drbubb

If so, the helpful winds at the back of the U.S. equity markets from 1983-1999 could turn into headwinds as household equity participation essentially flatlines (or worse) in the years to come. No doubt these statistics were on the minds of Wall Streeters when they pushed for privatization of Social Security in recent years to allow more Americans to play the markets with their SS funds. Without new players coming into the casino, the U.S. equity markets will have to make do with the players already in the market. Another potential headwind is the fact that, while Americans over the age of 35 have continued to play the markets at more or less equivalent levels since 1999, those under 35 have reduced exposure. For example, 41% of these younger citizens had stock market exposure in 1999 while only 36% had exposure in 2005, for a 12% decline in participation over seven years. Is this reluctance on the part of younger Americans due to a hangover from the 50% SPX decline in 2000-2002 or are these younger folks simply unable, from a financial perspective, to generate enough excess savings to invest a stake in the markets? Again, hard to say. Yet another potential headwind in the years to come is the fact that the U.S. population, like so many developed nations, is aging rapidly. Historically speaking, the older you get, the less exposure you want to have to volatile, non-income-producing asset classes. The rationale for this is obvious: once retired, you need to count on investment income since you don’t have wages to depend on. In addition, a severe, even brief, market swoon, could take years to recover from, as we have seen from 2000-2007. The percentage of the U.S. over-65 population is expected to grow 67% over the next 25 years (from 12% in 2000 to 20% in 2030), while the percentage of the 20-64 population is expected to shrink by 9% over the same period (from 59% in 2000 to 54% in 2007.) So when you consider that the growth rate of household equity participation is flat, younger Americans are actually reducing exposure, and demographics will be increasingly unkind in the decades to come, it’s easy to see how the U.S. equity markets could suffer as a consequence. ...more: http://wallstreetexaminer.com/blogs/wheeler/?p=178

NATGAS -shows relative strength Oil stocks slide on weaker crude, downgrades SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Oil stocks fell at the open Monday, weighed down by lower crude oil prices and several broker downgrades. In early action, the Amex Oil Index ($XOI : 1,245.58+2.99+0.24%) was off 0.5% and the Philadelphia Oil Service Index ($OSX : 220.69+0.86+0.39%) was down 0.2%. Standard & Poor's downgraded Tesoro (TSO) and Lehman issued valuation downgrades on Murphy Oil Co. (MUR : 53.33-0.54-1.00% ) and Hess Corp. (HES ) . The Amex Natural Gas Index ($XNG : 489.39+3.41+0.70%) bucked the trend, advancing 0.4%. May crude-oil futures were down 81 cents at $63.47 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

New link: GEIbb, just below the Global Edge logo This will take you through to: http://www.GEIbb.com : have a look ! This is a speedy way to get to GlobalEdgeInvestors , and it is also I place where you will find links to many websites visited regularly by GEI members Anyone use this page? If so, what other links should be added?

Rikki, I agree with BP, be careful about assuming it is easy to make a living from this game. We are all prone to winning and losing streaks, and neither kind lasts forever- that much i have learned. I have been making good money for some years now, but that is mainly due to a bull market in commodities, and the favorable economics of the private placement game, where i big part of my capital is at work. I am delighted to read you are learning plenty, but i dont want people to have unrealistic ideas about the trading game. I think this is a particularly dangerous year, and i am looking to keep a 7-figure sum in cash, or reasonably bullet-proof investments. My recent property investments in HK, are also part of a diversification drive, as i strat to think more about wealth protection, and not just wealth enhancement. I'm also starting develop some charity ideas, which is part of a desire to "give back" something.

a nice scalp trade

one to watch in Burkino Faso is AIM Resources: chart uk:AIMR - a good way to play zinc they will be listing in Canada, and that may help the stock price, since AIM "has indigestion" right now. BK is one of the "good countries" in black Africa. Very poor, but little corruption. Botswanna is another. And Zambia and South Africa can be okay too.

