Oil drillers brace for Hurricane Dean

By Steve Gelsi, MarketWatch
Last Update: 4:14 PM ET Aug 17, 2007

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Oil drillers began pulling employees from the Gulf of Mexico on Friday as Wall Street trains its eye on Hurricane Dean's path in coming days.

The storm was upgraded to a Category 3 as it moved west through the Caribbean toward the Gulf of Mexico with winds of 125 miles an hour. Although the storm's exact path is uncertain, it seems likely to strike Mexico or the coast of Texas.
Transocean pulled about 92 employees from its most western oil rig as Hurricane Dean approached from the east. Transocean normally has 1,270 people in the Gulf of Mexico
Noble Energy said it evacuated one rig in the Gulf during tropical depression Erin, but the crew will remain onshore as the company assesses the impact of Hurricane Dean.

-> ( Time to watchout those Oil stocks, especially those in the Great discount. )

Article from:-
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/oil-drillers-brace-hurricane-dean/story.aspx?guid=%7B3E0D7C50%2DE47D%2D4124%2D960F%2DB7F58289818F%7D

Has the pullback in financials created an opportunity?

Posted Aug 17th 2007 7:45AM by Kevin Kelly

A very hard-hit sector from this market sell-off has been the financials including Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS), JP Morgan (NYSE: JPM), Bear Stearns (NYSE: BSC) and Bank of America (NYSE: BAC). There are a variety of reasons for this sell-off. Some include poor hedge fund performance (Goldman and Bear), worries about unknown exposure to the derivative market, a slowdown coming in investment banking, and subprime credit exposure. While all of these concerns and worries are very legitimate, I'm starting to see very legitimate value opportunities arise in this category.It's embarrassing to admit that I liked Goldman Sachs at more than $200 per share with the stock currently below $170 per share. But I really think that this is more a case of Mr. Market offering an opportunity rather than a sign of things to come. I believe that everything I argued in my first bullish take on Goldman is still legitimate -- a very strong 'brand,' relative undervaluation vs. peers, and so on. Unlike many of its peers, Goldman wouldn't be absolutely devastated by a significant slowdown in the investment banking business (presumably due to the end of the LBO boom) because of its abundant money management and sales and trading businesses. As a result, I think that Goldman remains a very interesting investment.

Article from http://www.bloggingstocks.com/category/chasing-value/

Oil sheds nearly $3 on credit squeeze

Thu 16 Aug, 2007 16:04


By Janet McBride

LONDON (Reuters) - Oil dropped almost $3 on Thursday as credit and economic fears pounded global financial markets and a storm threat to U.S. Gulf refineries and rigs receded.

Tropical Depression Erin crossed Texas without inflicting damage on the oil industry there, companies said. The U.S. National Hurricane Centre forecast Hurricane Dean would plough into Mexico's Yucatan peninsula in about five days.

U.S. crude fell $2.88 or 4 percent to $70.47 a barrel by 4:40 p.m. British time, 11 percent below its August 1 record high of $78.77. London Brent crude was down $2.55 at $69.09.

European shares fell to a five-month low and London's FTSE 100 hit a 10-month low below the 6,000 level as U.S. housing-loan problems and wider damage to global markets continued to worry investors.

Harry Tchilinguirian, senior oil market analyst at BNP Paribas Commodity Derivatives, said the credit squeeze that started in the U.S. subprime loan market threatened to have a knock-on effect on the wider economy and ultimately on oil demand.

"A slower U.S. economy has ripple effects. If the advanced economies of the United States, the eurozone and Japan slow down that could have a moderating impact on the countries furnishing these goods, on China and India."

"The U.S. consumer and his outlook is an important cyclical factor. Subprime issues are leading to a reappraisal of risk, credit tightness is increasing and that is a depressing effect on consumers."

Tony Dolphin, director of economics and strategy at Henderson Global Investors, agreed that the ripples from subprime loans were no longer just a Wall Street problem.

"Today is certainly a serious growth scare. For the first time really, we've seen big falls in the Asian market that suggest that what's going on in global credit could actually impact global growth going forward."

"The longer this thing drags on the more worried we get that this will have an economic impact."

