As demand for oil increases prices will follow.  There is more oil out there that if enters the market as a competing source could drive prices down.

IEA revises up global oil demand growth for 2010

Global oil demand will grow by more than previously expected in 2010, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Thursday, with all the growth coming from emerging markets.

The industrialised world is going through an “oil-less” recovery, the IEA said, with signs demand has peaked in developed countries despite many returning to economic growth.

The Paris-based adviser to 28 industrialised economies revised upwards its demand growth estimate for 2010 by 120,000 barrels per day (bpd) to 1.6 million bpd.

The strong rebound in demand follows two years of falling consumption as the world struggled with the deepest financial crisis since the 1930s. The IEA estimated oil demand would now average 86.50 million bpd this year, just 10,000 bpd below the all-time peak seen in 2007.

“The demand growth is all coming from countries east of Suez,” David Fyfe, head of the oil industry and markets division of the IEA told Reuters Insider TV.

“The emerging economies of China, India, the rest of Asia and the Middle East is where all the action is.”

Fyfe said while demand for motor fuels and petrochemicals may rise slightly in industrial countries, there has been a huge shift away from using oil for power and heating generation.    –more

There have been many debates about the stimulus package and whether or not it will help. It turns out that the solar subsidies did create jobs. Unfortunately the majority of jobs where created overseas and solar manufacturing jobs were actually lost here in the the US.

Solar Subsidies Fail to Create Green Jobs, Again

Despite massive amounts of stimulus funding being spent on wind farms—nearly $2 billion—the vast majority (80%) of it has been spent on overseas companies. ABC contacted Russ Choma at the Investigative Reporting Workshop who suggested that the project has resulted in nearly 6,000 jobs for overseas manufacturers and only a few hundred over here.

To add insult to injury, ABC’s Jonathan Karl reports that “a recent report by American Wind Energy Association showed a drop in U.S. wind manufacturing jobs last year.” That’s right—even with a government-subsidized demand, wind manufacturing decreased.

As Foundry readers may remember, this not the first time that China has benefited from a country deciding to waste its money subsidizing the green projects. Derek Scissors reported back in August how Chinese companies were benefiting from Germany’s decision to heavily subsidize solar power.    –more

Trading options may be one of the safest was to invest in the stock market.  There are several strategies that can work well for you.

10 Options Strategies to Consider

By Max D.

Even if you’re new to options trading, you’re probably already familiar with buying puts and calls. These are the two most basic options strategies and the ones that rookie options traders gravitate to. That makes sense. Puts and calls are low-risk and easy to understand. Buy a put and you want the underlying security to go down in value. Purchase a call and you’re cheering for the underlying security to rise. Either way, you’re risk exposure is limited to the premium you pay to buy the contract. If the contract expires worthless, you lose nothing more than the cost of the contract.

To that end, we’re definitely fans of buying puts and calls, no matter what your level of options experience is. The potential for explosive returns without the need for betting the farm on each trade is unrivaled in the investing world. But we’re also fans of broadening our horizons and investing in options is one of the best places to do this. With so many different options strategies, there’s literally always a way to make a profit. Let’s look at the top 10 options strategies.

1. The Covered Call

Writing options means we are sellers of an options contract, which can be risky under some circumstances, but not with covered calls. In fact, covered call writing is probably the most conservative options-writing strategy because the contract you write is backed by your ownership of the underlying stock.

Let’s say you own 500 shares of a highly liquid blue chip stock like Microsoft. Microsoft isn’t very volatile and that makes it an ideal candidate for covered call writing. It’s a good idea to write calls on stocks that aren’t very volatile because we’re going to write out-of-the-money calls and collect some income in the form of a premium for doing so. Say Microsoft is trading at $23. We might write calls on the $25 strike for the next month’s contract. The risk here is that if the underlying stock rises above the strike price before expiration, the buyer of the call can call our stock away at $25, which is a discount to the market price.

Now you see why you have to own the stock you’re writing covered calls on and why you want to select stocks that are range-bound. As a rule of thumb, you would write one call contract for every 100 shares of the underlying you own.

2.The Married Put

Another fairly conservative options strategy is the married put trade. Married puts are a lot like covered calls in that you already own the underlying stock and you’ll buy an amount of puts equivalent to the number shares you own. Here, you’ll be long on the puts, but since you own the underlying stock, the puts act as a hedge. In other words, they give you a way to make money if the stock declines.

3. The Bull Call

There are several different options strategies known as spreads. One of the more basic ones is the bull call spread. In this trade, you buy calls at one strike price and then sell the same amount of calls at a higher strike price. So if you bought five Microsoft 25 calls, you might sell five Microsoft 27.50 or 30 calls. The contracts have to have the same expiration month and underlying security for the trade to be considered a bull call spread. This is a bullish strategy.

