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Money matters: Oil gushes higher
High oil prices and heightened political risk likely to remain a feature
– The views of one of our analysts
Graham Macdonald
MBMG International Ltd.
Recent weeks have seen resurgence in the price of oil. MBMG
have been overweight in the energy sector on their global sector overlay for
some months, in light of the positive fundamentals for the sector. The recent
increase in investor risk aversion has enhanced the sector’s attractions. The
oil stocks have been beneficiaries of the move away from riskier areas of the
market and have important attractions in terms of security and the potential for
future growth.
Yukos Share Price over the last
three years
Source: Yukos.com
Yukos is responsible for 19% of Russian oil production and
accounts for 2% of the world’s production, equal to the current level of Iraqi
exports. The market fears that the government’s interference in the running of
Yukos could have a significant impact on the company’s oil production.
The strong growth of the global economy and the rapid
development of China have fuelled demand for oil. As consumers in China become
more affluent, demand for cars has been expanding at a frenetic pace. There is
very little room to raise current oil supplies, with the result that prices in
the US were recently propelled to a record high of around $44 per barrel. The
low level of supply was a factor driving oil prices higher earlier this year but
these have been rebuilt to their historic normal levels.
Adding to existing concerns over oil supply is the danger of
increased political risk. Oil pipelines in Iraq continue to be subject to
periodic acts of sabotage while there has been a pick-up in terrorist activity
in Saudi Arabia. Elsewhere, there are continuing tribal problems in Nigeria
while in Latin America, Venezuela has seen increasing unrest and opposition to
the current president, which could escalate and affect oil production as it has
in the past. There is also the uncertainty surrounding the future of the key
Russian oil producer, Yukos.
At some point MBMG are likely to re-assess their stance - a
return of investors’ risk appetite is likely to prove unhelpful as the
sector’s more defensive characteristics mean that it is likely to be used as a
source of funds when investors wish to move back into areas such as technology.
However, our view that high BETA markets will continue to fall until some time
between 2007-2010 means that there is still scope for commodities in the medium
term, although price spikes in the short term will see periods of subsequent
price retrenchment and there will be massive volatility to both the upside and
the downside, which can be both extremely profitable and also somewhat risky for
many of our portfolio holdings, such as Man, OM-IP, JF Natural Resources among
others.
Next week: 8 bullet points about the price of Oil
The above data and research was compiled from sources believed to be
reliable. However, neither MBMG International Ltd nor its officers can
accept any liability for any errors or omissions in the above article nor
bear any responsibility for any losses achieved as a result of any actions
taken or not taken as a consequence of reading the above article. For more
information please contact Graham Macdonald on [email protected]
Snap Shots: Another one bites the dust! Farewell Richard Avedon
by Harry Flashman
Another of the world’s finest photographers has just
died - Richard Avedon. The 81 year old was still photographing
professionally when he died suddenly on location following a brain
haemorrhage. His work is known by generations, and he was one of the
photographers who set new standards for those who have followed. He was
voted one of the ten greatest photographers in the world by Popular
Photography magazine, and in 1989 received an honorary doctorate from the
Royal College of Art in London. He was one of the masters.
 Richard
Avedon could produce wonderful glamorous fashion photographs, but was not
the kind of portrait photographer to spend time producing ‘flattering’
lighting for his other subjects, or to use a soft focus filter on those
whom the bloom of youth had since perished. His portraits were, often as
not, harsh, harshly lit and most unflattering. Yet people lined up to be
photographically slaughtered.
I have always contended that photography is “lying
with a camera”, so I found it interesting to read a quote from Avedon
which was, “All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.”
Richard Avedon was born in New York in 1923 of
immigrant parents and dropped out of high school to join the US Navy which
put him in its photographic section.
After returning to America after WW II, he found a job
as a photographer in a department store. Within two years he was working
for the fashion magazine Harper’s Bazaar, after his tutor at the New
York New School for Social Research, Alexey Brodovitch, noticed his
talent. Brodovitch was also the art director at Harpers!
