“Work eight hours and sleep eight hours and make sure that they are not the same hours.”

– T. Boone Pickens

Inflation can do tricky things to markets. It creates distortions. In those distortions, an intrepid investor can find some big moneymaking ideas. I think we’ve got one opening up in oil and gas, and it is not without precedent in financial markets. In fact, it’s starting to look a little like the tail end of the 1970s in some respects.

In the spring of 1969, the Dow Jones industrial average stood at 969. By 1982, the Dow hit 1,071. That’s thirteen years of going nowhere. (We’ve had 10 years or so of going nowhere, though the ride between the poles has been anything but boring).

The problem is inflation makes that performance

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The first few days of the week have been characterized by a fresh wave of risk aversion as uncertainty over the global economic outlook took its toll on stock markets and investors favored safe-haven assets such as government bonds, the US dollar and Japanese yen. However, yesterday brought some relief for risky assets - now in corrective mode - and it remains to be seen whether the S&P 500 Index will close down for a fourth consecutive week as the US earnings season gets on the way.

The usual debate on the outlook for the economy and financial markets dominated the video channels over the past few days, but interesting snippets on the IMF’s improved forecast for the global economy, the viability of the Public-Private Investment Program (PPIP), the US dollar’s role as reserve currency, the prospects for the earnings-reporting season and President Obama’s visit to Russia were also

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Some interesting news as Boone Pickens continues to put pressure on Washington to come up with an energy plan. a href="http://www.pickensplan.com/news/2009/07/08/nat-gas-bill-introduced-in-the-us-senate/"Legislation is now being discussed/a about a bill to promote use of vehicles that run on cleaner burning natural gas.br /br /ulliU.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Senators Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Robert Menendez (D-NJ) were joined today by energy-independence advocate T. Boone Pickens to tout new legislation that would boost vehicles that run on clean natural gas. The NAT GAS Act, introduced today by Menendez and co-sponsored by Reid and Hatch, would extend and increase tax credits for natural gas vehicles and refueling./li/ulpspan style="text-decoration: underline;"strongBackground on legislation/strong/span /p div class="entry"liExpands and modify the alternative fueled vehicle and refueling property tax credits as follows:/li blockquote liMakes all dedicated natural gas-fueled vehicles eligible for a credit equal to 80% of the vehicle’s incremental cost. Only some dedicated natural ...

I had briefly owned some a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=ung"UNG/a a couple of weeks ago. Missed most of that move, but am not feeling too bad now as its come back below where I originally bought. The supply numbers came in higher than expected, and UNG has sold off pretty hard. I like UNG going forward, but its going to take some time. There is no legit uptick in demand, and no sign of supply easing yet. The rise in price the past couple of weeks appeared to be purely speculation on the part of traders. What are the long-term catalysts for natural gas?br /br /-It's cleaner burning than other fossil fuels. In some circles it gets touted as a "clean fuel", although drilling isn't necessarily good for the environment.br /br /-It's domestic. Although worldwide production is been growing, the U.S. has access to a ...

h1 style="text-align: center;"bPaulson amp; Co Holdingsbr //b/h1h2 style="text-align: center;"bspan class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);"Paulson amp; Co 13F Holdings Analysis | Q3 2008br //span/b/h2This post on Paulson and Co is being written as part of HedgeFundBlogger.com's a alt="Hedge Funds and Investment Securities" title="Investment Securities Holdings" description="Investment securities analysis 13F holdings" href="http://richard-wilson.blogspot.com/2008/09/investment-securities-and-holdings-of.html"Investment Securities Tool/a which analyzes the holdings of hedge fund managers.Please click on the pictures below each section to view the securities held along with their values and current share holdings as of Paulson and Co.'s Q3 2008 filing:br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"Security Holdings Changes 1 of 3 (Click Image to View)/spanbr /a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_wM_OZdOMR_Y/ST6sny29uYI/AAAAAAAACoY/pt3BxIP51Mk/s1600-h/Paulson+and+co-1+of+3.JPG"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 220px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_wM_OZdOMR_Y/ST6sny29uYI/AAAAAAAACoY/pt3BxIP51Mk/s400/Paulson+and+co-1+of+3.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5277845612991986050" border="0" //aspan style="font-weight: bold;"Security Holdings Changes 2 of 3 (Click Image to View)/spanbr /a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_wM_OZdOMR_Y/ST6stJWOltI/AAAAAAAACog/rpMlrrrMGPU/s1600-h/Paulson+and+co-2+of+3.JPG"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; ...