HURRICANE

Chip Hodge, energy portfolio manager with John Hancock Financial Services, said the Atlantic hurricane season was a wild card that could prop prices up, although he cautioned "if there is no damage the effects would go away quickly."

Dean became the first named Atlantic hurricane of 2007 on Thursday.

The U.S. National Hurricane Centre showed a track that would take Dean across the Lower Antilles and into Yucatan, missing U.S. Gulf rigs and refineries that were battered by Katrina and Rita in 2005. Some weather models forecast Dean would enter the Gulf of Mexico.

"The grim situation in the bond and stock markets against a backdrop of possible slowing growth will act as the more dominant influence on the energy markets, and should more than offset any hurricane-induced bounces," said Edward Meir, an analyst at MF Global Energy Group.

In Nigerian oil city Port Harcourt troops and gangsters fought gun battles. Violence in Nigeria's oil heartland has shut down a fifth of output from Africa's biggest producer.

(additional reporting by Randy Fabi, Jonathan Leff in Singapore)

http://www.iii.co.uk/news/?type=reutersnews&articleid=MTFH00515_2007-08-16_16-04-26_SP311831&feed=Bus&action=article

The making of a market crisis

http://www.iii.co.uk/articles/articledisplay.jsp?section=Planning&article_id=7245300&catEnforce=YourStories

by Peter Temple
23.07.2007

The American consumer's addiction to using their home as an ATM machine had to come to grief somewhere. Most investors might have assumed that, when it happened, it would be nothing to do with them. In reality, the interconnectedness of financial markets means that home loan defaults in America can threaten large hedge funds, in turn provoking rumbles on Wall Street, weakness in the dollar, and a backwash into the FTSE.

Add to this the fact that some large UK banks have exposure to mortgage lending in the US and the conclusion is that we really do need to understand exactly what is going on here.

The problem starts with so-called sub-prime lending. For the uninitiated this might normally mean lending to the self-employed, those with adverse credit histories and other higher risk individuals. In the US, this has been taken to a new level with aggressive marketing bringing in individuals who might not normally participate in the home buying market, and their being given loans many times their income on the flimsiest of pretexts. When rates rise, and times get tougher, defaults become inevitable.



Collateralised debt obligations

For the next stage of the problem we need to reflect on the ingenuity of Wall Street in creating new financial instruments. Home loans in general, and sub-prime mortgages in particular, were repackaged into bundles known as collateralised debt obligations (CDOs) and sold to investors in search of high yield. The theory was that while some loans might go bad occasionally, this had always occurred with a predictable frequency that could be offset when incorporated into the terms of the bond that was backed by the bundle of loans.

Not content with this relatively simple idea, the next stage is for the packaged mortgages in CDOs to be sliced into different tranches, each with different degrees of seniority. Those lower down the pecking order stood first in line to take the brunt of defaults, when they occurred, and offered higher returns in the meantime to compensate. Higher-grade slices offered lower yields, but less exposure to default.

Now add to this the fact that lots of hedge funds bought stuff like this using massive amounts of leverage and it's possible to see the genesis of a financial crisis. The problems are compounded by the fact that the different classes of security created in the collateralised debt obligations are virtually impossible to value accurately. And what's more, there is no liquid market in them.


The issue of valuation

It's not a small problem. In the US, approaching $1,000 billion of a collateralised debt obligations based around residential mortgages was issued in 2006 alone. Not all carries a risk of default, but a fair proportion does.

Let's look at the issue of valuation in particular. Typically buyers of 'toxic debt' like this would go back to the investment bank responsible for the original issue and ask them for a price when seeking to value their holdings. Issuing banks, of course, would be reluctant to admit that their creations had dropped sharply in value, so the whole edifice begins to take on a slightly unreal quality. Everyone with any sense knows there is a problem, but no-one is prepared to admit (or even really knows) quite how large it is.

What is now known is that two hedge funds run by investment bank Bear Stearns have all but collapsed as a result of the crisis. Some more may follow as reality takes hold. Other hedge funds have actually profited from the misfortune of their competitors. But that doesn't mean the whole affair is simply a gigantic zero-sum game.