4. The Bear Put

The bearish cousin of the bull call is the bear put spread. Here you’ll buy puts at one strike price and then sell the same amount of puts at a LOWER strike price. Both strategies limit gains, but they also limit losses.

5. The Collar

As you can see, a lot of options strategies offer protection to investors. Another one of these trades is the protective collar. With a protective collar, you’ll purchase an out-of-the-money put option and write (or sell) an out-of-the-money call option on the same security. This strategy is used by investors that have already gotten substantial appreciation from the underlying security as a way of locking in profits.

6. The Long Straddle

Got a feeling that a stock is about to make a big move, but you’re not sure what way the move is going to go? That’s OK because you buy both a put and call with the same strike price and expiration on the same security. This is known as the long straddle and positions you perfectly to profit from a big move in the underlying, regardless of the direction.

7.The Long Strangle

A related strategy is the long strangle, but there’s a twist with this trade. With a long strangle, you’ll buy a put and a call on the same security with same expiration date, but with different strike prices. A strangle is usually a little cheaper than a straddle because you’ll be buying out-of-the-money contracts. And with both long straddles and strangles, your loss is limited to the cost paid to enter the trade.

8. The Butterfly Spread

The butterfly spread is an advanced options strategy that may seem confusing to the novice options investor. In a butterfly spread, we combine bullish and bearish spreads using three different strike prices. An example of a butterfly spread would include buying one put or call at the lowest or highest available strike price, then purchasing two of whatever we didn’t purchase in the first leg at higher or lower strike prices and then one final put or call at a lower of higher strike. Let’s try to make this easy to understand. Buy one call, buy two puts, then add another call. Voila, there’s your butterfly spread.

9. The Iron Condor

Another unique options strategy that is geared more to experienced options traders is the iron condor. The iron condor is risky and complex because you simultaneously hold a long and short position in two different strangles. This is the type of trade you need to research before randomly committing money to it.

10.The Iron Butterfly

And our final options trade that we think you ought to know is another butterfly. The iron butterfly allows investors to combine a long or short straddle with the purchase or sale of a strangle. With the iron butterfly we use both puts AND calls, not one or the other. Using out-of-the-money options is advisable to keep costs and risks to a minimum.

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As the Dow drops below the 10,000 mark, futures are moving up. This commentary can be helpful to your trading.

Stock Futures Pointed Higher

Stock futures are higher, an indication that the Dow Jones Industrial Average’s drop below the key 10,000 line in the previous session is in fact, luring some buyers back into what’s been a choppy market over several sessions.

At last check, the S&P 500 futures rose 7 points, while Nasdaq 100 futures are up 12 points and DJIA futures rose 50 points. Asia and Europe gained.

Stocks fell Monday for the third time in four days. Part of the pressure on equities derived from Wall Street Journal report that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke will begin laying the groundwork for credit tightening later in the year. Ongoing worries over the debt health of some European nations also weighed.

News that European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet was leaving a summit in Sydney a day earlier than planned helped to lift the euro and European equities on Tuesday, MarketWatch reported.

A spokesman for the ECB said Trichet was always planning to attend a summit of European leaders scheduled for Thursday, but the market interpreted Trichet’s departure as increasing the chances for a European bailout package later this week, the MarketWatch report said.

As for individual pre-market movers:

Electronic Arts (ERTS) is down nearly 8% in continued negative reaction to its evening earnings. The company beat with Q3 earnings but offered several quarters and FY guidance that’s mostly below the Street view.

Cell Therapeutics CTIC) is off to a robust start after the company announced the FDA informed them that due to severe weather conditions in the Washington, D.C. area, the FDA is postponing the Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee meeting that was to be held on Wednesday, February 10, 2010 to discuss the pixantrone New Drug Application. The FDA indicated that it intends to reschedule the meeting as soon as the FDA can determine a schedule that will allow them to reconvene the advisory panel.    –more

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With so many cars being recalled by Toyota, it makes you wonder how they passed quality control.  Toyota vehicles were known for quality and they held their value well.  I think that Toyota owners will still stick with Toyota through the recalls.

Toyota President apologizes… again, calls situation a “crisis” *UPDATE

Fifteen days after Toyota announced a recall of 2.3 million vehicles in the U.S. for sticking accelerator pedals, the company’s president and grandson of its founder made a formal apology at an evening news conference in Japan on Friday night (early morning EST). Akio Toyoda has been largely silent during the last two weeks as his company struggles to contain the fallout from recalls affecting over nine million vehicles on multiple continents. The only other time he’s spoken on record was during an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland last Friday when he told a Japanese interviewer, “I am deeply sorry.” What’s the reason for today’s remarks? Toyoda told the audience of press, “”I came out here today because I would not want our customers to spend the weekend wondering whether their cars are safe.”

