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Dines on Marketwatch

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Dines still glowing over nuclear energy Commentary: But veteran editor cautions about uranium price manipulation By Peter Brimelow, MarketWatch Turbulent times, but a colorful veteran is sticking to his nuclear guns. I called The Dines Letter's James Dines "probably the most arrogant, egotistical, aggressive and abrasive of all the investment letter editors monitored by the Hulbert Financial Digest" when I named him our latest "Investment Letter of the Year". See Jan. 1 column Dines has been around many years and has a lot of scars (and scarred subscribers) to prove it. But what counts are the Hulbert Financial Digest's numbers. And Dines' numbers right now are excellent. Dines is up 31.33% over the past 12 months, vs. 16.49% for the dividend-reinvested Dow Jones Wilshire 5000. Over five years, he's up 32.56% annualized vs. 29.11% for the total-return DJ Wilshire. Even more remarkably, over the past 10 years, he's up 18.78% annualized vs. 6.52% for the DJ Wilshire. Dines still publishes on a monthly schedule, so his latest comments came out before the (ahem) excitement. Sponsored by: It's a shock to realize that we are still in that range. Dines has done very well recently in uranium. See May 17 column His bigger concern in his recent issue: Do recent setbacks mean that the uranium boom is bursting? Dines' answer is a typically emphatic no. He wrote: "The majority cannot believe the age of oil is ending, so they don't see it. Nothing new there. But crude oil (which had just reached a new high) will drag the whole energy sector higher in its message from the marketplace. Brazil's pilots and air-traffic controllers for years have warned about the short and slippery runway at Congonhas airport in Sao Paolo, but the latest crash and deaths of nearly 200 people finally got the airport closed - warnings don't seem to work anywhere these days." Dines is searingly contemptuous about the notion that corn-based ethanol might be a solution, and in fact is anything more than a political racket: "We have not the slightest doubt that, while renewables will make a minor contribution, serious energy usage will have to be nuclear power splitting water to produce pure hydrogen and oxygen that will produce carbon-free energy, and it is only a question of how stubborn humanity will be in its belief systems." Dines did offer an interesting caveat: "There could be a crash in the price of uranium, perhaps instigated by the American government dumping its holdings on the market as it conspires with nuclear-plant operators to lower the cost of electricity for the public and thus gain votes. That might well be what is happening right now ... the American government has announced the sale of 520,000 pounds of U3O8." But he added: "We doubt that this cause of uranium weakness will last much longer. How come? Because we have witnessed government's central banks dumping their gold and silver holdings in the past, yet those precious metals kept moving up, so we are skeptical that America has enough uranium to seriously "break" its bull market." Dines said he envisaged "A broad trading range ensuing as markets attempted to balance buyers and sellers." The idea that the authorities are manipulating markets seems to be increasingly discussed. See June 13 column For the record, Dines remains a long-term gold bull.