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Wednesday-Night creates charts and follows stocks, including timely related financial news items, in which Wednesday Nighters are interested and in order to demonstrate a service that could eventually be developed and marketed. Wednesday Nighters are invited to participate and help to test the service. see Wednesday-Night.com Flip charts
QUOTES of the EVENING from recent Wednesday Nights
It’s not a Bush problem, it’s an American problem. He is playing double or nothing. He is trying to shift the responsibility from the Coalition to the Iraqis
New York City has more police officers than Iraq has troops
THE LAST DROP: The four most dangerous words in investing are "This time it's different." - John Templeton (1913-2008)
Thursday 10 July 2008 OTTAWA: HIGH OIL PRICES REPORTED DOING MORE HARM THAN GOOD
A report by the Bank of Montreal says that soaring oil prices are having an overall negative impact on Canadians and their economy. Douglas Porter, BMO's deputy chief economist, writes that the conventional wisdom has been that the economy benefits on net from higher oil prices because of the country's role as a major and growing energy exporter. But Mr. Porter says that consumers are paying a steep price in terms of high gasoline, electricity and heating expenses. The economist notes that fuel costs have risen to a point at which households spending a record seven per cent of their revenues on energy. Mr. Porter writes as well that industry is suffering greatly from higher production costs and the slowdown in the world and U.S. economies due to fuel costs. According to the economist, the turning point came when the price of a barrel of oil reached US$120. It was trading at about $137 on Wednesday.
The Federal Reserve may extend into next year a facility that gives investment banks access to emergency cash if the financial turmoil persists.
The lending facility was put in place in March to stabilise the financial system as Bear Stearns collapsed.
Fed chairman Ben Bernanke also called on Congress to give the central bank more authority to supervise markets.
Wednesday 09 July 2008 OTTAWA: CENTRAL BANK ENDS SPECIAL CREDIT LOANS
The Bank of Canada has announced that it has ended its injections of cash to chartered banks through short-term loans, saying that the credit conditions that resulted from last summer's subprime mortgage crisis in the U.S. have eased. The bank says it will continue to monitor markets and if necessary to intervene to provide liquidity. The U.S. Federal Reserve, on the other hand, has said it will continue providing short-term loans to financial institutions until the end of the year.
Supply on demand
Buyers like China are bypassing commodities markets altogether and going right to the source
Two CEOs I know--one at an oil company, the other at a gold miner--recently had strange encounters with Chinese counterparts. A Chinese oil company and its apparent partner, Standard Bank of South Africa, offered to buy a lot of oil for five years. It would be a direct sale--no middlemen, brokers or spot market involved. "They didn't care about the price," the oil executive says. "All they cared about was locking up the supply."
The gold company had a similar experience. The price offered was extraordinarily high, but the Canadian CEO didn't bite. He wondered what the Chinese knew about long-term demand that he didn't. Maybe in five or 10 years, the price won't look as high as it does today.
Welcome to the world of direct-sale commodity deals, better known as "off-take" deals and sometimes bilateral deals. In such arrangements, the commodity--oil, natural gas, base minerals, precious metals, iron--doesn't go to the London Metal Exchange (LME) or other public energy markets. There are no intermediaries. The commodity is, in effect, locked up and taken off the global market. These kinds of deals are suddenly everywhere, to the point that some energy and mining bosses think that the whole concept of open and transparent global commodity markets, where the highest bids get the shipments, is coming to an end.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080627.ROB7PG32/TPStory/Business
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