The G Manifesto

Commodity Trading: Supply & Demand in Commodities

For April 27th– May 1st 2009
By: Matthew Bradbard

Buy The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets: How to Keep Your Portfolio Up When the Market is Down by Peter Schiff

Click Here for Pit Bull: Lessons from Wall Street’s Champion Day Trader

It is viewed by many that a modest increase in commodity prices is a sign that demand is coming back to the market. We need to point out demand is only one side of the equation, the other being supply. We do agree that once prices stabilize we could see further upside, as the global economy starts to digest the recent stimulus, which should lead to inflation down the road. The 2 main questions are how long and windy will that road be and how much inflation will we have? Over the years, one of the main aspects within commodities that has intrigued me is the economics, supply and demand govern the price as opposed to an executive sleeping with his assistant, a missed earnings report or a short seller with an agenda. Yes, just like any market, commodities can be manipulated but to a bigger degree these markets make sense. A hurricane, flood or drought will affect supplies and therefore price. A significant population expansion, a growing middle class with an appetite for better things; i.e. more demand should fuel a commodities bull market for years. It is our viewpoint that we are in the 4th or 5th inning and just taking a rest before the next leg up begins.

To find out exactly how we are positioning our clients in commodity futures and options,
Contact us today at 1-888-920-9997. Don’t forget to tell them The G Manifesto sent you.

Financials

Stocks: Stocks ended the week much better than they stated, clawing back to end modestly lower. The Dow finished the week 55 points or less than 1% lower at 8076 for its first loss in 7 weeks. The S&P traded on both sides of positive and negative but finished the week 3 points lower at 866. For the month of April the S&P is up nearly 9% and on track for its best 2 month run since 75’. The NASDAQ was able to keep its streak alive, ending higher for the seventh consecutive week adding 21 points to 1694. Earnings were largely ignored as were the stress tests, as the market disregarded these tests feeling the gov’t is once again letting banks off the hook. With the results still 1 week away don’t hold your breath for any earth shattering results. The dilemma is that the recent rally was led by financials and with banks on the guillotine we feel it’s unlikely the financials will remain the leaders. We remain cautiously optimistic but if forced to pick a direction we would say down. That is not to say an attempt at 900+ on the S&P is unlikely, we will just be spectators not speculators. Remember the adage “Sell in May and go away.”

Buy The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets: How to Keep Your Portfolio Up When the Market is Down by Peter Schiff

Click Here for Pit Bull: Lessons from Wall Street’s Champion Day Trader

Bonds: June 30-yr bonds were lower by just over 1 basis point with the lowest trade since 3/18. Support is seen at 123’00 with resistance at 126’00. The trend remains down but we could see a bounce being prices have come off 7 basis points just in the last 3 ½ weeks. June 10-yr notes were lower by 21.5 ticks last week, like bonds was the lowest price since 3/18. Support comes in between 120’16-120’23 with resistance between 122’05-122’16. The trend remains down but the pace of selling may slow now with the rate back above 3.0%. We are advising clients to continue accumulating shorts in March 10’ Euro-dollar positions. We are approximately in the middle of the trading range we have been in for the last 3 months. The Fed meets this week and we expect no change in policy, at most some jawboning on how to keep longer term rates low.

Softs

July cocoa picked up $58 last week recovering from the previous 2 week’s losses of $383. Support is seen at 2400 with resistance at 2500 followed by 2532, the 20 day moving average. On further weakness in the dollar we may see a short covering bounce being prices are oversold.

July sugar closed up 54 ticks, the highest close in 7 months, helped by higher gasoline prices and what appears to be fund buying. Support comes in between 13.70 and 13.80 with resistance at 14.25 followed by 14.60. We have advised clients to lighten up on longs or at a minimum tighten up stops. Additionally, our clients sold July calls against some of our October call positions.

The US Census Bureau said that cotton mill use increased from an annual rate of 3.09 to 3.14 million bales in March. July cotton closed up 2.10 cents at its highest level since late January. Resistance comes in between 53.50/54 with first support at 51.00 followed by 50.00. We would be a cautious buyer on breaks. We have considered selling July calls against a purchase of October calls; contact us for pricing.

Continue Reading about Softs and Metals

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_____________________________________________________________________________________Risk Disclosure: The risk of loss in trading commodity futures and options can be substantial. Before trading MB Wealth recommends that you should carefully consider your financial position to determine if commodity trading is appropriate for you. All funds committed should be purely risk capital. Past performance is no guarantee of future trading results. There are no guarantees of market outcome stated, everything stated above are our opinions. Calculations of profit and loss have not factored in commissions and fees.

