Survey Shows Coking Coal Contracts Hit Record Lows

“BHP Billiton Ltd. (BHP), the world’s biggest exporter of steelmaking coal, may face a drop in contract prices to a record low in the third quarter amid rising supply and weaker Asian demand.

Asian buyers will probably pay $165 a metric ton for hard coking coal in the three-month period starting July 1, according to the median estimate of five analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News. That would match the record low for contracts set in the first quarter and compare with $172 a ton in the second quarter. Spot prices have slid 11 percent since March, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

Rising supply from Mongolia and South Africa has added to an increase from Australia, which is rebounding from January floods that shut rail lines and curbed exports. A slowing Chinese economy is also causing weakness in the price, Shuma Uchino, the chief financial officer of Mitsubishi Corp. (8058) said in Tokyo on May 8. The Japanese company is a partner in the world’s biggest exporter, the BHP Billiton Mitsubishi Alliance.

“There’s too much supply,” said Daniel Hynes, the Sydney-based head of commodity strategy at CIMB Group Holdings Bhd. (CIMB) who predicts contracts may be settled at $180 a ton. “There’s a recovery from the Australian market, which is compounding weak demand from China and Japan, the biggest importer of premium hard coking coal. That has meant that the market has remained relatively weak.”

Supply Increase…”

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World Markets

Currencies

Commodities

USD Libor

Euribor

Yields for Italy, Spain, France,  and Germany …

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It has become increasingly clear that web crime, hacking, and general mayhem is being unleashed via the web.

This documentary shows just how vulnerable the interweb is and why you should be extremely careful of what you use a computer for.

Cheers on your weekend!

[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34cwMz3HZ8Q 450 300]

If you did not get enough from the above documentary here is another documentary to chomp on…

[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rj35GguOAGE 450 300]

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[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9fC3flXY5g 450 300] [youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8LZGQ4MkvQ 450 300]

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“Now seems like a great time to invest in the stock market, which has continued its bullish ways this year. But then why has stock ownership reached a 15-year low?

Gallup’s annual Economy and Finance survey, conducted April 4-14, found that only 52% of Americans currently are playing the market. That’s the lowest rate since at least 1998, when Gallup began tracking stock ownership. Even that figure is deceptive because about half of Americans who do own stock do so only through pension funds, mutual funds and other accounts they don’t control.

Meanwhile, the Dow Jones Industrial Average reached 15,000 recently, for the first time ever….”

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“SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Federal authorities in Puerto Rico have arrested an executive at Pfizer Pharmaceutical for allegedly producing child pornography.

Officials say 48-year-old Reinaldo Diaz Camacho was charged after Puerto Rico police received information that he was having sexually explicit conversations with a 16-year-old boy on Facebook.

U.S. Attorney Rosa Emilia Rodriguez said Thursday that the boy’s mother told authorities she had seen the conversations on her son’s cellphone….”

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“Rail traffic trends have been undoubtedly weak in recent weeks as we’ve seen double digit year over year growth slide into negative territory.  This brought our 12 week moving average from a high of 6.75% in March to the low single digits.

The latest intermodal traffic data from AAR showed 2.8% growth which is an improvement from last week’s 1.6% reading, but still trending lower on a monthly basis.  We’re now at a 3 month low in the moving average at 3.13%.  So there are some small signs of stability, but the overall trend is still down….”

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“We have tracked the key short interest changes as of April 30 in these large cap stocks: General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE), Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK), Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC), Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ), Alpha Natural Resources Inc. (NYSE: ANR), McDonald’s Corp. (NYSE: MCD), Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL), BlackBerry (NASDAQ: BBRY), Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT), Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL), Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Inc. (NASDAQ: GMCR) and Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO)….”

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SOURCE

NYSE

NASDAQ

AMEX

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Upgrades  – AGN, AWK, ABFS, BA, BSX, EIX, NUAN, PRLB, DDD, TEVA, WDAY, Z,

Downgrades  – AES, CVC, DF, DNDN, FRX, LTD, MYL, OPTR, RCII, SHPG, TECH,

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In Play ,

On the Wires 

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“With U.S. stocks hitting all-time highs and bond yields under pressure, bubble talk is rampant. But you shouldn’t pay any attention to it, according to Princeton economics professor and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman.

In his Friday column, Krugman writes that there “definitely” is no bond bubble and is “probably not” a stock bubble, either.

The Nobel laureate takes a stab at defining a bubble, calling it a situation in which asset prices appear to be based on implausible expectations for the future. Think of dot-com prices in 1999 or housing prices in 2006. In the latter case, housing prices only made sense if you thought home prices would continue to significantly outpace buyers’ income for years.

When it comes to bonds, you wouldn’t want to buy a 10-year Treasury at a yield of less than 2% if you believed the Fed would be raising short-term rates to 4% or 5% soon, notes Krugman notes, who then asks why you’d believe any such thing:

The Fed normally cuts rates when unemployment is high and inflation is low — which is the situation today. True, it can’t cut rates any further because they’re already near zero and can’t go lower. (Otherwise investors would just sit on cash.) But it’s hard to see why the Fed should raise rates until unemployment falls a lot and/or inflation surges, and there’s no hint in the data that anything like that is going to happen for years to come.

There are several reasons for the bubble fears, but one may have something to do with what he describes as a “deep hatred” for U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke “and everything he does.” ….”

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“The yen broke through the 100 dollar resistance level Friday and was trading at 101.63, its weakest level in more than 4 ½ years.

Now the question is will how low can it go. David Baran, co-founder of Tokyo-based hedge fund Symphony Financial Partners, says he doesn’t see the dollar stopping until 115 to 118 yen.