The company president also announced that a committee would be created to look at Toyota’s quality issues and address them going forward, something his predecessor, Katsuake Watanabe, also did back in 2006. Finally, in regards to braking issues with the 2010 Prius revealed yesterday, Toyoda said the company would soon announce how it plans to address them. Despite reports coming out of Japan to the contrary, there has been no official confirmation from Toyota that the new Prius will be recalled. Both the Japanese and U.S. governments have also opened investigations on the Prius and Toyota has pledged its cooperation.

We also learned yesterday of brake issues in the Ford Fusion Hybrid and Mercury Milan Hybrid after Consumer Reports experienced a sudden loss of braking power in a Fusion Hybrid and contacted the automaker. The issue sounds similar to what some owners are experiencing in the 2010 Prius, though we’ve only heard of this one instance and Ford has already responded with a TSB to repair the issue with a software upgrade.    –more

In FOREX, the straddle trade is a simple  yet popular strategy that can be applied in different scenarios from news to the weekend.  I found a few videos that explain the strategies in different ways.

This first one is called the power straddle which is used to straddle the news.

This next video is for weekend straddle trades.  This is one my brother loves to use on the GBP/JPY.

There is a lot of risk in a straddle trade because of widening spreads so be sure to practice for a while before you take the trade live.  When you do start live only trade the smalls lot available a few times before you increase your lot size to match your money management.

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Who would have thought that a loss of 22,000 jobs last month was good news.  The good news is that it is the smallest job loss in two years and midsized companies had a net increase of 9,000 jobs.  Are we on the road to recovery? Too soon to tell, but this is a step in the right direction.

ADP employment report: Midsize firms start hiring again

After leading the charge in laying off workers during most of the recession, they added a net 9,000 workers last month, the ADP National Employment Report said Wednesday. That’s the first employment growth among companies with 50 to 499 workers in two years.

Overall, the economy still lost 22,000 jobs between December and January, according to the ADP report. But that was the smallest decline since February 2008.

“Growth of overall private employment is on the verge of turning positive,”Joel Prakken, chairman of Macroeconomic Advisers, said in a release. The company puts out the monthly report, based on private payroll data, in partnership with Automatic Data Processing. On Friday, the US Labor Department will release the official unemployment figures for January.

Midsized businesses still have a long way to go. They have lost nearly 3.2 million since the recession began, according to ADP. Nationally, these firms employ more than 42 million Americans, far more than large companies (17.8 million) and nearly as many as small businesses (48 million).    –more

The Toyota recall has drastically hurt business for them, but helps boost business for other car manufacturers. The question now is, will Toyota be able to recover from the all the bad press surrounding the recall?  I think so.

Toyota Motor Company falls 16%, FoMoCo up 25%

How do you know if a recall has affected your sales? If you find yourself below the Chrysler Group in sales performance. That’s exactly what happened to Toyota Motor Company in January 2010, as the early effects of its sticking pedal recall sank sales 16 percent versus the same month last year. And the recall was only announced on January 21, directly affecting only about a third of the month’s selling days. We’ll be watching closely to see if Toyota can recover those lost sales in February, which may depend on the outcome of two House hearings scheduled to investigate how its recalls have been handled.

Ford Motor Company, meanwhile, continues to ride a wave of positive press and industry accolades to higher sales. Its group rose sales some 25 percent last month to beat all auto-making companies. Sales for the Ford brand itself rose 26 percent by volume alone. General Motors also has something to smile about, as Chevrolet roared back with sales up 36 percent and sales overall (including non-core brands that are still clearing out inventory) that jumped 14 percent.

Perhaps the single most surprising result is Kia, which for months has stood atop the sales performance charts with fellow Korean brand Hyundai and Subaru. While those two continued their winning ways, up 24 and 28 percent respectively, Kia sales remained flat. That said, there were only 24 selling days in January 2010 versus 26 in January 2009, so Kia did sell more vehicles per day in January than it did last year.    –more

When I hear the term “spending freeze” I think no more additional spending, but apparently there is a different definition used by Obama.  To him it means no additional funding to certain projects, but other programs may continue to spend.

I just don’t see how increasing spending by over $3 trillion will help cut the national debt. To me spending more money means you go deeper in debt. Does the government have a different set of mathematical rules?

The Obama Budget: Higher Taxes, Higher Spending and More Debt

President Barack Obama will submit a $3.8 trillion budget proposal for fiscal 2011 to Congress today. One might hope that given last year’s $1.4 trillion budget deficit was an all-time high and the President promised a spending “freeze” in last week’s State of the Union, this budget might signal a change in direction from the White House. No such luck. President Obama’s new budget is full of billions of dollars in new spending for failed government programs, higher taxes on American families and businesses, and deficit spending for as far as the eye can see.