many good links are now available at the top of: http://www.GEIbb.com :: "the quick and easy way into GEI"

i think silver will tend to move with gold. there remains an annual draw on silver inventories, i believe

what is that worm character? an alien? i think it would be difficult to communicate with insects- they are like robots, and rely on instincts, making them poor companions

Some of the U-stocks got it hard yesterday. This may be the start of the correction that I have been looking for. But I will wait a couple of weeks before putting the score at: Bubb-1 , Dines-0

Alternative energy goes after investor dollars Executives tell big investors the cost of producing power in the sector is dropping. By Steve Hargreaves, CNNMoney.com staff writer ... February 21 2007: NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Executives from some of the world's leading alternative energy companies argued their case to big investors Wednesday, outlining why money thrown into the red-hot sector will pay off. Much of the rationale centered around costs, which leaders of renewable energy firms contend are dropping at a breakneck clip. "We need to make sure solar is becoming cost effective compared to other energy sources," Erik Thorsen, president of the Norwegian solar firm Renewable Energy Corporation told the crowd at Piper Jaffray's second annual conference on investor opportunities in alternative energy. Thorsen said the company planned to cut silicon costs by 70 percent by 2010 by using less silicon in solar energy devices, combined with higher efficiency solar cells. Silicon costs have been a major hurdle to developing solar power, as the price of the material, which is also used in computer chips, has soared in recent years due to skyrocketing demand. California-based Applied Materials (Charts), which makes semiconductor production equipment and recently moved into making equipment for manufacturing solar power cells, also outlined strategies to reduce production costs. Applied Materials presented a solar panel design four times larger than current panels, basically something the size of a large garage door. The company said the design would save up to four times on costs associated with framing and connecting a solar set-up. Sunpower Corporation (Charts), also based in California, said it was looking at shaving 30 percent off installation costs, partly by designing solar panels that take the place of normal construction materials, like roofing tiles. Sunpower's executive, Tom Werner, also pointed to the massive potential of the electricity market, which he said was valued at over $1 trillion annually, and that the company is poised to take an ever larger share of that pie with each corresponding drop in solar's price. "The upside opportunity here is fantastic," said Werner. While there may be tremendous opportunity in investing in alternative energy companies, investors should always understand that the companies are often new and small, and can therefore be very volatile. Take ethanol darling Verasun (Charts), which debuted last summer at over $30 a share, quickly lost half it's value, rose to near $30 again, and now trades at $15. Among larger companies at Wednesday's conference, DuPont (Charts) outlined its emerging bio program, saying it is nearly ready to introduce a plant-based material that can replace petroleum-based plastics in things like carpet fiber, molded parts and packaging. John Ranieri, general manager of the company's bio-based materials division, said DuPont is also big in developing organisms that create ethanol or butanol, that later of which he said could be more promising than ethanol for certain fuels because it has a higher energy yield. In response to a question about when cellulosic ethanol might be cost effective, Ranieri said that "by 2010 we'll be looking at commercial possibilities." Piper Jaffray, a Minneapolis based investment bank, organized the conference to bring together what a spokeswoman said were top companies and the bank's clients, which include mutual funds, hedge funds, and other institutional investors. Other publicly traded companies presenting at the conference included MEMC Electronic Materials, Energy Conversion Devices, First Solar, Metabolix, Nova Biosource Fuels, The Andersons, Beacon power Corporation, Akeena Solar, Canadian Solar, Fuel Cell Energy, Active Power, Ormat Technologies, EMCORE Corporation, Medis Technologies, Suntech Power Holdings, Evergreen Solar, Active power, Altair Nanotechnologies, Ultralife Batteries, SatCon Technology Corporation, Power Integrations, Power-One, Spire Corporation and American Superconductor Corporation. @: http://money.cnn.com/2007/02/21/news/compa...oney_topstories

