Como se combate o populismo? "Com eleições", responde Fukuyama

[Shenron]

A prata também pode bem ter feito um double-top.
Penso que podemos ir bem lá abaixo, talvez até ao suporte dos 11,5, isto sem rebentar a bolha, porque se quebramos esse valor...

[Ertai]

"A commodities selloff seems to be unsettling investors. Oil fell $1.53 a barrel. Also Gold sunk about 3.7 percent and silver tumbled 5.5 percent from Friday's levels."

Pelos vistos começam bem a semana..

Pergunto-me é para onde vai o dinheiro das mais-valias obtidas nestre grande Bull Market das Commodities.

O ouro poderá vir a sofrer uma correcção pesada este semana, depois dos últimos meses de subidas constantes..
Vamos ver se estamos perto de um topo ou não deixa de ser mais uma "adivinhação", como temos vindo a ter nestas últimas semanas..

[Keyser Soze]

Commodities Spur Bubble Worry; Solarworld Tops Google (Update2)

May 15 (Bloomberg) -- Pacific Ethanol Inc. makes no fuel, loses money and is valued at $1.2 billion on the Nasdaq. Solarworld AG earned less than $21 million from solar panel sales of $106 million in the first quarter. Its shares rose 367 percent in the past year, almost five times those of Google Inc.

The bull market in commodities, now in its fifth year, is beginning to challenge the laws of physics. Prices as measured by the Reuters/Jefferies CRB Index haven't staged a rally this long in more than five decades. Copper quadrupled in the past five years, gold more than tripled and oil doubled. The Morgan Stanley Commodity-Related Index of 20 stocks has risen 58 percent in the last 12 months.

From New York's oil markets to shares of Russian mining companies to trading in Thai sugar, investors say a speculative rally is overdone. Robert Shiller, an economist at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and author of ``Irrational Exuberance,'' says commodities markets resemble the technology- stock bubble of the 1990s.

``It's the same phenomenon,'' Shiller said in an interview. ``When you have something that has glamour value, it opens up the possibility of a speculative bubble. You can't have a speculative bubble if there isn't a story.''

Analysts including Citigroup's Tom Fitzpatrick in New York and John Noyce in London say crude oil prices may have peaked at the April 21 record of $75.35 a barrel. Societe Generale analysts including Frederic Lasserre in Paris last week said oil may have reached a ``tipping point'' that will send prices lower.

``A speculative bubble is forming,'' said Tony Dolphin, who helps manage $125 billion as director of economics and strategy at Henderson Global Investors Ltd. in London. ``It may be sensible for some investors to get out of these markets now and return once there has been a correction in prices.''

Solar Fortune

Germany's Asbeck family joined the ranks of the world's wealthiest after oil prices soared. The Asbecks, from Bonn, own 26 percent of Solarworld, valued at more than 900 million euros ($1.2 billion) after the stock advanced from 13.75 euros in its November 1999 debut to 255.46 euros last week. Investors are willing to pay more for shares of Solarworld than stock of Google, the biggest Internet search engine, based on the current price and expected profits this year.

Shares of Renewable Energy Corp. ASA, a solar-power provider based in Norway, last week jumped 23 percent in an initial public offering that valued the company at $9.5 billion. Its net income last year was 3.92 million kroner ($646,000).

``Given the choice of buying commodities with a capital C, or buying capital C -- Citigroup -- at current prices, I'll take the latter,'' Bill Miller, who has beaten the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index for a record 15 years, said in an April 15 note.

Miller is chairman of Legg Mason Capital Management, which oversees $850 billion. He declined to comment for this article.

Lehman View

Commodities from aluminum to zinc are rising partly because of demand from India and China, the world's most populous nations. Disposable incomes in Chinese cities and towns may rise 6 percent this year, according to Ma Kai, chairman of the country's top planning agency. India, Asia's fourth-largest economy, is estimated to have grown 8.1 percent in the year ended March 31, according to the government.

Asia's expanding economies may be why commodities won't peak anytime soon, according to Jack Malvey, chief global fixed- income strategist at Lehman Brothers Inc. in New York.

``Investment flows in commodities are nowhere near those of the dot-com boom,'' said Malvey. ``The commodity boom is at risk of heating up to bubble proportions, but we haven't reached that time yet. I can't imagine us seeing $20-a-barrel oil for a long time. The story is pointing in the other direction.''

Fund investments in commodity indexes and other products may exceed $120 billion by 2008, compared with $80 billion last year, according to estimates from Barclays Plc.

`Crazy Days'

Companies that produce and use commodities say prices eventually will drop.

``We live in very crazy days,'' said Juan Eduardo Herrera, vice president of strategy at Codelco, the world's biggest copper producer. ``These prices are not here to stay, and nowadays they are causing more harm than good to everybody.''

William Douglas, chief financial officer of Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc., the world's largest soft-drink bottler, said the company was working ``very hard'' with suppliers to control rising aluminum costs.

Larry Berman, chief technical strategist at CIBC World Markets in Toronto, points to higher-than-typical price forecasts as one sign that markets are overvalued. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. analysts sent crude prices soaring when they said in March 2005 that the price could eventually reach $105 a barrel.

The forecast is reminiscent of former analyst Henry Blodget's prediction of late 1998 that Amazon.com Inc. shares would hit $400 a share, some analysts said. The stock did climb high, only to tumble 80 percent over two years, signaling the end of the technology bubble.

Tulip Bubble

An historic commodities bubble occurred from 1634 to 1637, when prices for tulip bulbs skyrocketed partly because of a plant virus in Holland. Bulbs shipped to western Europe from Turkey produced striped flowers and met with great demand, until a price drop caused the market to collapse.

``I wouldn't use the word bubble to describe what's happening in commodities right now,'' said Charles Diebel, head of European rates strategy in London at Nomura International Plc. ``Bubbles imply that prices are distorted from reality but that's not the case given demand from China, which isn't going to evaporate any time soon.''

Company Valuations

Man Group Plc's executive president and head of global metals, Fred Demler in New York, compared today's valuations of companies that produce commodities and those of technology companies in the 1990s.

Sycamore Networks Inc., a maker of fiber-optic networking equipment, had a price-to-earnings ratio of 2,875 in August 2000. That year, Cisco Systems Inc., the world's biggest maker of computer networking equipment, had a ratio of 219, while Juniper Networks Inc. had a ratio of 273.

A stronger U.S. dollar would cause prices for most commodities to decline, Demler said. ``And when prices do fall, it will be the correction of all corrections,'' he said.

The Bloomberg Metals and Mining Index has more than doubled in the past five years. Copper rose to an all-time high of $8,800 a metric ton last week, nickel and zinc climbed to records, while aluminum advanced to a 17-year high.

Legg Mason's Miller, writing in his quarterly letter to investors, said copper prices are sure to fall and that anyone jumping into commodities now is a ``determined optimist.''

``It is not a question of if copper prices are going down, it is a question of when,'' Miller said.

Copper for delivery in three months was bid at $8,510 and offered at $8,560 a ton on Monday. Prices reached a record $8,800 a ton on May 11.