#One Petroleum Trading

[madelynraemunson]

pass the salt • e.m. smut

DAD’S BEST FRIEND!OLDER!EDDIE x FEM!READER

part two here

summary: you’re home from college and staying with your dad for the summer, spending as much time as you possibly can with him…and his hot best friend that you’ve never seen in your life.

authors note: okay have you guys ever seen those text posts like “when you say ‘daddy pass the salt please’ and your father and your man both reach for it” 💀💀 well this is inspired by that concept. also i went overboard and this is a LONG BOI

disclaimers — photo credits to @eddiemunsons-missingnipple 🫶🏼porn with plot, reader’s nickname is “sunshine”, reader has female anatomy, race unspecified, divider: @iluvpooks

NSFW — 18+ obv, porn with plot, daddy kink pls keep scrolling if it’s not ur thing, slight age gap (eddie is mid to late 30s, reader is in her early 20s), corruption kink, size kink, masturbation (m&f), p in v sex (protected), dirty talk, teasing, sexual innuendos, extreme flirting, eddie kinda being a perv, praise kink

The sound of breakfast on the griddle summons you downstairs.

Dad never cooks.

For as long as you can remember, weekends at your dad’s have always consisted of Lucky Charms cereal and powdered donuts. That tradition continued even after you started college.

Oh yeah. Someone is here, alright. Someone Dad desperately wants to impress.

Trailing after the commotion, your fuzzy pink slippers guide you down the wooden steps of your dad’s ‘bachelor pad’ and into the kitchen. And when you near the bottom of the steps, you can make out two distinct voices — one belonging to Dad, another belonging to someone who's identity is obscure.

“God, I fucking missed you, Jeff. Missed everyone so much.”

The smells of pancake batter, cigarette smoke, mint, and petroleum fuel reel you in, but not nearly as much as the sight of the man sitting on the opposite side of your dad. He's built, handsome with wavy brown hair, leather, black denim, twiddling a toothpick between his teeth as he listens to your dad speak with a smile on his face. That is, until you come into sight. It then that his intense focus circles in on you.

Funny. You don’t remember this friend. And something in your gut tells you that you won’t ever be forgetting him after this.

The stranger's grin curls into a wonder-filled smirk. You can feel your knees start to buckle.

“Uh oh. Looks like our shenanigans woke up Sleeping Beauty.”

When you get a closer look at Dad’s friend, you observe his faint brown beard — neatly kept and lightly peppered with some gray — delicious lips, shiny white teeth, and grooves along his laugh lines that would deepen with every theatrical cackle he belted out.

You can't help but freeze in your tracks as him and your dad continue on with their banter, reliving their glory days like it was yesterday. Man. What a damn dreamboat.

Your dad’s eyes light up with glee when he sees you.

“Hey, good morning, Sunshine!” Dad cheers. “Thought you’d never wake up. This is my friend Eddie. We were in that band together in high school. Come say hi.”

"Yeah, come say hi," Eddie agrees. feeding into the obvious tension in the room. "I don't bite."

The stranger laughs at his own comment as soon as he utters it.

There’s a charm — a magic — about Eddie that could only be found in Hollywood or the Big City. But of course, you didn't expect any less from Dad's supposed ‘Rockstar Friend’.

When your parents had you at 17, life went on for Dad’s band Corroded Coffin. And although he missed out on the ‘Sex, Drugs, and Rock&Roll’, Dad insists that tea parties and white picket fences were an ideal trade-off. Because — despite how things ended with Mom — it still meant a life spent with you.

You tell him your name as Eddie offers you his hand to shake. Electricity serges through you when your hand is enveloped by his firm, calloused one. Eddie smiles down at you, his presence all-consuming. It's almost as if he knows it. And as much as you were dying to, you resist the urge to fall into him.

Eddie's no better.

It takes everything in Eddie's power to keep his eyes above your collarbones, reprimanding himself with the utmost tedium. Because heaven knows he'd be TOAST if his best friend found out that Eddie thought that you were absolutely stunning — strutting around the house the way that you do, without a bra underneath that poor excuse of a sleep shirt — a sleep shirt far too tight for your own good. With tight, pajama shorts to match…

Of course, this is all an assumption…Not that he caught wind of it or anything.

“You know…” he mentions. “Your dad has told me SO much about little miss Sunshine.”

“Me, really?” is all you can say behind those fuscia cheeks.

“Really,” Eddie insists. “He never shuts up about you, darling.”

“Hopefully you’ve only heard good things,” you mutter faintly.

And instantly, your dad and Eddie share a laugh.

“Only good things,” Eddie assures you. He nudges your dad playfully.

Your dad doesn’t exactly deny the last part, basically confirming to Eddie that you’ve got a hint of spunk to you. The heat settles at your cheeks as you shy away from your father’s curious friend.

Taking note of how timid you’ve just become, Eddie furrows his brows.

“What — was that an implication that you’re not always good?”

“No comment,” your smile melts into an awkward one.

