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85Hokie

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Anyone else taking a Wicked beating on their Mutual Funds? :mad:

Wish I had money to lose in a Mutual Fund! :p:eek:
Must be tied to oil, as some are losing a little bit of their profits.
 

Daren Todd

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Still showing around +1.5% on mine as well. Down from 3.5% 6 months ago, but at least it isn't losing.
 

skeets

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Im still trying to get out of the Dot.com bubble burst. The guy that was doing the investment sold everything before it popped, never bothered telling anyone else what he figured was going to happen,, prick:mad:
 

cerlawson

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As to losing money with mutual funds, you don't say much about the circumstances. A lot depends on the buying ans selling activity and when. and if it was via Morgan Stanley, that will explain it.
 

D2Cat

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Interesting how we all are glad when fuel prices drop. Somehow we don't like it when investment drop. Aren't they generally tied together some how?
 

CaveCreekRay

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Word is, a shed-load of US banks have derivatives linked to the price of oil. If it goes below $60, you are going to see a ton of bank failures. And don't count on the FDIC to cover everyone. Expect more consolidations. Remember 2008? Its coming back -and soon. And worse.

This entire economy is rigged. The Market, the price of metals, oil, most commodities, all manipulated. When the house of cards comes down, its going to hammer nearly everyone.

Keep a few silver coins under your mattress. It may come in handy some day.
 

Daren Todd

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Im still trying to get out of the Dot.com bubble burst. The guy that was doing the investment sold everything before it popped, never bothered telling anyone else what he figured was going to happen,, prick:mad:
I had a lot of friends who got hammered back in 2008 when it crashed. I got really lucky with my 401k. I happened to get my quarterly statement the day before, and didn't like what it was doing. Happened to go online that same night and switched everything to blue chips and extremely conservative plans. By noon the next day I was getting phone calls from friends who lost there shirts.
 

CaveCreekRay

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Daren,

I did the same thing after a friend called. He flew for a billionaire who warned him after a flight that the stock market was going to crash. I went all cash about two weeks before the drop. Pure luck.

If you can just hold on to what you have, you are ahead of 95% of the investors out there. This Ponzi scheme of robbing Peter to pay Paul so we can buy votes will not end well. The dollar is on a run simply because all the other fiat currencies are doing far worse. This will probably be the dollars final hurrah.

Google "Cloward and Piven." Our good president studied under these two at Columbia. If you wonder why it seems we are intentionally harming our country's future, that is exactly what they are doing. All in the name of politics. And many of those helping him are Republicans.
 

CaveCreekRay

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Posted By Michael Snyder On January 1, 2015
Zero Hedge


Who is to blame for the staggering collapse of the price of oil? Is it the Saudis? Is it the United States? Are Saudi Arabia and the U.S. government working together to hurt Russia? And if this oil war continues, how far will the price of oil end up falling in 2015?

As you will see below, some analysts believe that it could ultimately go below 20 dollars a barrel. If we see anything even close to that, the U.S. economy could lose millions of good paying jobs, billions of dollars of energy bonds could default and we could see trillions of dollars of derivatives related to the energy industry implode. The global financial system is already extremely vulnerable, and purposely causing the price of oil to crash is one of the most deflationary things that you could possibly do.

Whoever is behind this oil war is playing with fire, and by the end of this coming year the entire planet could be dealing with the consequences.

Ever since the price of oil started falling, people have been pointing fingers at the Saudis. And without a doubt, the Saudis have manipulated the price of oil before in order to achieve geopolitical goals. The following is an excerpt from a recent article by Andrew Topf…
We don’t have to look too far back in history to see Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter and producer, using the oil price to achieve its foreign policy objectives. In 1973, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat convinced Saudi King Faisal to cut production and raise prices, then to go as far as embargoing oil exports, all with the goal of punishing the United States for supporting Israel against the Arab states. It worked. The “oil price shock” quadrupled prices.

It happened again in 1986, when Saudi Arabia-led OPEC allowed prices to drop precipitously, and then in 1990, when the Saudis sent prices plummeting as a way of taking out Russia, which was seen as a threat to their oil supremacy. In 1998, they succeeded. When the oil price was halved from $25 to $12, Russia defaulted on its debt.

The Saudis and other OPEC members have, of course, used the oil price for the obverse effect, that is, suppressing production to keep prices artificially high and member states swimming in “petrodollars”. In 2008, oil peaked at $147 a barrel.