After 20 years with Harper’s Bazaar, he moved on to
Vogue magazine and others, as his ‘different’ style became popular. He
became very attached to his studio because it was only there that he felt
he could totally control the lighting. His technique was faultless and his
images pin sharp.
He was in some ways a technocrat, but did not rely on
new and sophisticated technology to record his images. Many of his most
famous portraits were done on a 10x8 inch Deardorff large format camera,
and after he was happy with the lighting, he would stand beside the camera
and fix his subject with a direct gaze, direct and shoot. That direction
could allow movement or spontaneity, but it was always controlled by
Avedon.
Amongst the celebrities who stood before the Deardorff
were the Duke and Duchess of Windsor (shown here), Buster Keaton, Gloria
Vanderbilt, Pablo Picasso, Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, Frank Lloyd Wright,
Mae West, Jimmy Durante, Brigitte Bardot, Georgia O’Keeffe, Jacques
Cousteau, Andy Warhol, and Lena Horne. Between the 70’s and 80’s,
while working for Vogue magazine, he took some of the most important
portraits of the famous people of those days.
Avedon enjoyed his portrait photography, but
photographed far more than just the A List celebrities. In 1959 he shot a
series of images of patients in mental hospitals. Again taken with brutal
reality, some of these images are quite shocking. He also has left a huge
body of work covering the ‘ordinary’ working class people and
‘drifters’, again pin sharp portraits of hopelessness in some cases.
There was never any attempt at glossing over these people’s plight.
He collaborated with others to produce many books, such
as “Nothing Personal” (1974) with his friend James Baldwin, a man that
he worked with for more than 30 years. Another book was simply entitled
“Portraits” and published in 1976.
He seemed to have an endless enthusiasm, and in 1992 he
became the first staff photographer for the “New Yorker”, and two
years later when he was 71 years old, the Whitney Museum brought together
fifty years of his work in the retrospective, “Richard Avedon:
Evidence”.
Another decade later and Richard Avedon was still
working, a tribute to not just his energy, but to his art. He was one of
the world’s great portrait artists.
Avedon died on October 1st, 2004.
Modern Medicine: Where there’s life, there’s HOPE
by Dr. Iain Corness, Consultant
One of the advantages of being around in
this (sort of) enlightened age is that the scientific studies that are being
undertaken these days are much bigger and more searching than ever before.
In fact, one of the major differences between today’s Evidence Based
Medicine (EBM) and ‘quackery’ lies in the fact that EBM can show very
demonstrably whether or not Magic Potion A does work, whereas it is very
rare to see the proponents of ‘alternative’ therapies allowing their
treatment modalities or medications put to the same rigorous tests.
Again with today’s networking ease, studies can be done
through centres throughout the world, and it becomes easier to collect data
over a much larger number of patients. Take, for example the HOPE trial
(since we medicos love acronyms, HOPE stands for Heart Outcomes Prevention
Evaluation). This study covering 10,000 patients world-wide to investigate
the worth of a medication known as an ACE (Angiotensin Converting Enzyme)
inhibitor was brought to an early closure in 1999, when it was decided that
the study showed such a positive result that it was unethical to carry on
comparing the outcomes of patients on treatment or on placebo (inactive
tablets). The monitoring board felt that they could not justify continuing
to give some patients inactive tablets, knowing by that stage that the
treatment with the ACE inhibitor gave a much better outcome.
And when I say a much better outcome, that is exactly
what the HOPE trial did show. For example a 32 percent reduction in the risk
of strokes and a 26 percent reduction in the risk of cardio-vascular deaths.
Those are certainly some positive findings from data collected world-wide.
Remember too that these findings came from rigorously controlled clinical
trials, not just results from a bunch of folk who told “somebody” that
they felt a lot better by taking three Mozambique mussels every morning.
