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Gold/Mining/Energy : Big Dog's Boom Boom Room -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GaAs52 who wrote (72713)	10/4/2006 4:16:31 PM
From: Q8	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 206184

I meant to say I also have Goldman's upbeat comments on the Oil Service Sector today with a note out saying that "backlog" remains one of our 3 key investment themes for oil service stocks.. heck they even reiterated NOV as favorite when just yesterday JP Morgan downgraded NOV. The only one screaming today is Cramer and he fails to mention that GS likes NOV! Expect Prolonged Pain in the Oil Patch By Jim Cramer RealMoney.com Columnist Here we go again with the prolonging of the agony in the oil patch. This bounce today is so repulsive because it hooks more people in. It says, "We have gone down enough." I don't think we have, for most of the stocks. That said, there are some encouraging signs. Valero (VLO) doesn't drop that much and then bounces off a really bad quarter, in part because it still made a ton of money despite the collapse of crack spreads. National Oilwell (NOV) doesn't go down on a downgrade. Marathon Oil (MRO) looks darned cheap in light of Valero. Halliburton (HAL) is so cheap, it's scary! These are places where the nibbling has to start. But I have learned the hard way that these are just symptoms of a bottom and not the real thing. We bottom after everyone has gone negative, not just a smattering of people. We bottom when we see analysts putting outright sells and mostly holds on stocks, not this buy-to-hold stuff that we have been seeing lately. We still have a preponderance of buy ratings. We still don't have enough of a short base to run and cover, although Valero indicates it can be reached eventually. I know it would be horrible for these analysts who have stuck with the oil patch and got in late to downgrade now. It would be embarrassing. But in the end, they won't be able to take the pain, and that's how we bottom -- not just because it "feels right." It has to be with total capitulation. That's how we caught the bottom in the homebuilders: There were no champions left. When that happens, the Oil Service HOLDRs (OIH) will be at $110-$115 and we might have something cooking. But this move, today? I don't trust it. Seems like just another stretching out of the agony, like we saw with the Oil Service HOLDRs at $130 and $125, before those floors collapsed beneath us.