h1 style="text-align: center;"bViking Global Investors/b/h1h2 style="text-align: center;"bspan class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);"Viking Global Investors LP Q3 2008 13F Holdingsbr //span/b/h2br /This post is being written as part of HedgeFundBlogger.com's a alt="Hedge Funds and Investment Securities" title="Investment Securities Holdings" description="Investment securities analysis 13F holdings" href="http://richard-wilson.blogspot.com/2008/09/investment-securities-and-holdings-of.html"Investment Securities Tool/a which analyzes the holdings of hedge fund managers.Please click on the pictures below each section to view the securities held along with their values and current share holdings as of Viking's Q3 2008 filing:br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"Added More Since Last 13F Filing (click image to view)br //spana onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_wM_OZdOMR_Y/ST6mX8gQS2I/AAAAAAAACno/dFKOvogV1TQ/s1600-h/Viking-Global-Investors-Added+More.JPG"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 220px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_wM_OZdOMR_Y/ST6mX8gQS2I/AAAAAAAACno/dFKOvogV1TQ/s400/Viking-Global-Investors-Added+More.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5277838743633415010" border="0" //aspan style="font-weight: bold;"New Holdings (1 of 3)/span span style="font-weight: bold;"(click image to view)/spanbr /a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_wM_OZdOMR_Y/ST6liHVebiI/AAAAAAAACnA/leNCGjSHd20/s1600-h/Viking-Global-Investors--New+Holding1.JPG"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 274px; height: 169px;" ...

Link FestHedge Fund Link FestIn case you have been reading up on bank failures and bail outs all week and missed much of the news on the hedge fund industry here is a link fest out to many of the events which recently occurred in the industry:Citadel, TPG-Axon Stumble Toward Worst Year in Hedge-Fund SwoonBloomberg - USA19, the worst first nine months of a year since Chicago-based Hedge Fund Research Inc. started tracking the data in 1990. Investment gains are being ... Worth Interviews Hedge Fund Guru David EinhornMarketWatch - USAIn the case of Lehman Brothers, one of those short sellers is David Einhorn, the head of hedge fund Greenlight Capital. Last May Einhorn stated publicly ... ...

BP Capital ManagementBP Capital Management | Boon Pickens HoldingsThis post is being written as part of HedgeFundBlogger.com's Investment Securities Tool which analyzes the holdings of hedge fund managers.With all the commotion surrounding energy these days, it never hurts to track an energy focused hedge fund ran by none other than Boone Pickens. If you are unfamiliar with Pickens, he is an energy maverick and his fund returned 300% in 2005. He is a big advocate of Peak Oil Theory and runs an energy-centric hedge fund based in Dallas, Texas. Although he typically holds numerous positions in oil, he is also big on alternative energy (except ethanol) and has numerous holdings there as well. He most recently advocated a large natural gas position and has additionally made a big bet on ...

The quest for performance sometimes drives a rapid shift from one market sector to another.  This can come from major hedge fund reallocations, but also due to marginal changes from large mutual funds.  Our TCA-ETF model shows us the direction of these moves by capturing recent trends.  It also includes some sectors that we expect to return to favor on a cyclical basis. Even for those not interested in trading based upon a sector program, looking at the changes in ratings paints a picture of overall market interest and activity.  Based upon a reader's suggestion (Thanks, TT!) we recently added a "prior week" rating to our report.  It is interesting information. This week we see that the most favored sectors have moved quite rapidly from much lower positions.  This reflects a decline in some recent high rankings, as well as recent strength ...

There’s nobody like an investment banker to deliver yesterday’s news tomorrow, and charge you dearly for it. Goldman Sachs have turned bullish on the dollar, while Merrill Lynch are calling crude oil down to $80. If bandwagon jumping was an Olympic sport, these guys would have more gold medals than Michael Phelps. After pumping up the commodity and Euro bubbles all year, a whiff of a bear market and they shamelessly perform a high speed U-turn. Even more amusing is the sudden discovery by the CFTC, which bent over backwards to convince Congress that oil prices were set by fundamentals, that they underestimated the share of trading accounted for by financial speculators. You don’t say. If a canny operator like Boone Pickens has lost $2bn in a month on oil futures, the odds of another Amaranth Advisors style blowup are worryingly high over coming weeks …