“Kept me on my toes back then,” your dad reflects with a sigh. “Keeps me on my toes now.”

“You don’t say…” Eddie smirks slightly, gaze panning back over to you.

Eventually your dad leaves you two alone, going into the garage to fetch something that he insists Eddie would like. But little did he know that such thing was already in the room, leaning…reaching into the fridge for some orange juice, not realizing its atmosphere caused your nipples to harden.

Eddie’s eyes proceed to follow you as you strut back to the griddle, flipping some hot cakes over before tending to your messy bedhead.

Eddie probably doesn’t know — or maybe he does, who knows? — that you feel him staring at you. It’s a burning gaze that practically impales you, but you’re too nervous to say anything. You’re better off pretending like it’s something you don’t notice.

You and Eddie continue to help yourselves to breakfast, enjoying the company of each other and your mutual silence. That is, until Eddie speaks up.

“Got some sausage for you if you’d like.”

“I’m sorry?” you sputter, looking up from your food.

Eddie shoots you a weird glance as he holds up some breakfast franks.

“Sausage?” he repeats. “Store was out of beef so I settled for turkey. Hope that’s not a problem.”

“Not at all,” you clear your throat. “I love turkey sausage.”

“Okay, good,” Eddie chuckles, seemingly relieved at how quickly the situation had diffused.

“Cool,” you chuckle with him while taking some links to cook.

The silence returns once more and is replaced by the sizzling of the grill. It’s short lived, however, because soon, the man nearly twice your age speaks again.

“What’d you think I said?” Eddie circles back.

“Nothing, why?”

“You just looked stunned.”

“I just woke up,” you shrug. “My mind’s somewhere else.”

“I can tell,” he smirks. “Get that thing out of the gutter.”

The coming days paved way for some more innocent flirting.

…Like when you make sure to wear the shortest skirt in your closet when running Eddie his afternoon beer in the garage.

“Well don’t you look absolutely darling…” he says as he peers up from his guitar.

“Hehe,” you smirk connivingly. “Thank you!”

“You are so welcome.”

Eddie downs the liquid guilt along with his pride, watching you strut around…the hem of that pleated cotton fabric just barely covering the roundness of your asscheeks. And as you blush a rosy pink when you process his little remarks, Eddie can only clear his throat in arousal, fantasizing about just how badly he wanted to turn your other cheeks that very shade.

…Or when you come downstairs the next day to help Dad manually wash his car.

While he and Eddie are harassing each other with soap and that god-forsaken hose, you decide to join in on all the fun.

“Watch out, Sunshine,” Eddie forewarns. “You’ve just entered the splash zone!”

And with the intention of cooling you off on a hot summer day like this, Eddie teasingly sprays you with said hose, your white shirt becoming transparent when lathered with water. He could see everything. Your erect nipples. Your perky tits bouncing in the sunlight as you jump around in excitement. How glazed your oil-nnuendo’ed skin looked when glimmering in the sun. All as intended.

“You got me,” you surrender yourself to him. “You got me good, Eddie.”

And when you walk away, Eddie mutters slyly to himself.

“Yes, yes I did.”

…And then there’s dessert after dinner.

Eddie watches as you lick your popsicle, his fingers curling at his thighs in arousal as you retract the wrapper before enclosing your lips around the bright pink dessert. And he swears he’s going to blow his pants when he envisions the melted sugar shooting into your mouth with the swiftest hollowing of your cheeks, the quiet suction noise you make with your pursed lips forcing him to adjust the way he’s sitting.

…The final instance takes the cake.

“What’s your major?”

You’re in the home library grazing some of Dad’s old books and vinyls, talking to Eddie while your father gets ready for the day. Meanwhile, Eddie is perched at your dad’s desk, rolling around in his expensive swivel chair and occasionally doing some spins on it to make you laugh.

“History.”

“Sounds boring.”

“You just haven’t found a topic that interests you,” you point out.

“Mm,” is all Eddie says. “Maybe I will eventually.”

Eddie watches as you waltz around in front of him, following your movements with his eyes as you get onto your tippy-toes in order to grab some books on the top shelf.

“Oh my god!” you yelp.

Your plan to entice him seemingly fails when you graze a book that’s halfway off the shelf. It’s already flying off of its platform, headed straight towards Eddie's lap before you can even stop it.

Eddie catches it before any damage can be done, saving Dad’s old campaign book with the hand furthest from you and snaking the other around your waist to prevent you from sinking any further into him.

Phew. Crisis averted.

Your eyes meet again.

“I’m so sorry, Eddie,” you gasp in embarrassment. “That book has a mind of its own.”

“You’re fine,” Eddie laughs. “Can’t defy the laws of gravity. Sometimes it betrays us.”

You feel yourself burning up a fever. Excusing yourself from the room, you leave Dad’s library and make your way over to the kitchen for a glass of water.

But you’re nearly taken aback when you feel tight, calloused hands wrap around your hips, and like a feather it’s like you’re whisked away into the air, and soon your body is pressed up against the wall.

Slam!

