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Tried shorting more GM at open today, no shares avaialble.
Had to make do with some fanny and freddie instead.
GM was shortable on wed.
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/oilsands-quest-announces-independent-resource/story.aspx?guid=%7B998294FC%2DC258%2D42C8%2D9B1A%2DE81E5F1F8B5D%7D&dist=TQP_Mod_pressN
Raven Ridge bigger than Axe Lake
"CALGARY, June 26, 2008 /PRNewswire-FirstCall via COMTEX/ -- Oilsands Quest Inc.
BQI 6.10, +0.03, +0.5%) announces its independent resource estimates for its Axe Lake Discovery and its Raven Ridge Discovery. Raven Ridge has been reclassified to a Discovery from an "area of interest". Oilsands Quest announces the initialization of engineering plans for the first 30,000 barrels per day commercial project planned to develop a portion of the Axe Lake Discovery and provides an update on its reservoir test program."
re GM signs of bottoming.
Apart from healthcare obligations, GM is $60B+ in debt.
Its bonds are junk status so its debt is costing it well over 10%. In all it is facing roughly $10B/yr just paying interest on its debt.
In the good times when ppl were buying GM vehicles and gas prices were lower, GM wasn't making $10B/yr.
So how is it ever going to pay its debt, whatever rosy picture can be painted with the most optimistic of assumptions?
Yes the auto companies are facing tough times due to external factors. But GM management has allowed itself, while times were good, to get twelve figures in debt. That's a disgrace. The excuse of high oil prices will be used to save face in my opinion, and they now have an opportunity to go bankrupt using econmic/oil woes as an excuse to mask the real reason being executive ineptitude. I think this one bottoms at $0 per share.
I'm long BQI - a considerable amount of my assets are in this. But I don't understand why the shorts are anti american? Surely they're short cos they believe the stock is going down and want to make money? It helps those of us who want to buy in at alower price, makes the stock more affordable, and then will help propel the stock upward as they cover - if we are right about BQI.
Cramer certainly not an asset as far as I am concerned. But the Cramer BQI pump came on friday right. Whereas BQI has gone to daily volume of around 6 million for the previous 6 days. (from daily volume of around 3 million).
Would 18 million shares usually get traded in advance of a cramer pump. Surely his staffers know he's crap so they wouldnt buy would they?
another up day for BQI, another down day for GM. Both trends look set to continue.
I am looking for oil to make new highs next week. I see oil as a hedge. If it goes up, I make money. If it crashes the world will be a better place and ultimately we'll all be better off.
Thanks but no need to tell him, I'm sure he already knows it. Just wanted to make sure the readers of this board knew it too. Wonder what his agenda is to publish that...
That article is bull. A euro note is a euro note whereever it is printed. I am from the UK but live in Spain, have family in Greece and spend much of my time driving between the UK and Greece or Spain. A euro is a euro. I have various different notes in my pocket and there is nothing on the face to say which country they come from.
The coins however, which have a max denomination of 2 Euro, identify the country in which they were minted.
With so much press on the "oil bubble", the chinese ending /reducing fuel subsidies, European and US govts talking about manipulation and legislation to limit traders fomr pushing oil price up BUT the price still being within a whisker of all time high, I can't help but think oil is poised to surge again thru next couple of weeks.
ZION offering one of the highest CD rates going. Even higher than GMAC & Countrywide.
I check the highest paying CDs looking for banks to short, as those having trouble with capitalisation are those most desperate and offering the highest rate. Last week's victim was indymac.
BQI still on a roll. Up another 7.5% today.
If it breaks the 52 week high 57 cents away then we may have some fireworks.
Has anybody read the Matt Badiali report from Stansberry & Associates? Is it worth subscribing? I discovered BQI from Badiali's research but never actually saw the report.
Sorry if this has been discussed already, have only looked at this board for first time today.
"What's going on? Increasing world oil reserves, and relatively weak growth in world oil demand, and oil prices have now doubled in the last year? Is this an oil bubble?"
