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Samson, thank you, assuming you're not being sarcastic. :) You never can tell around here. In terms of energy investing I am a big fan of Kurt Wulff and his web site www.mcdep.com. Another source I can highly recommend is the book "The Oil Factor" by Stephen and Donna Leeb. I read The Oil...

The unconventional oil deposits in Alberta are bitumen (tar) mixed with sand, not shale. The largest oil shale formations are in the USA. Much of the cost of producing crude from oil sands is purchased energy, in the form of natural gas, so the cost is not fixed. In 2004 when the Syncrude...

THe 100 Billion was just the Alberta oil sands, and just the amount that can be produced with current infrastructure and economics. There's a few hundred billion more that can likely be produced with forseeable technology at forseeable oil prices. Geologically there are 1 or 2 trillion barrels...

Yes they are. I'm a very happy investor in SU and COS_U.TO, so I know quite a bit about that. :) Oil sands have the same problem as oil shale, mining is slow and the upgrading process is incredibly complex, capital intensive, and prone to failures. Both Syncrude and Suncor have large...

I think there are "only" a hundred billion barrels or so of proven & provable reserves. The remainder of the 1 trillion barrels are too deep to be surface mined economically, and "in situ" technologies are still pretty experimental and low yielding. I'm sure you can find better numbers if you...

I hate to sound like that asshole who was promoting peak oil here a few months ago. But he did have a point. Reserves aren't really the most important question as far as oil price is concerned. The question is how fast we can get what we have out of the ground. Shale oil for example, even if we...

If there are no middlemen and no fees, who mails you a statement every month, files your 1099, answers the phone when you want to complain about something, clears your trades, provides market data, sends you a check or wire when you want to redeem your account, writes new and better trading...

Hah! I was right. That's a pitiful short list. None of the 8 or 9 stocks and ETFs I am currently short at various retail brokers are on Genesis' short list. In my experience none of the direct-access brokers even begin to compete with the large retail brokers such as Ameritrade, BrownCo, and...

First of all, Roach never implied that housing prices could or would go to zero. Second, only an idiot invests based on the risk of losing their entire investment. A dollar will never lose all of its value. That doesn't mean you should keep all you money in cash. Third, the vast majority...

To elaborate on Tomcole's point: The benchmark oil futures are light sweet crude. The excess supply from the Middle East is in heavy sour crude. The spread between light and heavy crude has widened sharply as it became apparent that the Saudis could no longer meet market demand for light crude...

A good ergonomic keyboard. Kinesis or Microsoft Natural Pro are good ones I've used. If you get RSI, it doesn't matter how many hotkeys you have, you're still going to be in pain. Independent traders aren't usually well insured against disability. You can never imagine how disabling RSI...

Arbitrage covers a very wide range of strategies. Pairs trading, merger arbitrage, and other forms of risk arbitrage are often quite accessible to retail traders. Riskless arbitrage is highly competitive and you generally need to have an edge in execution or resources, as you point out. Martin

I realized I didn't actually answer your question. :( That's what I'd do. Martin

SATA uses point to point wiring rather than a bus. That means for every port on the adapter card, you connect one hard drive. There is no master and slave, or primary/secondary bus. Lower numbered SATA ports will show up first in your BIOS and in the Windows drive letters unless you...

Yep. Martin

I guess it happens... I've never seen it in any of the stocks I short. Martin

A Morningstar analyst looks at real estate valuation from an accounting perspective: http://news.morningstar.com/doc/article/0,,135312,00.html Particularly interesting is the Federal Reserve Board study it refers to on price to rent ratios, showing price/rent ratio in a parabolic increase...

I agree with Samson. I have the "Jerker" desk and apart from the name it is awesome. Here's some people's Ikea desks, just to give you an idea of the options. http://adam.pra.to/content/jerker/ Martin

Morgan Stanley economists examine the data behind the housing bubble and conclude that some of the warning signs have been overblown. They see "froth" but not a "bubble." http://www.morganstanley.com/GEFdata/digests/20050527-fri.html#anchor1 Notably: "In contrast, HMDA (Home Mortgage...

But it costs more if you are wrong. :) Martin