Weekly Wizards: Online Gaming Plays in China Wednesday, February 21, 2007 By Weekly Wizards Click here for StockHouse Conflicts and Disclosure Policy Q&A with David Riedel, China Investment Opportunities Q: What do investors need to know about China? A: China continues to offer some of the most compelling investment opportunities in the world. Obviously they have economic growth and demographics on their side. Those are all old stories. But what investors need to be thinking abut today is the performance of the Chinese domestic markets over the last year. Over the past five years the Chinese domestic markets underperformed, and were actually flat to down in four of the last five years. That all changed in 2006, when the domestic market Shenzhen was up 97% for the year and the Shanghai market was up 130%, among the fastest growing major markets in the world. Q: What happened to change the performance of the Chinese domestic markets? A: What happened was government changes in the regulations regarding the tradability of major state-owned organization. It's a little convoluted, but what happened was shares that were registered in the name of the government in major companies in China were allowed to be more liquid and allowed to trade. That dramatically increased the liquidity in the market and sent a signal to Chinese domestic investors that the government was supporting stock market investment and trying to make the stock market a more attractive place for people to park their money. The result has been that the domestic market has really taken off. My analysts in Shanghai have reported that you can't turn around without getting a stock tip from a waiter or a taxi driver. Individual investors are reported to have opened an estimated 50,000 retail brokerage accounts a day during December. So clearly these people are showing up to the domestic markets in force. Q: Is the market overheated? A: Well, that certainly is a lot of growth to take place in a very short amount of time. Currently, the PE in Shanghai is 31times for the market, and Shenzhen is 32 times. Many of the companies that are listed domestically are not entirely proven in terms of their transparency and in terms of compliance with regulation and so forth. So I would be a little bit weary of that kind of blind optimism that is taking place in China today domestically. In the China Investment Opportunities newsletter, we talk about Chinese stocks that are listed here in the United States - either directly listed, like Baidu.com (NASDAQ: BIDU), or listed as ADRs (American Depository Receipts). These are much higher-quality companies than the ones we're talking about in Shanghai and Shenzhen. So when we talk investment opportunities in China, we're one step removed from this bubble that's developed in the Shanghai and the Shenzhen markets. That's not to say we're going to be completely immune. I think if we're expecting a 15-20% correction in the domestic markets, which would actually just be giving back what they've gained in 2007 year-to-date, that would have a knock-on effect on the valuations of some of these U.S.-listed China stories. Q: How should investors respond to this trend? A: I think what investors need to be thinking about in China today is what sectors they want to be exposed to, and then get to know these companies and buy into them when the opportunities present themselves. Some of the sectors we really like remain the technology sector; the consumer sector, which taps into that very strong demographic demand that we have; and the industrial sector. Q: That's a wide swath. A: Yes, but it leaves out some important things like financial services, and we are quite wary of the Chinese banks at this point. The government has shown a lot of stomach to recapitalize these banks, and obviously the international markets have taken a shine to both banks and insurance companies. We think there are still a lot of legacy problems in the financial services industry in China, and we don't think it's a good play on the continued growth there. The reason we focus on technology is these are nascent business opportunities that are being implemented in China in a very accelerated way. Like the growth of the Internet in the U.S., which took a little bit longer in terms of people catching onto it and understanding what its attributes were and how it would work into their lives, in these developing economies like China those lessons learned in the developed world can be applied and you can have very rapid growth in these markets. Online gaming, for example, developed in South Korea, and now it is being applied to China in an accelerated fashion. Q: What companies should investors keep an eye on? A: I'll highlight two of the recent stories we've recently talked about in China Investment Opportunities, both of them in the tech sector. The first is CDC Corp. (NASDAQ: CHINA), commonly referred to as Chinadotcom. This company has a base business of providing enterprise software packages to small and mid-size companies. Off that base they have built a very aggressively growing online gaming business. Online gaming is a huge business in China, where you can have at any one time more than 1 million people online playing a particular video game. Often these are fantasy dungeons-and-dragons-type video games where people have characters moving through various challenges and accumulating points and power and wealth and so forth. Massive multi-player online gaming is well known to investors through companies such as Netease.com (NASDAQ: NTES), listed here in the U.S., and also Shanda Interactive Entertainment (NASDAQ: SNDA), which we'll talk about in a second. But Chinadotcom's gaming operation was the pioneer in a slightly different approach to the business. Their approach is called free-to-play. That means it doesn't cost you anything to go online and start to play this game, but if you want your character to progress you go to a virtual store where you actually purchase items that will make your character more powerful and more likely to win the various competitions and challenges that it faces, and you spend real money in this virtual store. So the business model is not so much a price of admission, but an investment you make to being successful. This was a South Korean model which has been tremendously profitable and successful there. It had not been implemented in China until CDC brought it there. And it's been hugely successful. They've actually been taking market share from some of the other players, and really changing the game in terms of online gaming. So what's happening with CDC is that they're in the process of splitting the company into two pieces. There is going to be one piece, which is just a software business, which is a good, profitable solid business for them, and the other one which is this faster-growing gaming business. Q: What is the potential upside? A: We think that if you look at the value of the company split into its two pieces, it's almost 50% higher than the stock price today. So, investors in CDC stand to benefit from this splitting of the company into these two component pieces and the recognition by the market of the true value of this tremendous gaming operation. The second company is Shanda Interactive, previously mentioned. They are one of China's leading online gaming companies, and they have recently moved toward this free-to-play model. The stock was a severe disappointment over the past two to three years as the company became distracted by a hardware initiative where they were rolling out a consumer electronics product that was a brain center for home entertainment, where you would connect your gaming console, DVD player, TV, and Internet, and it would be a hub for home entertainment. That was a failed business strategy and luckily the company is turning away from it, and you've started to see the stock react. It's moved from around 15 to 22, and we think it's got a lot further to go as people realize the value of this change in their gaming business more along the lines of Chinadotcom, toward this free-to-play. The company recently reported very strong results, and the market reacted well, but we think there's still very good upside from where we are today in Shanda. Q: What about the bubble in the domestic markets impacting these stocks? A: Those two names are a little bit separate from the domestically listed lower-quality stocks that have participated in this Shanghai and Shenzhen bubble in the market that's developing. We're hoping that the secular growth these companies are enjoying offsets the impact of a potential correction in China. But we encourage investors to get to know these names, and other names in China which we'll continue to highlight in China Investment Opportunities, and look for their buying opportunities if there is a correction in China, because we continue to believe that China offers the best investment opportunity in the world today. David Riedel does not have a position in stocks mentioned in this article. David's newsletter, China Investment Opportunities, is being offered on our AdviceTrade site starting March 1. If interested in learning more about the newsletter, please email us at info@advicetrade.com. Fluent in Chinese and Thai, David Riedel has been active in Southeast Asian equities since 1992, including eight years with Salomon Smith Barney as a telecom analyst in Thailand and small-cap analyst in New York. He now runs New York City-based Riedel Research Group specializing in Asian equity research for institutions. Starting March 1, David will begin offering his new China Investment Opportunities newsletter through our AdviceTrade site. Email us at info@advicetrade.com if interested in learning more about the China newsletter. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Weekly Wizards is a weekly column courtesy of AdviceTrade.com, publisher of online investment newsletters by leading Wall Street wizards. For more of AdviceTrade's Wizards, please visit our website at www.advicetrade.com. @: http://www.stockhouse.com/shfn/editorial.asp?edtID=19352