Turning to the current price drop, the Saudis and OPEC have a vested interest in taking out higher-cost competitors, such as US shale oil producers, who will certainly be hurt by the lower price. Even before the price drop, the Saudis were selling their oil to China at a discount. OPEC’s refusal on Nov. 27 to cut production seemed like the baldest evidence yet that the oil price drop was really an oil price war between Saudi Arabia and the US.
If the Saudis wanted to stabilize the price of oil, they could do that immediately by announcing a production cutback.

The fact that they have chosen not to do this says volumes.

In addition to wanting to harm U.S. shale producers, some believe that the Saudis are determined to crush Iran. This next excerpt comes from a recent Daily Mail article…
Above all, Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies see Iran — a bitter religious and political opponent — as their main regional adversary.

They know that Iran, dominated by the Shia Muslim sect, supports a resentful underclass of more than a million under-privileged and angry Shia people living in the gulf peninsula — a potential uprising waiting to happen against the Saudi regime.

The Saudis, who are overwhelmingly Sunni Muslims, also loathe the way Iran supports President Assad’s regime in Syria — with which the Iranians have a religious affiliation. They also know that Iran, its economy plagued by corruption and crippled by Western sanctions, desperately needs the oil price to rise. And they have no intention of helping out.

The fact is that the Saudis remain in a strong position because oil is cheap to produce there, and the country has such vast reserves. It can withstand a year — or three — of low oil prices.
There are others out there that are fully convinced that the Saudis and the U.S. are actually colluding to drive down the price of oil, and that their real goal is to destroy Russia.

In fact, Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro openly promoted this theory during a recent speech on Venezuelan national television…
“Did you know there’s an oil war? And the war has an objective: to destroy Russia,” he said in a speech to state businessmen carried live on state TV.

“It’s a strategically planned war … also aimed at Venezuela, to try and destroy our revolution and cause an economic collapse,” he added, accusing the United States of trying to flood the market with shale oil.
Venezuela and Russia, which both have fractious ties with Washington, are widely considered the nations hardest hit by the global oil price fall.
And as I discussed just the other day, Russian President Vladimir Putin seems to agree with this theory…
“We all see the lowering of oil prices. There’s lots of talk about what’s causing it. Could it be an agreement between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia to punish Iran and affect the economies of Russia and Venezuela? It could.”
Without a doubt, Obama wants to “punish” Russia for what has been going on in Ukraine. Going after oil is one of the best ways to do that. And if the U.S. shale industry gets hurt in the process, that is a bonus for the radical environmentalists in Obama’s administration.

There are yet others that see this oil war as being even more complicated.
Marin Katusa believes that this is actually a three-way war between OPEC, Russia and the United States…
“It’s a three-way oil war between OPEC, Russia and North American shale,” says Marin Katusa, author of “The Colder War,” and chief energy investment strategist at Casey Research.

Katusa doesn’t see production slowing in 2015: “We know that OPEC will not be cutting back production. They’re going to increase it. Russia has increased production to all-time highs.” With Russia and OPEC refusing to give up market share how will the shale industry compete?

Katusa thinks the longevity and staying power of the shale industry will keep it viable and profitable. “The versatility and the survivability of a lot of these shale producers will surprise people. I don’t see that the shale sector is going to collapse over night,” he says. Shale sweet spots like North Dakota’s Bakken region and Texas’ Eagle Ford area will help keep production levels up and output steady.
Whatever the true motivation for this oil war is, it does not appear that it is going to end any time soon.

And so that means that the price of oil is going to go lower.

How much lower?

One analyst recently told CNN that we could see the price of oil dip into the $30s next year…
Few saw the energy meltdown coming. Now that it’s here, industry analysts warn another move lower is possible as the momentum remains firmly to the downside.

“If this doesn’t hold, we could go back to price levels in late 2008 and early 2009 — down in the $30s. There’s no reason why it couldn’t happen,” said Darin Newsom, senior analyst at Telvent DTN.
Others are even more pessimistic. For instance, Jeremy Warner of the Sydney Morning Herald, who correctly predicted that the price of oil would fall below $80 this year, is now forecasting that the price of oil could fall all the way down to $20 next year…
Revisiting the past year’s predictions is, for most columnists a frequently humbling experience. The howlers tend to far outweigh the successes. Yet, for a change, I can genuinely claim to have got my main call for markets – that oil would sink to $US80 a barrel or less – spot on, and for the right reasons, too.

Just in case you think I’m making it up, this is what I said 12 months ago:

“My big prediction is for $US80 oil, from which much of the rest of my outlook for the coming year flows. It’s hard to overstate the significance of a much lower oil price – Brent at, say, $US80 a barrel, or perhaps lower still – yet this is a surprisingly likely prospect, the implications of which have been largely missed by mainstream economic forecasters.”

