patrick.net

It’s Thursday, and Mountain View inventory is back up at 167. I guess we’re on track after all.

@Apostasy and OO

Thank you for the wealth of information about Precious Metals.I have read it over many times. I am visiting Scottsdale at the moment (115 degrees in the shade) but as soon as I return home I will print the info and begin taking action.

THANKS AGAIN !!!

The US is more broke than France, by objective measure of deficit/year/GDP.

The US is more broke than France, by objective measure of deficit/year/GDP.

Measures can be "objective," but applications of measures are subjective.

France is broke broke, by subjective measure of their welfare state.

Another obvious fact too obvious to be noticed: France does not control its own currency, America does!

I have a question about investing in or shorting oil. Of course, one can can buy/sell/short oil companies such as CVX or VLO, and there will be some correlation with oil price. On the other hand, there are ETF funds such as

OIL DBO USO USL UGA UHN RJN DBE

Pasting these funds into Google Finance, I see that most if not all are very small (with less than 3B market cap) and have small float. I'm concerned that it may be risky to short them, because it is easy to engineer a short squeeze, somewhat indepedent of the actual oil price.

Any thoughts on this. Needless to say, THIS IS NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE in any way, shape or form. It is a question about the structural properties of the oil market, as seen by a retail investor.

What's wrong with this?

http://www.nymex.com/QM_spec.aspx

Not investment advice.

I have a strange intuition that during this 'great delveraging' there is a host of borrowed dollars trying to make as much last-minute cash as it can on its way out of the hands of the hedgies and back into banks.
One of the few markets big enough to handle the size of this cash-pile is oil. Fit me for a tin-foil hat, but I feel like there is not just some, but a lot of oil speculation and it is te hedgies.

Needless to say, I think either long or short positions in oil are exceptionally dangerous as this group has to deep pockets to squash little players at will.

My advice - stay the heck outta oil.

More importantly, stay the heck outta snake oil. I am sure a lot of fraudsters will be preying on little guys.

More importantly, stay the heck outta snake oil.

But it may be a good time to invest in the raw materials themselves: snakes.

Not herpetologist advice.

Peter,

QM looks good. But do any of the major online brokers support commodity trading?

I can't see any advantage to the "Amero". Why would anyone propose such a thing? Any oil we buy from Mexico or Canada is already priced in $US. The only thing worse than an old fiat currency is a new fiat currency.

Already one good chokepoint for illegal aliens from Mexico is the necessity to exchange $US for Pesos prior to shipping funds back home. If required law enforcement would have a good surveilance point. This would go away with a common North American currency.

QM looks good. But do any of the major online brokers support commodity trading?

I think E-Trade does.

Again, please be very careful because futures is a very sharp two-edged sword. Leverage works both ways.

Many people abuse leverage and they get killed. Others over-trade and they suffer. Nevertheless, oil futures has the highest correlation to oil futures prices. (Duh!)

I have lost money in the futures market.

Not investment or brokerage advice.

The Original Bankster Says:

> Another good one: Chrysler guarantees $2.99
> gas for 3 years with the purchase of an SUV.

I heard a radio ad in Sacramento yesterday where the Chrysler dealer has "Hemi" aka "Gas Sucking" pickups and cars on sale for $9K off sticker...

BTW, does anyone know if year 2000 Audi A8 is an okay (reliability-wise) car for occasion uses?

National Review has gotten their hands on an internal BofA memo from last March, which purports to be their "wish list" for a bailout.

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ODJkN2Q3NTY0MjAwYjJlNTY0NTJmMWEzZTI1OGZjZTg=

It would appear that the Dodd-Shelby bailout bill is just the BofA memo plus some cleanup.

Fiat lux - UC motto
Fiat slug - UCSC motto
Fiat currency - government motto? :?

# justme Says:
June 20th, 2008 at 11:31 am

QM looks good. But do any of the major online brokers support commodity trading?

How different is this than trading USO options?

2.99 gas is no different from cash back. They limit how much they will chip in. I see no difference from a cash back offer.

Shitty bank (C:NYSE) and SkankAmerika (BAC:NYSE) near 52 week lows!!!

GM at 1982 prices

What does a GM Bailout look like??? Does anyone recall how up in arms this country was with the Chrysler bailout back in the day?

When they had GMAC they could have thrown in a 30 year fixed at 5% when you buy a hummer! Seems they lost their way.

"BTW, does anyone know if year 2000 Audi A8 is an okay (reliability-wise) car for occasion uses?"

I had an A6 - one of the two best cars I have ever had.

Coretexity,

My original concern was that ETF offerings such as USO have low float and low market cap. To me that looks like they are susceptible to manipulation, although the fund manager is supposed to make it track oil futures in some sense. So far the tracking has been pretty decent (just overlay the graphs), but can it be guaranteed on a minute-by-minute basis?

It seems more direct to uy/sell contracts (not options) of QMQ8 (august) and so on, but many brokers do not support commodity trading. Peter mentioned Etrade, I could not find anything on their web site. Ameritrade likewise.

I'm not looking for leverage, options or anything like that, just straight long/short contracts would suit me better.

Speaking of oil futures:

In light if the recent large-scale Israeli air force training exercise (read: preparation for Iran attack), I wonder if the Israeli government or its insiders are going long or short on oil futures? Two reasons, somebody in the government knows what the plans are, and they may also want to hedge against rising oil.

Would that be illegal insider trading ? ;-)

Insider trading is defined in terms of insiders to the corporation of interest, not to some outside party that may cause a change to the fortunes of said corporation. For example, if I shorted ExxonMobile prior to blowing up some of their facilities, I would merely be a criminal terrorist and not (God forbid) an inside trader.

Anyone tried Wakuriya in San Mateo?

If I did, would it be illegal insider eating?

If I did, would it be illegal insider eating?

Huh?

If you did, I would like to hear what you think about the place.

Well, it was because you are a sushi insider, and, uh, I heard about the place from you, and, uh. you know, uh, I was just trying to be funny. Oh well :-)