Breathing heavily against each other now — chest to chest, lips so unbearably close you can smell the whiskey — Eddie draws you even closer to him. You both study each other intently. It’s like you’re waiting for the other to say something. Eddie does the honors and speaks first.

“I wasn’t born last night, doll. I was also your age at one point.”

———

To his own despair, Eddie touches himself later that night. Facing your room, he strokes his rock hard cock with his lotioned-up hand, running his thumb across the slit of his head, pretending it’s your tongue giving him a little tease like you did the popsicle.

“Fuuuck,” he grunts quietly. “You like when I fuck your throat, baby? Gonna suck me dry with that pretty little mouth of yours?”

You’re playing make-believe just as much. Because at the same time, in your room, you’re a drooling, pathetic mess, riding your wall-mounted toy to oblivion in your bathroom, legs trembling when the thick, veiny piece of silicone slams into the spongy part of your heat, initiating shock-waves all across your body.

“Eddie,” you find yourself blubbering. “EddieEddieEddieEddie…”

You both know it can’t be like this, but that was the mere thrill of it all. And when you both have overcome your peak, just one mere wall apart, the floodgates of guilt outweighs both your arousals the way it comes pouring in.

So, so wrong. But oh, so right.

You’re anticipating…waiting…aching for Eddie to make the next move.

He doesn’t.

“Going to the store again,” Eddie announces. “Hopefully this time they’ll have beef sausage. Need anything?”

Need you, is what you think. But you end up shaking your head, a part of you disappointed that you and Eddie won’t be able to spend some time alone together.

“No,” there’s defeat in your voice.

“Are you sure?” Eddie questions softly.

“Mhm,” you nod.

“Okay,” he gives you a grin, one in the form of a tight-lipped smile. “I’ll be right back. You be good.”

“Ha-ha,” you roll your eyes.

——

Eddie leaves the door of his room open that night. Just a smidge. You end up following the sound of his TV that he’s placed at a low volume, making out that it’s Seinfeld just by Jerry’s voice and the laugh track.

Your heart skips a beat as Eddie laughs along with the show, shaking his head at a stupid joke. But he shifts his focus immediately onto you when he sees you at the doorway.

“Having some alone time tonight?” you ask him.

“Mmm…not by choice,” he responds. “Tuckered your dad out after dinner doing P90X.”

Eddie follows a crazy workout routine. He says that it helps with his stamina, especially when he does crowd work during his stage performances. Your mind can’t help but wonder what else he may be using it for.

You snort. “Yeah. Dad wasn’t what you’d call an athlete in high school.”

Eddie laughs at that too. Both you and him know that.

He then pats the space on his bed beside him. “Wanna come watch with me?”

Your stomach does a series of cartwheels when you process Eddie’s question. You know what’s bound to happen if you follow through. And it seems Eddie knows it too. Even if there wasn’t any sexual tension between you both already, the concept of it all would rub anyone that way.

But you still follow through with it. Just like Eddie knew you would.

“You comfortable?” Eddie asks you, eyeing you endearingly as you squirm around on the bed.

“Yeah,” you breathe.

“Good…” he replies, voice nearly at a strained whisper now.

You two watch the show in silence for a few minutes, exchanging commentary and pleasantries regarding the show every so often. It’s not too long after Eddie pulls a laugh from you that he starts closing up the space between you both, scooting himself closer…and resting his gruff palm over the base of your knee.

You inhale sharply as he does so. And evident by your refusal to pull away, it’s enough of a green light for Eddie to hike up further.

A soft moan escapes your mouth from the back of your flustered throat, but you bite your lip in restraint.

"I'm sorry," you whisper.

"For what?”

You shrug sheepishly as Eddie continues to graze your thigh. Your breathing falters even more.

“Don’t be scared,” Eddie coos.

“I’m not,” you insist.

“Then what’s stopping you from getting on top of me? Hm?”

He’s in between your legs now, the rough material of his denim jeans riding up your sex, teasing your clit with every calculated rub against it.

“And riding my rock hard cock til those pretty legs give out?” Eddie continues. “I see how you’ve been looking at me, doll. It's all over your face how bad you want it.”

“The bed is squeaky,” you answer honestly. “And that headboard is a lost cause.”

Eddie puts the dirty talk on pause, squirming around to assess the guest bed’s squeak factor. When it checks out, he gives you an understanding nod. You giggle.

Eddie wastes no more time. You watch as he grabs one of the pillows on the bed and wedges it between the wall and headboard. He issues you a sly smile.

“Oldest trick in the book.”

You're back to fooling around shortly after, your aching core burning with lust as you pine for him.

“The boys at school ever touch you this good?” Eddie quips rubbing circles around your puffy, needy folds as you hopelessly cling to him out of pleasure.

“No, Eddie.”

“Didn’t think so.”

He continues to tease, gliding his fingers along your slit before slowly inserting two large digits inside of you.

His calculated pumps into your needy pussy are steady, a pace so agonizingly beautiful that it makes you squeal sweet nothings into the crook of his neck.

