Apple, Oil, & Steel were rays of light on gloomy market day

Posted May 20th 2008 8:15PM by Sheldon Liber
Filed under: Major Movement, International Markets, Other Issues, Bad News, Rants and Raves, Apple Inc (AAPL), Market Matters, Halliburton (HAL), Reliance Steel and Aluminum (RS), Valero Energy (VLO), Anadarko Petroleum (APC), Politics, Commodities, Oil, Headline News, Precision Drilling TR (PDS)

Anadarko Petroleum Today was a very gloomy day in the stock market with Oil reaching new highs and everything else losing -- almost. Among the few winners, and I mean very few, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL), oil, and specialty steel were up. I went through my watch list and found this very short list of winners:

Anadarko Petroleum (NYSE: APC) $78.49, up +$0.95 or 1.23%

Apple Inc (NASDAQ: AAPL) $185.90, up +$2.30 or 1.25%

Halliburton (NYSE: HAL) $49.92, +$0.85 up +$1.73%

Precision Drilling TR (NYSE: PDS) $27.90, up $1.13, or 4.22%

Reliance Steel and Aluminum (NYSE: RS) $67.37, +0.$52, or 0.78%

Valero Energy (NYSE: VLO) $50.12, up +$0.43 or 0.87%

Every day people are asking how high oil prices will go and every day someone guesses much higher. Those folks will continue to be correct until they are wrong so I will stay out of the prediction business. Of course the "guess" is my choice of words, for there are plenty of people who would like you to believe they actually "know" something.

I was wondering lately why oil prices have shot up 500% for a barrel during a period of time when demand has not even doubled. The best I can figure is the collapsing dollar is a third of the increase, demand is a third of the increase and speculation is the last third.

When things like this happen the conspiracy theorists come out of the woodwork, and they join ranks with the politicians to bad mouth "big oil" and all kinds of taxes and penalties and new regulations are threatened. How about, conservation, alternative energy, and allowing carefully planned off-shore oil exploration. Here's a BIG idea -- how about having any kind of cohesive energy policy at all.

Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the principal for design and research at an architecture & planning firm. He writes the columns Chasing Value and Serious Money. Disclosure: I own shares of APC, PDS & VLO.

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