corn and produced a record 13.074 billion bushel corn crop. Despite the record production, reserve corn stocks only increased from 1.3 billion to 1.4 billion bushels, owning to strong ethanol producer demand as well as 2.45 billion bushels in export sales.
Providing more background to the reserve stock shortages, the International Food Policy Research Institute recently released a report saying that the world is eating more food than it produces, and that biofuel production runs the risk of creating social unrest. The report projected a 66 percent increase in the price of corn and a 50 percent increase in oilseed prices by 2020, attributed to biofuel production. The report also said that global cereal stocks have fallen to their lowest levels in more than 15 years.
CON: (more at link) http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20070501faessay86305/c-ford-runge-benjamin-senauer/how-biofuels-could-starve-the-poor.html
How Biofuels Could Starve the Poor
C. Ford Runge and Benjamin Senauer
From Foreign Affairs, May/June 2007
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Summary: Thanks to high oil prices and hefty subsidies, corn-based ethanol is now all the rage in the United States. But it takes so much supply to keep ethanol production going that the price of corn -- and those of other food staples -- is shooting up around the world. To stop this trend, and prevent even more people from going hungry, Washington must conserve more and diversify ethanol's production inputs.
C. Ford Runge is Distinguished McKnight University Professor of Applied Economics and Law and Director of the Center for International Food and Agricultural Policy at the University of Minnesota. Benjamin Senauer is Professor of Applied Economics and Co-director of the Food Industry Center at the University of Minnesota.
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Energy, resources, and environment
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Food for Fuel?
By Tom Daschle, C. Ford Runge, and Benjamin Senauer
Foreign Affairs, September/October 2007
THE ETHANOL BUBBLE
In 1974, as the United States was reeling from the oil embargo imposed by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, Congress took the first of many legislative steps to promote ethanol made from corn as an alternative fuel. On April 18, 1977, amid mounting calls for energy independence, President Jimmy Carter donned his cardigan sweater and appeared on television to tell Americans that balancing energy demands with available domestic resources would be an effort the "moral equivalent of war." The gradual phaseout of lead in the 1970s and 1980s provided an additional boost to the fledgling ethanol industry. (Lead, a toxic substance, is a performance enhancer when added to gasoline, and it was partly replaced by ethanol.) A series of tax breaks and subsidies also helped. In spite of these measures, with each passing year the United States became more dependent on imported petroleum, and ethanol remained marginal at best.
Now, thanks to a combination of high oil prices and even more generous government subsidies, corn-based ethanol has become the rage. There were 110 ethanol refineries in operation in the United States at the end of 2006, according to the Renewable Fuels Association. Many were being expanded, and another 73 were under construction. When these projects are completed, by the end of 2008, the United States' ethanol production capacity will reach an estimated 11.4 billion gallons per year. In his latest State of the Union address, President George W. Bush called on the country to produce 35 billion gallons of renewable fuel a year by 2017, nearly five times the level currently mandated.
The push for ethanol and other biofuels has spawned an industry that depends on billions of dollars of taxpayer subsidies, and not only in the United States. In 2005, global ethanol production was 9.66 billion gallons, of which Brazil produced 45.2 percent (from sugar cane) and the United States 44.5 percent (from corn). Global production of biodiesel (most of it in Europe), made from oilseeds, was almost one billion gallons.
The industry's growth has meant that a larger and larger share of corn production is being used to feed the huge mills that produce ethanol. According to some estimates, ethanol plants will burn up to half of U.S. domestic corn supplies within a few years. Ethanol demand will bring 2007 inventories of corn to their lowest levels since 1995 (a drought year), even though 2006 yielded the third-largest corn crop on record. Iowa may soon become a net corn importer.
The enormous volume of corn required by the ethanol industry is sending shock waves through the food system. (The United States accounts for some 40 percent of the world's total corn production and over half of all corn exports.) In March 2007, corn futures rose to over $4.38 a bushel, the highest level in ten years. Wheat and rice prices have also surged to decade highs, because even as those grains are increasingly being used as substitutes for corn, farmers are planting more acres with corn and fewer acres with other crops.
This might sound like nirvana to corn producers, but it is hardly that for consumers, especially in poor developing countries, who will be hit with a double shock if both food prices and oil prices stay high. The World Bank has estimated that in 2001, 2.7 billion people in the world were living on the equivalent of less than $2 a day; to them, even marginal increases in the cost of staple grains could be devastating. Filling the 25-gallon tank of an SUV with pure ethanol requires over 450 pounds of corn -- which contains enough calories to feed one person for a year. By putting pressure on global supplies of edible crops, the surge in ethanol production will translate into higher prices for both processed and staple foods around the world. Biofuels have tied oil and food prices together in ways that could profoundly upset the relationships between food producers, consumers, and nations in the years ahead, with potentially devastating implications for both global poverty and food security.