The concern among central bankers and other policymakers is that the large scale mispricing of assets like this - which looks like it is what has happened here - will not be corrected in an orderly manner. Writing down of large tranches of CDOs to their correct price might necessitate the forced sale of more liquid bonds to shore up cash reserves. A subsequent sell-off in bonds would have a knock on effect on equities. Result: we all end up with higher bond yields, and lower share prices.


Peter says

The moral of this particular story is that financial markets never learn that complexity, leverage and illiquidity are rarely a good combination. CDOs have worked well for a while, but most observers with any knowledge of the history of financial markets could have seen the current crisis coming a mile off once US interest rates began to rise.

The bundling of mortgages, held to be a strength because of the diversification of risk of default, turns out to be a weakness. With a low-grade corporate bond (a so-called 'junk' bond), for example, buyers at least know what they are buying. They can analyze the company's accounts, and form a view on the true risk of default under a range of scenarios. If default happens, they can fight for representation at meetings of creditors, determine how a restructuring might be engineered, and maybe come out not too far out of the money.

Buy a slice of a CDO based around residential mortgages from an investment bank and none of this is possible. The amount you recover is a function of how prudent the original mortgage lending has been, the earning power of the mortgagees, and the value of the underlying property. History suggests, in fact, that the underlying property is little more than a house of cards.

Yen Rallies Across Board as Investors Exit Carry Trades

The yen rallied Thursday to its highest level against the dollar in more than a year, as investors unwound risky trades financed with borrowed yen on fears of a global funding crisis.

The yen rose against all major currencies and hit its strongest level since March against the euro, as the unwinding of carry trades accelerated on evidence companies across the globe were having increasing difficulty accessing credit.

In carry trades, investors finance purchases of more risky higher-yielding assets by borrowing in currencies with lower interest rates such as the yen.

In the United States, benchmark stock indexes sold off more than 1 percent as a report showing housing starts in July dropped more than expected. The data added to nervousness about the outlook for the U.S. economy as losses related to the U.S. subprime mortgage sector mounted.

"The strength of the yen has been driven by unwinding of positions that had been established over a very long period of time," said Meg Browne, senior currency strategist at Brown Brothers Harriman in New York.

"The market is also very concerned there will be a slowdown of the U.S. economy," Browne added. "There is concern that it will spread to the rest of the world."

The dollar Japanese Yen Spot%24%24USDJPY
[$$USDJPY 112.67 -3.90 (-3.35%) ] was 1.8 percent lower against the yen at 114.31 yen , its lowest since July 2006. The euro Euro / Japanese Yen Cross%24%24EURJPY [$$EURJPY 150.99 -5.77 (-3.68%) ] slipped two percent to 153.24 yen , its lowest since March.

The selling in other cross-yen pairs exploded as options barriers were smashed and automatic sell orders triggered, with the Australian Australian Dollar / Japanese Yen Cro%24%24AUDJPY
[$$AUDJPY 88.44 -7.15 (-7.48%) ] and New Zealand JPY/NZD REUTER CROSS%24%24NZDJPY [$$NZDJPY 75.89 -7.13 (-8.59%) ] dollars on track for their steepest daily declines against the yen in about two decades.

"Attention is on the turbulence in international markets," said David Powell, senior currency strategist, at IDEAglobal in New York. "We're seeing the yen crosses rise as a result."

The Australian dollar fell as much as 5.6 percent against the yen in intraday trading, which would be its its biggest drop in 21 years, according to Reuters data. It last traded at 89.88 to the yen. And the New Zealand dollar slid 5.7 percent, its biggest decline in 20 years, to trade at 77.61 yen.

The Australian dollar has now lost more than 12 percent in the last six sessions, while the New Zealand dollar is down about 14 percent against the yen.

U.S. Housing Troubles

The sharp increase in risk aversion came after shares in Countrywide Financial, the largest U.S. mortgage lender, plunged on Wednesday amid rumors it was having trouble raising funding. Countrywide Financial CorpCFC [CFC 17.74 -3.55 (-16.67%) ] shares tumbled another 15 percent on Thursday after it said it had to draw all of an $11.5 billion credit line to fund operations after it was effectively shut out of other credit markets.

