Howdy folks


It is that time of year when we all think about the great Goddess Lakshmi and hope she fills our homes and lives with good fortune.

As it is considered a good luck sign, many of us undertake to indulge in some 'shagun' ( good luck) investments.

Should you wish to invest in a mutual fund of high potential, may I be so bold as to suggest Excel India funds.You can invest in the growth of our home country and make money in the bargain.


Happy Diwali!

I actually bought the Excel Chindia fund abt 2 weeks ago. What is your opinion on its performance , say in the next 6months to 1 year.

Cheers
rsk

Thanks Investpro for your wishes,

Today is the first day i started investing in financial markets (ofcourse with the help fo some brokers).
crossed my fingers as just bought 2 lots of cruide oil, as the whole world is predicting will reach to $100barrel.

Let's hope for the best of all luck to all our CD's in their endevours.

happy Diwali :-)

rgds

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MK

Quote:

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Originally posted by mkannuri


crossed my fingers as just bought 2 lots of cruide oil, as the whole world is predicting will reach to $100barrel.

rgds

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I am a Gents and not a Ladies.

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MK

Quote:

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Originally posted by rsk12

I actually bought the Excel Chindia fund abt 2 weeks ago. What is your opinion on its performance , say in the next 6months to 1 year.

Cheers
rsk

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Get a load of the person's name Economides- like Euripedes or other Greek philosopher and his name starts with econo-
Stretch your imagination.


http://www.globeinvestor.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20071121.woil_v2_1121/GIStory/


Traders toy with $100 oil
JOHN PARTRIDGE


Wednesday, November 21, 2007

As the price of oil nudged closer to the $100 (U.S.) a barrel mark Wednesday, the Texas engineering professor who predicted more than three years ago that it would hit this then lofty target is looking for more.

“You want to know the headline that will get it up to $150? It's ‘Israel attacks Iran',” Michael Economides said in an early morning telephone interview from his office at the University of Houston.

“If al-Qaeda manages to disrupt Saudi oil production, and they have said it's in their cross-hairs, that's $170 oil,” he added “And stay tuned: it's only the beginning right now. I think we're in for oil shocks fed by geopolitical events any day.”

Prof. Economides made his remarks as the contract for oil for January delivery was changing hands at $98.08 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, having earlier hit a record $99.29.

By mid-day, the price had slipped back to $97.37, despite a report from the U.S. Department of Energy showing that crude inventories fell by 1.1-million barrels or 0.9 per cent last week, rather than rising by 700,000 barrels as analysts had forecast.

Prof. Economides, an engineer and oil production specialist, contends that the “equilibrium price” for oil, that is, the price accounted for by only micro-economic factors, is currently only about $50 a barrel.

The rest of it flows from geopolitical events and forces, and speculation that they generate, as “energy militants” such as the mullahs of Iran, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and, increasingly, Russia's Vladimir Putin, use their energy resources as political weapons, he said.

“We are the buyers [of oil] and they are the sellers, and the sellers don't think the buyers have enough of a stomach to be aggressive,” he said.

Prof. Economides is by no means the only oil expert who thinks crude prices have little to do with basic economics these days.

Oil analyst Fadel Gheit at Oppenheimer & Co. in New York dismisses the current environment as a bubble.

“It's a farce,” he said when reached at his office by telephone. “The speculators have seized control and it's basically a free-for-all, a global gambling hall, and it won't shut down unless and until responsible governments step in.”

Mr. Gheit sees the situation as a vicious cycle: the more bad economic news there is in the United States, the more likely the Federal Reserve Board is to cut interest rates, which in turn makes the U.S. dollar even weaker and further boosts the price of crude.

“The players have solved the riddle,” he said of the speculators. “They know what is coming next...so they can make a bet on that. It's almost like fixing the score in a sporting event.”

Another New York energy analyst, Tim Evans of Citigroup Global Markets Inc., said oil is taking on a life independent of the traditional supply and demand fundamentals, although he also said that the “laws of economics...have not been repealed” and in the long run will reassert themselves.

“We're not in a situation of tight inventories or imminent supply disruption here,” he said in an interview. “We're really being supported by things like the weaker U.S. dollar, the anticipation of lower interest rates and the general flow of buying in the futures and options market.”

Mr. Evans noted, for instance, that the International Energy Agency has reduced its energy demand forecast for the fourth quarter three times in recent months by a cumulative 910,000 barrels a day or about 1 per cent.

Prof. Economides did consulting work in pre-Chavez Venezuela and also was a senior adviser for five years to Russia's since dismantled OAO Yukos oil company, while it was being run by now imprisoned former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

He contended that the Mr. Chavez, Mr. Putin and the other energy militants have even more of a vested interested in keeping prices high than producing countries that are more friendly to the West, such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

“With $100 oil, Chavez and Putin are 1,000-pound gorillas, but even at $70, they are reduced to monkeys, because the price of oil is the essence of their economies and they have based their regimes on high oil prices,” he said.

He also dismissed as irrelevant refinery and other shutdowns that news reports sometimes cite as contributors to rising prices.

Still, Prof. Economides also shares the view that by some measures, oil is in fact less expensive than it was in the 1970s and 1980s, if the price is adjusted for both inflation and for the fact that, over all, the global economy is less energy intensive.

“In terms of Btus per dollar of GDP, we use about 40 per cent of what we did in 1973, when we had the Arab oil embargo,” he said.

Adjusting for this and inflation, oil would have to reach $142 to top the previous inflation-adjusted high of $84.73 it hit in March 1981 after Iran cut oil exports.