No its not a bubble. Reserves are no good when your tank is empty cos those reserves are in the ground. Some of those reserves are awaiting the technology to be exploited, others are awaiting the limited personnel/equipment/refinery capacity. All these things take time to ramp up meanwhile energy users are demanding more and more.
BQI breaking out, have been trading this a couple of months but now looking good for hold to 1000%+ gains ? My other trader GM is broken other way, and looks like a short to bankrupcy now.
Anyone know how much a property like this: $33,900 in Texas, would rent for?
http://secure.aireo.com/propertylistings/88_listing_Texas_Single-Family-Residence_Best-Deal-In-Town....
In the UK where I have made most of my purchases, in late 90's it used to be possible to buy a place for 25k that would rent for 300/mth. Now the same properties are 75k and rent for 330/mth so don't make sense for the investor because mortgages aren't covered by rents, and there is a risk of prices dropping when interest rates rise. We don't have access to very long term fixed rates. Usually fixed rates are 2 to 5 yrs.
It is possible to find properties in certain parts of Northern England and Scotland where annual yields approach 10% but this is getting difficult because it is so easy for the UK investor to get a "buy to let" mortgage with 90% loan to value ratio. Some vendors will then gift you the 10% for the deposit. The acceptance criteria is usually a non-landlord income of £20k+ and the rent must be 125% of the interest on the mortgage. Such easy lending criteria combined with low rates have sent property thru the roof in the last 5 years.
Annual yields of 15%+ make it possible to buy a lot of properties very quickly and I believe yields in excess of this are available in the USA. I need to learn about sourcing finance, property taxes, landlord legal obligations, how the buying process works. Most importantly, in my view, is to pick the right properties in the right areas - where prices are low, rents are good. Capital appreciation will follow naturally as investors hunt out and fight over the last few remaining high yield real estate investments worldwide.
I have been looking in Texas at some cheap properties and trying to get a feel for rents:
http://secure.aireo.com/propertylistings/index.php?category=1&subcategory=1&province=0&c...
http://www.rentalhouses.com/view_listing.php?id=70649
Looks like some good yields might be available there.
Thanks, lisitng info is extremely useful to me so I can compare propositions.
Properties that are ready to rent out are preferred but if there's a hefty discount then fixer uppers could be worth looking at. Same with foreclosures - if it's a way of obtaining property below market price then I'm all for it. I like gearing so don't want to get into any purchases that I can't get finance for.
Looking for high yield, long term. Ease of obtaining finance is another important factor.
Please post any properties/areas with good investment yields.
Anything returning 12% or more can be considered.
I don't know much about the US property market. Have been investing in residential property in Europe since mid 90's but yields above 10% are very hard to find now. Is US property a better option?
Can someone advise where in the USA the best rental yields are for the investment landlord? Maybe this isn't the best board to ask this question - in which case any suggestions of where to ask will be gratefully received. Thanks.
I rent out property in Europe but am struggling to find yields of 10%. I have been told 20+% is achievable in the US but am being asked for hefty finders fees to get the locations.
Current headline on cbs.marketwatch.com:
"More losses ahead"
Quite a bold statement!
It is the act of falling over on your face (ie the opposite of "tits up")
You can buy an old (2 -3 yrs) compaq proliant with two or four P3 processors on ebay for next to nothing. The high speed of the disk system and the design of the motherboards make these systems faster than many new desktop machines and much more reliable. With the RAID disks and redundant power supplies the can withstand the two most common causes of system failure.
They are a bit noisy due to the powerful fans but for business server use they are excellent value.
Re: "the apparent overstaking of oil reserves" according to friends in the oil exploration biz the reserves as stated by shell were not exaggerated, but just did not conform to recently changed accounting rules that dictated the exact definition of confirmed reserves. I am told that the actual reserves are much higher than stated and that the oil companies and environmentalists have a vested interest in making oil seem to be in shorter supply than it actually is.