The euro was down against the dollar at $1.3407.

Earlier the dollar erased all its gains versus the euro after the U.S. Commerce Department said housing starts fell much more than expected in July.

"Some very weak numbers, which certainly show that the U.S. housing market remains weak," said David Watt, senior currency strategist with RBC Capital Markets in Toronto. "There has been such intense focus on the U.S. housing sector that any signs of weakness and its global implications, one of the factors spilling over into other markets, adds to the nervousness."

Reflecting the fears of the markets remaining rocky, the implied volatility on one-month dollar/yen options -- how much a currency pair is seen moving over a given period -- soared above 17 percent earlier to its highest in over seven years.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Thursday the nation's economy remains in good shape and he expects the Bank of Japan to make an appropriate decision on monetary policy while examining economic conditions.

The yen's surge is fueling trader speculation that Japanese intervention in the currency markets is a possibility. The last time Japan intervened was March 2004 as it wound up a period of yen-selling intervention totaling some $350 billion.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/20287109/site/14081545

Naked Short Stock Sales video special.

Part-I


Part-II


Part-III

Congressman Ron Paul in Iowa video clip - election 2008.

http://www.ronpaul2008.com/


Ron Paul in Iowa - Inflation Tax.


Ron Paul in Iowa - Federal Reserve, Monetary Policy.


Ron Paul in Iowa - Economy.


Ron Paul in Iowa - Property, Draft.


Ron Paul in Iowa - Life and Liberty.


Ron Paul in Iowa - Announcements

Cramer's 3rd August video posting.

he know the true impact of subprime melt down?

Cramer: Why I Took the Fed to Task on 'Stop Trading'

Look out for the video on what Carmer comments.

How to make profit on Bull Put spread (Credit Spread)? Steps

Bull Put Spread.

The Condition to get the trade right for Bull Put Spread:-

1. high Volatility - mean the option premium is expensive but this will happen on the SOLD LEG (short PUT), just remember the higher the stock Volatility the better it is. (please do a comparing to other stock or set a value for it.) Hint: higher beta in stock.

2. high Delta - The higher the Delta the better it is, why? so this will make the option premium expensive. the best is get near to 1 in delta value but most of the time is under 1 something like 0.8 etc.

3. more open interest - the more the better, why? this will make the option more easily to trade on ether buy or sell the option, because the liquidity is there.

4. Trade the Bull Put spread while the STOCK PRICE are nearest to SOLD LEG strike price, like example the strike price is 120, the stock price is 119.95 to 119.98 - This will help you to get maximum credit as possible as. (make sure is out of money option)

5. To trade the bull put spread after market opening 5 to 10 min., this is because once you choose the stock that you going to trade the price of premium will tend to move around.

Key point to know For this case:-

- When is company's Earning Announcement DATE, AAPL is 07/25/2007

-AAPL is bull for future earning on ipod sale, new ipod phone sale and as well as new coming future product that welcome the consumer market.

-This trade is done on 6/27/2007 which mean must have min. more than one month before Expiration.

- Breakeven is:-
(Higher strike price - Maximum Credit at Expiration Per contract)

$120 - $2.05 = $117.95

Therefore the breakeven is $117.95

- Maximum Credit at Expiration is:-

(higher strike price premium X no. of contract X 100) - (Lower strike price premium X no. of contract X 100)

($4.60 X 2 X 100) - ($2.55 X 2 X 100) = $410

Therefore is $410 (Maximum Credit at Expiration)

- Maximum Loss at Expiration is:-
[ ( Upper Strike Price - Lower Strike Price) X number of contract X 100 ] - Max. at Credit
[ ( $120 - $115 ) X 2 X 100 ] - $410 = $590

Therefore is $590 (Maximum Loss at Expiration)

NOTE: (- Credit is Reward, - Loss is Risk.)

Bull Put Spread unlike the straight Put that needed to go for cheap premium to have maximum leverage.

The Best is YOU must record on what you are trading on, that will help you to learn more and understand more on option trading. because there is too much things to know.

