Oil Has Been A Poor Leading Indicator for (Recent) Recessions

Every time oil drops these days, I notice hand-wringing about whether the fall indicates a recession is somewhere close on the horizon. There is an intuitive appeal to this assumption. Oil is still an engine of economic activity, so declining prices must indicate falling demand. What seems to be “different” this time is a true … Read more

An Unusual View of Timing Panic (Regarding Oil Prices)

This is a “quick hit” post – too long for a tweet, but not a complete blog post either. Maybe I will call these quickits. Anyway, I caught a snippet on CNBC this morning discussing the plunge in oil prices. The on-air personality recounted a conversation she had with an oil analyst. The oil analyst … Read more

Commodities Crash: Stocks That Have Erased QE2 Gains (Agriculture, Oil, Natural Gas)

(This is an excerpt from an article I originally published on Seeking Alpha. Click here to read the entire piece.) Trades continue to trigger in the on-going sell-off in commodities. In my last listing of commodity stocks that have erased all their post-QE2 gains, I did not include stocks in agriculture, oil, or natural gas. … Read more

Profiting from Physical Assets in a Resource-Constrained World – Rules and Picks (Part 2 of 2)

(This is an excerpt from an article I originally published on Seeking Alpha. Click here to read the entire piece.) {snip} This piece is a follow-up post to “Preparing for Profits in a Resource-Constrained World” (Part 1) in which I discussed the implications of Jeremy Grantham’s fundamental thesis of a new world where resources are … Read more

The Federal Reserve C(Sh)ould Become a Target of the Oil and Gas Price Fraud Working Group

(The following news release is satire and reflects my own cynical interpretation of recent news events. But as they say, there is always some truth in humor.) On Thursday, Attorney General Eric Holder introduced the country to the Oil and Gas Price Fraud Working Group to “…focus specifically on fraud in the energy markets” by … Read more