Oil Spikes Yikes!!!!

January 2, 2008

Once again happy New Year!

First I want to apologize for the slow turn around this last 10 days for P&L’s or anything else you asked me to look into. I have been a bit overwhelmed by year end demands and been slowed down with technical problems with my internet service. I am playing catch up for the next couple of days.

Oil spikes but looks like some profit and loss taking got pushed from 2007 to 2008. I am not sure it really means anything more than there is a lot of tax driven transactions or perhaps a warning of things to come.

For the beginning of 2008 the market looks to offer more of the same. Energy, Agriculture And Global Construction look to continue to dominate, the key to 2008 looks to be when will the financials come clean and turn around and my guess is a lot of money will be made in financials once this happens but at this point and I know I was late to the party on” sub prime” I think there may be more bad news to come. Several major regional banks are have trouble raising capital and as I warned in my previous post I have become concerned about a spill over into the Muni bond Market. Perhaps a clue to the bottom in financials will be when Citibank cuts its dividend or some shot gun weddings arranged by the FDIC or SPIC.

Another issue that cropped up once again was the preponderance of high priced stocks to out perform there lowre priced brethren . The effect being a huge distoration and lots of volitility for returns in smaller accounts and huge advantages in larger accounts.