Goldman hikes their forecast for the average price of crude oil for H2 2008 …
from 107 to 141(!!!) $ …
If they are right … equity markets should suffer BIG time …
Even if retail sales rise … on gasoline sales
Reason for the Goldman action is higher demand from China due to the earthquake, […]

Or … in other words … much money … no brain
The facts … of today only …
-UBS … dissappointing figures … even after very weak expectations …
says … MORE WRITE OFFS … sees MONOLINE induced ones … AUTSCH
-FNM … worse than expected … but positive talk despite their view, housing market will […]

Weekend ahead … time for weekly charts
Euro and OIL are working on a reversal today … EXACTLY at their targets …
Both had a nice uptrend, starting the second half of JULY 2007 …
the time, when everybody got aware of the huge problems within the financial system in the USA and this was the […]

As I find it quite difficult … and every day more … to be “in sync” with the way, US markets and US media reacts to news and events …
I probably found the reason … I am not american
A kind of optimism … let’s face it … even a blind optimism and still […]

Message understood … “they” are really worried …
Who is “they”?
The FED, the Government, all the (investment) banks who fight for survival.
They fight for every(!) single day, they can hold the markets up. This might end in desaster mode …
Today’s news was:
- Gulf investors see more capital needed to save Citibank
- Intel cuts outlook
- S&P […]

Oil closed today at about 101$ … on March expiration only … April contract is still below 100$
As OPEC always states, markets are well supplied … they even sell their oil at a discount as otherwise they could not sell it.
Financial speculation drives prices … some analyst think, that about 30$(!) of the price is […]

What we are experiencing now … the first days of 2008 … is exactly that, what we call in a daily sense the “Amateur hour”. The first hour of trading, where all the amateurs buy and sell and wrong positions get closed/stopped out. And as we know, it is the hour, which the professionals use […]

As X-mas comes closer, it gets more difficult to be interested in the markets …
Even more as the main themes are still the same … NO CHANGE … and it seemingly won’t change for some time down the road …
Housing, subprime and recession on one side … Asian growth, splendid tech earnings and the […]