Guest Manifesto: Time Is Of The Essence

Click Here for Wristwatches: History Of A Century’s Development

Cartier Ballon Bleu Mens Yellow Gold Automatic Chronograph Watch

G’s know that “Time is of the Essence”, and therefore the display and measurement thereof is crucial to the life, and lifestyle, of a G. There are many (too many in fact) brands of wristwatches for men, and there are too many men who just don’t care what goes on their wrist. This discussion is not for those men.

So you’re a G, or a wannabe G. You’ve got the Kiton / Henry Poole / Brioni / Borrelli / Turnbull & Asser thing down. You’ve got the Cleverly/E. Greene/Gucci/Lobb thing down. You’ve even got the Zimmerli/Hanro/Calida/Sunspel thing down (if you don’t have this down the fly girls will be laughing at just the wrong moment of intimacy). We’ll assume you’ve learned the difference between a .45 and a 9mm, as well as between Benson & Hedges and Nat Shermans or A. Fuente and Romeo y Julieta. Be that as it may, you’re probably still working on how a G puts the time on his wrist. This primer should get you where you need to be.

You’re ready to leave your abode, suited up, and the penultimate accoutrement, after the steel-and-lead, is the wristwatch. Depending on the task, or tasks, at hand, you may be wearing one, perhaps one of many, timepieces. What separates a G from a Joe the Plumber? Exclusivity, Precision, Refinement, and Comfort in All Environments. The same should stand for the wristwatch of a G. While a $40 Swatch can tell time with the same accuracy as a quartz Patek Phillipe (and the only quartz Patek is for women), I wouldn’t suggest a quartz at all. Quartz is accurate, but cheap. Quartz is accurate but battery powered. Quartz is accurate but mass-market. Batteries die. Quartz is disposable. An haute-horlogerie mechanical movement will last forever with proper servicing. Quartz-powered timepieces are simply very expensive, or very cheap, adornment that should be shunned. No further discussion need ensue.

Jadakiss – Happy 2 Be Here

Now, to the matter of which timepiece should, or should not, grace the wrist of a G:
G-Shock – Despite the name, this is a plastic piece of mass-merchandise, albeit a durable and accurate piece of mass merchandise. Thor Hyerdal wore an Eterna mechanical timepiece on the Kon Tiki (quartz didn’t exist back in 1947). NASA’s watch of choice since 1964 through today, is the mechanical Omega Speedmaster chronograph. Paul Newman’s watch of choice – Rolex Daytona Cosmograph automatic Chronograph Chronometer. Enough said.

Click Here for Wristwatches: History Of A Century’s Development

There are certain manufactures of watches that have stood the test of time. They literally manufacture the entire watch, and are known for designing and manufacturing the movement, or the guts that keep the time. Swatch Group is, believe it or not, home to a number of highly respected Swiss manufactures. Richemont Group, another Swiss conglomerate, owns several well-respected manufactures, as does LVMH (owner of Louis Vuitton and Moet). The independent manufactures are perhaps the most exclusive.

Cartier Ballon Bleu Mens Yellow Gold Automatic Chronograph Watch

A note about chronometers: They are often confused with chronographs, timepieces that measure fractions of a second and other time segments (hours, 10-minutes etc.). Chronometers are certified by official agencies in Switzerland and always come with certificates. Typically a chronometer will imply a higher quality movement and higher accuracy, but I’d stack a Patek, Girard-Perregaux, JLC, Grand Seiko, or other haute horlogerie piece against an “official” chronometer any time at all.

A note about case material: Yellow gold, while suitably expensive and flash, is no material for a G’s watch. White gold is subtle, platinum is rare, both are easily mistaken for steel except by those who truly know. I recommend steel as it is durable and subtle. Yellow or pink gold should be worn only with a band of alligator, crocodile, or other rare skin.

Here are the brands that merit our attention:
Audemars Piguet – Royal Oak
Breguet – Type XX chronograph
Girard Perregaux – Laureato
IWC – Ingenieur
Jaeger-LeCoultre –Master Control, Master Ultra Thin, Reverso Duo
Omega – Speedmaster Chrono, DeVille Chrono, Aqua Terra, Railmaster
Patek Philppe – Nautilus. Their other pieces are too delicate for a G’s day-to-day mission.
Rolex – Rolex, while being known on every street corner from Washington Heights to East LA, and everywhere else called earth, is in fact a well-made and solid timepiece. They are, however, overvalued in the market due to self-aggrandizing advertising. Their movements are solid, but I would put Omega’s George Daniels movement head-to-head, with the price/quality ratio favoring the Omega. Nevertheless, Rolex makes a durable watch (600,000 per year, and no, they are not handmade). Get a Sea-Dweller, Explorer II, or GMT.
Seiko – Do not confuse their Grand Seiko and Phoenix lines with the department store quartz varieties. Their high-end pieces are brilliant, but unavailable in the States. Swoop the Phoenix automatic chronograph if you can find it.
Zenith – Chronomaster. This same movement powered the Rolex Daytona for years.

