>I'm always skeptical of "everything has changed"
>stories. Stories often follow prices, not vice versa.
I'm with you entirely. In my earlier message I was just repeating what the usual talk is. I think it's important to heed that talk if only to understand why people are, say, paying strategic prices for a deeply cyclical commodity. I have no strong feelings as to where anything's going (though regressions to the mean seem common enough).
As to Soros' holdings, I think the Suncor holding is about the only one that says anything macro (the usual sell-side story is that high energy prices are here to stay, so non-traditional Canadian deposits are feasible while being free of political risk). Otherwise the correct reading's probably speculative: on account of all the money sloshing around, a lot of the independents and Canadian junior are being taken out at large premiums to NAV. He probably just bought a basket of the more desirable ones with an eye toward consolidation. You can also read it as motivated by scarcity concerns as some of them have nice proven reserve profiles, but he'd be buying physical reserves I'd think if that was his primary concern (he's got the money).
Whatever the case, I think it's separable from what he's hollering about now. I think his anti-Sovietism's simply devolved into a pathetic Russophobia.
A good weekend to all.
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