"Shh, baby," Eddie hushes you. "Your dad's gonna hear us. Gotta be quiet for me, mkay?"

Your hot, messy, and muffled sounds cease as Eddie soothes your quivering lips with his tender ones.

The wet sounds that ricochet and fill the room in tandem is almost enough to send him over. And Eddie is sure to communicate that… with an abrupt curving of his three thick fingers.

Fuck.

Needing him direly now, you tug helplessly at his pants.

“God, Eddie,” you whimper. “Just fuck me already. Please.”

Eddie laughs at the desperation. He hasn’t ravaged you to his fullest extent yet, and you’re already a pooling mess beside him.

“Well since you said please, sweet girl,” Eddie obliges as he starts to undress himself. “Your wish is my command."

You watch Eddie as reaches over into the bedside drawer for a fresh box of condoms. Looks like the sausage links weren't the only things he went to the store for.

“Oh.”

Eddie chuckles at your observation before shrugging. Can you really blame him? You both knew what was coming.

You watch with absolute lust as Eddie slides the piece of rubber over his long, girthy, throbbing cock. He’s bigger than anyone you’ve ever had before, and the snarky, hooded-eye smile as he watches you fawn reveals to you that he knows exactly how to use it.

"On your stomach, babygirl. Will have you all nice and pounded out just like you wanted.”

You situate yourself in prone and spread your legs for Eddie to line himself up against them. He teases his wrapped cock against the entrance of your pussy, and when his soothing countdown is over, your lips part in disposition as you accommodate his ruinous stretch.

A throaty moan spills out of the both of you the moment Eddie snaps his hips in and out of you. Meanwhile, one of his hands lays tauntingly at your stomach, so the prideful man can feel himself wriggling inside you, glazing his shaft with your slick more and more with every pump into your weak cunt.

"Fuck, Eddie... yes..." you mewl. "R-right there, Eddie, please..."

And then it picks up. You can feel Eddie’s hips practically collapse right onto you, his balls slapping against you as he digs further into your body.

"God damn..." the man sighs in disbelief.

He can only beam down at you in awe. You were taking him so good, pussy swallowing him so nice and tight. And when you nestle your ankles between each other to keep him there in prone, the nearly cries out in pleasure, but refrains because he knows your dad is resting — just a thin wall over.

That still doesn’t stop him from going to town though. Practically seeing stars, the broken record of a mouth that belongs to you chants Eddie’s name like it’s all you know. Eddie attempts to keep you contained, offering you his fingers to suck on as he’s railing you dumb.

And when he fucks you through your climax, Eddie continues with his string of lust-filled praises, satisfied at himself that he was able to make you wet enough to soak the mattress.

“Did so good for me, angel,” he praises you as he sucks at your temple. “Always knew you weren’t all that innocent.”

The griddle comes out again on Eddie’s last day. But this time, for a homestyle southern dinner.

You and Eddie were on mashed potatoes and gravy duty at the stove, an ordeal that only opened doors for lots of innuendos on Eddie’s part. Meanwhile, Dad insisted on making the rest, having taken pride in continuing his Mama’s legacy.

“This is amazing, Daddy,” you rave. “I really missed this. Do you mind passing the salt, please?”

And to your horror, you watch as your father and Eddie automatically extend their arms, bumping into one another in the process en route to getting you the salt.

The gentlemen meet each other’s eyes.

“Ohp!” Eddie exclaims, letting out a slight chuckle. “Sorry.”

You try your hardest not to blush. Eddie kicks you from under the table, and softly he oh-so-seductively he mutters,

“I was just tryna help her out.”

[swifty-fox]

Im researching for kfak and came across some ancient BOB fandom:

December 5 2008, 05:26:04 UTC 

In general, Vaseline petroleum jelly. Still classic, but I bet it did a number on rubber. In the Pacific, where the sodomy was everywhere, there was this one spot on Guadalcanal or someplace in the New Hebrides the gays liked to call Vaseline Alley where a lot of trade could be picked up, va-va-voom!

At the front, the cold European front, well, there's always spit. Since I'm assuming you're talking about Haguenau I'm thinking you could whip up a bombed-out pharmacy that has stuff that would work. Unless you're writing Webgott, in which case I suggest Joe would just stick Dave dry just to hurt him.

[blueiscoool]

Missing Pieces of 6th-Century Byzantine Bucket Finally Found at Sutton Hoo

While working at the Anglo-Saxon site of Sutton Hoo in England, archaeologists found the missing pieces of a 1,500-year-old copper bucket imported from Turkey. The bucket, which is at least a century older than the famed ship burial, may provide a window into how people lived in early medieval times.

A team of archaeologists, conservators and volunteers from Time Team, the U.K.'s National Trust and FAS Heritage discovered the metal fragments in late June during excavation and metal-detecting work at Sutton Hoo.