Personal ‘results’ like this are purely anecdotal, and in no way
represent scientific evidence of efficacy.
As well as HOPE, there have been other multi-centre
trials such as the SOLVD (Studies Of Left Ventricular Dysfunction) and SAVE
(Survival And Ventricular Enlargement) to demonstrate the effects of this
ACE inhibitor group of drugs.
So should you be “saving” up in the “hope” that
these can produce a better outcome for you? Well, if you have high blood
pressure, or are more than 55 years of age with evidence of coronary artery
disease, peripheral vascular disease, stroke or diabetes and other cerebro-vascular
risk factors, then you may indeed benefit from some ACE inhibition.
But here is the ‘real’ problem. You do not
necessarily know if you have any of the above conditions (other than being
older than 55, as most of us do know our ages)! It requires testing and
examination of the type you would call a ‘check-up’ - and when was your
last one?
Even if you have been found to have some of the problems
mentioned earlier in this article, it is not a case of popping into your
favourite pharmacy and buying some tablets over the counter (always a
dangerous practice anyway), but is something that should be prescribed and
monitored by a physician or cardiologist.
There are hundreds of dedicated medical scientists out
there who spend their lives trying to make your lives better. I would
sincerely encourage any of you in your 50’s and above to consider having
regular check-ups. It is worthwhile, and may even increase your own quality
of life. Take the advancements that modern science can offer you!
Learn to Live to Learn: Adopting the Diploma Programme
by George Benedikt
The growth of the IB programmes has been
exponential, especially in recent years, and there are now 130 schools in the
Asia Pacific region offering the Diploma alone and another 100 schools offering
one of the other IB programmes – the Middle Years Programme (Years 7 – 11)
and Primary Years Programme (only 20 schools so far offer all three).
One misconception about IB is its supposedly elitist status.
Interestingly, 43% of Diploma schools worldwide are government owned, although
this statistic is clearly not representative of Thailand.
Another misconception often aired by schools (often without
any supporting research) and more than often given as a reason to parents for
not wanting to run the IB programme, is that the diploma is ‘expensive’.
Whilst the rate of growth of IB schools has been great, many schools still hide
behind this preconception and are apparently unwilling to engage in any serious
analysis of what might be best for them or more particularly, what might be best
for their students, their parent body, the faculty and their short term, medium
term and long term marketing strategy.
Depending on the number of subjects offered within the six
subject areas, it is quite conceivable that as few as 15 students in the final
two years of a programme can make an ‘expensive’ programme such as the IB
diploma financially self-sufficient, whereas the philosophical, academic and
whole school benefits are never-ending and priceless.
So perhaps, one of the worst mistakes a school can make when
growing is to make a decision on its future programme without any degree of
research into the feasibility of a particular programme, or the related costs of
it. Readers who are business orientated might very well consider it absolutely
bizarre that any organisation can undertake particular or serious decision
making without a proper and flexible short term, medium term and long term
study, in this case preferably in full consultation with parents and students.
Schools who are unwilling to engage in this process
invariably suffer from knee jerk reaction. Even though natural growth might have
predicted the need for pre-university provision, by the time the first cohort
comes through, often schools still have not created a secure foundation based on
educational philosophy and whole school vision, on which to build their
pre-university programme.
This kind of thinking is indicative of education from the
last two centuries, rather than an ‘international’ environment of the twenty
first and is educationally pickled.
The result is that schools will opt (and often this is a
unilateral decision) for the first option that comes to hand, which will almost
inevitably be the programme with which they are most familiar. Change is often
seen as requiring too much effort and clinging to what is seen as a ‘safe’
option is one way of avoiding the issue.
The IB programme is undoubtedly the world leader and the
benefits associated with being an ‘IB world school’ are huge. Its detractors
on grounds of cost are fundamentally mistaken. In planning any kind of future,
especially with a new programme, just like buying a house, there is a time when
investment happens, a time for consolidation, a time for decoration and a time
for reaping the dividends of one’s labour.