At the very least, the budget document President Obama is submitting today exposes his spending “freeze” promise for the fraud that it is. As outlined last week, the administration would halt spending increases for only a $447 billion sliver of our total budget, with a total of $15 billion to be saved. That is less than half a percent off of last year’s spending. Worse, this isn’t even an across-the-board spending freeze; it is an aggregate one. So “spending cuts” in parts of the budget are immediately channeled to others. For example, even though the federal government does not need any money for the Census next year, President Obama counts the $5 billion spent this year as a “spending cut” that can be immediately spent on other government programs, such as a16% increase in Department of Education funding, a 6.8% increase in Department of Energy funding, and increases for ineffective Health and Human Services programs like Head Start and sex education.

Given the best case scenario, the most the White House hopes to save from this supposed spending “freeze” is$15 billion. And that is easily dwarfed by just the $100 billion President Obama wants for his Economic Stimulus II plan. Then there are the tax hikes, including higher taxes on families earning more than $250,000 and a brand new tax on financial institutions to pay for the failed automobile union bailout.

And what is the end result of all of President Obama’s new taxes and spending? A record national debt. According to the White House Office of Management and Budget, the United States will post a $1.556 trillion deficit in fiscal 2010, which the Obama administration claims will be reduced to $1.267 trillion in fiscal 2011, thanks to their budget. Given this administration’s budget forecasting record, however, expect that final deficit number to go up. The Obama administration now forecasts $5.08 trillion in debt over the next five years; that is 35% more debt than they forecast just 12 months ago.

A common sense budget would move our country in a much different direction. For starters, the remaining TARP and stimulus funds should both be rescinded. Next, instead of the President’s fungible “aggregate” spending freeze, tough hard spending caps should be enacted. Finally, Congress should disclose the massive unfunded obligations of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid; put those programs on long-term budgets; and enact the necessary entitlement and programmatic reforms that can keep government within those limits. –more

Trading Forex can be difficult especially with how fast the markets can move.  This article gives a little tip into how to base your trading.

Forex Trading Strategies That Work – Understanding the “Fundamentals”

By Daniel Webb

Foreign exchange (”Forex”) trading is a complicated business.  The foreign exchange trader must take into account (amongst other things) what may be called the “fundamental” factors of a country’s economy (i.e. the qualitative factors that may have a bearing on its currency’s exchange rate).  So, what are these “fundamental” factors?  They include political positions and developments (such as changes to a country’s government’s economic policy) and relevant decisions made by a country’s central bank. They also include any relevant pieces of economic news affecting the country in question.  The Forex trader needs to not only be aware of this information at an early stage, but to effectively “second guess” how the money markets will react to it.  It would probably be unwise for traders (even those with considerable market experience) to ignore these fundamental elements and to just base their market decisions on technical analyses.

Approximately three trillion dollars is traded each day on the foreign exchange market (on those days that it is operating), making it the world’s most liquid market.  FX trading is vastly different to stock trading. (For example, in the Forex market, currencies are “paired” in that when one is bought, the other is sold, and vice versa.)  As such, investors may find FX trading to be a useful means of diversifying their investment portfolios.

A number of factors make the Forex market unique (in addition to its liquidity, mentioned above).  These include the fact that the market operates 24 hours a day, 6 days a week, and that traders in the market typically generate low profit margins (when compared with other markets).

The Forex market has changed quite dramatically since participation was opened up in the 1970’s;  now, it is not just the banks, but a range of institutions and investors (both large and small) that routinely participate in the market.  If you do choose to operate in this market, you would be well advised to enroll in a reputable course to learn the nitty gritty of the complicated world of currency trading, find out about the various different ways that this could be done and to consistently apply Forex trading strategies that work.

The important factors that a Forex trader needs to consider when conducting a fundamental analysis of a country’s economy include that country’s GDP, employment rate, trade balance and most recent budget.  Much of this information is publicly available on the Internet.

The results of a fundamental analysis could affect a trader’s course of action in a number of ways. For example, a trader may use fundamental analysis to determine or predict the direction and extent to which a given country’s official interest rate may change. Based on this analysis, the trader may sell the country’s currency (if he/she predicts interest rates will fall), or buy the country’s currency (if he/she predicts interest rates will rise).  Indeed, large investors may take this process a step further by seeking to effectively influence the value of a country’s currency. For example, such investors could fund industrial development in a country (when that country’s currency is weak) and subsequently sell back that country’s currency at a higher rate (when the currency is strong).

In an overall sense, if a Forex trader understands how to conduct a fundamental economic analysis, he or she will be in a much better position to know when to exit an “over inflated” economy before its financial “bubble” bursts.

Learn more about Forex trading for beginner, intermediate and advanced traders and grab some free ebooks and e-courses at http://www.savvyfinancialtraders.com

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