Here are the stocks I’m watching lately, supported by votes of confidence from the guest analysts brought in lately on BNN:

Arc Energy Trust - (AET.UN-T): $28-29
Crescent Point Energy - (CPU.UN-T): $33-34
Husky Energy - (HSE-T): $43-44
Freehold Royalty Trust - (FRU.UN-T): $21-22
Diana Shipping - (DSX-N): $28-29

Interesting that most of them are oil plays. Oil per barrel is really cheap right now, and that means all the oil stocks are on sale. I really want to take the opportunity to buy some up, but with limited cash, I can either do this or put some more money in US stocks for increasing my US cashflow (since most US stocks are superbly on sale right now, too). Not sure which decision to take.

The Loonie could be falling again if oil stays low. In that case I’d better buy my US stocks now while I don’t lose money in the exchange rate. On the other hand, because oil is low right now, all the great Canadian energy plays are on sale too.

Hmmm…. what would you do? If you’re Canadian, or living/working in Canada, how are you planning to take advantage or protect the recent highs of the Loonie?

This is an open question to all of you.  I haven’t thought about this in a while, but I was recently reminded of it and noticed that we haven’t heard much in the way of updates on the Iranian oil bourse.

The last I heard, a few months ago, was that Iran successfully opened the euro-denominated oil-trading bourse in a limited fashion on some small island in the Gulf.  That was this year.  What’s happened since then?  Can anyone corroborate this information?

What’s the Iranian Oil Bourse?

Apparently, Iran (and, as some speculators thought, also Iraq at one point pre-March-2003) has been planning for some time now (since at least before the latest war in Iraq) to trade oil in euros rather than dollars.  The rationale behind the attention this story attracts is that presumably, if traded in euros, oil-traders would have less need to keep any US dollars in their foreign reserves.  Instead they would load up on euros for their oil-trading and they would drop the dollars they don’t need.

Once countries start selling their US dollars, it’s a problem for the US Treasury because there would be less people keeping the US debt-boat afloat.  It’s no secret that the US owes the rest of the world more than the rest of the world owes the US.  That debt is growing at an alarming rate.  The US borrows something like a billion dollars a day just to pay interest on all of its foreign loans.  I’d say you can look this information up and verify it yourself, but alas, they have stopped publishing M3, which is the figure that represents the sum total of all US dollars in existence.

Whether or not this has anything to do with the US interest in Iraq and Iran is beside the point, for now.  It’s a much better idea to just stay tuned to developments in the oil bourse itself.  So, send them my way if you have hard updates.  This isn’t a story that seems to be followed in North American media very well.

Here’s one of Jim Rogers’ latest interviews with Bloomberg (June 5, 2008). I always smile at these. He seems so annoyed and frustrated at talking with journalists and reporters. It’s as though he feels that it’s all so common sense - of course you should know that bankruptcies are signs of bottoms and that means it’s a good time to be buying into the airline industry!:) Betty gets him riled up about all the usual suspects: the Fed, Bernanke, the banks, what he’s shorting, commodities, food, gold, Soros, oil and more commodities.

“If People are Talking About a Bubble, I’d Like to Know What They’re Talking About… Sugar’s down 80% from its All-time High - What Kind of Bubble is that?”

I’m actually surprised that he does go into so much detail on all the stocks he owns and what he’s short and how much etc. on national broadcast. Betty even asks him if he’s short on Lehman Brothers. Turns out he’s short all of them through his investment bank ETF.