End of Oil Run

What I find curious is this idea of the omnipotence of OPEC. Certainly the organization and Saudi Arabia has some amount of clout both from the actual size and cost of their production and how much influence speculators ascribe to them. However:

Oil was trading in the $10-$20 range for most of a decade in the 90's while OPEC futilely tried to raise the price. While the wealthier OPEC members could afford to limit production the poorer members simply ignored quotas. Plus the prior spike had brought on-stream a lot of non-OPEC supply they could not control; Canada, Norway, UK, etc.

In sum: OPEC's pricing power while real is often overblown.

I hope people will remember this ;-) Bruno

COP is still a good one. So is APC.

The following observations are based on the charts at these URLs:

An increasing number of these stocks have gone down since 2/16. Only PTR in this group is still in positive territory (the triangle of red in the lower right is growing). It also shows a trend downward (the green is getting darker).

APC is in the Oil&Gas Operations group. These charts are reachable from the URLs above. In % change since 2/16 APC is a respectable 14th out of 40, but is about back to the 2/16 price (dark blue is 0% change since 2/16).

This group also shows an increasing number of negatively performing members over the last 3 months. Even the good performers show a trend downward since about 4/27.

Feel free to post or e-mail if you have questions about these charts.

Duncan Chesley American Image, Inc.