Energy

By Michael Filloon

For those following commodities, a resurgence with respect to commodity prices were seen in 2010. This has been important for several reasons. First is the economic rebound. After an economic slowdown, basic materials will be one of the first sectors to see a comeback. As demand increases for products, a draw down of inventories lead to purchases of the raw materials used to make those products. The second will be seen as more of an opinion than fact, but there was an interruption of the world wide commodity bull run.

[[wysiwyg_imageupload:1117:]]By Bill Powers

With a new year upon us, I believe now would be an excellent time to review several of the biggest themes I see unfolding over the next 12 months.  While some of the items/predictions I will cover in this issue have been discussed in previous issues, I will introduce several new themes that I will be exploring more thoroughly in 2011.  Let’s get started.

By Tony Richardson

“The man who fears God will avoid all extremes,” Ecclesiastes 7:18

Speaking with Carol Massar and Matt Miller in a Bloomberg interview back in July 2010, former Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said, “(The United States) is a country whose economy has always been based on having plentiful, affordable supplies of energy. But one of the things we can do is develop more sources here at home – not only in terms of developing more oil here, but also we need to build more nuclear power plants. We need to install more renewable energy sources that are domestic sources, so that we are not as dependent on external imports.”

By Shah Gilani

The outlook for the U.S. stock market in the New Year figures to be an exasperating mixture of promise and peril. Positive momentum is building going into 2011, but so are dangerous bubbles.

[[wysiwyg_imageupload:997:]]By Jeff Rubin

The recently released base case that will be used in the upcoming Annual Energy Outlook 2011 from the US Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) paints a future of cheap and abundant energy for the US economy over the next quarter of a century. But its underlying assumptions are no more credible than those that underpinned the equally optimistic forecasts released by the International Energy Agency.