If on to a good thing, you might as well stick with it; so for the coming year, I’m doubling up on this forecast. Far from bouncing back to the post crisis “normal” of something over $US100 a barrel, as many oil traders seem to expect, my view is that the oil price will remain low for a long time, sinking to perhaps as little as $US20 a barrel over the coming year before recovering a little.
But even Warner’s chilling prediction is not the most bearish.

A technical analyst named Abigail Doolittle recently told CNBC that under a worst case scenario the price of oil could fall as low as $14 a barrel…
No one really saw 2014’s dramatic plunge in oil price coming, so it’s probably fair to say that any predictions about where it’s going from here fall somewhere between educated guesses and picking a number out of a hat.
In that light, it’s less than shocking to see one analyst making a case—albeit in a pure outlier sense—for a drop all the way below $14 a barrel.

Abigail Doolittle, who does business under the name Peak Theories Research, posits that current chart trends point to the possibility that crude has three downside target areas where it could find support—$44, $35 and the nightmare scenario of, yes, $13.65.
But the truth is that none of those scenarios need to happen in order for this oil war to absolutely devastate the U.S. economy and the U.S. financial system.

There is a very strong correlation between the price of oil and the performance of energy stocks and energy bonds. But over the past couple of weeks this correlation has been broken.

It is inevitable that at some point we will see energy stocks and energy bonds come back into line with the price of crude oil.

And it isn’t just energy stocks and bonds that we need to be concerned about. There is only one other time in all of history when the price of oil has crashed by more than 50 dollars in less than a year. That was in 2008 – just before the great financial crisis that erupted in the fall of that year. For much, much more on this, please see my previous article entitled “Guess What Happened The Last Time The Price Of Oil Crashed Like This?…”

Whether the price of oil crashed or not, we were already on the verge of massive financial troubles.

But the fact that the price of oil has collapsed makes all of our potential problems much, much worse.

As we enter 2015, keep an eye on energy stocks, energy bonds and listen for any mention of problems with derivatives. The next great financial crisis is right around the corner, but most people will never see it coming until they are blindsided by it.
 

Daren Todd

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Ray, it's strange with that article. I've heard from a couple reliable sources that they are supposed to expand production this year. Investing in more rigs and hiring to staff them. That means the support companies will have to grow as well to keep up.

I guess we're just gonna have to wait and see what happens. Who knows, maybe the USA is fixing to go self sufficient, and screw importing oil :confused:
 

85Hokie

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Ray, it's strange with that article. I've heard from a couple reliable sources that they are supposed to expand production this year. Investing in more rigs and hiring to staff them. That means the support companies will have to grow as well to keep up.

I guess we're just gonna have to wait and see what happens. Who knows, maybe the USA is fixing to go self sufficient, and screw importing oil :confused:

Good article - all very accurate too. My oldest son IS a geologist working in the north dakota oil fields, his "consulting firm" has frozen all new hires.....so there is a problem brewing.......

but lets look at this from a different view, as gas prices go down the american spender NOW has a chance to buy other goods, gas is down OVER 33% in the last 4 months......that money can be saved or spent....most people will spent it on something else - "helping" the economy.......we hope......

with american oil companies making 50+ billion, now that is a B ...in profits (remember that PROFIT is defined as money AFTER ALL bills are paid) over the last couple of years, they can take a little hit and hold on.

I think the arabs and others are trying to put the squeeze on the US and everyone else......

remember WE only BUY about 15 or less % of oil from the saudis ......

we are working harder to be self sufficient and cut the ties with them and they really dont like it ......

time will tell who what and when.

shame we cant buy gas and hold on to it......damn ethanol!!! :eek::eek:
 

CaveCreekRay

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A brilliant 5-step strategy

The Speculative Investor
December 30, 2014

Rescue major banks by transferring to them, through various channels, a few hundred billion dollars of taxpayers’ money.

Call this money transfer the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), because calling it the Bailout At Taxpayer Expense (BATE) program wouldn’t create the right impression.

Justify the money transfer by claiming that it is necessary to prevent a total financial collapse and massive losses to bank depositors, even though, in reality, bank deposits are not at risk and the financial system would actually be strengthened by allowing excessively indebted/leveraged financial institutions to go bust.

Implement monetary policies that, over the space of several years, effectively transfer trillions of dollars from savers and middle-class wage earners to the balance sheets of banks and other financial speculators.