There are also interesting questions to be asked about whether this stuff is really made from old dinosaurs fish and plants as some would have is believe. It is now thought that wherever you drill in the world you will find oil, but in some places it is deeper than current technology allows us to get at. Many of those fields that were though to be depleted and abandoned decades ago, are now found to have been replenished. Maybe this is plate techtonics shifting the old dinosaur juice around from place to place within the Earth, but it still amazes me that lighter than water crude is found 4 kilometres below the seabed.
The rise in Asian oil usage is certainly going to be a important factor in the next decades, even if oil isn't as scarce as we have been led to believe. From a pollution aspect it could be devastating. China seems to have a policy of not drilling in quantity at any time in the near future, perhaps hoping that the rest of the world will run out and it will hold all the cards.
Shell could be a good buy right now, having gone out of favour because of the "overstated" reserves "scandal". They have rights to huge reserves in Nigeria that they are not allowed to officially class as confirmed due to accounting rules, and that is reserves they have actually measured with much of the swamps and offshore territory they have rights to remaining unexplored. If you think crude is due for a correction and the oil shares as a class could come down, then maybe long shell and short BP.
I think the anti US arab world has just jumped on an "excuse" and the US should accept that prisoners weren't treated right and the situation will be remedied, but not make a big deal out of it. The Iraqis have seen tens of thousands of people brutally tortured in that prison but to get stripped naked and led round on a dog lead by a twenty-something year old woman in military uniform is normal weekend stuff for many of the world's politicians and a privilege for which they might have to pay a couple of hundred of dollars - or so I've been told.
By all means don't let it happen again, but to have a big enquiry or have high level people resign is just pandering to the crocodile tears of people looking for something to have a scandal about.
"The most extreme in all major religions are convinced those who do not share their views will burn"
I don't think it's the most extreme, I think that's pretty much what a majority of believers of the major religions subscribe to.
Its time for humanity to get on with concentrating on this life instead of believing a load of old man-made bull about the next life.
If God wanted us to accept Jesus or pray five times a day or eat meat that's been prepared in a special way or chop parts of our genitals off then wouldn't such an all powerful being be able to tell us this directly, just like we know how to breathe and make our hearts beat, rather than use the occasional prophet who we are asked to trust without proof?
Those earning $1 MM will be more mobile and will to some extent spend their money in the country with the lowest sales tax. So, even if you think it would be fairer to make the tax more progressive, countries doing so will price themselves out of the market and end up making the sales tax more practically regressive, whilst hurting domestic production at the same time.
Hundreds of thousands of people each year make the crossing from England to France on a "booze cruise", to load their cars up with cheap alcohol and cigarettes, which are taxed much lower in France. There is a similar phenomenon with Swedes travelling to Denmark to shop for alcohol, while Danes travel to Sweden for other items. A smaller number shop around between different EU countries to buy cars.
For higher priced items like yachts, the use of "flags of convenience" has been around for centuries.
This is why there are "tax havens" which come under the protection of a country, and are home to that country's citizens, but have a lower rate. The govt would like to tax those citizens at a high rate, but knows they will lose the citizens and get zero if they attempt to do so.
What you say about the value of your service might be true. I remember reading plenty of posts from you that were interesting/useful.
But if you have an interesting/useful service, I think the polite thing to do is to spend effort/money promoting it like every other business owner does.
I don't think it is polite to ride for free on the success of someone else's board to advertise your business, because in doing so you dilute the quality of the board.
One retained subscriber for you pays the cost of a lifetime iHub membership. There are thousands of people offering professional investment advice and services that would be relevant to board members, and might be useful/interesting. I would hate to see even a small percentage of them signing up to iHub, homing in on Zeev's popular board, and using it as an advertising platform.
Don't get me wrong. I'm on my high horse but I know you do contribute and I don't regard your post as a major bad thing. I just thought I would reply to a post that suggested FR was "sour" for not taking you up on your kind offer, as there are alternative interpretations of your reasons for posting it.