There are many other high quality watchmakers in Switzerland, Germany, and even the States, but these are the names I’d suggest at the outset. So with these watchmakers a G can find (not always easily) the right watch for the right circumstances. Remember, we are focusing on Exclusivity, Precision, Refinement, and Comfort in All Environments.

Any of the above are well made classic machines that will get you everywhere you want to go, but should I choose to rank the above it would be difficult. Yet here are my top 5 G timepieces:
#1 Thee A-P Royal Oak
#2 The JLC Master Control
#3 The IWC Ingenieur
#4 The Omega Railmaster
#5 The Rolex Explorer II

A G does his homework, and I would suggest that you supplement your watch knowledge with information from none other than the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry at
http://www.fhs.ch/en/

Click Here for Wristwatches: History Of A Century’s Development

Cartier Ballon Bleu Mens Yellow Gold Automatic Chronograph Watch

Cheers,

Steve Lazarus
aka The Greatest
aka The Professor
aka Laz
aka The Laz

Papoose- Computer Love

Gavin Newsom Will Run for Governor of California

Click Here for The PlumpJack Cookbook: Great Meals for Good Living

Mayor Gavin Newsom formally announced his candidacy for California governor on Tuesday, offering himself as an heir to the same groundswell for generational change that helped send President Barack Obama to the White House.

Entering a race that could see him competing against men 15 and 30 years his senior, the 41-year-old Democrat pointedly used YouTube and the social networking sites Twitter and Facebook to disclose that he would seek his party’s nomination to succeed Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Click Here for The PlumpJack Cookbook: Great Meals for Good Living

The move mirrors Obama’s early efforts as a candidate to identify and mobilize supporters through the Internet. But Newsom, who campaigned for Hillary Rodham Clinton in the presidential primary, described it as emblematic of the “intuitive” comfort with technology, transparency and consensus-building he says he shares with Obama.

Newsom For California

“There will be legitimate questions nationally – is change an affectation of the personality of Barack Obama and is it exclusive to Washington, D.C. and the occupant of the White House? Or is that change, that generational mind-set, going to take shape across the rest of the nation, starting with the most populous state?” he said in an interview with The Associated Press. “We’ll see.”

Newsom said that to broaden his appeal beyond the San Francisco Bay area, he plans to highlight his background as a successful businessman – before becoming mayor, he founded a wine store that he parlayed into a string of restaurants – and as a politician who has been fiscally responsible. For several months, he has been crisscrossing the state and meeting with voters in markedly less liberal areas such as Stockton and San Diego.

“I’m socially progressive, no doubt about that,” he said. “People know I will fight for the things I believe in. But they may not know that other side.”

Source

“We can’t afford to keep returning to the same old tired ideas and expect a different result,” the Democrat told supporters in his three-minute YouTube announcement, part of the unprecedented “virtual fly-around” campaign announcement done entirely in the new media.

The gubernatorial candidate’s announcement video, which premiered on his Web page, GavinNewsom.com, utilizes three languages – English, Spanish and Mandarin – as well as images of solar technology, schools and health care facilities. It argued that Newsom – now in his second term as the city’s mayor – has created jobs, helped San Francisco establish a rainy day reserve and budgetary “sound fiscal policy,” and has tackled the challenge of providing universal health care to the uninsured.

Click Here for The PlumpJack Cookbook: Great Meals for Good Living

In his announcement, Newsom says his record on issues like environmental and green technology issues, health care and government spending “isn’t conservative or progressive. It’s just plain smart for everyone.”

Source

Newsom is a smooth cat. This could be a big win for The Playboys of the World. I will definitely float some scratch his way. (Although his is a little too negative on Legalizing Prostitution.)

And his wife is an intelligent, classy woman. (And I don’t say that about a lot of women).

http://www.gavinnewsom.com/home/

Michael Porfirio Mason
AKA The Peoples Champ
AKA GFK, Jr.
AKA The Sly, Slick and the Wicked
AKA The Voodoo Child
The Guide to Getting More out of Life
http://www.thegmanifesto.com

Rappin 4 Tay – Players Club

Mexican Cartels: DIY Gun Truck

Click Here for The G Manifesto’s The Tijuana Report: There is a War going on Outside

Click Here for Cocaine Trafficking in Latin America

Click Here for Narcocorrido: A Journey into the Music of Drugs, Guns, and Guerrillas

Click Here for Drug Lord: The Life & Death of a Mexican Kingpin

The war among Mexico’s drug cartels has spurred a major arms race — and the gangs are starting to acquire more serious weapons.