Sutton Hoo is best known for its magnificent seventh-century ship burial, whose 1939 discovery was featured in the 2021 movie "The Dig." But the burial was just one part of a complex of 18 separate burial mounds found near Suffolk in southeastern England, many of which contained jewelry and coins. Evidence of imported goods — including an Egyptian bowl, Eastern Mediterranean silverware and a Middle Eastern petroleum product called bitumen — has also been discovered at Sutton Hoo.

But the copper-alloy bucket, known as the Bromeswell Bucket, predates the ship burial by at least a century. The fragmented bucket, which was found in 1986, depicts a North African hunting scene featuring lions and a dog. It was likely produced in the sixth century in Antioch, Turkey, which was then part of the Byzantine Empire. An inscription in Greek on the bucket reads, "Use this in good health, Master Count, for many happy years," suggesting that it may have been a diplomatic gift.

The artifacts uncovered last month were decorated with figures similar to those on the original find. So the team employed X-ray fluorescence (XRF) — which is used to determine which elements are present in an object and to create a unique elemental "fingerprint" of the artifact — to confirm that the newly recovered fragments are indeed part of the sixth-century Bromeswell Bucket.

"Thanks to closer inspection, we now believe that the bucket had been previously damaged and then repaired," Angus Wainwright, a regional archaeologist in the East of England for the National Trust, said in a statement. "In-depth analysis of the metals suggests it might even have been soldered back together."

Although East Anglia has been occupied since at least 3000 B.C., when Sutton Hoo was in use as a cemetery in the sixth and seventh centuries, the area was relatively densely populated and part of a busy trade network. The Sutton Hoo treasures represent diverse objects, including pagan and Christian artifacts, brought there from all over Europe and the Middle East. The ship burial and cosmopolitan nature of Sutton Hoo may even link it to the Old English epic poem Beowulf, which includes tales of gift-bestowing kings from far-flung lands and was composed around the same time.

"It's hoped that this two-year research project will help us learn more about the wider landscape at Sutton Hoo and the everyday lives of the people that lived there," Wainwright said. "So, this find is a great step on that journey."

By Kristina Killgrove.

[metamatar]

In 1975, civilian nuclear technology was part of a worldwide strategy to bring the Organization of Petroleum-Exporting Countries (OPEC) to heel. That body’s power seemed unprecedented, given that most of its countries were historically impoverished or “backward” peoples. [...]

Many developing countries did adopt nuclear technologies, often with crucial parts of their national infrastructures relying on American and European expertise, equipment, and fuel. Rather than seeing liberation from nature, such countries faced renewed forms of dependence. Iran certainly never gained reliable access to uranium and did not become the economic miracle envisioned by Ansari back in 1975. Instead of lifting up the poorer nations of the world, the global nuclear order seemed structured in ways reminiscent of the colonial era. The most heated debates within the IAEA pitted the nuclear weapons states against the so-called LDCs—less developed countries. The agency never became a storehouse for fission products. Instead, one of its primary functions was to monitor an arms control treaty—the Treaty 4 on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. By the end of the century, the IAEA was referred to as a “watchdog,” known for its cadre of inspectors. In 2003, IAEA inspections were crucial talking points in public debates about the invasion of Iraq by the United States [...] evidence gathered over the years by the agency created for the peaceful atom was being interpreted by the United States government as justification for military intervention. [...]

Focusing only on arms control glosses over the domestic politics of nuclear programs, particularly the role of high technology as symbols of state power and legitimacy. But it also does not square with what scholars of the Cold War have been pointing out for decades—that governments, especially the United States, deployed science and technology as diplomatic tools, to achieve feats of prestige, to shape business arrangements, to conduct clandestine surveillance, or to bind countries together with technical assistance programs. Poorer countries’ dreams of modernization, of using advanced technology to escape hunger, poverty, and the constraints of nature—these were the stock-in-trade of US diplomacy. Why, then, should we imagine that the promises connected to peaceful uses of atomic energy were any less saturated with geopolitical maneuvers and manipulation? [...]

American officials in the late 1940s and early 1950s were very worried that commercial nuclear power would siphon off supplies of uranium and monazite needed for the weapons arsenal. So they explicitly played down the possibility of electricity generation from atomic energy and instead played up the importance of radioisotopes for medicine and agriculture—because such radioisotopes were byproducts of the US weapons arsenal and did not compete with it. The kinds of technologies promoted in the developing world by the United States, the USSR, and Europeans thus seemed neocolonial, keeping the former colonies as sites of resource extraction—a fact noticed, and resented, by government officials in India, Brazil, and elsewhere. Mutation plant breeding, irradiation for insect control or food sterilization, and radioisotope studies in fertilizer—these were oriented toward food and export commodities and public health, problems indistinguishable from those of the colonial era. These were not the same kinds of technologies embraced by the global North, which focused on electricity generation through nuclear reactors, often as a hedge against the rising political power of petroleum-producing states in the Middle East. By the mid-1960s and 1970s, the United States and Europe did offer nuclear reactors even to some of the most politically volatile nations, as part of an effort to ensure access to oil. Convincing petroleum suppliers of their dire future need for nuclear reactors was part of a strategy to regain geopolitical leverage. Despite the moniker “peaceful atom,” these technologies were often bundled in trade deals with fighter jets, tanks, and other military hardware [...]