THE OIL AND BIOFUEL ECONOMY
In the United States and other large economies, the ethanol industry is artificially buoyed by government subsidies, minimum production levels, and tax credits. High oil prices over the past few years have made ethanol naturally competitive, but the U.S. government continues to heavily subsidize corn farmers and ethanol producers. Direct corn subsidies equaled $8.9 billion in 2005. Although these payments will fall in 2006 and 2007 because of high corn prices, they may soon be dwarfed by the panoply of tax credits, grants, and government loans included in energy legislation passed in 2005 and in a pending farm bill designed to support ethanol producers. The federal government already grants ethanol blenders a tax allowance of 51 cents per gallon of ethanol they make, and many states pay out additional subsidies.
Consumption of ethanol in the United States was expected to reach over 6 billion gallons in 2006. (Consumption of biodiesel was expected to be about 250 million gallons.) In 2005, the U.S. government mandated the use of 7.5 billion gallons of biofuels per year by 2012; in early 2007, 37 governors proposed raising that figure to 12 billion gallons by 2010; and last January, President Bush raised it further, to 35 billion gallons by 2017. Six billion gallons of ethanol are needed every year to replace the fuel additive known as MTBE, which is being phased out due to its polluting effects on ground water.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080428/ap_on_re_us/farm_scene_flooded_farmers_2
Mississippi River flood dooms promising year for farmers
By CHRIS TALBOTT, Associated Press WriterMon Apr 28, 8:39 AM ET
Farmers here are experiencing water torture as they wait for the flooded Mississippi River to recede and give them a chance to salvage what's left of what might have been the best season in memory.
The muddy Mississippi is at levels not seen in more than three decades, putting hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland under water. It's impossible to gauge overall agricultural losses at this point, federal and state officials say, but most agree the cost will be expensive and the damage extensive.
At Pig Willie's barbecue joint, a cinderblock and cement floor affair attached to a gas station along Highway 61 as the blacktop begins its long, flat run through the Delta, independent farmers recently gathered for lunch and to share their blues.
"Right here in this room it will cost over $1 million," Karsten Simrall said of the difficulties facing farmers. They are wagering potential profits offered by some of the richest soil in the country against the whims of the mercurial Mississippi.
"It'll take us five years to get out of this. It's going to put people out of business," Simrall said. "There's no telling what's going to happen."
The river has not reached this level — about 7 feet above flood stage — since 1973.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says a total of 855,750 acres are under either Mississippi floodwater or backwater from the Yazoo River, which drains much of the board-flat Mississippi Delta into the Mississippi River. About 273,000 of those flooded acres are cleared for wheat, cotton, soybeans, corn and other crops.
Simrall recently knocked a hole in a levee his family built more than a century ago to protect their land north of Vicksburg. After failing to keep water out, he feared it will keep in receding floodwaters.
The flood hit just as farmers were preparing to harvest wheat and plant corn, soybeans and cotton. Some, like farmer Brad Bradway, were forced to watch as water crept inch by inch over his 110 acres of wheat until his fields sat under 8 feet of water.
Others are now stuck waiting for the water to recede and the ground to dry before they can plant, guaranteeing a shortened growing season, yield reductions and lower returns. This comes after a drought has left much of the region parched for several years.
"At one point I had 300 acres under water and 240 acres too dry to plant," Bradway said. "What's wrong with this picture?"
Weather is just part of the problem.
Input costs such as fuel and fertilizer have risen dramatically in just a few months. Diesel around Vicksburg costs more than $4 a gallon — or more than $100 per tank for the ubiquitous diesel pickup — and fertilizer that went for $68 an acre last season now runs $100.
Simrall planted 1,700 acres of corn that was about a foot tall when floodwaters covered 1,200 of those acres. He's out $120,000 already and doesn't know if the Mississippi River will recede fast enough for him to salvage that acreage.
He's not alone. The flood has taken not only money farmers invested in the field, but much of the profit they expected. Worse, most sold their crops in advance to take advantage of prices so high few could resist.
Bradway sold 1,000 bushels of winter wheat to a distributor for $7 a bushel. When the flood took his crop, he was still on the hook. So he paid $10.50 a bushel to another distributor for wheat to satisfy his contract. He hopes to turn a profit on soybeans this summer.
