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

To: ild who wrote (20692)	10/25/2004 4:59:53 PM
From: russwinter	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 110194

The VIX hasn't exploded, but it's moved quite suddenly up from 13-14 to over 16 over the last week or so, and especially today. finance.yahoo.com^VIX&t=5d&l=on&z=m&q=l&c= Just an indication that options premiums are creeping up. Ideally I'd like to be able write naked calls, rather than buy puts, or at least do a combination of the two bear strategies, so I'm watching this.

To: ild who wrote (20692)	10/26/2004 12:17:56 PM
From: ild	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 110194

Date: Tue Oct 26 2004 11:54 trotsky (Apollo,@oil prices per the trade data) ID#248269: Copyright © 2002 trotsky/Kitco Inc. All rights reserved note that there are several factors at work here: 1. both heavy and sour crudes trade at a VAST discount to WTI light sweet which trades on the NYMEX. 2. many importers will probably have hedged their exposure somewhat, via fixed price contracts for near term delivery months, or other means. 3. it takes 6 weeks or so for a tanker to arrive from the Persian Gulf. in those 6 weeks, the price can move a lot, but the cargo will already have been paid for. 4. the government lies as much as it can get away with in its economic statistics. Date: Tue Oct 26 2004 11:47 trotsky (mooney, 8:13) ID#248269: Copyright © 2002 trotsky/Kitco Inc. All rights reserved "With THREE closes just below $55 in last 5 trading days in November Crude and ONE close just above $55 in same five days in December Crude, the oily one is again looking toppy." you might get a short term correction, but my usual caveat is coming here: top picking small speculators continue to hold a huge net short position ( for this category of traders ) in WTI crude - in fact, for the first time in months, the commercial hedgers are actually NET LONG crude oil, if only by 1,000 contracts. therefore there continues to be a lot of upside potential for the contract, since a technically strong market exhibiting so much negative sentiment usually tends to rise much further than anyone thinks possible. in fact, it is the strongest 'expectational analysis' ( a term copyrighted by Schaeffer Research ) position a market can find itself in. the risks assumed by the speculative shorts are imo enormous - the physical oil market is so drum tight that any significant disruption could send the contract into a parabolic blow-off rally. note that in terms of the positioning data, the speculative position could easily swing from 1,000 contracts net short to 80,000 contracts net long per the contract's history - thus i conclude that there continues to be a plethora of OTHER markets where considering short positions makes more sense and involves far less risk. top picking in crude just doesn't seem worth it at this stage - imo it's better to wait for the speculator positioning to significantly swing toward a large net long exposure before actually committing funds to such a trade. trotsky (Heavy Metal, 8:41) ID#248269: Copyright © 2002 trotsky/Kitco Inc. All rights reserved it is important to remember that Bush is NOT a 'conservative' in any heretofore known sense of the word. if i didn't know anything about him and someone described to me the set of policies implemented under his watch, i would guess he was a socialist, or more precisely, a national socialist. i'd really be surprised if it were then submitted to me that he is actually a Republican. the upcoming election seems to be a contest between a national socialist and a more traditional socialist ( known in Europe as a 'democratic socialist', a label that serves to differentiate mainstream socialism from the inherently non-democratic communism ) . there is in fact no 'conservative' candidate. the libertarian Badnarik seems intellectually closest to conservatism, and the same goes for the Constitution party candidate.