For mental health reasons, we hardly ever watch CNBC anymore. But glancing at it this afternoon, at one point we saw three separate live graphics displaying the price of crude oil. So much screen space was taken up by live oil trackers, there wasn’t enough space left to show the chart of whatever alternative energy company they were pumping.

Was oil making a new high today? Did the U.S. unilaterally attack another country?  Did someone accidentally double-park in the Strait of Hormuz?  No.

If you feel like it’s been impossible to get away from oil and oil-related stories for too many years to count, that’s because you’re right. The CXO blog has a nice report up on a momentum-based sector investing strategy, and as they explain, the primary reason the strategy massively outperforms the S&P over the

Joe Gutnick plans to list his Legend Mining in Australia. And THE AUSTRALIAN (News Corps orignal flagship newspaper) has taken his numbers at face as shown in this linked article.

Which leads to an interesting question: why bother paying stock shills USD2500 when the News Corp will take your adverts without payment?

The article of course makes it plain:

The company sees a local listing as logical, considering the operations will be based in Queensland.

But this would involve trading existing shares — there are no plans for any immediate capital raising here.

So Joe is going to flog existing shares in Legend to the Aussies. The $2500 stock shilling in my last post is the pump. The sale to Australian fund managers is – well a way of getting some cash into existing shareholder pockets.

Now Bronte Capital has always had the best interest of Australian Investors at heart. …

I have previously written about the proposed takeover of St George bank by Westpac. I think Westpac is crazy – somewhat ameliorated by the fact that they are paying stock.

But there is one aspect of that takeover which makes you wonder what the board is could possibly be thinking. I know (and like) the Chairman (Ted Evans) and am very puzzled by this. [First disclosure: when Ted Evans was Secretary of the Australian Treasury I used to work for him.]

The thing that puzzles me most is the CEOs conflict of interest.

Gail Kelly- the superstar CEO of Westpac – was previously the CEO of St George Bank. Yes that is right. Only a few months ago.

On the plus side she probably knows more about the strength and weakness of St George than anyone. However you can say that about every deluded bank CEO of the

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