Readings: BCA Research, GaveKal / Mauldin, Raymond James,
- BCA Research: Unloved Natural Gas
. . . natural gas prices have settled into a broad trading range and have disappeared from many investors’ radar screens. Sentiment has been extremely negative in the past 18 months, similar to the environment early in the decade, even though prices are well above the levels seen in 2001.
- GaveKal @ John Mauldin’s Outside The Box: Here Comes A Whale
Sadly for Northern Rock, . . . , its whale-like £113 billion balance sheet rests on a £3 billion equity base better suited for a sardine. Even worse, its liabilities include only £30 billion of stable (until last week) consumer deposits. Its remaining £80 billion of funding depends on securitisation or on capital market and inter-bank borrowing, . . .
. . . this could turn into one of the biggest financial events in a generation, comparable to the collapse of the European Exchange-rate Mechanism, which occurred just as suddenly and in eerily similar circumstances exactly 15 years ago (on 16 September, 1992).
- Raymond James (Jeff Saut) Investment Strategy: “Heads I win, tails you lose!”
. . . we still like the themes that have served us so well over the last six years . . . that being “stuff” (oil, gas, coal, grains, fertilizer, cement, water, etc.). Currently, we are particularly emphasizing agriculture and gold. Interestingly, soybeans rallied 6.6% last week, cotton was up 5.9%, and wheat improved by 2.7%. While we own a number of the ag-based stocks, for those investors looking for new agricultural names the recently created Van Eck Vectors Agribusiness ETF (MOO/$41.80) is a good approach to the agricultural sector.
Also check this chart of commodity indices.
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