(from KE-Report): Sarah Nunnally of Material Profits reminds us in Segment 3: http://www.kereport.com/audio/0217-03.mp3 that there's still money to be made with the right investments in coal and its technologies. + Transition to Coal-to-Liquids technology + May make the US more self-sufficient in transportation fuel (67-70% imported now) + US wasnt focussed on this problem because it long had access to cheap oil + creation is carbon intensive- but the ultimate fuel is clean COAL producers may benefit from this trend

let us know what the reaction is

MARK SKOUSEN IS KEEN ON... Coal Stocks: Surging Worldwide Energy Demand To Fuel Coal Profits in 2007 Based on current production levels, oil reserves will last another 41 years, and gas reserves will last another 65 years. That is, of course, if supplies remain uninterrupted in the Middle East and Russia, which produce 68% of the world’s oil and 67% of the world’s gas. Coal supplies, on the other hand, are a much different story… Right now, coal reserves total more than a trillion tons worldwide, which could last almost 155 years. In the U.S., there are roughly 267 billion tons of recoverable coal – enough to fuel the country’s energy demands for 240 years! It’s no surprise, then, that profits at the world’s leading coal producers are on fire… To get this complete coal stocks report, simply sign up for the free Investment U e-Letter from best-selling financial author Dr. Mark Skousen. The report will arrive in your e-mail inbox in no more than 10 minutes... Absolutely FREE. ...@: http://www.investmentu.net/ppc/t4coal.cfm?kw=X300GC03

