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Strategies & Market Trends : The Epic American Credit and Bond Bubble Laboratory -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (14660)	5/28/2004 4:05:09 PM
From: russwinter	Respond to of 110194

In the same spirit as the metals perp, here's the daily shill/carnival barker "signal" alert on the "flood" of Saudi "heavy" oil: Shell story: Message 20166086 Reuters UPDATE - Saudi books four early July VLCCs to US-brokers Friday May 28, 9:03 am ET LONDON, May 28 (Reuters) - Top oil exporter Saudi Arabia has booked four very large crude carriers to the United States for loading in early July, brokers said on Friday, a sign that the OPEC (News - Websites) giant is striving to keep markets well supplied through the summer. Shipping brokers said Vela International Marine, state oil company Saudi Aramco's chartering arm had booked the "Patris", the "Maritime Jewel" and two VLCCs managed by the Tankers International pool to load a total of eight million barrels of crude oil to the U.S. Gulf in a July 1-3 window. Assuming a typical 35-40 day journey from the Gulf to the United States the exports are due to arrive in early to mid-August. "It's unusual that they've come in so early when cargoes are still being worked in June, but the volume is not extraordinary," one broker with a leading house said. "The Saudis are clever they've come in early, possibly to secure the tonnage before freight prices rise, but the move could also be seen as a strong signal to the oil market on supply," another said. Saudi Arabia, the only OPEC member with any significant immediate spare capacity, has pledged to pump at least nine million barrels per day (bpd) in June, an increase in real extra volume of 700,000-800,000 bpd to world markets. Cautious international oil traders are keeping their eyes peeled for signs of the extra oil, saying boiling oil markets need to see evidence of the barrels on the water. Saudi sells its oil to global refiners delivered, using its own massive fleet of 23 VLCC and ULCC-class ships and additional spot chartering if it needs to. It also sells it free-on-board to international oil companies who buy the barrels straight from any one of its oil terminals. Most of the earmarked increase will go to Asia and there are strong signs from the chartering market that extra oil is already being loaded. Freight markets jumped this week on benchmark voyages to Asia from the Gulf as oil companies scrambled to hire more ships. Asian refiners said this week Riyadh was supplying them with some extra barrels in June on top of regular contractual supply, though they said some might not arrive until July. Saudi Arabia has so far fully booked eight VLCCs from the spot charter market in June to carry 16 million barrels of crude to the United States for arrival in July. That spot charter volume is not highly unusual and compares with similar volumes booked to move in April and May. Brokers reported the oil giant's spot charter volume for delivery in May and early June at 16.4 million barrels. Vela's spot bookings to U.S. shores in April totalled 14.5 million, brokers say. Those figures represent bookings at the time but brokers say Vela rarely fails vessels. The spot Saudi chartering in June to date is still only half the unprecedented volume Riyadh moved last year, just before the United States attacked Iraq, when Vela snapped up 14 supertankers on the charter market to ferry a colossal 29.5 million barrels to calm oil markets.

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (14660)	5/29/2004 12:04:21 AM
From: ild	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 110194

Hedge Funds Are Now the HERD by Don R. Hays Summary: Not too long ago the legends of Hedge Funds—Julian Robertson, George Soros, etc. decided to scale back their involvement in public hedge funds. Old-time partnerships were either dissolved, scaled back dramatically, or one of the parties moved on to open their own thing. Hedge funds that operate under a different level of management compensation and regulation had provided some amazing results in their history as they did their own things. But now, just like the index funds of 2000, and like the portfolio insurance themes of 1987, hedge funds have now exploded in number—and I suspect suffered in performance. There are now over 11,000 hedge funds with combined assets over $1 trillion. Ed Hyman’s ISI group, that has a great history of performing surveys, has now expanded their multiple surveys to include hedge funds, and lo and behold guess who is becoming a major contrary indicator, with maximum bullishness at tops, and maximum bearishness at the bottom? You guessed it—the new herd--hedge funds. In some ways, operating a highly leveraged hedge fund is like investing for your mother-in-law, they have to have strict stop loss disciplines to prevent them washing themselves out of business on only slight market declines. And conversely, they have to buy break-outs in order to “earn” their massive compensation. They are rewarded generally with a fixed fee, plus a percentage of their performance. Whereas the old time geniuses like Julian Robertson were superb stock pickers, and then turned into master globalists long before most of us knew how to spell it, the new guys have the same strong opinions but the new herd all chasing essentially the same opinion get caught in a trap. I still find that some of the smartest—mathematically smart—people are associated with hedge funds, but then you see that even they have to swing with the trends. And now since there are so many swinging with the same trends, it has dramatically changed their game. The market has made its final low of this correction—or at least that’s my opinion. But what now?? No-body knows for sure, but we do know that the emotions will pretty much determine the nature of the advance. We do know that the emotions of today have been conditioned by the former bear market whose horrific damage is only 15 months in our past, and it generally takes about 3 years before those thoughts will be neutered. The closest correlation as to how long it takes to heal the bruises would come from 1974’s experience, so we’ll take a look at that this morning, to see if any clues are available.