Quality international teaching staff want to teach at IB
schools, students want to learn at IB schools and parents want their schools to
be IB schools. (Please let me know otherwise!) With proper leadership, a school
cannot fail to flourish when flying the IB banner. Ah, please note the ‘with
proper leadership’ part again.
Next week: What I love about the IB diploma…
 Heart to Heart with Hillary
Dear Hillary,
I disagree with you regarding Anti-smoking Aunty, October 9 issue. Unless it
is a restaurant or somewhere like that, the smoker has just as much rights
as anybody else and can smoke wherever he likes. Just because somebody else
doesn’t like smoking doesn’t mean they should force their will on
smokers either. I think your advice is just typical of a non-smoker wanting
to stop smokers enjoying themselves.
Smoking Uncle
Dear Smoking Uncle,
You appear to have missed the point of the previous reader’s enquiry. The
problem was smokers who say, “Do you mind if I smoke?” and then just go
ahead without waiting to see if anybody does mind. I suggested the reader
should immediately say, “Actually I do mind.” At that point the two
people can either take sides, square off to one another, pour beers all over
each other, set fire to each other, or some other amicable agreement. Nobody
was discussing whether or not smokers had rights or otherwise. Non-smokers
have rights too, Petal.
Dear Miss Hillary,
How can you even begin to give “Worried Mum” advice about her six year
old child and her tantrums, when you are very proudly unmarried, always
insisting that you be called Miss Hillary, not Mrs. Hillary?
A Real Mum
Dear Real Mum,
You were absent for the birds and the bees lessons at school, weren’t you?
This might even explain why you have children. I don’t know why you think
women have to be married before they can have offspring. The ability to have
children does not hang on a marriage certificate. As they say, the first
pregnancy takes any time at all. The following ones all take nine months! By
the way, Real Mum, I have never asked to be called Miss Hillary, I have
always insisted on Ms. Hillary, a title that does not imply being married or
otherwise, just as the title Mr. does not show marital status either. OK?
Dear Hillary,
Seems like the Viagra vigilantes are on your tail, Hillary old girl. Better
watch out they don’t try and give you a stiff arm tackle one night when
you’re out shopping for chocolates and champers. Some of these guys think
they’re Prince Valiant when they’re high on the Big V.
Don’t Need It
Dear Don’t Need It,
Thanks for the advice, Petal, but Hillary does not go shopping alone for
chocolates and champagne. I always have a man with me to carry the groceries
and pay the nice lady at the checkout. On Hillary’s salary a tube of Polo
mints once a month and a small bottle of wine cooler is about it.
Dear Hillary,
My Thai girlfriend is wonderful - except for one thing. Time does not seem
to matter to her. She will arrange to meet me at 2 in the afternoon and
rolls up at 3 saying “Sorry I’m a little late.” I don’t consider one
hour to be a “little late”, sorry or not. She has been even more late
than that, but every time it is the same, “Sorry I’m a little late”.
Have you any ideas that I could try to get this girl to be on time?
Punctual Pete
Dear Punctual Pete,
Have you tried buying her a watch, my poor punctual Petal? But then you
still have another problem - the Thai way of telling the time is quite
different from yours, and they have several ways as well. There is the
military style 24 hour clock system as well as the traditional system that
divides the 24 hours into four 6 hour sections. Suggest you buy her a
digital watch, or else it will be endless descriptions of “When the little
hand is at two and the big hand is at twelve...” You could also buy her a
mobile phone and ring her up quarter of an hour before the appointment to
remind her. Then you could also get her a motorbike, so that she doesn’t
have to waste time looking for a song taew. To keep the motorcycle
serviceable, it should be kept under cover, so while you’re shelling out
the shekels, you may as well buy her a little house. With that kind of
investment you may as well marry the girl, so that next time you write to
Hillary you can begin with “My Thai wife is wonderful - except for one
thing. Time does not seem to matter to her.”
