Last Thursday, China roiled the oil market, announcing it would raise gas and diesel prices by about 46 cents per gallon in order to reduce demand. In a matter of minutes, oil prices skidded lower. Before you knew it, America's TV news and finance channels were all over the story. They asked the burning question, "Will higher prices and lower demand in China kill this great bull market in oil?" And they presented a seemingly endless parade of oil bears and stock bulls who almost unanimously proclaimed that oil prices were about to crater. I hope those experts can live with disappointment, because by Friday morning, investors were buying the pullback like crazy and the oil price was already recovering nicely. Why? Well for one thing, savvy oil investors know that this price ...

If you overlay the natural gas stocks over the coal stocks, it's the identical pattern since last Thursday, only with about half the gains... still some very nice moves for 3 days of work. Since my natural gas stake (3 positions, about 6%) is smaller than coal I am not taking any profits here, but once again just remember this the next time the 'early cycle', 'it will all be fine' folks start clucking. Let's compare Fannie Mae (FNM) to Cimarex Energy (XEC) Now, in the most recent period people were so fearful of financials that any news saying they won't be bankrupt was CHEERED - huge writeoffs? Better than expected! Take the stock up!... equity dilution? At least it's not out of business! Take the stock up! - but at some point the longer this goes (and it won't reverse in a quarter or two like many would have you ...

The individual names do not matter at this point so I am going to just consider this mini basket to be "1 position". Last Thursday as the chickens were running around with their heads cut off about the "strong dollar", I was incrementally adding to my coal stakes [May 1: Incrementally Beginning to Add to Coal] so today I am simply reversing those purchases plus taking out some Alpha Natural Resources (ANR). Let's look at them as a group since that is how I look at these 4 names - I had a 10% weighting going into day with Arch Coal (ACI), Massey Energy (MEE), ANR, and Consol Energy (CNX) They have come a long way in just a few days ACI from $53s to $62s (+17%) MEE from $48s to $57s (+19%) ANR from $46s to $58s (+26%) CNX from $75s to $89s (+19%) Please note I did not buy at the lows Thursday, ...