Excerpt: "As mentioned in the last newsletter (for November), results from Carotare at that time had not been encouraging. Since then we have completed Carotare West, a visually impressive structure with alteration, gold, and silver but our intersections have not demonstrated enough gold and silver to be economic. The same can be said for the south structure at Carotare East. After the excellent start when the first 28 holes in 2005 generated a resource of 240,000 gold-equivalent ounces this has been disappointing. Similarly, although we have intersected mineralized structures, early drilling at El Orito Norte has not provided much excitement yet. Drilling on the main structure continues and we will evaluate progress with each batch of results." Let's see if JP lightens up on this news

kimber has gone weak i wonder of jim p. is bailing out

Greensaver Technology Corp. ...a Zhejiang based storage battery company has secured a $20 million investment from SAIF Partners, an Asian private equity firm, according to the National Business Daily. Established in 1999, Greeensaver claims to be the world's only Silicone storage battery maker. Compared with conventional lead acid batteries, Silicone batteries are less corrosive, and more environmentally friendly. The company says its products have been adopted in industrial sectors such as the automotive and railway sectors, and it is trying to tap the demand in the wind and solar energy sectors. Greensaver will use the funding to expand its production capacity and boost its sales to $70 million by the year's end, compared to 2006 sales, which totalled several millions. (China Business Weekly, Feb.12-18, page 4: VC/SME page)

FLORIDA - Is it still the LAND OF OPPORTUNITY ? == The Best way to speculate on Florida Property? : Is it St.Joe Company (JOE) ? == JOE / The St. Joe Company ... All-data : 5-yrs : 2-yrs : 6mos / 10-d : $19.25 at 10/6/17 at (vs $17.10 at 3/6/2017) St Joe together with its subsidiaries, operates as a real estate development company in Florida. The company operates in four segments: Residential Real Estate, Commercial Real Estate, Rural Land Sales, and Forestry. The Residential Real Estate segment develops mixed-use resort, and seasonal and primary residential communities. It also focuses on selling undeveloped land to third-party developers or investors. This segment serves individual purchasers, as well as national, regional, and local homebuilders. The Commercial Real Estate segment develops and sells real estate primarily for commercial and light industrial uses. The Rural Land Sales segment markets parcels for rural recreational, conservation, and timberland uses. The Forestry segment grows, harvests, and sells timber and wood fiber; and provides land management services for conservation properties. As of December 31, 2009, the company owned approximately 577,000 acres of land concentrated primarily in northwest Florida, as well as approximately 405,000 acres in the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. It has a strategic alliance with Southwest Airlines Co. to facilitate the commencement of low-fare air service to the northwest Florida's new international airport. The St. Joe Company was founded in 1936 and is based in Jacksonville, Florida. Back in Feb.2007, I was seeing comments like this one: NOW is the time to buy!*" "Real estate booming in Miami and Florida is over, but the opportunity to make money in real estate is not over. The current market is oriented to buyers’ advantage with financial incentives never seen before and sellers more willing to negotiate home prices. Reaction: THE ARRIVAL of a Buyer's Market, does not mean it is the time to buy, unless it is your objective to generate commissions for the Realtor. WE NEED to wait for: + A substantial fall in prices (at least 20-30% from the highs- probably more), + A much bigger drop in the dollar, making property cheaper relative Pounds, Euros, or Gold, + The slowing of newly built properties flooding into the market, + Some substantial absorbtion of the excess supply These factors should take at minimum 2-3 years, and so I do not see a good buying window until 2009-2010, at the earliest. (That's for the physical property market.) Here's a great bellwether for Florida property - the largest landowner in the state (?): St.Joe (JOE) ... update-2006-8 : weekly : daily Daily chart - a nice downwards channel in place Notice how JOE bottomed right ON the 200mo.MA ! IMHO, we havent seen the Low yet. But it is not too early to start monitoring the market, and to see where are the good sources of information. And some of the property stocks may bottom months, or even a year before the physical property market. On this thread, I will be collecting articles and links which relate to opportunities in Florida & to St.Joe. - - *Note: the above comment was from the Home page of the website, but if you dig deeper, you will find this: "The correct selling price of a home is the highest price that the market will bear. To assist you in determining the correct asking price we provide you with a comprehensive market analysis of comparable properties sold and offered for sale in your neighborhood." (This comment makes it absolutely clear, that the website is not designed to find opportunties in favor of the buyers - thanks for the lightly vailed honesty!) ===== LINKS: Florida Home Investor : http://www.flahomeinvestor.com/ St.Joe charts thread... : http://www.advfn.com/cmn/fbb/thread.php3?id=16069173 St.Joe website .......... : http://ir.joe.com/index.cfm