Dear Hillary,
When I make a date to meet any Thai ladies I find that they have gone to the
wrong shop to meet me, or the wrong Post Office, or the wrong movie theatre,
so we never connect up. This has happened a few times now, and when I see
them in the bar later they just say they are sorry but they waited for me
and I never showed up. How can I make sure they know the right meeting
place?
Confused
Dear Confused,
This one is easy to fix, Petal. Just suggest they meet you at the gold shop
on the corner closest to their bar. Not only will they be there, but
they’ll be there early!
PC Blues - News and Views:
Sender Ids Part 3
By far the majority of the web servers on the internet
run Apache software. [A web server is a suite of software which sends
web pages to you.] This is the main piece of software produced by the
Apache Software Foundation, and it is produced under the Open Software
Licence. This licence basically gives anyone the permission to modify it
to suit themselves, under the condition that they make the changes
available to the public under the same licensing terms. For the small
print, and legalese, visit their website at www.apache.org
I remarked recently how Micro$oft was offering
SenderIds under a rather restrictive licence, albeit free. SenderIds
were to inhibit the publication and movement of spam through the
internet, and the concept is a GOOD THING. Properly implemented, they
allow a receiver of an email to check whether the apparent sender is the
actual sender, and will stop spammers masquerading as innocent people.
This check can be carried out at any mail server in the transmission
chain, and should significantly lower the volume of spam in the
internet. [An email may go through as many as twenty mail servers before
reaching its destination. If the first mail server in the chain blocks a
message, it lowers the traffic for the other nineteen!]
Apache Software Foundation have published their views
on this, and explain clearly that they can have nothing to do with
SenderIds if their licence is as restrictive as Micro$oft have made it.
More particularly, they cannot include in their software anything
looking like SenderIds, because to do so would break the Open Software
Licence.
More recently, Debian, a highly respected distributor
of Linux systems, has published a similar statement. They bow their
heads in recognition of the lead Apache have taken, and acknowledge the
Apache text was the basis on which they formed their own statement. Once
again, they explain that they cannot include anything like SenderIds in
their software because it would break their Open Software Licence. Note
that distributing a Linux System involves much more software than an
Apache suite. Indeed, Apache comes as a small but significant piece of
almost all Linux distributions.
Debian’s statement is therefore much more
significant, and I expect all Linux distributors, and other distributors
of software covered by the Open Software Licence, or similar, to come
out with such a statement very shortly.
They are all pointing a finger at Micro$oft and
blaming M$ for inhibiting SenderIds.
They are, in fact, doing more than that. They are
pressing the relevant standards authorities to force Micro$oft to
recant.
As you may imagine, I have been following the
correspondence on this quite closely. I am not absolutely certain of the
fine details on this, but it seems that Micro$oft was a member of the
standards committee which determined SenderIds, and that Micro$oft has
effectively tried to steal the licence for the work of the committee.
Something as if there was an international committee to decide how to
measure temperature; the committee agreed to use the Celsius scale; and
then Micro$oft then asked the thermometer makers to licence (albeit
free) the Celsius scale from them.
To take this analogy one step further, an open
software licence would allow any purchaser of a thermometer scale to
make any changes they like (so long as they publish these under the same
licence). The Micro$oft licence would have the manufacturers ban the
customers from so doing without themselves applying for a licence from
Micro$oft. For example, I might find it convenient to mark “blood
heat” on the scale. OSL would let me do it, so long as I told everyone
else how to. Micro$oft would make it onerous for me.
Debian raise exactly this point. Any software
engineer operating under the Micro$oft licence would have to give
Micro$oft his or her name and address before making changes. Debian,
quite rightly, refuses to sell products to a customer under a licence
which requires the customer to give Micro$oft information, and which
requires the customer to so bind all of the customer’s customers.