Take, for instance, the discovery last week by Mexican police of a powerful .50-caliber weapon bolted to the bed of a truck. Reports vary on what kind of weapon it was: Mexican Federal Police General Rodolfo Cruz said it was a .50 caliber Browning machine gun — a Ma Deuce — while the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms said it was an unmodified semi-automatic weapon built by U.S. manufacturer TNW Firearms. But either way, it sounds like an effort to build a “technical” — an improvised fighting vehicle of the kind favored by Somali warlords and developing-world armies.

Continue Reading

Click Here for The G Manifesto’s The Tijuana Report: There is a War going on Outside

Click Here for Cocaine Trafficking in Latin America

Click Here for Narcocorrido: A Journey into the Music of Drugs, Guns, and Guerrillas

Click Here for Drug Lord: The Life & Death of a Mexican Kingpin

Reminds me of the Miami “War Wagon”.

The Rest is Up to You…

Michael Porfirio Mason
AKA The Peoples Champ
AKA GFK, Jr.
AKA The Sly, Slick and the Wicked
AKA The Voodoo Child
The Guide to Getting More out of Life
http://www.thegmanifesto.com

Jadakiss-Living For The City

Heisting Drug Dealers on The Rise

Click Here for The Top Ten ways to Make Money in a Down Economy

Click Here for The G Manifesto’s The Tijuana Report: There is a War going on Outside

Click Here for Cocaine Trafficking in Latin America

When the heavy battering started to buckle the front door of her new home in Tucson, Maria remained frozen to the spot with fear.

As her family scattered to hide in the bedrooms, bathroom and kitchen, masked men toting guns and dressed in flack jackets stormed into the living room shouting “Police! Everyone on the floor!”

Her cheek pressed to the ground, she watched as the men fanned out through the comfortable suburban house, pistol whipping her brother-in-law and shouting, “Where are the guns and the drugs?”

“I raised my head and saw his black boots … It was then I realized they weren’t police at all,” she recalled, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Maria, who has no connection to the criminal underworld, is among scores of law-abiding Tucson residents caught up in a wave of violent so-called home invasions, most of them linked to the lucrative trade in drugs smuggled from Mexico. Maria had bought the house weeks before and the gunmen believed drug traffickers were using it.

Click Here for The Top Ten ways to Make Money in a Down Economy

Click Here for The G Manifesto’s The Tijuana Report: There is a War going on Outside

Click Here for Cocaine Trafficking in Latin America

The desert city is less than two hour’s drive from the Mexico border. It lies on a crossroads for the multimillion dollar trade in drugs headed north to market across the United States from Mexico, as well as guns and hot money proceeds headed south to the cartels.

Five years ago, police say home invasions were virtually unheard of in Tucson. Now the crimes run at three to four a week, as criminals go after the profits of the illicit trade in marijuana, black-tar heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine through the city.

“We’ve always dealt with those in business establishments, banks and convenience stores, it was very unusual to see them in houses,” Roberto A. Villasenor, Tucson’s assistant chief of police said of the recent trend. “The home was seen as a safe spot.”

CAUGHT UP

Curbing drug violence is a top concern for the government in Mexico, where rival cartels murdered 6,300 people last year as they battled the authorities and each other for control of lucrative smuggling corridors to the United States.

It is also high on the U.S. agenda as authorities seek to stop cartel-related crimes such as kidnappings, home invasions and gangland-style slayings from bleeding over the porous U.S. border and taking hold here.

A year ago, Tucson police department set up a special unit to target the rising number of home invasions. Since then, the officers have investigated at least 173 cases scattered across the city, three-quarters of them tied to the drug trade, investigators say.

The assailants — typically teams of two to six people — frequently dress in tactical gear and identify themselves as police officers, Drug Enforcement Administration agents or SWAT team members as they burst into houses to steal drugs, cash or guns.

“Demographics mean nothing when it comes to home invasions. We see (them) in some of the richest, most wealthy parts of town, and also in some of the most downtrodden, completely poor areas,” said Detective Sergeant David Azuelo, who runs the home invasion unit.

While most raids target the drug trade, some have branched out and gone after students and other law-abiding residents, Azuelo said. Others assault families who just happen to live in a house that was once used to deal drugs, or simply because the attackers got the wrong address.

Continue Reading

Click Here for The Top Ten ways to Make Money in a Down Economy

Click Here for The G Manifesto’s The Tijuana Report: There is a War going on Outside

Click Here for Cocaine Trafficking in Latin America

I have been warning of this for a while now.

The Rest is Up to You…

Michael Porfirio Mason
AKA The Peoples Champ
AKA GFK, Jr.
AKA The Sly, Slick and the Wicked
AKA The Voodoo Child
The Guide to Getting More out of Life
http://www.thegmanifesto.com

Keith Murray “Hustle On”