[MrBill]

'F' me! Whipped out of my short today! Sold near the top this morning. It went down, so sold some more. Then it reversed and came back very quickly. Not wanting to lose any money, I stopped myself out near my entry point. It went a little higher and now we are 60 pts. lower again.

Not wanting to complain, but I never the less feel a little like a seashell being battered against a beach by giant waves. Whether I am bashed against the rocks or swept back out to sea is of little consequence to the waves and completely out of my control.

Would I love to be a BP and sitting on top of the flow and the physical pipes! Ah, discipline, discipline, and this too shall come to pass! ; - )

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ') If insider selling is any guide, the
stock-market rally for energy companies may be waning.
Sales of shares by officers and directors at oil refiners
climbed to a record in July, according to a scoring system used
by the Leuthold Group since 1999. Among a broader group of 142
energy producers, insider selling peaked in May, according to
Leuthold, a research and investment firm that counts two-thirds
of the 100 largest U.S. money managers as clients.
Executives at Valero Energy Corp., the largest U.S. refiner,
and XTO Energy Inc., an oil and natural-gas producer, were among
those selling stock.

[Revi]

My little foray into the stock market has proved to be a roller coaster as well. At one point ESLR was the darling of the market and was up well over a dollar per share. Now it's down two bucks and shows no sign of crawling out of its hole. I'm not selling, as I still have hopes for string ribbon solar technology. It's got to come up. They have a long term silicon agreement and a new factory in Thallheim Germany. I figure that if I can hold on to it until 2008, they'll turn the corner and start to make a profit. If not, well, I helped the fledgling strig ribbon solar industry get launched anyway.

[MrBill]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Revi', 'M')y little foray into the stock market has proved to be a roller coaster as well. At one point ESLR was the darling of the market and was up well over a dollar per share. Now it's down two bucks and shows no sign of crawling out of its hole. I'm not selling, as I still have hopes for string ribbon solar technology. It's got to come up. They have a long term silicon agreement and a new factory in Thallheim Germany. I figure that if I can hold on to it until 2008, they'll turn the corner and start to make a profit. If not, well, I helped the fledgling strig ribbon solar industry get launched anyway.

[MrBill]

Bill the Bear made some money by shorting Brent near the highs on hurricane Chris being downgraded to a tropical depression, but we are back up again? Dunno? Friday afternoon? Anything can happen time. Or 'be careful, be very, very careful', says Elmer Fudd.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ') NEW YORK, NY, August 2, 2006 -- The New York Mercantile Exchange, Inc. announced today that it will offer its physically delivered energy futures contracts on the CME Globex electronic trading platform during its regular open outcry trading hours, beginning on September 4 for trade date September 5. The contracts will trade side by side in conjunction with NYMEX trading floor hours, and they will be fungible with the floor-traded NYMEX energy contracts.
The contracts include the NYMEX crude oil (CL), natural gas (NG), heating oil (HO) and gasoline (HU, RB) futures contracts. The contracts on CME Globex will be listed for the full curve, or all months corresponding with the underlying full-sized futures contract and will be available for trading from 6:00 PM ET Sundays through 5:15 PM ET Fridays, with a 45-minute break each day between 5:15 PM ET and 6:00 PM ET.
Details regarding the competitive fee structure will be provided prior to the September 4 launch.
NYMEX launched financially settled, standard-sized and NYMEX TM energy futures contracts for trading on CME Globex on June 12. Access to electronic trading of NYMEX products is available virtually 24 hours a day on CME Globex.
For more information, visit www.nymexoncmeglobex.com.

[Revi]

Mr Bill,
Do you think it's good to hold cash or to turn it into hard assets, like silver or land? I don't have much, but I'd hate to lose it when the dollar tanks. I'm a bit queasy about the stock market, after my recent experience with it. I'm worried what will happen if the euro based oil exchange opens on Kist. The whole thing is unravelling isn't it?

[cube]

LMAO....looks like Mr. Bill has a fan club:

maybe I should start one?

Cube's crystal ball of investing says:

1) do NOT diversify, put your money in one spot
2) the fastest way to make money is in a recession
3) no price is too high to buy and no price is too low to sell

Legal disclaimer - Investing/Speculation is inherently risky. You may lose your shirt, your shoes, and the kitchen sink.

[MrBill]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Revi', 'M')r Bill,
Do you think it's good to hold cash or to turn it into hard assets, like silver or land? I don't have much, but I'd hate to lose it when the dollar tanks. I'm a bit queasy about the stock market, after my recent experience with it. I'm worried what will happen if the euro based oil exchange opens on Kist. The whole thing is unravelling isn't it?

