TOTALINVESTOR

Monday, December 27, 2010

Trader Holds $3 Billion of Copper in London

As commodity prices soar to new records, the ability of a few traders to hold huge swaths of the world's stockpiles is coming under scrutiny.

The latest example is in the copper market, where a single trader has reported it owns 80%-90% of the copper sitting in London Metal Exchange warehouses, equal to about half of the world's exchange-registered copper stockpile and worth about $3 billion.

The report coincided with copper prices reaching record highs Tuesday. Commodities prices rallied along with stocks. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 55.03 points, or 0.5%, to 11533.16, its highest level since August 2008. Crude oil jumped to its highest level in more than two years and topped $90 a barrel in late electronic trading in New York. Corn and soybeans rose amid worries about hot weather in Argentina. (more)

Royal Nickel (RNX): Little Inco prepares to take flight

Royal Nickel, a company led by a group of former Inco executives, is working to cash in on rising commodity prices by developing a large nickel project near Amos, Quebec.

The Inco boys are back!

Three years after the venerable Canadian nickel mining giant was swallowed by Vale SA (NYSE: VALE, Stock Forum) of Brazil, a group of former Inco executives are working to cash in on rising commodity prices by developing the Dumont nickel deposit in Quebec, at a projected cost of around $2 billion.

This effort is being led by Scott Hand, the 68-year-old ex Inco chief executive officer, who two years ago agreed to become executive chairman of Royal Nickel Corp.(TSX: T.RNX, Stock Forum), the Toronto company that owns 100% of the project.

He is working with a management team that includes former Inco marketing vice-president Peter Goudie, and Tyler Michelson, who was a vice-president and business strategist at Inco.

Mitchelson is now President and chief executive officer at Royal Nickel, which recently raised $45 million from an initial public offering that will be used to finance metallurgical test work and mine feasibility studies.

On December 24, 2010, the stock was trading at $2.09, giving Royal Nickel a market cap of 175.5 million based on 84 million shares outstanding.

"We do have a couple of former Falconbridge people there too," said Hand, referring to the fact that Alger St-Jean, a former senior geologist at Falconbridge, is now vice-president of exploration at Royal Nickel. Falconbridge was Canada's second largest nickel miner, behind Inco, before it was acquired by Xstrata PLC in 2006. (more)

US Economic Calendar for the Week

Date	Time (ET)	Statistic	For	Actual	Briefing Forecast	Market Expects	Prior	Revised From
Dec 28	9:00 AM	Case-Shiller 20-city Index	Oct	-	-0.2%	NA	0.59%	-
Dec 28	10:00 AM	Consumer Confidence	Dec	-	56.0	56.1	54.1	-
Dec 29	7:00 AM	MBA Mortgage Applications	12/24	-	NA	NA	-18.6%	-
Dec 29	10:30 AM	Crude Inventories	12/25	-	NA	NA	-5.33M	-
Dec 30	8:30 AM	Initial Claims	12/25	-	415K	416K	420K	-
Dec 30	8:30 AM	Continuing Claims	12/18	-	4000K	4030K	4064K	-
Dec 30	9:45 AM	Chicago PMI	Dec	-	61.5	62.5	62.5	-
Dec 30	10:00 AM	Pending Home Sales	Nov	-	-3.0%	-1.8%	10.4%	-

Saturday, December 25, 2010

Construction In China Fuels Commodities Investing

2010 has been quite the year for commodities. No doubt you’ve seen the various headlines about soaring gold prices. You may have even seen how higher wheat and corn prices are impacting the price of groceries.

From a big picture perspective, the iPath Dow Jones-UBS Commodity Index ETN (DJP) is up almost 13% year to date. DJP holds a basket of 19 commodities weighted on market prices.

But DJP doesn’t do justice to the year we’re seeing in commodities.

In fact, a handful of individual commodities are having unbelievable years. Cotton is the year’s biggest winner, up a ridiculous 104% year to date. Some other headline grabbers are silver, up an amazing 74%, and corn, up a stellar 46%.

And those are just some of the flashy winners. There are over 15 major commodities with greater than 20% gains this year! That’s crazy.

No matter how you look at it, it’s been an incredible year for commodity investors.

Here’s the thing…

We’re just scratching the surface of where commodities can go. (more)

HES Radio: World Financial Report

The World Financial Report brings you timely information on the worlds most exciting markets like oil, precious metals, currencies, commodities and hard money markets like very rare color diamonds and collectibles. The World Financial Report makes predictions and gives investment advice and has been very successful in identifying trends in the marketplace.

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John Taylor Says To Play The Coming End Of The Global Reliquification By Shorting Australia

In his weekly headline letter John Taylor analyzes where he and Jim Chanos have overlapping views, and where both of them erred (hint: everyone underestimated the willingness of Bernanke to sacrifice monetary prudence in order to reflate anything and everything, although with oil now the latest and greatest excess liquidity target, the experiment may soon be ending). Yet the time of the global reliquification may be coming to an end: "If the Republicans play rough and California craters, fiscal tightening will be the rule, US rates will be higher than Bernanke wants, the dollar will be strong, and foreign markets will be hurt. The odds favor an outcome like this, and the Fed is not free to ride to the rescue again. With Ron Paul riding hard over Bernanke, the Feds wild ways will be corralled. With fewer excess dollars, the growth game, and the markets that follow it, are over." So is shorting stocks the best bet? Yes. But an even better one is going short the Aussies: "The Aussie was over USD 1.0000 today and we think it is a great sell here." (more)