Perhaps the easiest way to profit from higher oil prices is to buy shares of the largest energy firms in the world. These companies are referred to as “integrated” oil and gas firms, which stems from the fact that they are involved in just about every facet of… Read More

Dear Investor, On Sept. 30, 2010, I told you about what could be the biggest profit opportunity of the next few years. The investments I recommended have already started moving: they’re up 25%, 34% and 56% in just four months. Read More

Five weeks into 2011, and investors are looking at their first bona fide bubble of 2011. All that money sloshing around global markets, led by the Federal Reserve’s massive easing policy, was bound to start igniting various speculative asset classes. Gold surely looked frothy in 2010, and in 2011, it’s copper that’s looking bubble-icious.     You have to take a 15-year look at copper prices to understand just how crazy the current market looks. For a decade up until 2005, copper usually traded for $75 to $100 a pound. That price reflected a nice equilibrium… Read More

Five weeks into 2011, and investors are looking at their first bona fide bubble of 2011. All that money sloshing around global markets, led by the Federal Reserve’s massive easing policy, was bound to start igniting various speculative asset classes. Gold surely looked frothy in 2010, and in 2011, it’s copper that’s looking bubble-icious.     You have to take a 15-year look at copper prices to understand just how crazy the current market looks. For a decade up until 2005, copper usually traded for $75 to $100 a pound. That price reflected a nice equilibrium between supply and demand. It was also a period of steadily declining output of copper, as second-tier and third-tier mines were hard-pressed to make money. China changed the whole dynamic. As its economy started to take off during the past decade, demand for copper, which is used in many industrial and construction applications, soared, pushing prices up above the $300 mark in 2006, 2007 and 2008. Although copper prices eventually cooled, China learned its lesson. The next time copper prices took off, China would have ample supplies on hand to draw upon… Read More

Policy planners in Washington just caught a big break. They’ve been repeatedly trying to prod China to strengthen its currency — to no avail — but larger economic forces may yield the same benefit. Prices are starting to bubble up in China and, if you connect the dots, you can start to see myriad benefits for the U.S. economy and U.S. stocks. A slow build The Chinese economy has been able to grow at a rapid clip for more than a decade without any price pressures — a feat that is… Read More

Policy planners in Washington just caught a big break. They’ve been repeatedly trying to prod China to strengthen its currency — to no avail — but larger economic forces may yield the same benefit. Prices are starting to bubble up in China and, if you connect the dots, you can start to see myriad benefits for the U.S. economy and U.S. stocks. A slow build The Chinese economy has been able to grow at a rapid clip for more than a decade without any price pressures — a feat that is largely unparalleled in the modern era. Not anymore. Inflation in China started to perk up in 2010 and finished the year at a peak, with inflation now running close to 5%. (The official figure released by the Chinese government is a bit lower, while analysts at HSBC in Hong Kong think it’s a bit higher than that rate). The reasons for rising inflation are pretty straightforward and can be explained by the notion of “capacity utilization.” As is the case with any industry, prices remain stable as long as producers have excess production capacity. Read More

To make money in stocks, you need to tie together various threads of information to see what it might mean for your investments. Right now, a pair of disparate data points has caught my attention: rising oil prices and a trio of unloved stocks that may really benefit from it. Read More

The world is undergoing a frantic search for new sources of oil. The reason is simple: World-wide oil supply is dwindling while demand is soaring. The planet is estimated to have 1.3 trillion barrels of proven reserves — only enough for 40 years at current consumption rates. Read More

Want a peek at this summer’s headlines? Then just watch the action in the oil market. The price of oil has been rising steadily for nearly two years, and it’s coming close to the point of inflicting real pain on many businesses. If current trends continue, we may be talking about $4 for a gallon of gasoline by spring, and surging home heating oil costs later in the year. In many respects, the United States can tolerate $70 oil, or even $90 oil. But at $100 or even $110, so many companies will start speaking of profit-margin… Read More

Want a peek at this summer’s headlines? Then just watch the action in the oil market. The price of oil has been rising steadily for nearly two years, and it’s coming close to the point of inflicting real pain on many businesses. If current trends continue, we may be talking about $4 for a gallon of gasoline by spring, and surging home heating oil costs later in the year. In many respects, the United States can tolerate $70 oil, or even $90 oil. But at $100 or even $110, so many companies will start speaking of profit-margin pressures. And profit margins are the key factor behind many strategists’ forecasts for continued stock market gains in 2011. This is why you should be worried, even if you don’t own oil stocks in your portfolio. Up until now, stocks have been rallying in tandem with oil prices. That’s quite unusual. We’ve been in a rare period where rising economic activity has been good for both assets. Yet if history is any guide, further oil price spikes will tend to deflate stock prices. Here are three stocks in particular that simply cannot… Read More

For years, physical gold and gold miners traded in tandem. You’d expect the companies that make a living mining gold would move along with the price of the metal. And that’s what happened for a long time… until the market tanked in 2008. Since then, gold and gold miners have had a strange relationship. Investors love gold right now. They see a safe-haven; a tangible commodity you can hold, covet, even hoard. But people were scared away from equities during the crash, sending shares of gold miners… Read More

For years, physical gold and gold miners traded in tandem. You’d expect the companies that make a living mining gold would move along with the price of the metal. And that’s what happened for a long time… until the market tanked in 2008. Since then, gold and gold miners have had a strange relationship. Investors love gold right now. They see a safe-haven; a tangible commodity you can hold, covet, even hoard. But people were scared away from equities during the crash, sending shares of gold miners down much further than gold prices. And while many miners have rebounded nicely (even outperforming physical gold recently), it looks like investors have yet to completely warm back up to the companies that actually pull gold out of the ground. It’s one of the reasons you can actually buy the gold reserves held by miners for pennies on the dollar. [See: “How to Buy Gold for Only $159 an Ounce”] The chart below shows the performance of the SPDR Gold Shares ETF (NYSE: GLD) compared to the Market Vectors… Read More

If you want to invest in the top hedge funds — such as from George Soros, Carl Icahn, Bill Ackman or John Paulson — you will need to write a big check. A minimum investment can easily be $10 million — that is, even if you are allowed… Read More

When you think about ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM), you think of oil. A steady focus on “black gold” has enabled the company to become the most valuable company on the planet. But with oil prices steadily rising and natural gas prices flat-lined during the past year, it may surprise you that… Read More