WARNING! Please take note Before you trade, please do your fundamental analysis, this article is just only a guide to help you get the trade right by 40%, the rest is economy data, fundamental analysis, market sentiment, insider trading and other more..etc.

Spread Trade Risk Disclosure:-

Before using our spread and combination one-step trading screens, options spread traders must understand the additional risks associated with this type of trading.

While it is generally accepted that spread trading may reduce the risk of loss of the trading of the outright purchase of a standardized option contract, an investor/trader MUST understand that the risk reduction can lead to other risks.

1. Early exercise and assignment can create risk and loss. Spreads are subject to early exercise or assignment that can remove the very protection that the investor/trader sought. This can lead to margin calls and greater losses than anticipated when the trade was entered.

2. Execution of spread orders is "not held" and discretionary. Spreads are not a standardized contracts as are exchanged traded put and calls. Spreads are the combination of standardized put and call contracts. There is NO spread market in securities that are subject such benchmarks such as "time and sales" or "NBBO" (National Best Bid/Offer) and therefore the "market" cannot be "held" to a price.

3. Spreads are executed differently than "legged" orders. Spreads are used by strategists as examples of risk protection, profit enhancement and as a basis for results and return on investments. However, these strategies ASSUME that the trade can actually be executed as a spread when market forces may and can make the actual execution impossible. Spreads are a bona-fide trades and not "legged" or "paired" of individual separate trades. For example: options prices on cross-markets are misleading for the spread trader. An option may be offered on one exchange and bided on another exchange that can lead the trader to believe that their spread trade should be filed, when, in fact, the bids and offers must be on the SAME exchange. As all bona-fide spreads are routed and executed on "one" exchange.

4. Spreads are entered on a single exchange and are acted upon by a market maker. Spreads are executed at the discretion of a market maker and when cancelled or filled require that the market maker take manual action and require manual reporting at times. Delays for reporting of fills and cancels may create additional risks in fast or changing markets. Spreads entered through optionsXpress one step spread screens are ALWAYS entered as spreads and as such are subject to the market risk and conditions as explained above.

For more information on the characteristics and risks of standardized options, please visit our Risk Disclosure page.

Mega merge on Barclays and ABN Amro.

According to internet news, Barclays and ABN Amro will merge together as one company, this merge will be a mega merge. why is a mege merge? I have search the information on Barclays and ABN Amro below.

Barclays PLC
Barclays PLC is the largest bank in the world by total assets ($1.59 trillion), the 14th largest in the world by Tier 1 capital ($32.5 billion), and the 15th largest in the world by Market capitalization ($71.6 billion).[citation needed] It is the third largest bank in the United Kingdom based on assets.


ABN AMRO
ABN AMRO ranks eighth in Europe and 13th in the world based on total assets, with more than 4,500 branches in 53 countries, a staff of over 110,000 full-time equivalents and total assets of EUR 999 billion (as at 30 September 2006).

The bank has developed a strategy of having three home markets: The Netherlands, the United States, and Brazil. The U.S. commercial banking operations of ABN AMRO consist of LaSalle Bank in Chicago, Illinois and LaSalle Bank Midwest in Detroit, Michigan which operate under the name LaSalle Bank Corporation. LaSalle Bank Midwest is the former Standard Federal Bank, which changed its name on September 12, 2005. ABN AMRO also operates ABN AMRO Mortgage Group, one of the leading mortgage servicing companies in the US. In Brazil, ABN AMRO's subsidiary is Banco Real. Banco Real recently completed an acquisition of Sudameris, a peer bank in the Brazilian market.

Just take note both size of the company is huge!

Halliburton's Exchange ratio offer on KBR.

Halliburton's offer the KBR maximum exchange ratio of 1.595 and on top of that with a discount of 7.5% is interesting but KBR forecast on sale is on the downtrend, I think this should be last for a short while.

What I have searched so far is:-
The analysts that rate KBR is a "HOLD" and for the charting side is bearish.
The KBR company senitment is bad .
KBR Peer and industry comparison .

Does US slow down affect KBR business?

Will the stock price fall after spin-off? if yes, is a good time to buy them. if not, forget it!

