Lou Gutheil

On 13 February 2013 the share price of Reckitt Benkiser (LSE:RB.) was up 2.9% to 4454.00 following the release of its 2012 annual results.  This morning, 22 April 2013, RB’s share price reached 4760.00 in early trading before backing off to 4678.00 by mid-afternoon.  ADVFN had reported on the earlier date that Reckitt Benkiser was […]

“Reputation is an idle and most false imposition; OFT got without merit, and lost without deserving.” ~ William Shakespeare The share price of GlaxoSmithKline (LSE:GSK) plunged 12.0 pence to 1646.0 by mid-afternoon following allegations by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) that GSK may have illegally delayed the introduction of generic drugs in order to […]

Yesterday the Bank of England released the minutes from the early April meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee Meeting.  Although the report indicated that the committee generally sees value in its Funding for Lending Scheme, it didn’t seem too anxious to expand it in the near future. The problem facing the committee is that, so […]

Those were the words of Zhang Ke of the Chinese accounting firm ShineWing as he told reporters that local government debt in the country is “out of control.” Mr. Zhang said that ShineWing “audited some local government bond issues and found them very dangerous, so we pulled out.  Most don’t have strong debt servicing abilities. […]

Earlier today, the International Monetary Fund released its semi-annual World Economic Outlook, subtitled “Hopes, Realities, Risks.” From a 30,000 foot view, the IMF thinks that the world economy is beginning to recovery from a slow 2012 although risks to the economy are still being considered high “in the medium term.”  The report cited two major […]

It’s been a 14-month distance that Glencore (LSE:GLEN) and Xstrata (LSE:XTA) have run, but the finish line is now within view as China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) has approved the merger of the companies.  Thus the last and final obstacle to the merger’s completion has been removed.  The share price of Glencore was up 3.22% […]

“There’s fool’s gold—pyrite—and then there’s fool’s gold—gold owned by idiots willing to trade it for worthless dollars.” ~ Jarod Kintz Some blame Cyprus.  Others blame China.  Yet others blame the U.S.  Regardless of whom you choose to blame, the price of gold has declined in the last two days of trading from $1,561 per ounce […]

Last week, on 09 April 2013, we published an article under the headline “Mining Stocks Make Major Gains.”  In that article we cautioned that “It’s going to take a steady stream of good news from the mining companies and commodity pricing in general for the F3MNG index to pass the 20,000 mark, which it has […]

Mediterranean Oil & Gas (LSE:MOG) and Noble Energy (NYSE:NE) have been making waves waves in the Mediterranean lately.  It appears that the front-end investment period in some of their Mediterranean projects is over and the fun part is about to begin. MOG is probably the smaller of the two stories.  Nonetheless, it is poised to […]

As a general rule of thumb, it’s good to remember that cause and effect are not necessarily closely related in time and space.  Today, however, the response to the news of Petrovac’s (LSE:PFC) latest contract award was immediate and pronounced. Petrovac released the news of being awarded a new $3.7 billion contract at 10:32 this […]