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By Anthony J. Alfidi |
December 18, 2012
Driving along a mining stock's S-curve is a little bit like driving a coastal highway. It can be thrilling and nail-biting. The difference is that the highway's curves are defined on a map but the stock's valuation curve always changes.
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By Anthony J. Alfidi |
November 28, 2012
The San Francisco Hard Assets Investment Conference is my favorite trade show ever. It was different this year with the exhibitors split between two levels at the Marriott Marquis but the seminars and workshops were phenomenal.
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By Anthony J. Alfidi |
October 12, 2012
The historically normal boom-bust model is giving way to its once-in-a-lifetime deformed cousin, the hyperinflationary depression crisis. An overindulgence in government, business, and household debt is driving the Fed to quantitatively ease away the dollar's value.
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By Anthony J. Alfidi |
August 7, 2012
I can attribute some of my portfolio's success to the avoidance of asset bubbles. If I had been invested in any of the crazes that hit the markets since the mid-'90s I'd be in a world of hurt. Fortunately I don't follow crowds.
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By Anthony J. Alfidi |
July 24, 2012
Nevada Geothermal Power is at risk of going out of business, according to its own auditors. A federal loan guarantee of $98.5M was for naught. The company will hold an emergency shareholder meeting today to discuss recapitalization and de-listing from the OTC exchange.
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By Anthony J. Alfidi |
March 29, 2012
Investors who think that buying a hedge fund will give them outsize returns need to subtract the two-and-twenty premium to calculate the impossibly large long-term alpha the fund will have to generate just to beat the tiny long-term beta of an ETF.
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By Anthony J. Alfidi |
March 28, 2012
The panel on automotive tech and grid storage made it clear that there will be no shortage of lithium to meet the world's needs, which is one reason why the Li-Ion battery market is expected to consolidate into a smaller number of manufacturers.
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By Anthony J. Alfidi |
March 14, 2012
Molycorp has been consistently ahead of the game in rare earth metal production. They were first to see the potential in reactivation of the old Mountain Pass rare earth motherlode. Now they're the first REE producer to move toward large-scale vertical integration.
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By Anthony J. Alfidi |
March 12, 2012
Individual clients of bankrupt commodities brokerage MF Global can take some cold comfort in the news that big corporations also got their pockets picked. Major corporations that used futures to hedge commodity prices comprised a fifth of the client funds that "vaporized."
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By Anthony J. Alfidi |
March 5, 2012
The Fed may not have much choice but to accommodate banks' desires to continue holding commodities, even if they are restricted in trading them. Think of a hard asset hoard as a balance sheet backstop that gives the Fed time to delay further QE.
