Presumably you want my peaches, as you are shaking my tree.
Not comatose yet, but close to a persistent vegetative state.
Ok: The nickel market. Lots of ways to look at it, but probably some number of people had long positions anticipating some problems around Inco/Falco labor negotiations and have now cashed them in, so some downward motion. My guess would be is that the really bright boys are talking Ni down so they can corral some around 3-3.50 and then drive the price up.
Being in a persistent vegetative state (if I wasn't PVS, I would have sold CMR at $4.00) I shouldn't criticize, but the investment banker types are basically braindead right, so if I have brainstem function (eg while I didn't sell CMR at $4, I will still move my foot if you burn it) that makes me smarter, right?
Tons of nickel hidden, but LME stocks down to 21 kt and something like 2.8 kt is something like a cancelled warrant, whatever the hell that is. Whats 20 kt? 2 weeks supply, 3?
No one has any sense of history. Commodities have been plentiful, for 400 years, basically as a combination of technological advancement and European development/exploitation of underdeveloped nations. The Royal Navy ran out of trees in England right? They had to harvest in N. America, and on and on.
Nickel has only been in play for 100 years. New Caledonia as I recall was the first big hit, followed about 40 years later by Inco (or Inco predecessors).
The whole system is unraveling before our eyes, and thus the inventories in the system are drawn down. Some Ni on Guadalcanal, and open warfare. Cu in Irian Jaya and war brewing. Lots of Ni in Celebes and Indonesia falling apart and increasing number of earthquakes in the area. Falco and French parastatals going broke in New Caledonia.
What does everybody think is happening in Zimbabwe? What about the 17 kt of Ni produced there per year? Would the Zimbabwe govt have dispossessed the Blancs (maybe if I use French, SI won't delete) if the prior govt was running SA? Ever since the colonial independence movements of the 60's while Africa Noir trashed the SA Apartheid govt, they were dependent upon them for technical expertise and capital and infrastructure. Well the ancien regime cest fine, and the current SA govt is, in all likelihood supporting Zimbabwe. So commodity production in Africa is really going to go to zero vis a vis Russia in the 20's. How many yuppie bankers know or care that Imperial Russia exported grain?
God only knows what is going on in Russia. Clinton, in the US, has either willingly or unwittingly transferred all US nuclear weapons technology to the Chinese. The US govt knows this, the Japanese know this, the Russkis know this. Hell the water department in Walkerton, who don't know that e.coli in their water is bad, know this. You are going to see a massive rearmenent of US, China, Russia, Japan and probably Viet Nam with lots of Ni demand.
CMR trading action is better. You questioned last week whether our analysis was independent. Neither of us has been to Cobalt. Who knows what is happening? Hopefully the stock action means they are getting money and contracts are being let.
These guys need capital. It cost money to own and run a refinery. It costs money to spin off a division. They are locked out of the market, as a source of funds. The long term holders, unless they stuffed their ears with wax a long time ago, have been wiped out and have no more to invest. Groome was supposed to raise what $12 mil and raised about 2 mil, a partial success as it let them buy the refinery.
Where is the Agra report? If it is favorable, why no release? Where is Task Force 54? The world waits, n'est pas? |