"I'm trying to design an exit strategy because I'm tired of it," Bradway said.
The farmers believe there's a simple solution to the flooding.
The Environmental Protection Agency is threatening to veto the Yazoo Backwater project that would pump excess water out of the Yazoo River wetlands during floods. Critics say the project will hurt the environment and threaten endangered species.
The veto would break a promise farmers and many area residents believe was made to them when the corps begin to harness the Mississippi with a massive levee system. While the levees keep the river in check, they say much of the benefit is upstream and at their expense.
A corps spokesman says if the Yazoo project were in place, it would have pumped about 4 feet of water off currently flooded land. That would have made quite the difference for Mississippi farmers who work inside the levee system.
Bradway has farmed the same 1,000 acres for three decades. He's had floods big and small in 14 of those 30 years.
This latest, greatest flood cost him $25,000 out of pocket and $45,000 in potential earnings. He wonders if this flood could be the last for Sherman's Defeat Plantation, the site of the Union scourge's only loss during the Civil War.
"I'm trying to keep it from becoming Bradway's Defeat," he said.
You buy some... I'll hide under my desk :O)
I bought 1K @ 3.61 when it looked to be coming back... :o(
don't you mean bit¢h slap :O)
Bit$h sounds like you have a lisp... sinuses acting up ? LOL
rumour has it we won't need anymore potash since it was just revealed that Fort Knox although devoid of gold is full of wheat :O)
Bigpike,
I don't see that in the financials ..
I see this.. but the stock action doesn't agree with me at all.
At January 31, 2008, 7,207,771 share purchase warrants were outstanding. Each warrant entitles the holder to purchase one common share as follows:
Number Exercise Price Expiry Date
4,974,500* $0.60 April 20,2008
158,271 $1.00 May 29, 2008
2,075,000** $3.25 April 2,2009
Total 7,207,771
got a link ?
Yeah I expected last week to be up up up... and away..
I'm in the black
now :O)
those are part of the .60s I posted ? My info is from their financial statements..
At January 31, 2008, 7,207,771 share purchase warrants were outstanding. Each warrant entitles the holder to purchase one common share as follows:
Number Exercise Price Expiry Date
4,974,500* $0.60 April 20,2008
158,271 $1.00 May 29, 2008
2,075,000** $3.25 April 2,2009
Total 7,207,771
I don't mind the drivers (as much) it's the guys sitting on their a$$es all day taking tickets... My eight year old could handle that.. He's got his own bank card and PIN :O)
I dunno, right now my PF is saying 'Houston... we have a problem...' :o(
COW has been rising
not a long term investment though :O)
Yeah I waited until late in the day...oil looks toppy ST... but ready with the stop
in... HOD 10.75
They seem to be pumping the wrong way today... with gusto
Quite a few times I've noticed 1 lots orders coming in that drop the ask..
Citi report on Potash
http://www.citigroupgeo.com/pdf/SEU14674.pdf
Agflation will change the course of history
BY MATEIN KHALID (At Home)
2 April 2008
WHILE consumers, savers and financiers in the Gulf fret about the current inflation surge and rightly attribute it to the dollar peg, offplan madness and the property speculation bubble, the prices of cement and steel, rent spirals, wage spikes, the money supply, 30 per cent bank credit growth and the tooth fairy, I am convinced that the Middle East’s next macroeconomic demon will be a spectacular rise in food prices.
Agflation will define the future of the region to a far greater degree than illusory hopes for a GCC monetary union, Arab League diplomatic platitudes or demographic time bombs everywhere from Iran to the Maghreb. Yet myriad forces define the supply and demand equations of agflation. As in crude oil, iron ore, nickel and steel, Chinese demand has surged for soyabeans, where the Middle Kingdom already accounts for 26 per cent of global consumption. The world’s inventories of grain, corn and edible oil are at historic lows and, just like gold and crude oil in 2003, spectacular bull markets in soft commodities have been ignited. Political chicanery has been the DNA of agflation in modern times. The Iraq war and $100 crude oil forced the Bush White House and the EU to anoint biofuels as the path to energy independence from Arab oil. As US corn, protected by price subsidies and mandation, monopolised arable land, soybean and cotton production will plunge.
