Cloudy today, the boys started school again. Little zayd who's starting Grade 1 was a bit quite and Isa looked a bit sleepy. Worse, we stucked in a traffic jam on the way to school!
Shares are no better, unfortunately. Gold is apparently in an uncharted territory, and oil hit the $100 magical number. Thanks to Wall Street, ASX was trading lower, and so most of my shareholding are in red, except PNA (which is a gold miner) and BPT (which is an oil digger). Oxiana is in more or less flat, and today's worse performers are DYL and AFG. Of course, how so predictable.
From today's The Australian:
Oil hits $US100, gold rises to record
Rhys Blakely January 03, 2008
OIL prices hit $US100 a barrel in New York overnight for the first time and gold reached a record in London.The surge in the value of crude oil, amid thin trading, follows violence in Nigeria, Africa’s largest oil producer, as well as a warning from OPEC that it may not be able to meet its share of global oil demand by 2024.
It is also a reaction to the weaker US dollar and a broader flight into safe-haven investments.
US crude futures gained more than $US4 a barrel to hit $US100. In London, Brent crude rose $US3.63 to $US97.48. In Nigeria bands of armed men invaded Port Harcourt, the centre of the oil industry, on Tuesday, attacking two police stations and raiding the lobby of a major hotel.
Four policemen, three civilians and six attackers were killed. The Niger Delta Vigilante Movement claimed responsibility for the attack.
“Although the violence has not impacted oil flow out of the country, it has reignited supply concerns as militant attacks have reduced Nigeria’s crude output by roughly 20 per cent since 2006,” said John Gerdes, an analyst at SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. Talk that several Mexican oil export ports were closed due to rough weather also stoked the market.
Oil last traded at more than $US99 a barrel on November 26, a few days after rising to a previous record high of $US99.29. Oil prices are now within the range of inflation-adjusted highs set in early 1980. Depending on how the adjustment is calculated, $US38 a barrel then would be worth $US96 to $US103 or more today. Trading volumes were about 50 per cent of normal in the session, meaning the price move was likely exaggerated by speculative buying.
Earlier in the overnight session in London, Gold had hit a fresh high, at $US859.30 an ounce, beating the $US850 fixing high recorded in 1980. The move followed renewed US dollar weakness and fuelled speculation that the sub-prime crisis is spreading into the wider economy. Gold, widely regarded a hedge against oil-led inflation, gained more than 30 per cent in value in 2007.
The Times
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