Company Description:-
A global engineering, construction and services company supporting the energy, petrochemicals, government services and civil infrastructure sectors.

Background:-
From building naval ships in WWII to fighting oil-well fires, delivering gas, and serving meals in Iraq, KBR (formerly known as Kellogg Brown & Root) has a red hot history. Other services include providing engineering, construction management, project management, and facilities operations and maintenance services to military and governmental entities, as well as to the oil and gas, infrastructure, pulp and paper, power, and process industries. KBR streamlined its operations and split into two divisions: government and infrastructure, which accounts for about 80% of sales, and energy and chemicals. Oil field services giant Halliburton is spinning off 20% of KBR through an IPO.

What's the next new thing for Apple?

According to reuters, Apple plan to introduce zippy notebook computers later this year that use the same type of fast memory as music players and digital cameras. This will help the consumer to eliminate the headache of lengthy startup times when turning on computer.

The adventage of using fast memory over a harddisk:-
-lesser take up space.
-weight lesser then harddisk which harddisk is big and heavy.
-faster run time when bootup the computer, also as well as loading program when using.
-using Chip is quiet than harddisk.
-can be upgrade by interchanging the chip with higher capacity.
-future Chip may be cheaper than harddisk in manfacturing cost.

The trend of using fast memory or flash memory will be there.

Therefore Seagate stock price may face selling pressure if they can shift their technology to a higher lever.

Apple stock is rated a buy and future Apple stock maybe bullish if they can really launch that new product out sooner than expected time.

AMD Warns of Lower Q4 Profit.

AMD (Quote) said income for the fourth quarter will be lower than expected because of lower processor selling prices in its competition with Intel (Quote).
AMD said Q4 operating income, excluding segments of and charges related to its purchase of ATI, is expected to be positive but substantially lower than in the third quarter.
The chipmaker said in a statement gross margin and operating income were impacted by "significantly lower microprocessor average selling prices," offsetting an increase in unit sales.
AMD said Q4 revenue, excluding ATI-related segments, is expected to increase roughly 3 percent from the $1.33 billion reported in the Q3 2006.
AMD will report Q4 results after market close on Jan. 23.
AMD shares were trading down $1.75 to $18.43 Friday morning on the news.
The news is reflective of the hot contest between No. 1 chipmaker Intel and AMD, which made some inroads into Intel's server market share with the introduction of its Opteron chips four years ago.
Among other perks, Opteron processors feature cache controllers built directly into the chip, an architecture that has impressed server makers because it reduces latency and eliminates the need for a separate chip.
With Intel rallying in recent quarters, AMD last year purchased ATI, a leading maker of graphics processors, which are becoming increasingly vital for next-generation gaming.
AMD is combining its Opteron chips with ATI processors under a brand called Fusion. Intel has said it will step up its graphics integration in 2007.

Is Orion HealthCorp (ONH) good for trading?

Who is BRANTLEY PARTNERS (who is the insider)?

I believe this is a trading buy only (trading buy mean trade on Technical analysis or Charting prediction), because there is no evidence to proof the company is earning profit. so beware of the risk. I have done my part of research here as you can see from those picture that I post it on this blog. Please feel free to browse MarketBlack Box Blog, so that you can have a good understand of what is investment research is all about. Thanks for reading..

Orion HealthCorp, Inc. is a healthcare services organization, providing complementary business management services to physicians through three wholly owned subsidiaries: SurgiCare, Inc., serving the freestanding ambulatory surgery center market. Integrated Physician Solutions, Inc., providing business services to pediatric practices and technology solutions to general and specialized medical practices. Medical Billing Services, Inc., providing physician billing and collections services and practice management solutions to hospital-based physicians.

This link will bring you to Zacks.com to study the company how good it is.
http://www.zacks.com/research/report.php?type=report&t=ONH

Macworld: What Dreams May Come

It is fairly likely that Apple will introduce a new wide-screen iPod with touch-sensitive and wireless features in the next two to six months, according to Piper Jaffray & Co. analyst Gene Munster. "We believe that the new iPod will be a significant improvement to the fifth-generation iPod as the device becomes more video-centric," he stated.

