And article is out in the Wall Street Journal on oil markets.

Corporations, Foreign Funds Appear on List of Investors During Oil’s Peak

The world of oil investors reached far beyond Wall Street in recent years as foreign pension funds, corporate icons and even an Ivy League endowment placed big wagers on oil prices, according to a list compiled by U.S. regulators.

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission list shows that just before crude prices reached record highs in 2008, investments tied to millions of barrels of oil were held by a diverse group of at least 219 investors.

The CFTC never identified specific investors publicly, but The Wall Street Journal recently reviewed the list. It offers a rare glimpse of the secretive world of oil trading, where buying and selling often takes place away from public markets.

The list could fuel calls for a crackdown on oil speculators, a label critics apply to those who trade in oil but don’t use or produce it.

Banks such as Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS – News) and Morgan Stanley (MS – News), which have long played a central role in oil trading, dominate the list. Also featured prominently are producers and consumers such as BP PLC (BP – News) and Delta Air Lines Inc. (DAL – News), which buy and sell large amounts of oil products.

A range of investors were in the market, too. Yale University, Singapore’s government, hedge funds Brevan Howard and D.E. Shaw & Co., as well as pension funds for Texas teachers and Danish workers all held positions, according to the list.

Also featured were a handful of individuals, including Aubrey McClendon, chief executive of Chesapeake Energy Corp. (CHK – News), one of the nation’s largest producers of natural gas. Cascade Investment LLC, the investment arm for Microsoft Corp. (MSFT – News) co-founder Bill Gates, appeared.

For a private equity firm that’s looking for the cheapest way to get online, AOL Inc. (AOL) is trading for 57 cents on the dollar.

The Internet pioneer spun off from Time Warner Inc. (TWX) in 2009 plunged to a record low last week after cutting this year’s profit forecast because of slowing growth in display advertising sales. With its market capitalization reduced to $1.3 billion from a peak of $3.1 billion last year, New York-based AOL is now the cheapest relative to its net assets of any U.S. Web company with a value of more than $500 million, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

AOL has posted net losses of almost $800 million in less than two years as a standalone company as the profitable dial-up Internet business becomes obsolete and online advertising sales on websites from the Huffington Post to Moviefone fail to make money. With AOL trading at a 43 percent discount, the company may now attract private equity buyers that can still extract $1.5 billion in cash out of the access business within three years, according to B. Riley & Co.

“Private equity could look at the business,” Ken Sena, an analyst at Evercore Partners Inc. in New York, said in a telephone interview. They may “decide that the company is worth a lot more than its current price tag,” he said.

Read the rest here.

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Micro-drying aborted or still-born babies into dust, then selling them to people as stamina enhancements. Korean lab tested the DNA of these pills with 99.7% accuracy.

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S&P futs +3.

sleep well

The Heng Seng is up nearly 1%.

down 2.4 points below fair value.

321 cracks were up 0.5% today, to $34.51.

Billy Meier relays info from the Plejaren extraterrestrial Ptaah from a March 7, 2011 contact.

“The current electronic technology and thereby also the entirety of the electronics on the Earth is extremely sensitive in regard to storms on the Sun and other cosmic radiation; consequently everything can collapse if strong sun-storm eruptions send their energies to Earth and induce storms of electrons on Earth. These induce electric currents as a result of which enormous numbers of electrical – and therefore, also electromagnetic – apparatuses and devices of all kinds can be made inoperable just as can atomic and electric power plants as well as other plants, machines and vehicles, and so forth, which are in any way associated with electrical energy. If something happens in this form then the whole thing is absolutely not harmless, because if such harmful consequences arise, then not only do large parts of the economy and medical care, as well as drinking water supply, collapse, but also the production and necessary transport of food stuffs, as well as general security measures against plundering. Not to mention that, in regard to all Earth human advances, a setback in development could result and damage could generally come about in all areas, which would take decades to rectify again. The Earth human beings and their governments would also come to the brink of financial ruin, which means that they would become incapable of payment concerning being able to generally address and rectify the damage which had arisen. Criminality and wrongdoing would also climb, along with many other evils, which would be incalculable. This would be the case if a catastrophe in fact arose in the form in which it could with an over-activity of the Sun. But that happening is only a possibility and does not correspond to a prediction, because it still is not certain what will occur when the activity wakes the Sun from its slumber.”

NASA warns
“Senior space agency scientists believe the Earth will be hit with unprecedented levels of magnetic energy from solar flares after the Sun wakes “from a deep slumber” sometime around 2013, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.

Scientists believe it could damage everything from emergency services’ systems, hospital equipment, banking systems and air traffic control devices, through to “everyday” items such as home computers, iPods and Sat Navs. Due to humans’ heavy reliance on electronic devices, which are sensitive to magnetic energy, the storm could leave a multi-billion pound damage bill and “potentially devastating” problems for governments.

“We know it is coming but we don’t know how bad it is going to be,” Dr Richard Fisher, the director of Nasa’s Heliophysics division, said in an interview with The Daily Telegraph. “It will disrupt communication devices such as satellites and car navigations, air travel, the banking system, our computers, everything that is electronic. It will cause major problems for the world. “Large areas will be without electricity power and to repair that damage will be hard as that takes time.”

No. Ticker % Change
1 MSHL 66.67
2 RLRN 23.37
3 FN 21.49
4 CARB 18.38
5 SYSW 16.14
6 PPHM 16.06
7 CRU 15.92
8 COOL 11.27
9 VSEC 11.18
10 ARTX 11.03
11 HEB 10.71
12 NURO 10.53
13 GAGA 10.12
14 GRRF 8.57
15 CDII 8.33
16 DVR 8.31
17 DNDN 8.30
18 WWIN 7.88
19 PGTI 7.73
20 TELK 7.69
21 REVU 7.42
22 LCRY 6.99
23 GLDD 6.63
24 CTNN 6.47
25 MERR 6.38

“Google’s proposed $12.5 billion acquisition would leave RIM a smaller player relative to rivals, which may force it to strike an alliance with another company or sell itself to remain competitive”…Click for full story.

Long $GOOG

Cliffs Natural Resources announces 4 mln share repurchase authorization

+4%. BANG-ZOOM-BAM.

“While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks.”

“Last year my federal tax bill — the income tax I paid, as well as payroll taxes paid by me and on my behalf — was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income — and that’s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent. ”

“But for those making more than $1 million — there were 236,883 such households in 2009 — I would raise rates immediately on taxable income in excess of $1 million, including, of course, dividends and capital gains. And for those who make $10 million or more — there were 8,274 in 2009 — I would suggest an additional increase in rate.

My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice. “

Euro indices are set to open higher by 0.5-0.75%.

+10

It moved past the 20,000 mark.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC ) is now looking into potential insider trading by Standard & Poor’s employees before the rating agency’s decision to downgrade the U.S.’s long-term debt, according to Financial Times.

Michelle Bachmann nips Ron Paul by 152 votes to win Iowa Straw Poll.

The Mittster lands lucky 7th with 3.36% of the vote, much to The JakeGint's chagrin … not that Mr. Gint is gonna lose much sleep at this point in the game.

God bless the corn huskers state and their corn dogs.

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