By the close of the century, two competing environmental narratives were plainly in use. One was critical of atomic energy, drawing on scientific disputes about the public health effects of radiation, the experience of nuclear accidents such as Three Mile Island (1979) and Chernobyl (1986), or the egregious stories of public health injustice—including negligence in protecting uranium miners or the wanton destruction and contamination of indigenous peoples’ homelands. In contrast was the narrative favored by most governments, depicting nuclear technology in a messianic role, promising not only abundant food, water, and electricity, but also an end to atmospheric pollution and climate change. [...]

As other scholars have noted, the IAEA tried to maintain a reputation of being primarily a technical body, devoid of politics. But it had numerous political uses. For example, it was a forum for intelligence gathering, as routinely noted by American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) documents. It also outmaneuvered the World Health Organization and Food and Agriculture Organization in the early 1960s and was able to assert an authoritative voice playing down public health dangers from atomic energy. Further, it provided a vehicle for countries to stay engaged in atomic energy affairs even if they did not sign on to the non-proliferation treaty—India, Pakistan, and Israel most notably. It provided apartheid-era South Africa with a means of participating in international affairs when other bodies ousted it because of its blatantly racist policies. By the same token, it gave the Americans and Europeans political cover for continuing to engage with South Africa, an important uranium supplier.

Introduction to The Wretched Atom, Jacob Hamlin

[zvaigzdelasas]

United States Navy ships fired on a Houthi anti-ship missile in Yemen hours after a tanker operated on behalf of trading giant Trafigura Group carrying a cargo of Russian fuel was hit in the most significant attack yet by the rebel group on an oil-carrying vessel.[...]

The vessel was carrying Russian-origin naphtha — a product used to make plastics and gasoline — purchased below the price cap imposed by the Group of Seven nations, a Trafigura spokesperson said Friday.[...]

Vast amounts of Russian petroleum now pass through the southern Red Sea to reach Asian buyers following Europe’s shunning of its cargoes due to the war in Ukraine. [...]

The vessel collected its Russia-origin cargo via a so-called ship-to-ship transfer from a stretch of water in the Laconian Gulf in southern Greece, according to data from analytics firm Kpler. The area has been pivotal in helping Russia to get its petroleum to the global market and, as well as handling supplies under the price cap, has also facilitated more shadowy trades. Trafigura, along with other commodity traders like Glencore Plc, Vitol Group and Gunvor Group, was one of the biggest lifters of oil from Russia before the country’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and was a partner in a major oil project run by state producer Rosneft PJSC.

The operator of the Marlin Luanda is registered as being Oceonix Services Ltd, a UK registered company.[...]

In a statement, a Houthi spokesperson claimed the Marlin Luanda was a British ship and was targeted in response to "American-British aggression against our country".

US now securing UK-owned shipments of Russian petroleum products under the g7 price cap to help sustain Israel's genocide [26 Jan 24]

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

In late May, 19 Republican attorneys general filed a complaint with the Supreme Court asking it to block climate change lawsuits seeking to recoup damages from fossil fuel companies.

All of the state attorneys general who participated in the legal action are members of the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA), which runs a cash-for-influence operation that coordinates the official actions of these GOP state AGs and sells its corporate funders access to them and their staff. The majority of all state attorneys general are listed as members of RAGA.

Where does RAGA get most of its funding? From the very same fossil fuel industry interests that its suit seeks to defend. In fact, the industry has pumped nearly $5.8 million into RAGA’s campaign coffers since Biden was elected in 2020.

The recent Supreme Court complaint has been deemed “highly unusual” by legal experts.

The attorneys general claim that Democratic states, which are bringing the climate-related suits at issue in state courts, are effectively trying to regulate interstate emissions or commerce, which are under the sole purview of the federal government. Fossil fuel companies have unsuccessfully made similar arguments in their own defense.

RAGA’s official actions — and those of its member attorneys general — closely align with the goals of its biggest donors.

The group, a registered political nonprofit that can raise unlimited amounts of cash from individuals and corporations, solicits annual membership fees from corporate donors in exchange for allowing those donors to shape legal policy via briefings and other interactions with member attorneys general.

A Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) analysis of IRS filings since November 24, 2020 shows that Koch Industries (which recently rebranded) leads as the largest fossil fuel industry donor to RAGA, having donated $1.3 million between 2021 and June 2024.

Other large donors include:

• American Petroleum Institute (API), the oil and gas industry’s largest trade association

• Southern Company Services, a gas and electric utility holding company

• Valero Services, a petroleum refiner

• NextEra Energy Resources, which runs both renewable and natural gas operations

• Anschutz Corporation, a Denver-based oil and gas company

• American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, a major trade organization

• Exxon Mobil, one of the largest fossil fuel multinationals in the world

• National Mining Association, the leading coal and mineral industry trade organization

• American Chemical Council, which represents major petrochemical producers and refiners

Many of these donors are being sued for deceiving the public about the role fossil fuels play in worsening climate change: many states — including California, Connecticut, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Rhode Island — as well as local governments — such as the city of Chicago and counties in Oregon and Pennsylvania — have all filed suits against a mix of fossil fuel companies and their industry groups. In the cases brought by New York and Massachusetts, ExxonMobil found support from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who filed a friend-of-the-court brief in defense of the corporation.