Anyway, enough said from me before i dilute the quality of this board anymore.
Zeev has made this board great by giving excellent trading insights. And in doing so he has attracted a number of other worthwhile contributors.
OJ's contributions are often good but he hasn't built the board like Zeev did. OJ runs a business that sells a trading room service. He plugged that service in the post on a board with at least a thousand followers, along with inviting board members for a free temporary trial to a paid service. It didn't look like an act of charity to me. If he wanted to selflessly help an individual, then a PM would have been appropriate.
I own a business, as do many other board members. It offers inducements to obtain new clients. These inducements could be considered acts of charity as they are free. But I don't plug them on Zeev's (or anyone's) board. That would be spam. Imagine this board if every member who had a business gave it a plug.
support? that was an unsolicited commercial plug.
Seems the public debt is forcing the fed to keep low rates.
Govt constantly needs to sell new debt to pay its current ones. It gets a better deal with lower rates.
But that is not helping the economy to rid itself of excess capacity. It is keeping the large companies going with easy credit, making it harder for new innovative companies and technologies to emerge.
I agree with Zeev that a soft landing is preferable to ridding all the excesses at once, but I suspect that current plan is too soft.
Unviable business plans should suffer a darwinian weeding out process, not be allowed to survive by selling junk debt and junk stock because the investment landscape is manipulated to favour such investments. And unviable public deficit policies should not be influencing interest rates either.
I'm guessing AA would buy crude futures to hedge against price rises. If so, then not much impact this quarter but it would affect guidance for the future (if they are honest).
but how to unlock the paper wealth?
perhaps they can pass a law granting options to the IRS that the companies wouldn't have to expense <g>
The door is, and has been, open for anyone to produce a rival. There are plenty of large corporations with the cash to make an offering and several have tried. So far, the alternatives with the exception of Linux have been crap IMO, and the market has rejected them. If Asian govts produce an alternative it will be a product designed by a committee and will not win. But it will probably dent MS profits considerably just by being an inferior alternative.
Shows how really really stupid the DOJ was to incite so much hatred against a company that has done so much for USA.
By the way, I am not American and I am short MSFT. Other countries are laughing at the US for shooting itself in the foot over the MS anti competitive action, and now the EU is set to get some free money from a similar procedure at America's expense. If I were Bill Gates I would put one finger up and set up in Canada or some other country. Maybe the fact that he didn't do that shows him to be a man that stands behind his country even when it has stabbed him in the back. Good for him!
Less money circulating in general would mean prices dropping, however there is an argument that the invisible hand of the free market is not being allowed to work because interest rates are low. In other words, unviable businesses selling unviable products are allowed to survive and carry on making things people don't want while the cost of basics like fuel and food and raw materials go up because these are not produced by trendy west coast businesses using VC and shareholder paper money. So u get inflation in those products simultaneous with a drop in price of the useless stuff like cisco routers <g>
Hi justa, I haven't kept tabs on how close schaeffer update this, but this morning it was a probolem they had updated, but had put the wrong figures in (since corrected)
I used to subscribe to the II survey meaning I got the data in the early hours of wednesday morning, but then decided that knowing half a day ahead of public knowledge wasn't really that useful as I am busy with real estate projects.
as far as i know the schaeffers site is the earliest place to get the II data each wednesday but would love to know if there is a more timely public free source.
Justa, according to schaeffers, the II bull/bear readings are the same as last week to the nearest decimal place.
You or anyone know if this is correct? It seems statistically unlikely that both bulls and bears have not moved by 0.1% since last week...
I see how printing money to buy bonds is inflationary, but I don't see how it will lead to lower rates.
Would you buy a bond denominated in a currency that you knew was being printed up in an inflationary style. Wouldn't you be buying into a scheme that pays back your debt in ten years with dollars that are almost guaranteed to be worth a lot less than when you buy the bonds?