Monday, August 11, 2008

Metal Goes Soft

From MarketBeat:

With stocks rallying, the dollar soaring and oil falling out of bed, there are suddenly a lot fewer metal fans in the market.

Futures prices on a range of different metals were flattened like a penny on a train track Monday. Comex gold for August delivery dropped 4.2% to $821.50 a troy ounce, in the biggest one day drop for the shiny stuff since March 19....CONTINUED

metal_art_200_20080811151248.jpg
Are metal prices headed for a big bottom? (Wikipedia)


That's Tim Annett's choice of graphic (and Tap ref.), which brought to mind this post by Mark Gongloff, last month:

Hard Rock and a Hard Place

Mark Gongloff has this report on the place where bad markets meet rock and roll.

If the economy and stock market are spiraling into despair, that must mean it’s time for a hard-rock revival.

ozzy_art_200_20080711082911.jpg
Crazy. But that’s how it goes.

We received in our inbox a note from a source pointing out that the late 1960s and early 1970s — when the economy, stock market and national mood began to turn ugly – brought us such gods of heavy-metal thunder as Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple.

As a bear market and stagflation gripped the nation in the 1970s, we consoled ourselves with the eardrum-abusing sounds of Aerosmith, Kiss and AC/DC. Punk was also born in this era....MORE

Among the comments:

Come on, we all know that Mr. Gongloff’s secret shame is humming ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go’ when he thinks no one can hear.

Seriously though, he should get prescience points for coming up with the heavy metal band name “Fjardaal Smelter” a few weeks after sub-prime entered the zeitgeist last year.

Comment by Climateer - July 11, 2008 at 8:47 am
We need to use more rock dots in everyday English. That’ll even things out.
Comment by Herr Umlaut - July 11, 2008 at 1:26 pm

Herr Umlaut,
When Mr. Gongloff was single-handing the Energy Roundup blog, his was the first place I saw the news of Spın̈al Tap’s reunion.
We alerted our readers that the ER was THE place on the internet for venue and artist information.
If you recall, David St. Ubbins is on record as saying :
“It’s like a pair of eyes. You’re looking at the umlaut, and it’s looking at you.”
When we chose a theme song for the Climateer Investing blog, the votes were leaning to the Scorpions’ “Rock you like a hurricane” but I wimped out and went with Modern English’s “I melt with you”.
Close to “everyday English”?

Comment by Climateer - July 11, 2008 at 2:15 pm

Climateer, shame on you, I had no idea!
.
ARG… what i would give for a HE nade right now…

Comment by To: Hemlaut at 1:26... more rock dots you think! - July 11, 2008 at 5:04 pm

Ja und Ja.
I got the dots over the “n̈” in Spın̈al though.

Comment by Climateer - July 11, 2008 at 5:52 pm
Our theme song:


Here's our mascot, from: "First Solar and Knut the Polar Bear (FSLR)"

So much for 205 on the FSLR. Here's our market snapshot:

Still Think I'm Cute?

Fangs for the memories: Knut is separated from this little boy by six inches of glass
One year on, cuddly Knut has turned into a 22st killing machine

From the Daily Mail

We've had a lot of Knut, here's the list. Here I called him a fat freak (after making sure I was a few thousand miles away)...


Climateer Investing, your spot for Knut and the gratuitous metal ümläüt*.

*Die Ärzte used a triple umlaut (which I can't reproduce) in their name on one of their albums, Geräusch:

Schwarzes Geräusch cover