A couple of weeks ago I mentioned I bought a few of the $85 strike SEP 10 puts on BP Prudhoe Bay (NYSE: BPT). Sold out of BPT today at $104.69, for a gain of a little over 100% since I bought it in ‘07. Also put in a limit order to buy a [...]

The FT reports:
The deal by Vale of Brazil and Anglo-Australian BHP Billiton with Japanese and Chinese mills marks the end of the 40-year-old benchmark system of annual contracts and lengthy price negotiations. The industry instead agreed to move to quarterly contracts linked to the nascent iron ore spot market.
“The benchmark system has ended. There is [...]

In a post last week, I mentioned that the cost of hedging a position in the S&P 500 tracking ETF SPY against a greater-than-20% loss for six months was about 1.3% of the position value. Checking it again today, the cost dropped to about 1.1%. So I went ahead and bought a few of the [...]

I’ve owned the royalty trust BP Prudhoe Bay (NYSE: BPT) for a few years. Back when oil hit $147 per barrel, BPT hit an all-time high of about $106 per share. Today it closed at $97.88 with oil at about $82 per barrel. Yahoo! Finance shows a forward dividend yield of 15% on BPT, but [...]

With the S&P 500 touching a 52-week high today, I checked Portfolio Armor to see how much it would cost to hedge a position in the S&P 500 tracking ETF SPY against a greater-than-20% loss for six months. It would cost about 1.3% of the position value. I’ll be interested to see how that cost [...]

U.S. Energy Corp. (Nasdaq Capital Market: USEG) issues its annual report. Here’s the full filing, via the SEC’s website, and here are the company’s highlights via its press release. Nothing too surprising here; the investment thesis remains on track since I last blogged about this company. These were the highlights the company listed in its [...]

Effective as soon as my developers implement the changes (most likely, within the next day or two), the premium membership fee on Short Screen is going up from $14 per month to $30 per month for new members. Current members will be grandfathered and continue paying their current membership fee.