Top of the World
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- Published on Thursday, 03 May 2012 08:00
- Written by Andrew Snyder, Editorial Director, Inside Investing Daily
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We pull out of Toronto and set our sights on Vegas. There's no time to relax when things are changing this fast.
Obama went to Kabul. We went to the top of the world. He campaigned. And we enjoyed cocktails 1,136 feet above the ground.
While the leader of the free world celebrated the death of a tyrant in a country with a growing disdain for America (can you blame 'em?), we celebrated the flat-out success of our Natural Resource Investing Summit at the top of Toronto's famed CN Tower with a few dozen of our Millionaire's Circle members.
I included a shot of Small Cap Insider editor Ryan Cole acting like he wasn't nervous staring at a 114-story void between us and the concrete.
Like I said, our summit was a great success. But it's over.
I'm back home and the rest of the team is gathering their things and will follow my footsteps later today.
It's time to look forward.
And thanks to our great political leaders, we've got plenty to look forward to. Or more aptly... plenty of reasons not to like what we see when we rub our crystal ball.
Our conference wrapped up less than 12 hours ago. A normal person would do something to clear his brain of the haze of four days spent in the basement of a century-old hotel.
Yet I'm already looking forward to our next event... in Vegas.
You see, the theme of what we will home in on in Sin City is something that has all of us concerned. Just about everybody I talked to in Toronto mentioned the theme in some form or another.
It's the idea of a New America.
I mentioned it yesterday. But it's something we'll focus tightly on over the next four months. If we don't, we'll get chewed up by a government gone wild.
We'll get swallowed by a raging bond bubble.
We will get digested by the tricks and tactics of the banksters at the helm of this market.
And we will get, well, "deposited" by the shadowy wealth destruction of a fiat currency turned upside down.
In the New America, the consumer is not the king. He is a pawn.
We already see it.
The government manipulates data. It gives free money to the banks. And through closed-door meetings that will never see the light of day... it sorts the winners from the losers.
It is all meant to steer the herd in the "right" direction.
But we're not buying it. We certainly aren't going to take it. And from what I saw over the past four days... neither are a lot of pissed-off investors.
That is why Vegas is going to be so intriguing. We've already got a team of insiders assembled to show you how to navigate what's ahead. And even better, we'll look at the various ways to make the "new normal" work in your favor.
I don't like what is happening. It is sad. The newspaper reads like a book of horrors these days.
But that's OK.
Every horror flick has its heroes.
Editor's Note: In the 1980s, with the U.S. market crashing, one brilliant investor made a killing. In the 1990s, while the British pound was collapsing, another savvy investor took advantage of crisis opportunity to make a fortune in one week. And in the 2000s, when the mortgage bubble was bursting, a certain hedge fund manager pocketed a hefty sum. Now another economic crisis is looming. This could be your lucky decade. Go here to find out why.
Chart of the Day: A Slight Reprieve During Your Road Trip
By Adam English, Associate Editor, Inside Investing Daily
We are only a couple short months away from the summer vacation season and North American consumers may have just had a lucky break. At least our losing streak isn't perfect...
Sunoco announced it would extend the deadline for the shutdown of its Philadelphia refinery to August while it tries to seal the deal on a joint venture with Carlyle Group. The private equity firm is showing serious interest in the 330,000-barrels-per-day refinery.
The cost of light crude oil has been creeping up since a protracted correction in mid-to-late 2011. Oil bulls were already salivating due to the announced closure of three unprofitable refineries in Pennsylvania.
Deep cuts in refining capacity looked like they would offset weak demand. Add in tight oil supplies, especially in the gas-guzzling Northeast, and there seemed to be tons of room for a rally in gasoline prices.
Unfortunately for oil bulls, higher prices have pushed the supply-and-demand equation further than they anticipated. Higher refinery margins caused a mini gas output boom. When coupled with weak demand from European nations slipping into double-dip recessions and sluggish demand in the U.S., a short-term cap appears to be forming for oil prices.
Unfortunately for us, the long-term problems with Northeast refineries will not end any time soon. They depend on increasingly high margins from expensive crude oil to exist. Our infrastructure is built around these refineries and it'll be painfully expensive to bring enough gasoline into New England and the Mid-Atlantic states when they are shuttered.
Carlyle Group certainly isn't going to be in it for the long haul either. The private equity firm is undoubtedly betting that domestic demand will pick up and deliver a nice profit when they exit the position and any intense capital investment is required to keep the refinery operational.
At least for the next couple months, we can take a road trip without bearing the full brunt of the high prices that will come.
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