asiablues's blog

It is inevitable that when you have a market run up like we have had recently driven mostly by liquidity and the Santa Claus Rally, many stocks would see pullbacks in the New Year. These are just five of such candidates that I believe capable of some meaningful downside risk.

China has been ranked as the top growing country among the G20 since 2001 and is expected to retain that title for at least another five years. However, the news coming out of China for the past three months has not been good.

Just in time for Christmas, On Wednesday, Dec. 22, U.S. gasoline prices hit an average $3 a gallon for the first time in more than two years, according to AAA's Daily Fuel Gauge Report. Meanwhile, U.S. stocks and oil also climbed to the highest levels since 2008.

James Bullard, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis was on CNBC Monday, December 20, 2010 mostly defending the Fed’s QE2. What struck me as totally self-contradictory were some of Bullard’s statements regarding the QE2, and inflation, which I will outline and rebuff here.

It has been a literal power struggle for the past few months between Dynegy, Inc. (DNY) and its investors. The climax came on Wed. Dec. 15 when Dynegy said it accepted a buyout offer of $665 million, excluding debt, from Carl Icahn.

The Getty Oil takeover battle between Texaco and Pennzoil was probably one of the ugliest in Wall Street's history. Here is a rare video of Carl Icahn recounting the event.

When a corporate partnership deal turns sour, it has every bit of the drama as a high profile Hollywood celebrity divorce. The verbal clashes between Starbucks (SBUX) and Kraft (KFT) have been escalating over the past month or so. Then, on Monday Dec. 6, Kraft took the fight to court seeking an injunction to stop Starbucks from unwinding a 12-year partnership.

A new study forecast 1.3 million white collar professional jobs could be offshored by 2014. This offshoring tsunami, a stubborn U.S. labor market, plus QE3, which has proven ineffective at job creations, are brewing a perfect storm for stagflation.

I posted this before Mr. Bernanke's interview on 60 Minutes was aired on CBS. However, it provides a different perspective about the dynamics among inflaion, jobs, and QE to counter views from the ivory tower of Mr. Bernanke's. RBOB went up 45 cents since Aug., is the fear of inflation really overstated?

CNBC last week quoted an HSBC analyst's note pointing out that California California currently consumes more crude oil than China. It is hard for me to fathom California even belongs in the same sentence with China on any economic measures, and decided to do some research.

Netflix stock has really taken off since 2008 –up 800% in two years. Piper Jaffray raised target to $202 as the company is now setting sight on the streaming video business. Here is my take on this classic momentum stock.

Natural gas has long been touted as a cleaner alternative because natural gas releases about half as much of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide as coal does. However, a new research by Dr. Robert Howarth at Cornell University says otherwise.

Natural gas posted the first weekly increase this month in the week of Nov. 14, on forecasts of colder than normal temperatures. However, the unprecedented inventory level means LNG could be the only exciting aspect of the natgas marekt in the meduim term.

This presentation outlines some of my observations about the G20 (a colossal waste of time), the U.S. dollar policy (to weaken, not to crash) and the related investing strategy.

It seems the panic time for both green enthusiasts and peak oil pundits.
According to a new research paper, it would take 131 years for replacement of gasoline and diesel, but world's oil could run dry almost a century before that.