January is a casualty in my profession for it coincides with "year end". So I'm up to my eyeballs in client work with little mental physical energy to post.
My portfolio has suffered a few bumps: KRY, ERF and KB have all declined: KRY spectacularly on the Hugo Chavez nationalization platform; ERF due to commodities sinking; and KB as it is just plain volatile and there was a requirement for increasing reserves etc for consumer loans. I have been building a position in MZZ to hedge.
Naturally, there is lots of yammerin' about the "as goes January, so goes".....
Though I did not act on it, in looking at some charts and I had an alert set for LSCO when it broke above $9. I didn't act because I think that the overall market is feeling weak and this is a thinly traded stock. I'm going to do more of chart looks, since I have had the best success with stocks that have carved out their bottoms and are starting to rise. But I'm not interested in speculating on stuff in this tide.
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Chavez looked like a paper tiger for a while. But after I started reading more about him, I realized that it was simply a matter of time before he did a big asset grab, the country fell into a counter-revolution, or both. So I pulled the plug on my Harvest Natural Resources Inc. (HNR) shares about a year ago.
IMO the Russians are no better.
You may be aware that Chavez is also working to aggregate a great deal of power into his own hands. Example: He is seeking to be allowed to rule by decree for one year.
An ominous sign of what Venezuelans can expect going forward occurred just recently: He refused to renew the license for a TV station.
Chavez is committed to the idea of centralized planning and socialism, if not outright communism. What's more, he has the "little people" behind him far more than a lot of Americans realize.
Expect to see more people who have money in Venezuela start moving it out. Also, look for a brain drain. Venezuelans with options will begin to leave the country. First a trickle, later a torrent.
The sad thing is that life will become even more difficult for Venezuela's poor.
From a slightly different, but interesting, point of view, the link below leads to an intriguing article entitled "Hugo Chavez, the Investor's Friend."
http://kwrintl.com/library/2007/HugoChavezTheInvestorsFriend.htm
PS: He might be my "friend", but I'm staying away!
His options have been limited by the fact that his oil is really heavy garbage. Selling to a market other than the US is going to be difficult for him.
Fortunately his rhetoric has alienated many of the people in Latin America who might have been listening to him otherwise. Of course anyone thumbing their nose at the US is going to get adulation from a certain crowd.
Thanks, Russell, for telling me about the quality of the oil, something I didn't know.
I know a lot of people whose parents (and they too!) left Cuba all those years ago. (Some would use the verb "fled", btw.) I wonder if we're going to see the same scenario if Chavez becomes even more overt in the things he plans to do. And can he succeed?
Thoughts?
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