That usual February dip is when the oil co's run down excess inventories, not needed after the winter, and when demand falls during "refinery turnarounds" (ie shutting them down for 1-2 weeks and retooling them to produce gasoline rather than heating oil) Once the february dip is out of the way, crude flies Get some cheap oilies, in these next 2-3 weeks

That usual February dip is when the oil co's run down excess inventories, not needed after the winter, and when demand falls during "refinery turnarounds" (ie shutting them down for 1-2 weeks and retooling them to produce gasoline rather than heating oil) Once the february dip is out of the way, crude flies Get some cheap oilies, in these next 2-3 weeks

"I would strongly recommend my broker but he is in Australia and only plays the Aussie sharemarket" Please mention your broker's firm, if you think that is appropriate. Alternatively, will you take emails from GEI members about this?

hi tom, welcome to the website. here's my set-up: + I have an account in the uk, which i use infrequently, + i have funds abroad with more than two brokers. my most active account is with a canadian broker based in Vancouver (canaccord), and it is almost entirely invested in resource companies, + i rarely do trades under C$5-6,000 because the brokers minimum trade makes those inefficient. My commissions are not cheap, but i get great service, and occasional good ideas- which in my mind, covers the higher commission cost. + over half of my investments started as private placements, and i typically invest a minimum of c$25,000 in a pp. the most recent ones i did included: el nino (ELN.V at $0.40), capital gold (CGLD at US$0.30), and alto ventures (ATV.v at $0.10) + in order to participate in a canadian pp, you need to be an "accredited investor" meeting certain networth or income tests. I typically hear about pp's from the company directly, through certain IR professionals that I know, or through friends (it helps to have a "network", and getting involved on GEI is a good way to start building one.) + i also buy stocks in the secondary market, and have recently been buying: golden china (GCX below $1.10), Vangold (VAN.v in the low $0.40's), Tumi (TM.v) below $0.55, and some freetrading ELN. + a few weeks ago, i was buying "tax bargain" (see that thread), and teh best performers so far have been GNG.v, WGP.v, and a tiddler TPBV.

chart, GEX.L ... update it has come up a long way since it relisted. what are those odd spikes in volume caused by?

(From Prof. Dan Nocera's talk - see MIT interview): Energy Requirement for our Planet Each person : 100 watt lightbulb, needs powering 12.8 trillion watts, measured per time ENERGY USE: 2050: 28 kerawatts 2006: 10 kerawatts differ: 18 kerawatts, to be found (But that need assumes current living standards and rising population, if the world goes to US living, it is 102 kerawatts, 90 needed- that's impossible) Possible sources: crops...: 7 kerawatts, if we stop growing food, and grow only energy nuclear: 8 kerawatts from 8,000 new plants (1 giga-each) wind....: 2 kerawatts from windpower covering all the land surface The real answer, long term: The Sun: 800 kerawatts on land mass