Gene Munster, an analyst for investment firm Piper Jaffray & Co., took a look at the pre-Macworld Conference & Expo rumors, and has offered us his odds on what Apple Computer (Nasdaq: AAPL) will surprise us with on Jan. 9.

Munster thinks that new product announcements could include an Apple-branded cell phone, a new video-capable iPod and the release of the iTV home entertainment appliance. Announcing any of these products at Macworld Expo would be a positive for Apple; not announcing a cell phone would be seen as a negative.

Munster broke out his certainty-ranking system to rate the likelihood of products and features. A "10" is highly likely; a "1" indicates what is extremely unlikely.

Get Ready for the Phones
The likelihood of Apple's cell phone entering production in the next two to six months gets a 9. A candy-bar form factor version of the phone within the next six to 12 months also gets a 9.

A smartphone version of Apple's cell phone with an integrated keyboard has a likelihood of 7.

A radio-transparent cell phone casing gets only a 3, and iChat mobile video and instant messaging seems unlikely with a ranking of 2. Including an iSight camera, however, along with 4 GB or 8 GB of storage has a higher likelihood with a 6 ranking.

Munster commented, "Just as Apple waited several years to enter the MP3 market, we believe the company is well-positioned to enter the phone market now that early music-enabled handsets have tested the waters. Apple will differentiate itself by offering iTunes integration on Macs and PCs, and by leveraging its expertise in software engineering for media-playing devices."

Yet Another iPod
Seeing a new wide-screen iPod with touch-sensitive and wireless features in the next two to six months is fairly likely, with a 7 ranking.

"According to several Apple patents, along with word from component suppliers, Apple is working on a sixth-generation wide-screen iPod that could feature touch-screen capability," Munster noted. "We believe that the new iPod will be a significant improvement to the fifth-generation iPod as the device becomes more video-centric. As such, the iPod line would feature small music-centric and 'wearable' players, as well as a larger music player with more video-centric features."

Ready or Not, Here Comes iTV
Apple in September 2006 announced its home entertainment center hub that links the music and videos on your computer to your TV. Munster gives a 10 ranking to the possibility that we'll see the iTV device in the next two to six months, and that it will have features that weren't previously announced.

"We believe Apple could release an improved model with an internal hard disk drive," Munster stated. "Downloadable movies average about 1.5 GB each on iTunes, and one way that Apple can ease capacity restrictions is to add hard drive space to the iTV."

What Else Will Apple Do?
The likelihood that we'll see Mac OS X v10.5 (Leopard) released at Macworld only gets a 3. It's also unlikely that we'll see the rumored ultra-portable, 12-inch MacBook Pro in the next 12 to 18 months -- Munster ranks that with a 4.

"Another possibility is that of a touch-screen tablet Mac," he said. "Rather than marketing the tablet computer to business users (like tablet PCs), we believe that a tablet Mac would be targeted at home users desiring to wirelessly control media content. Again, this rumor is a stretch, because we have not seen any hard evidence -- other than several patent applications -- that point to the release of a tablet Mac."

Apple has already fueled speculation over what CEO Steve Jobs will announce during his keynote presentation at Macworld Expo next week. The company's Web site now sports a graphic that states, "The first 30 years were just the beginning. Welcome to 2007."

Falling Oil Prices Should Help Drivers

Falling Crude Oil Prices Should Translate to Lower Prices at the Pump

NEW YORK -- U.S. drivers could start seeing lower prices at the pump as early as this weekend, thanks to the cascading price of crude oil and a seasonal dip in gasoline, analysts say.
A gallon of regular unleaded gasoline costs an average of $2.325 across the country, according to the AAA.

---

Oil price falling too far down will cause the common stock to jump start the rally, and this is very likly to see a surge in stock price in US stock market. so a possible rebound can be see on the stock price. Trading activity will be active.
This kind of event is a short lift only.

May can have a slight rebound on MXIM.

MXIM may can have a slight price rebound.

Chart for 01/04/2007





After the weak selling is a good time to trade at weakness and sell on strength. base on the volume indicator (to spot for block purchase volume.)