Paxton has accepted $5.2 million in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry over the past 10 years, according to data compiled by OpenSecrets and reviewed by CMD.

Fossil Fuel Contributions to the Republican Attorneys General Association Includes aggregate contributions of $10K or more from the period November 2020 to March 2024.

Note: This funding compilation does not include law firms, front groups, or public relations outfits that work on behalf of fossil fuel clients, many of which use legal shells to shield themselves from outright scrutiny. For example, Koch Industries, through its astroturf operation Americans for Prosperity, has deployed a shell legal firm in a major Supreme Court case designed to dismantle the federal government’s regulatory authority.

CARRYING BIG OIL’S WATER

This is far from the first time RAGA members have banded together to try to defeat clean energy and environmental regulations. In 2014, the New York Times initially reported on how RAGA circulates fossil fuel industry propaganda opposing federal regulations.

The Times investigation revealed thousands of documents exposing how oil and gas companies cozied up to Republican attorneys general to push back against President Obama’s regulatory agenda. “Attorneys general in at least a dozen states are working with energy companies and other corporate interests, which in turn are providing them with record amounts of money for their political campaigns,” the investigation found. That effort, which RAGA dubbed the Rule of Law campaign, has since morphed into RAGA’s political action arm, the nonprofit Rule of Law Defense Fund (RLDF).

Since then, RAGA’s appetite to go to bat for the industry has only grown.

In 2015, less than two weeks after representatives from fossil fuel companies and related trade groups attended a RAGA conference, Republican AGs petitioned federal courts to block the Obama administration’s signature climate proposal, as CMD has previously reported. Additional reporting revealed collusion between Republican AGs and industry lobbyists to defend ExxonMobil and obstruct climate change legislation.

There was also the 2016 secret energy summit that RAGA held in West Virginia with industry leaders, along with private meetings with fossil fuel companies to coordinate how to shield ExxonMobil from legal scrutiny. Later that year, West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey — aided by 19 other Republican AGs — successfully brought a case before the court that hobbled Obama’s signature climate plan.

Morrisey is currently leading the Republican effort to take down an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulation that targets coal-fired power plants.

Often, the attorneys general bringing these cases share many of the same donors who backed the confirmation of Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices, as pointed out by the New York Times.

And in 2021, Republican attorneys general from 19 states sent a letter to the U.S. Senate committees on Environment and Public Works and on Energy and Natural Resources hoping to persuade senators to vote against additional regulations on highly polluting methane emissions, a leading contributor to global warming.

Since 2022, RLDF’s “ESG Working Group” has been coordinating actions taken by Republican AGs against sustainable investing. Communications from that group obtained by CMD show that it was investigating Morningstar/Sustainalytics and the Net-Zero Banking Alliance. Republican AGs announced investigations into the six largest banks for information on their involvement in the Net-Zero Banking Alliance later that year.

LEGACY OF RIGHT-WING ACTIONS

It’s not only about fossil fuels. Attorneys general who are members of — and financially backed by — RAGA have a long track record of pursuing right-wing agendas. In Mississippi, Attorney General Lynn Fitch helped bring the legal case that ultimately overturned Roe v. Wade. In Texas, Paxton has attempted to overturn the Affordable Care Act and sued the federal government over Title IX civil rights protections, and safeguards for seasonal workers, among other policy irritants to the far Right. With support from fellow Republican AGs, he also led one of many efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

In recent years, other pro-corporate major donors have included The Concord Fund, which is controlled by Trump’s “court whisperer” Leonard Leo, Big Tobacco, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for Legal Reform.

[reality-detective]

One of the most diabolical stories of our time is the birth of Big Pharma. Its “rich history” of corruption began with John D. Rockefeller, oil magnate and the man responsible for our transition from time-honored herbal medicine to petroleum-based “medicine.” This unholy union of oil and drugs has continued to erode our society, government and health for decades.

People are waking up to the dark intentions of our institutions and leaders. With minor repercussions at most, many in power are more than willing to trade OUR health for dollars. The last few years in particular are showing… the emperor wears no clothes anymore, the naked truth is out. 🤔

[mariacallous]

In recent weeks, Ukraine has found a way to overcome a lack of aid and a dearth of ammunition, using long-range drones to strike oil industry assets deep inside Russia. The attacks on Russian oil refineries—which number at least a dozen so far, including some very long-range strikes—have damaged Russia’s ability to process and refine its huge output of crude oil, dealing a small but meaningful blow to a Russian energy sector that has so far weathered the war and Western sanctions in surprisingly good shape.

