I made a little money on Enron a few years back... a very little. But it was better than losing money.
This time around, I'm really perplexed as to how we are finding ourselves in the same bucket and everyone is surprised. Everyone is amazed by the price of crude oil, but what few understand is that the reason oil is priced that high has less to do with a lack of oil and more to do with an unregulated market.
Keith Olberman has an entertaining view of the situation, and Obama is planning on doing something. But I'm watching my stocks go down in value and the general economy collapse and I wonder how close we'll get to a replay of Enron.
I was in oil a few weeks back before it rocketed to 138+ and I got out because I believed it was (and still is) an unsustainable bubble and that I had made the easy money and that the most likely direction for Oil stocks at that time was down. I was wrong, I've missed a good 20% in the stocks that I sold.
Knowing now that this is caused by an unregulated market left open by Enron leads me to believe that I might have to get back in and ride this up to it's inevitable pop. Since the speculation others are still doing is causing me to lose money, I may have to adjust my approach to take advantage of the speculators.
Of course, I actually think that what I should do is to get out of the market entirely for a while. This economy is effed and apparently there are people in power (like John McCain) who want it that way.
On a long shot, there are those who are speculating in the other direction. Since Obama is working to close the loophole, we may have a collapse of the price of oil back down to 50% of it's current price. Time to buy puts on Exxon and Conoco perhaps??
Go Obama!
