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September 5, 2009
There were some positive comments out of K+S this week, one of the potash producers who has in the past most vocally negative. K+S, you will remember, was the first potash producer to cave in on price, reducing their price to European customers from $750/t to $600/t back in April. Norbert Steiner, the CEO of K+S, believes that demand will pick up in 2010, and also noted that distributor...
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August 31, 2009
It being August, it was a slow week for news. Probably the most interesting points came from the fertilizer sector, where, on the one hand, Don Carson of UBS issued some bearish comments and downgraded the fertilizer stocks to hold, and on the more bullish end of things, Merrill Lynch provided a comment that potash imports into Brazil would be much higher in the second half, that distributors...
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82 Reads
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August 30, 2009
After not having made a trade in a couple weeks, I made a number of them this week, reducing my positions in MET coal further, adding a couple of oil names, and adding back a portion of my previously sold down copper exposure.There was an interesting article on the Gregor blog this week discussing the demise of the Cantarell field in Mexico. The decline rates of Cantarell over the past couple...
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August 24, 2009
This week's list of clippings that I have accumulated. Describes economic news and in particular, news on commodities.Coking Coal Many of the mines were closed due to a spate of mining accidents. This meant Chinese imports of coking coal, mostly from Australia, surged to about 4.6 million tonnes in June 2009, up about 50% from May 2009...But now Australian coal miners are nervous...
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88 Reads
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August 23, 2009
I didn't make any trades this last week. I had hoped that the collapse on Monday would show more follow-through, upon which I would have bought back some of the copper and coal stocks that I had sold. But it did not, and the stocks that I had sold the week before (QUA, TKO, WTN, GCE, TCK) ended the week only a little lower then when I had sold them.I am questioning whether it was a mistake to...
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41 Reads
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August 16, 2009
I sold a lot of stock this last week. I sold completely out of my positions in Taseko and Quadra, and I reduced my positions in Grande Cache, Western Canadian Coal, and Teck by half. The move has been straight up for these stocks, and the fundamentals of the economy, while improving, are still too weak in my opinion to justify further price increases.With these trades I now have a cash...
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71 Reads
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August 9, 2009
With everyone focusing on whether or not the US is recovering, less attention is being given to the recovery in China. Yet take a look at the cars sales in China this week. Up 70% yoy. Forget cash for clunkers, the Chinese have real demand for vehicles that dwarfs the effects of American stimulus. I will have more to say on this shortly.Still, it feels like this rally is liquidity driven...
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August 3, 2009
There was an article in the Australian this weekend about Chinese coking coal mine restarts. Met coal prices are on the rise, and the Chinese are not going to pay through the nose what they can produce locally. The mines were closed mostly for their environmental and worker safety record. I have no doubt that if the price is high enough they will find ways of either improving such records...