“Give it time, it will happen,” he tells The Wall Street Journal….”

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“Federal securities regulators have been slow to revamp rules abused by corporate insiders to trade their company stocks, according to a group of pension funds and a former SEC commissioner.

In a letter Thursday to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Council of Institutional Investors urged the agency for the second time in four months to tighten rules on government-sanctioned trading plans that allow corporate executives and directors to sell shares despite potentially having knowledge of nonpublic information about their companies.

The group, which represents pension funds overseeing more than $3 trillion in assets, cited a series in The Wall Street Journal on the issue. The articles have triggered criminal and civil investigations into whether executives and directors improperly profited from trading their company shares while in possession of confidential information.

“There are some abuses going on—even broader than some had suspected,” Jeff Mahoney, the group’s general counsel, said in an interview.

Mary Jo White, the SEC’s new chairman, declined to comment through a spokesman. The SEC hasn’t ruled out taking action to amend its guidance or regulations on the plans, but no such review is under way, according to a person familiar with the agency.

For now, the SEC intends to continue to tackle any abuses of the plans through enforcement actions, the person added…..”

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“Investors are overlooking Facebook‘s potential at their own peril, Leon Cooperman of Omega Advisors said Thursday on CNBC.

“We think that people are underestimating the mobility opportunity that exists in Facebook,” he said. “We think ultimately they could achieve a market cap comparable to a Google, which would make the stock very, very rewarding.” …”

See why Cooperman likes $FB

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“California’s top law enforcement official accused JPMorgan Chase on Thursday of flooding the state’s courts with questionable lawsuits to collect overdue credit card debt.

The suit, filed in California Superior Court by the state’s attorney general, Kamala D. Harris, contends that JPMorgan, the nation’s largest bank, “committed debt collection abuses against tens of thousands of California consumers.”

For about three years, between January 2008 and April 2011, JPMorgan filed thousands of lawsuits each month to collect soured credit card debt, Ms. Harris said. On a single day, for example, JPMorgan filed 469 lawsuits, court records show.

As the bank plowed through the lawsuits, Ms. Harris said, JPMorgan took shortcuts like relying on court documents that were not reviewed for accuracy. “To maintain this breakneck pace,” according to the lawsuit, JPMorgan relied on “unlawful practices.”

The accusations outlined in the lawsuit echo problems — from questionable documents used in lawsuits to incomplete records — that plagued the foreclosure process and prompted a multibillion-dollar settlement with big banks. One hallmark of the foreclosure crisis, robosigning, in which banks worked through mountains of legal documents without reviewing them for accuracy, is at the center of Ms. Harris’s lawsuit against JPMorgan….”

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“The price of oil dropped below $95 a barrel on Friday as a strengthening dollar made crude more expensive for traders using other currencies.

By early afternoon in Europe, benchmark crude for June delivery was down $1.74 to $94.65 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contact lost 23 cents to finish at $96.39 a barrel on the Nymex on Thursday.

Since oil is traded in dollars, a stronger dollar makes crude and other commodities less appealing to investors with other currencies.

On Friday, the euro was down to $1.2998 from $1.3041 late Thursday in New York. The dollar also gained on the Japanese yen and was trading at 101.34 yen on Friday, the first time it broke above 100 yen in over four years, since April 2009.

Recent signs of improvement in U.S. employment data have sparked speculation that the Federal Reserve might scale back its aggressive monetary policy.

Traders were also influenced by remarks Thursday by Charles Plosser, president of the Fed’s Philadelphia regional bank, said Stan Shamu of IG Markets in Melbourne…..”

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“Yahoo! Inc. Chief Executive Officer Marissa Mayer is exploring whether to bid for the Hulu LLC streaming-TV service, people with knowledge of the matter said.

Mayer met this month with Hulu senior executives to learn more about the site, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private. Amazon.com Inc. has also expressed an interest in Hulu, this person said…”

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“Priceline.com Inc. (PCLN), the largest U.S. online-travel agent by market value, forecast second-quarter profit that missed analysts’ estimates as international expansion exposes the company to economic swings in Europe.

Profit, excluding some items, will be $8.87 to $9.45 a share in the current period, the Norwalk, Connecticut-based company said in a statement yesterday. Analysts were projecting a profit of $9.59, according to data compiled by Bloomberg….”

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“OPEC boosted crude output in April to the highest in five months as Saudi Arabia increased production, helping lower oil prices amid concern that global economic growth is slowing.

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries produced 30.46 million barrels a day last month, up from 30.18 million in March, the group’s Vienna-based secretariat said today in its Monthly Oil Market Report. That’s the most since November. The estimates are based on secondary sources.

Brent crude slipped 7 percent last month as Europe struggled to move beyond its debt crisis and China’s growth and manufacturing showed signs of a slowdown. The drop brings prices closer to the $100-a-barrel target Saudi Arabia’s Oil Minister Ali Al-Naimi described as “reasonable” for consumers and producers. Brent, the benchmark for more than half of the world’s oil, traded at about $104 today on the ICE Futures Europe exchange in London.

“The continued decline in the eurozone, the significant deceleration in the first quarter in some of the Asian economies and the recently acknowledged slowdown in Russia all have the potential to again push growth down,” according to OPEC, which supplies about 40 percent of the world’s oil.

Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest crude exporter, pumped 9.27 million barrels a day in April, rising from 9.13 million in March, OPEC said. That’s the most since November and compares with the country’s own figure of 9.31 million barrels based on its direct communication with the group.

Fragile Recovery

Global oil demand is forecast to rise 800,000 barrels a day to 89.66 million barrels a day this year, little changed from last month’s estimate….”

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