A month later

Been a while since I last posted. This post is specifically dedicated to the person who encouraged me to continue posting in spite of the poor blog comment activity :)

The central issue confronting capital markets right now is the financials. I have tried bottom picking these and been burnt but at some point you have to wonder how low they can go. Sure FNM and FRE may not be the best of breed but believe me, IBN and HDB are not in the same boat as these.

And then there's oil. It's a scare trade right now. The only thing i can see is some near term weakness followed by another run up and then a collapse later in the year. Bubbles are meant to burst and don't believe anyone who tells you oil is not a bubble. Sure it's a supply demand problem more than speculation, but the supply is getting destroyed and more so, longer term perceptions are changing which will afftect the future curve of the oil price. So when oil again gets into backwardation (future price lower than near term price), there will be tremendous incentive for companies to dump oil. Other factors to consider

• Congress acting against speculators
• Iran/US reaching a deal on their nukes, Israel/Syria coming to a peace treaty, Nigerian rebels getting more oil profit share causing them to halt attacks
• Demand destruction
• $ appreciation

On the flip side, we have exactly opposites of the above and

• Hurricanes
• More fields going offline for other reasons

That's all for now folks. Now, please comment. Ask questions, post ideas, make this interactive instead of a monologue.