[MrBill]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('cube', 'L')MAO....looks like Mr. Bill has a fan club:

maybe I should start one?

Cube's crystal ball of investing says:

1) do NOT diversify, put your money in one spot
2) the fastest way to make money is in a recession
3) no price is too high to buy and no price is too low to sell

Legal disclaimer - Investing/Speculation is inherently risky. You may lose your shirt, your shoes, and the kitchen sink.

[MrBill]

Now back to business. Here are the three drivers behind the higher prices this morning.

Oops, another environmental disaster and things like refinery explosions just seem to happen to BP more than to others?
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'B')P Plc said it's shutting the Prudhoe
Bay oil field in Alaska, the largest in the U.S., because of
corrosion in a pipeline. Oil prices rose as much as 1.7 percent.
Some 400,000 barrels a day of production, or 8 percent of
the nation's total, is being shut, said Ronnie Chappell, a
spokesman for London-based BP, the world's second-largest
publicly traded oil company. BP doesn't know when the pipeline
will be repaired, he said in a telephone interview.

[Chaparral]

Took profit on CL-U06 today at 7700. Wheat is a wild card. Corn is goin' down baby!

I am thinking of setting a limit order for electronic access unleaded somewhere down in the 223s this evening. One little white swirly thing even THINKS about forming in the gulf and the stuff rings the 23000 bell.

[cube]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Chaparral', 'T')ook profit on CL-U06 today at 7700. Wheat is a wild card. Corn is goin' down baby!
....

[Chaparral]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('cube', '
')*sigh* the life of a trader

[MrBill]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('cube', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Chaparral', 'T')ook profit on CL-U06 today at 7700. Wheat is a wild card. Corn is goin' down baby!
....

[MrBill]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '"')As I have said, the law of supply and demand has been stood on its head regarding oil. Puzzle me this: Actual world production has been level since May 2005, yet energy needs have been rising and are expected to continue to do so. If the Saudi’s have so much spare oil to sell—and no buyers--, why has the price not fallen?"

[Doly]

So, Mr Bill, do you think it's perfectly possible that Saudi Arabia could be producing more but it's choosing not to?

[MrBill]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Doly', 'S')o, Mr Bill, do you think it's perfectly possible that Saudi Arabia could be producing more but it's choosing not to?

[MrBill]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '"')Nice post overall, except for this nonsense:

c) they know the bottleneck is refining capacity, so there is enough crude to keep the refineries running, so long as they do not sell gasoline itself short, and the gasoline curve is in backwardation indicating a preference for prompt delivery during the summer driving season and the changeover to ethanol RBOB from MTBE unleaded,

Complete baloney."

[MrBill]

U.S. Home Sales
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he Fed lifted short-term rates 17 times beginning June 2004, ending with a quarter-point increase to 5.25 percent June 29. The average 30-year fixed mortgage rose to 6.6 percent last week, compared with 5.8 percent a year ago, according to Freddie Mac, the No. 2 U.S. mortgage buyer.

U.S. sales of new houses this year probably will drop 13 percent to 1.12 million after reaching a record 1.28 million in 2005, the National Association of Realtors said in a forecast yesterday. The last sales decline was 1999, when new-home purchases fell 1.1 percent.

Prices are starting to ease. The median U.S. price of a new home was $231,300 in June, down from a record $253,800 in April, according to the Commerce Department. The industry sold 1.13 million houses at an annualized pace in June, compared with 1.27 million a year earlier, and the number of unsold homes rose 24 percent to 566,000.

[MrBill]

EIA inventory no.s August 9, 2006

Crude stocks down 1.1 mio bbls to 332.6mio bbls
Gasoline stocks down 3.2 mio bbls to 207.7,
which is 3X more than expected and brings stocks well below their 3 yr ave
Distillates stocks down 0.2 mio bbls to 132.4 mio bbls
Refinery runs up 0.8% to 91.6%

Imports down 266k bpd to 10.17 mbpd
Product imports down 1.15 mbpd to 3.43 mbpd

Total product demand up 0.1% to 20.94 mbpd
Gasoline demand up 1.8% to 9.62 mbpd
Distillate demand up 5.8% to 4.10 mbpd,

Which again reinforces the trend of strong transport fuel demand,
While the drop in actual total demand is less than expected and still nominally positive
Although below trend

On the whole a very bullish inventory report as with Prudhoe Bay next week’s nos. cannot be expected to be much better.

[truecougarblue]

I brought my stops up close on the up market this morning and got stopped out of my miners with a handsome profit on the month.

I'll be looking to short in the next few days. The market seemed to yawn at the fed pause yesterday and I see trouble with a capital T coming down the lane.