Psychological Perspectives: Changing our views: Acceptance of a difficult reality
by Michael Catalanello,
Ph.D.
The Stoic philosopher Epictetus, who
lived during the first century AD, said, “Men are disturbed not by
things, but by the views which they take of them.”
The “things” referred to by Epictetus are the
various trials, tribulations, petty hassles as well as major traumas that
we inevitably encounter in our day to day lives. Of the multitude of such
“things” we humans might face, however, few can compare in severity
with the one encountered nine years ago by the famous American actor,
Christopher Reeve who died last week.
Reeve, best known for his motion picture role as
Superman, suffered a neck injury and paralysis as a result of a riding
accident in 1995. Confined to a wheelchair, devoid of movement and
sensation below the neck, and dependent upon a respirator to deliver each
life-sustaining breath, Reeve reportedly experienced a period of dark
depression, during which he, understandably, contemplated ending his life.
More recently, however, Reeve had returned to a
productive life, even accepting an acting role and directing a motion
picture. Perhaps most impressively, he became a dynamic advocate for spinal
cord injury (SCI) research, most notably, embryonic stem cell research.
Recalling Reeve’s courageous response to SCI prompted me to reflect upon
my own experiences working with people with SCI, and some valuable insights
I gained into the human capacity to deal productively, or
self-destructively with this extreme form of adversity.
The year was 1990. I had just completed my graduate
studies at the University of North Texas. At last I was a specialist in
health psychology, but still a bit wet behind the ears professionally. I
was excited to be leaving Texas, where I had lived for the last twelve
years, to return to my old stomping grounds of New Orleans. I was fortunate
to have landed an attractive position, working on the inpatient spinal cord
injury unit at the Rehabilitation Institute of New Orleans.
Having just achieved my hard won academic goal, I had
every reason to feel proud. My lessons were finally over, or so I thought.
In retrospect, however, they were just beginning. My graduate training had
not fully prepared me for what I would encounter working with people who
were living with SCI.
The patients I encountered on the unit were
predominantly young men, in the prime of their lives. Those with recent
injuries were predictably in a state of denial, unprepared to accept the
doctors’ verdict that they would never again walk. We learned to accept
and respect this attitude as a helpful, if only as a short-term defense
against debilitating depression and despair.
Perhaps as predictable was the bout of depression they
would inevitably experience as the implications of what had occurred began
to dawn on them. Every aspect of their lives would irrevocably change. They
were required to quickly learn a set of skills that would be necessary to
adjust psychologically and survive physically.
Some would largely remain depressed and socially
isolated, living at home as “couch potatoes” periodically returning to
rehab when pressure sores, bladder, bowel, or respiratory difficulties
demanded medical attention.
Others remarkably worked out a more meaningful
existence. Some achieved gainful employment with the help of adaptive
equipment, or served as leaders of education and support groups for others
with SCI. Some became social and political activists campaigning for causes
of interest to people with SCI.
What distinguished the individuals who successfully
adjusted to SCI from those who did not? I would have to say it was their
willingness and determination to adjust their ideas or beliefs about what
their lives would or should be like. Obviously, none learned to love their
paralyzed condition. They would undoubtedly have traded up to a more
functional body in a heartbeat, if it had been possible.
Rather, I would say that they learned to look at their
condition, not as a catastrophe, but rather as a very unfortunate
inconvenience, one that they could, nevertheless learn to work around. They
learned to focus their attention on their remaining abilities, rather than
their disabilities, and how to use them in such a way as to find meaning
once again. They had their share of bad days, to be sure, but they learned
to accept them and take them in stride. By embracing Epictitus’ wisdom
and changing their views, they were able to have an effect upon their
emotions and behavior in a dramatic way.
Dr. Catalanello is a licensed psychologist in his home
State of Louisiana, USA. He is a member of the Faculty of Liberal Arts at
Asian University, Chonburi. Address questions and comments to him at [email protected]
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