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Strategies & Market Trends : Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (7143)	5/27/2004 8:43:44 AM
From: mishedlo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116555

U.S. jobless claims fall in latest week By Corbett B. Daly WASHINGTON (CBS.MW) -- The number of people filing first-time unemployment insurance claims fell in the latest week, the Labor Department said Thursday. First-time claims in the week ended May 22 fell by 3,000 to 344,000, while the average number of initial claims over the past four weeks rose by 1,500 to 335,500, the department said. In the prior week, the four-week average was the lowest since the week ended Nov. 18, 2000. Economists prefer the four-week average over the more volatile weekly number, which is subject to large revisions.

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (7143)	5/27/2004 8:55:43 AM
From: mishedlo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116555

Bush prolongs the Greenspan agony [Russ will find this article to his liking - mish] moneycentral.msn.com

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (7143)	5/27/2004 9:11:09 AM
From: mishedlo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116555

The Law of Accelerating Returns [interesting long but mainly OT article scroll thru it to spot some of the trends - mish] kurzweilai.net

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (7143)	5/27/2004 10:53:49 AM
From: Tommaso	Respond to of 116555

The price is knocked down right now on COS.UN for two reasons. First, they continue to have occasional hangups (or gum-ups) of the process that refines the bitumen, and when that happens there has to be a workover of the equipment that slows things down. Second, the whole operation underestimated the costs of the latest expansion of the project by about 25%. I think the low price can be accounted for also by two other things: its relative novelty, and also a lack of confidence that oil prices will stay high. All the figures can be found here, for anyone who can do a better analysis of them than I can: cos-trust.com

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (7143)	5/27/2004 11:08:36 AM
From: Tommaso	Respond to of 116555

Another problem with the syncrude project is that they have lost huge amounts of revenues from hedged sales in the last two years. They are making plenty of money, but they could have made twice as much. But what this means is that the whole operation is an engineering success and once they quit selling themselves short so badly, they will make a lot more money. People are always looking for reasons not to invest in the syncrude project, and especially not to buy the Canadian Oil Sands Trust. I think Canadian pension funds have been severely limited as to the percentage of assets they can place in any income trust. I just think COS.UN is an extraordinary example of overlooked long term value. Oh--one more thig holding down the stock price is that the Canadian government limits foreign ownership in any Canadian trust to under 50%. This means that the trust could be closed to outside investors as it approaches that limit. My reasons for holding it continue to be: 1. A good current return on my money. 2. A politically safe oil investment. 3. Growing production and profit margins. 4. Long term (fifty years) reserves.