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Strategies & Market Trends : Natural Resource Stocks -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (4162)	12/2/2003 12:50:19 AM
From: Mac	Respond to of 108745

SAG: looks ready to break out . Production to begin in early 2004. Lots of volume & low valuation.

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (4162)	12/2/2003 8:00:02 AM
From: Mannie	Respond to of 108745

By Thom Calandra, CBS.MarketWatch.com Last Update: 11:40 AM ET Dec 1, 2003 SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- It's pile-on time. With spot gold trading above $400 an ounce Monday for the first time in more half a half-decade, and copper's price rebounding smartly this week, investors both professional and individual are wishing they owned more commodity-linked companies. Says tiny think-tank Cantillon & Co., a brand-new offshoot of supply-side researcher Polyconomics, "Our chief regret is not having more commodity names ... such was the ravaging of the sector by the 1990s deflation, that so few names have survived in precious and base metals." This is one lament you will hear again and again in coming days, months and years. "The (commodity) survivors have been bid up into the stratosphere," says Christopher Ecclestone, Cantillon's strategist in New York. "Investors need to hunt for these names farther afield, like Canada and Australia." Owning Australian and Canadian equities is especially good right now, with both currencies up more than 25 percent this year against the American dollar. This weekend from London, Kjeld Thygesen told me the real danger for investors in the metals melt-up, which has taken prices of precious and base metals miners and explorers to great and satisfying heights. Thygesen spent more than 30 years as a mining analyst and asset manager at James Capel and N M Rothschild. "The risk for investors is getting off this moon shot too early," says Thygesen, whose expertise in the field has pointed me personally, and professionally in subscription service The Calandra Report, to several "moon shots." Thygesen sits on the board of Mongolia copper-gold exploration company Ivanhoe Mines (HUGO), which stands out as the Toronto Stock Exchange's biggest metals gainer this autumn. (I also own shares in the stock.) Ivanhoe Mines' top executives were in London on Monday telling their story to UBS and to the thousands of U.S. retail brokers in the UBS-owned Paine Weber brokerage. Thygesen, who runs Lion Resource Management, a London mining and corporate finance consultancy firm that advises miners and natural resource funds, says business is good, very good right now. The theme I'm finding in every nook and cranny of the metals market is the desire to own more and more equity in commodity-linked companies. The search for greater percentage stakes in miners, both exploratory and actual producers, is happening across the board: from hedge funds with less than $10 million under management, up to $1 billion-and-greater asset managers and down to individuals with nest eggs they are nurturing. "I think you have to position yourself for the long hold, and you will do well," fund manager John Hathaway told me the other day here in San Francisco, where we had crossed paths to attend a metals conference. Hathaway's $430 million Tocqueville Fund (TGLDX) gets credit for turning to emerging mid-sized mining companies that could become the next large producers of gold, copper and other metals. His top 10 holdings, in addition to the usual buy-and-hold-on-for-dear-life-in-a-bull-metals-market Newmont Mining (NEM) and Compania De Minas Buenaventuras S.A. (BVN), include Ivanhoe Mines with a $2.3 billion market value and Canadian miner Iamgold (IAG), with a $1.3 billion market worth. Fund managers, playing the I'm-better-at-spotting-winners game with their mutual fund peers, must always be on the lookout for companies whose exploration activities (or science lab, R&D, etc., if we're talking about biomedical or technology) could catapult them to the top of the equity-performance charts. In the world of mutual funds, it's all about the companies in the sector that are doing best -- and does your fund own them? That's what the Morningstar and other agency ratings games are all about for benchmarks that gauge mutual fund managers -- be they in metals or technology. It's my bet personally - I also own Nevsun Resources (NSU), Sunridge Gold (SGC) and other emerging-miner shares based in Canada but exploring worldwide -- and it is my bet professionally in The Calandra Report -- that a handful of company geologists out there with new and quantifiable world-class copper, gold, nickel, platinum, zinc and even silver deposits (in Mongolia, Eritrea, Russia and South America) will continue to top the metals-equities charts as the commodities rally enters 2004. The pile-on continues. Thom Calandra's StockWatch is CBS MarketWatch's flagship column. The regular report is in its eighth year at CBS.MarketWatch.com. Thom Calandra is also author of subscription service The Calandra Report.