When the banks, flush with the huge profits stemming from the carry-trade opportunities provided by many years of limitless access to near-zero-cost short-term credit, pay back the TARP money with a smidgen of interest, declare the whole exercise to be a resounding success for taxpayers and the economy.

It should be added that politically connected entities such as AIG, Merrill Lynch and even some foreign banks were assisted and allowed to continue business, albeit ML was rolled into Bank of America (very politically connected). However, it is speculated that Lehman Brothers was not bailed out because they declined to "fully participate" in the 1998 bailout of LTCM.

Gold and silver investors should also take note that because the Establishment's assertions that the 2008 bailouts were "successful," the creation of still more fiat money has become an accepted and endorsed means of solving financial and economic problems. The world is now experiencing massive money creation; massive price inflation will follow.
 

eddiebob

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Lots of good information. I work as a drilling engineer in the Deepwater Gulf of Mexico. We are not affected by the price of oil anything like the land drillers. Land drilling is already starting to take a pretty hard hit and will get a lot worse. And it is going to affect banks, the market, and many many people. Down here in the Deep South people can afford $3/gal gas and have trouble at $2/gal because of loss of work. I got very conservative in January of 2008 and made 5% and moved everything to conservative in October last year. It's coming, count on it! Ed B
 

cabu

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I do not use a lot of money to play. But the last years I made ~20% each year. I just look around where the big company play around. Companies like blackrock. Their impact is big enough to move the value. So where they play, the value goes up and down. I buy when its down and sell when it is 2% up. Even if its look like it will go higher, I sell and wait when it will be down again.
The trick is: Don't be greedy.
It works for me since 8 years and until now I nearly triple the money I started with.

BR carl
 

CaveCreekRay

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Oil Derivatives Explode in Early 2015-Rob Kirby

By Greg Hunter On January 4, 2015 In Market Analysis 194 Comments

By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com (Early Sunday Release)

Gold and derivatives expert Rob Kirby thinks crashing oil prices are going to lead to a 2008 style financial meltdown. This is not a maybe–a market explosion is going to happen in 2015. Kirby contends, “Oh yes, without a doubt, it will. It must because the income crude oil sales generate are used to pay the interest on the debt. . . . If you have a mortgage payment of $5,000 at the end of the month and you only have $2,500, you have defaulted. That is the position they are in right now. We just need to wait for some coupon dates to come and go because these guys won’t have the money. They don’t have the income.”

Kirby also thinks what is happening with oil prices being cut in half in a matter of months is no accident. Kirby explains, “I look at what is transpiring in the crude oil market as yet another engineered or financial trickery on the part of the financial elites.

What this breakdown in the crude oil price is going to spawn another financial crisis. It will be tied to the junk debt that has been issued to finance the shale oil plays in North America. It is reported to be in the area of half a trillion dollars worth of junk debt that is held largely on the books of large financial institutions in the western world. When these bonds start to fail, they will jeopardize the future of these financial institutions. I do believe that will be the signal for the Fed to come riding to the rescue with QE4. I also think QE4 is likely going to be accompanied by bank bail-ins because we all know all western world countries have adopted bail-in legislation in their most recent budgets. The financial elites are engineering the excuse for their next round of money printing . . . and they will be confiscating money out of savings accounts and pension accounts. That’s what I think is coming in the very near future.”

On the economy getting better and the upward revision to GDP of 5%, Kirby says, “The official data is inconsistent with what you can empirically observe going on in the economy. The economy isn’t doing well, and in addition to the economy not doing well, the U.S. government, for all intent and purposes, is insolvent. Why bonds would be rallying against a backdrop of an issuer that is insolvent is beyond anybody’s fundamental understanding, but fundamentals don’t count anymore in our markets. We don’t have markets anymore; we just have interventions. This financial engineering is all a hallmark of communism or central planning. Central planning has a track record of failing.”

On central banks, Kirby says you need to look beyond the Federal Reserve. Kirby says, “When you are looking at the extension of the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency . . . you need to look at the Fed, the Bank of Japan and the European Central Bank. One or the other has been printing since 2008. The Fed can say we are not printing for 6 or 8 months, but really, what they have done is pass the baton to the Bank of Japan who has been printing like hounds. They are printing fiendishly. All they have done is picked up where the Fed left off. As sure as God made little green apples, we are going to see in the very near future a made-in-America financial crisis regarding this shale oil junk debt. They are going to use that as an excuse for yet more money printing from the Fed. This is the path we are on, and it will continue to be the path we are on until the whole bloody mess collapses.”


Join Greg Hunter as he goes One-on-One with Rob Kirby of KirbyAnalytics.com.
(There is much more in the video interview.)