Subscribe
India’s inflation in food prices has been soaring lately — holding for weeks above 17 percent — due to a combination of factors including the weakest monsoon rains in nearly 40 years, new taxes on gasoline and diesel, and increased excise taxes on a wide variety of products.
From BusinessWeek:
(more...)Thompson Creek Metals Company (NYSE:TC), the Toronto-based molybdenum mining company with operations in Canada and the US, hit some rough waters with a recent downturn in “moly” pricing, but there’s reason to expect a stronger performance ahead.
(more...)Brookfield Asset Management (NYSE:BAM), the Toronto-based global property, power and infrastructure asset management company, has been in the news recently bidding for General Growth Properties… is that a sign that the company is grasping at straws?
(more...)Markets in the US ended yesterday’s session in the red. The Dow was off by 100 points, or around 1%. The broader S&P 500 fell a bit harder, down 1.3% at the close. Gold slipped, too. The yellow metal sunk below the $1,100 mark and now trades for about $1,095 per ounce. Oil gained a smidge, to just shy of $80 a barrel.
(more...)Charlie Munger, vice chairman of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, shares many of the plain-spoken ways of his more famous business partner. Munger also grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, and has the kind of charm that seems to come from trying to do things right by keeping them simple.
Over the weekend he had a parable he wrote published by Slate… and it’s outright depressing. He describes a nation, not unlike the US, that’s been the envy of the world since its inception. It has gotten that way by frequently, if not always, making good decisions and making them for the right reasons.
(more...)Based on its new quarterly report, Houston-based onshore, rig-based well servicing contractor Key Energy Services (NYSE:KEG) is showing renewed signs of sales growth.
Agora Financial expert editor Chris Mayer dug deeply into the numbers and had the following opinion:
(more...)We are entering a time of year that in recent decades has been good for energy prices and energy equities.
Combine that with new estimates that domestic and global energy demand will rise in 2010, and we have the makings of a promising period for investors. March tends to be one of the best months of the year for both crude oil and natural gas.
(more...)We are entering a time of year that in recent decades has been good for energy prices and energy equities.
Combine that with new estimates that domestic and global energy demand will rise in 2010, and we have the makings of a promising period for investors. March tends to be one of the best months of the year for both crude oil and natural gas.
(more...)The next few years should be good times for those that produce uranium, the feedstock for nuclear reactors
In looking at supply and demand, it seems clear that we’ll need more uranium than we mine now. At least if we expect to run all the power plants that are on the board. The World Nuclear Association (WNA) reports there are 50 nuclear reactors under construction around the world that’ll need some 23 million pounds of U308. (U308 is the oxide you get when you mine uranium ore.) There are 432 more on the planning board. Based on these projects, the world’s nuclear power production will more than triple from 2008-30.
(more...)Last month, I traveled halfway around the world to Australia and New Zealand while researching one of my favorite investment themes: the growing scarcity of resources like water, farmland, and energy.
One of the highlights of my trip was taking a group of subscribers to visit one of the world’s best resource investors – Rick Rule – at his farm outside of Auckland, New Zealand. After eating lunch, we got down to the business of the market.
(more...)Until just three years ago, the Marcellus was an obscure name for an obscure rock formation in the backwaters of geological research. Not anymore…
The tipping point came when Penn State professor Terry Engelder demonstrated that the Marcellus holds as much as 500 trillion cubic feet of natural gas – the equivalent of total US gas consumption for 25 years. There’s over a trillion dollars’ worth of gas down there – probably much more. Even if the estimate is off by 50% or so (and that 500 trillion cubic foot number might be on the LOW side), Marcellus is a very big resource.
(more...)We really don’t know as much about the oil market as we think we do.
There are many numbers out there, but most of these involve a lot of guesswork. For example, we really don’t know just how much oil the world will need. The US Department of Energy says we’ll need 106.6 million barrels a day by 2030, but how does it know? It can’t know. The DOE can’t know what the world will look like in 2030.
(more...)