The Math is very simple. The political crisis around Iran will resolve itself within the next 5 months. The economic crisis won’t. 2 dollar gasoline per gallon is better than 3 dollar gasoline per gallon in an election year, but only where there is demand for all that oil. Alternatively a sitting president running for…Read more
Crude Price Outlook
Prediction of crude oil in the coming months: Bringing order out of chaos
Introduction Where will crude oil prices be in the coming months? In particular will WTI prices breach the USD 130 level as some analysts are predicting or will it fall below the USD 100 level as others forecast? We believe that the price of WTI will probably range between USD 110-115 in the second quarter…Read more
Stress Testing, ALM, Capital Adequacy online video courses
Three new posts at the Finance Training Course portal this week that broke the popularity graph. Continuing Profession Education (CPE) online learning solutions for actuaries Stress testing crash course for Board of Directors and Board Risk Committee members Cross selling treasury products Two new online video based courses – The Stress Testing, ALM and Capital…Read more
Finance Training Courses: Top 30 posts across risk, treasury, derivative pricing and Basel III
Across 200,000 pageviews and 90,000 visitors here is a list of our top 29 posts over the last 8 weeks at Finance Training Courses. The posts cover the impact of US credit rating downgrade, basics of derivative pricing, ICAAP, dissecting gold models, business plan pitches, credit derivatives, structured products, counterparty limits, correlations, a first course…Read more
Gold Price Forecasts: Extending our simple gold price models.
In our last article on Gold relative value: using commodity mispricing to forecast gold prices , we reviewed a number of possible drivers for the rise in the value of Gold. This article is an extension of the same discussion on gold with some additional supporting datasets and graphs. Our first argument and model was…Read more
Understanding Crude Oil. A model for dissecting crude oil
Here is the model we used last year to dissect the projected price behavior of oil. This was a fundamentals driven model that examined supply and demand gap, future supply sources and shocks, core demand growth drivers and relative value effects. The same approach was used later this year in building our fundamentals driven model…Read more
Finance Training Courses at the Capital Club, DIFC, Dubai, UAE
Short half day and full day format applied and corporate finance training courses coming soon to the Capital Club at DIFC in Dubai (UAE) and locations in Abu Dhabi and Al-Ain in collaboration with our DIFC Partners, Kinetrix Limited. Courses cover a range of hands on practical topics from treasury risk to project finance, from…Read more
US Credit rating downgrade: DTCC, OCC and ICE say no change in treasury haircuts and collateral rules – Day Two.
Please see our previous two posts on the US credit rating downgrade posted earlier on Finance Training Course. The first post is an initial announcement and gut check, while the second reviews analysis published over the last 48 hours in global media supplemented by our opinions and outlook. US Credit Rating Downgrade Day One –…Read more
Crude Oil breaks 88 dollars a barrel and falls by 4%. Slowing global economy, crashing equity markets or ETF rollover?
For the last few months a simple trade in futures or options would have made you money. Buy puts on crude oil ETF’s as soon as crude oil crossed US$99 a barrel and sell them when crude oil fell beneath 92. Ride the opposite trade by buying calls as soon as you sold your puts….Read more
Crude Oil Price Update-Oil Declines Due to Speculation about OPEC increasing Output
Crude oil declined for a third consecutive day amidst speculation that OPEC shall raise its output quota. WTI crude futures fell by 0.53 percent to USD $ 98.490 a barrel. Brent crude futures fell by 0.45 percent to USD $ 113.96 a barrel. The current high level of oil price has increased the idea that…Read more