Agflation will change international politics, redefine economic models and trigger regime changes across the emerging markets. Far more than crude oil or even bullion, price rises in the supermarket trigger mass consumer inflation psychology. So central bankers at the Fed, the ECB, the Bank of Japan, RBI, PBOC and SAMA will be powerless to prevent food prices from accelerating the embryonic global inflation nightmare. Global warming, the destruction of the rain forest, carbon emissions and black swan (rare high impact events with fat statistical tail) events like Mad cow’s disease, avian flu and Australian droughts will make agflation as compelling a global issue, at Davos or the UN, as climate change.
Inflation in Dubai is as visceral as “stickershock” in Spinneys and Carrefour as in the price surge in white hot developments like the DIFC or Business Bay. Inflation psychology aside, agflation hits the poor like a financial neutron bomb and encourages hoarding behaviour that make price spirals a self fulfilling prophecy. As agflation accelerates, countries with farmland like Russia, Argentina, Ukraine, Australia and Brazil will possess a new currency of geopolitical power. While soybean and corn are as supply elastic in the short run as black gold, making price rises inevitable. Chinese pork prices, half the CPI for a staple diet for more than a billion people, surged and sparked worker riots and wage rise demands even in the high growth coastal provinces. The surge in the price of beef and tofu in Indonesia led to protests and compelled a cabinet minister to warn of potential social unrest similar to 1965, the fabled year of living dangerously when General Suharto overthrew President Sukarno and the Indonesian military massacred 500,000 suspected communists. Australia’s drought, Brazil’s bad harvests, Russia and Ukraine’s export restrictions and soaring global demand has lead to epic rises in the price of wheat. The surging price of kerosene, cooking oil and flour were instrumental in bringing down Pakistani President Musharraf’s PML-Q, the ostensible king’s party now reduced to a pitiful toothless dictator party. Indonesia’s sovereign creditworthiness is at stake because of agflation since Jakarta spends a third of its budget on fuel/and electricity subsidies.
Egypt is most at risk in the Arab world by the nightmare of agflation. Bread has been subsidised by the rulers of Egypt for millennia from Pharonic times down to the government of President Mubarak. Basic food prices have surged on strikes, bringing factories and universities to a halt. After all, “IMF bread riots” preceded the violence and unrest in the early 1990’s that culminated in the assassination of Anwar Sadat at a military parade to commemorate the 1973 October War. Even though the Egyptian government subsidises sugar, rice, oil and bread, food price surges are more of a threat to regime stability than Dr Zawahiri’s Al Qaeda terrorists. Bread queues turn violent, a recurrent theme in Egyptian history from Ramses II to the Mamluk sultans, from the Ottoman pasha rule to Lord Cromer’s British viceroyalty, from King Farouk to Nasser, Sadat to Mubarak.
The price of rice is the most accurate gauge of social stability for almost three billion Asians. Since Egypt, India and Vietnam banned exports to bring down local prices, the global price of rice has skyrocketed. If India restricts Basmati rice exports, a worldwide panic is inevitable. I believe Thai rice will prove a far bigger money maker for investors than Saudi sour crude. As rice prices double, the poor of Southeast Asia will go ballistic, threatening the government of countries like the Philippines, Burma and Vietnam. With water scarce, low investment in agriculture and dependence on imported food is a disaster for the Arab world.
As hedge funds speculate in coffee, the incomes of Brazilian farmers and Coorgi yuppies surge and the price of a Starbucks cappuccino became an inflation indicator in Ibn Batuta Mall. Stock exchange rumours swirl that Nestle and Kraft Food (owners of the Maxwell House brand) have not hedged their wholesale prices for robusta and arabica beans. I grew up in a world where the CRB, the world’s commodities index, correlated perfectly with global economic growth. The correlation, unfortunately, has broken down as the world flirts with recession even as food prices skyrocket. This is the stagflation and supply shock scenario, as in the 1970’s.
Agflation concerns UAE economic policymakers. The UAE economy minister is considering food price reserves to combat inflation. This was also the message of the government’s decision to freeze 18 basic foodstuff prices on 2007 levels. Will the UAE government follow rent caps with price freezes at private supermarkets? Food subsidies could even compensate for the decision by GCC central banks not to revalue their currency or drop the dollar peg, the symbol of the Gulf’s Washington security and diplomatic umbrella. Agflation, I am convinced, will be world history’s next game changer, an ominous sword of Damocles over the poorest citizens of the global village.
Matein Khalid is a Dubai-based investment banker and economic analyst
http://siliconinvestor.advfn.com/readmsgs.aspx?subjectid=51736&msgnum=33636&batchsize=100&batchtype=Next
Right now it needs Proactin LOL
http://www.vitaherbexpress.com/en/protactin.htm