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (4162)	12/2/2003 8:28:08 AM
From: Roebear	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108745

JW, I want to give a cautionary weather note to the thread. We are setting up for a likely Nor'easter this weekend which will feature high winds and winter weather. Also want to note there is a possibility that this system could turn into a large storm, a possible Blizzard, going up the east coast and effecting areas from Virginia north. For this possibility, much will depend on how much cold air is drawn into the system and if it will end up rain or snow accordingly. Odds are better than even for a Nor'easter this weekend and I am rating Blizzard chances a bit higher than 1 in 3, large winter storm 1 in 2. Kudos to Joe Bastardi of Accuweather for seeing this possible system development long before the possibility was evident on the maps. National Weather Service seems to be taking a wait and see attitude and is not forecasting the storm yet that I have seen, though they are doing some mumbling. Canadian model is showing a large storm along the US eastern seaboard this weekend. Disclaimer, I'm just an amateur forecaster sharing his views and what info I have sifted off of the net, this is not professional advice. Best, Roebear

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (4162)	12/2/2003 12:35:33 PM
From: Ruffian	Respond to of 108745

Dollar Tumbles to New Low Against Euro 20 minutes ago Add Business - Reuters to My Yahoo! By John Parry NEW YORK (Reuters) - The dollar fell to a record low against the euro of $1.2089 on Tuesday according to Reuters data, with traders citing persistently negative sentiment on the dollar for the decline. Reuters Photo Related Quotes DJIA NASDAQ ^SPC 9880.68 1993.58 1070.10 -18.37 +3.76 -0.03 delayed 20 mins - disclaimer Quote Data provided by Reuters The New TV Religion TiVo-like digital video recorders can change your life. Build your own, or check out Sony's new PSX. The greenback lately has failed to post gains on a stream of robust U.S. economic data. But Tuesday's data calendar was light, so even that support has vanished at least temporarily. "In the absence of anything new or fresh hitting the market...the dollar keeps sliding. The market is more and more of the view that a weaker dollar suits the U.S. economy and that a global economic recovery depends on the dollar being allowed to slide," said Thomas Molly, a trader with Bank Alumni in New York. Some strategists said the euro is butting against a technical resistance level at $1.2090. Additional resistance was seen at $1.2132. Gold also capitalized on the dollar's weakness, jumping to its highest level in more than 7 1/2 years. Enduring concerns over U.S. economic imbalances -- most notably the wide U.S. current account deficit -- outweighed evidence of a strong U.S. economic recovery, analysts said. The dollar's recent inability to rally, either on signs of a U.S. economic rebound underscores the greenback's persistently negative tone, analysts said. "The trend of late has been to completely ignore any good numbers out of the United States, so I don't know that it is necessarily important what the numbers are: they just seem to generate volatility and dollar selling," said John Beerling, regional foreign exchange trading desk manager for Wells Fargo in Minneapolis. "Good numbers are at best a reason to pause. It's just the overwhelming (dollar) baritones right now," Beerling added. The dollar brushed aside a report by job placement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc, which said that the number of job cuts announced by U.S. employers fell 42 percent in a holiday-shortened November. On Monday, the Institute for Supply Management's manufacturing index for November reached the highest level in two decades. Construction spending also posted a fourth consecutive month of record highs in October. But after receiving muted support from these reports on Monday, the dollar has since relapsed. The greenback dipped briefly after initial reports of a plane crash in Long Island turned out to be a small aircraft accident, with the dollar's slip underscoring traders' nervousness about security concerns. Late Tuesday morning in New York, the euro was up 0.9 percent on the day at $1.2075. Against the yen , the dollar was down 0.3 percent at 109.05 yen. Against the Swiss franc , the dollar was at 1.2871 francs, down 0.8 percent on the day. The pound hit multi-year highs and was up 0.6 percent at $1.7281. Only secondary U.S. data was reported on Tuesday and investors were looking ahead to Friday's U.S. employment report for signs of improvement in the labor market. "Data-wise, today is light and investors are looking to U.S. asset markets," said Paul Mackel, currency strategist at ABN Amro in London. "Euro/dollar direction will also come from dollar/yen." But with hopes for a recovery already well priced in, concerns over the U.S. current account deficit and Washington's handling of post-war Iraq (news - web sites) undermined the positive impact on the dollar. The euro was unmoved by comments from European Union (news - web sites) Economics and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Pedro Solbes, who said discussions over the Stability Pact would affect markets. Elsewhere, the Bank of Canada kept interest rates steady at 2.75 percent on Tuesday, as expected. The U.S. dollar traded at C$1.2970 . The Reserve Bank of Australia is expected to raise rates by 25 basis points to 5.25 percent when it meets late on Tuesday (New York time). Rate hike expectations pushed the Australian dollar to six-year highs against the U.S. dollar and five-month highs versus the yen. The Australian dollar traded at US$0.7314 . The currency is now up some 30 percent since its 2002 close.