Another Flagpole

[realist]

Zoran mentioned a key factor to a successful beginning of a Wave 3 of 3 of 3. This key factor was that the wave needed to capture many on the WRONG SIDE of the trade making the decline a very quick and painful one.

 

Perhaps all of those that have forward bot the market in anticipation of the "WAR RALLY" are on the "RIGHT SIDE"?

 

I seriously doubt it!

[BAREister]

I agree BARE, I don't see this war being short or going well. It could be a sort of 10 sigma event, one to wake these brain-dead investors up.

Pile, Lettuce hope, fervently, that they are only "brain" dead...

 

HRFF just read his HORROR>>>scope (whatever happened to Sigmoidoscope, anyhoo?, speaking of "scopes") and it hASS warned him, STERNLY, SNOT to have fixed ideas during the next 6 weeks ass a matter of long term survival.

 

what do those bloomin' IDJITS expect The BARE to DOO-doo during that time, ANYWAY, dagnabbit!*%#@!???

 

turn BOOLISH or sumpthin'?

[Lethal Dose]

Well, it's late and there's not too many Stoolizens around to notice, which I guess is good a time as any to come clean. I'm a P&F guy. Tom Dorsey is my guru (www.dorseywright.com) and in the several years since I started observing markets from the P&F perspective I've been astounded at the accuracy of the parameters described at any point in time by the toolset. This moment is mixed, as if any of us has difficulty in making such an assessment. All the longterm indicia say we're headed lower. Some of the short term indicators say a few companies are doing just fine, thank you very much. In the end, if you like the action, you place your bet. I'm with Pile, SG, Doc, Mark and plenty of you other folk in being all to the wall short. I've been adding shorts on every rally since the middle of December and to tell the truth, I've got very little left to commit to the short side. If I'm wrong and this POS heads to longer term resistance -believe it or not 900 on the SPX wouldn't change a thing- I'll go to cash somewhere between 850 and 860 and wait to see what happens from there. If you can't stand the heat or you don't have an opinion of your own you ought to be in cash right now; if the SP gets to 800 there will be plenty more downside to catch.

[Jimbo]

CHEAP WINE CHEAP WINE

 

On the beach - your right about cheap wine.

 

The forces of stock market deflation are really working on the wine industry - Southcorp the big Australian wine company has really cratered in the past 6 months - it has lost half its value from its high - wine discounting is rife!!!

[Mr. Beal]

 

NEW YORK, Feb 28, 2003 (ODJ Select via COMTEX) -- (From The Wall Street Journal)

 

By Bhushan Bahree And Thaddeus Herrick

 

(Dow Jones)--With U.S. crude-oil prices fast approaching $40 a barrel - the highest since the start of the Persian Gulf War - senior OPEC officials acknowledged that their increased production can no longer suppress the price rise, at least for now.

 

The officials from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Counties also said that only a dwindling amount of extra production capacity is left to meet world demand.

 

A senior official from a key OPEC country said the group would almost certainly decide to supply even more oil, probably by removing all production restraints, when the group's ministers meet March 11 in Vienna. A decision to open the spigots wide could come even before then if prices continue to spike, he said.

 

The recent price increases come on fears of another war against Iraq and low inventories aggravated by a shortfall in Venezuelan production due to a strike aimed at toppling President Hugo Chavez. A cold snap in North America and sharply rising natural-gas prices also have contributed to the run up in oil prices, now the highest since 1991. After hitting an intraday high of $39.99 a barrel, U.S. light crude for April delivery settled yesterday at $37.20 a barrel, down 50 cents, on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

 

"At this time, the funds, traders and speculators on the Nymex are more powerful than OPEC," the senior official said. "Some things you can control, and some things you can't."

 

The sharp rise in prices represents a serious threat to the sputtering U.S. and global economic recovery. Prices are rising for everything from jet fuel - which is leading to higher air fares - to gasoline - already more than $2 a gallon in some U.S. markets - and that is driving up the cost of doing business for many industries.

 

Adam Sieminski, an anal cyst at Deutsche Bank (DB), says that global gross domestic product declines by as much as 0.5% for every $10 rise in the price of a barrel of oil. "This is going to lay a huge egg on the economy," Mr. Sieminski said.

 

Another senior OPEC official said that major consuming countries - such as the U.S., Japan and Germany - may have to release oil from their strategic stockpiles to ease the international supply pinch. "OPEC has limitations, and people should understand that," the official said.

 

OPEC has only one option left: unused production capacity that is variously estimated at between 1.5 million and three million barrels a day. Once this is used up - as it quickly could be if Iraq's exports of some two million barrels a day are interrupted by war - the world's complex system of oil supply will be operating flat out and energy markets will be highly vulnerable to any disruption.

 

The comments by the OPEC officials come as the U.S. prepares for a possible invasion of Iraq, a move that has little support among OPEC members. The organization also has a certain interest in maintaining a tight oil market, since high prices represent an extraordinary windfall for the group's member countries. Indeed, OPEC, in seeking to keep oil prices near $30 over the past several years, has been far more willing to risk higher prices than lower ones.

 

Officially, OPEC continues to suggest that it can meet the growing demand. Alvaro Silva, OPEC's secretary-general, said the group's members could offset the loss of Iraqi crude in the event of war and that the major consuming countries won't need to dip into their strategic petroleum stocks. A Saudi official added: "No oil company coming to us to buy crude is being turned back."

 

But industry anal cysts blame the current price run-up on OPEC's recent practice of dribbling out only enough extra volumes of oil to preclude any threat of price declines. Instead, OPEC could have pumped up output quicker and by larger amounts to hold down price increases. "They've been fooling around for the past year, not giving the market the oil it needed," said Leo Drollas, deputy director at London-based Centre for Global Energy Studies. "Now, OPEC alone can't close the gap" if a war in Iraq disrupts supply.

 

OPEC has been producing increasing volumes of oil in recent weeks, but prices continue to rise. Mr. Drollas said that in the short term, OPEC can increase its output by only 1.3 million barrels a day, or some 700,000 barrels less than Iraq's exports, assuming Saudi Arabia is producing at nine million barrels a day. Given a couple of months, OPEC can raise output by an additional one million barrels a day, he said.

 

Saudi Arabia, the world's largest exporter, which has most of OPEC's unused production capacity, jealously guards its output data. But the kingdom's oil officials have previously indicated that they can quickly raise output to 9.5 million barrels a day from roughly nine million today, and then to 10.5 million barrels daily within 90 days.

 

Underpinning the high price of oil are historically low commercial inventories. In the U.S., the world's largest oil consumer, the Energy Information Administration said stocks declined by one million barrels in the week ended Feb. 21 to 271.9 million barrels. That is 12% below the five-year seasonal average and 16% below year-ago levels. Inventories of heating oil are 10.3% below the seasonal average and 18.4% below year-ago levels, while gasoline stocks are 3% below the average and 2.8% below year-ago levels.

 

For their part, traders said they had little confidence that OPEC could calm markets, even if the group resorted to its spare production capacity. "At this point, war fears are too great," said John Kilduff, an anal cyst at Fimat U.S.A., a commodities brokerage house.© Copyright 2003 ODJ

[MaxxPain]

I guess I do think too much sometimes. Another scenario is that we get such a slow torturous decline to 775 that there won't be many shorts left to get much of a blast off. One of the reasons I'm a happy bear is that I was 0% short during the October & January rocket rides. I guess it's the nature of a bear market to keep the shorts petrified while the bulls are calmly losing their ass.