The campaign, which has been tacitly acknowledged by Ukrainian security services and officials, is meant to strike at both the economic and logistic sinews of Russia’s war effort, which is still grinding its way through the third year of its invasion of Ukraine. (Ukrainian drones have also targeted Russian defense production plants.) 

“These attacks are on a major source for the Russian budget, and that budget is being spent on military equipment,” said James Henderson, an expert on the Russian energy sector at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. 

Moscow gets about 40 percent of its federal budget from the export of crude oil and refined products (and that share is even bigger when converted into Russian rubles), making the sector a key part of the Kremlin’s ability to increase defense spending, rebuild its shattered armies, and purchase huge amounts of foreign-made weaponry to use against Ukraine. Russian refineries also churn out millions of barrels a day of products such as diesel and aviation fuel, which are needed for Russia’s perpetually logistics-constrained armed forces.

The Ukrainian strikes so far, which have damaged numerous refineries and started several fires, have knocked out anywhere between 400,000 and 900,000 barrels a day of refining capacity, according to estimates from energy experts and defense officials. Russia has an installed refining capacity—not all of which it uses—of about 6 million barrels a day, and refineries processing more than 2 million barrels a day have been targeted by Ukrainian strikes, some that did superficial damage and some that did more, in recent months.

While the impact of the Ukrainian attacks has varied from refinery to refinery, they present two big problems for Moscow. First, the continued attacks will further stretch Russia’s limited air defenses across even farther-flung bits of its sprawling territory. Second, due to years of Western sanctions, repairs to more advanced refinery components could be much trickier than in normal circumstances, which could affect Russia’s ability to churn out higher-value petroleum products, such as high-octane fuels.

“The higher-quality products are the ones that are going to be at higher risk,” Henderson said.

The Ukrainian onslaught has consequences that reach beyond the Kremlin. Moscow has retaliated with its own bombing campaign, a reprise of previous years’ efforts to destroy Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. Russian missiles struck power supply facilities all over Ukraine last week in what appeared to be the biggest attack yet on Ukraine’s ability to keep the lights on. That’s especially problematic since Ukraine is running low on air defense ammunition needed to protect large cities and power plants, and the big U.S. aid package remains captive in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.

The strikes are also rippling into trading rooms in New York and London. Global oil prices have stayed above $80 a barrel over concerns of an escalation of Ukrainian attacks that could inflict further damage on one of the world’s biggest oil producers and exporters. That’s one reason why the Biden administration, facing a fall election, seems nervous about the Ukrainian drone campaign. 

U.S. officials reportedly asked Ukraine to limit strikes on Russian oil facilities that could lead to higher prices, though Kyiv has made clear that its campaign will continue. Unlike U.S.-delivered long-range weapons, the drones used for the oil industry assaults are Ukrainian and don’t carry Western restrictions. A White House spokesperson declined to comment directly on reports that it asked Ukraine to abstain from such attacks, but White House national security spokesperson John Kirby reiterated that “we do not encourage or enable the Ukrainian military to conduct strikes inside Russia.”

Since the start of the war, the Biden administration has been leery of squeezing Russia’s energy golden goose too hard, lest it spike global energy prices. The embargo on Russian oil exports was only gradually phased in, and a price cap on Russian crude meant to limit Moscow’s energy earnings has proved disappointing. 

What’s more, until recently, Russia was able to use a fleet of shadow oil tankers—vessels that circumvent normal shipping rules such as insurance and identification—to bypass Western restrictions on shipping its crude by sea. All of that has meant that the prewar level of Russian oil exports has been basically unaffected by sanctions and embargoes. But a growing crackdown on shadow tankers, coupled with further Ukrainian strikes, could make for a tighter oil market in months to come, said ClearView Energy Partners, an energy consultancy.

But that’s not Ukraine’s concern. Rather, Kyiv figures that if Russia has trouble processing its crude, it may be forced to pump less. Indeed, Russia this week announced that it will cut oil output to comply with informal production quotas agreed with OPEC+; some energy experts believe Moscow has little choice given the carnage in its downstream facilities.

But there’s another risk, Henderson warned. Just as the United States and other Western countries have gotten more rigorous at cracking down on Russia’s evasion of oil export bans, Moscow may have an incentive to just export more of its unrefined crude. If it does so, it will mean a return to steep discounts on Russian oil as compared with global benchmarks, which will give shippers and third countries reason to get creative yet again at sidestepping sanctions. 

[brostateexam]

Look inside your shopping cart to spot the impact of the world's ebbs and flows: It's in the wood pulp in your paper towels, the petroleum in your frozen meal container, the fruits and veggies that survived floods or droughts.

So, a shopping basket at a Walmart in Georgia offers a view into the U.S. economy — and the inflation that has roiled it. It's a bit painful if you're shopping for aluminum foil or eggs. But not so bad if you want cabbage or Wonder bread. And you may even find a relative bargain on shrimp.

In NPR's shopping cart of several dozen items, prices went up 23% on average since mid-2019. That's when NPR last visited this Walmart, in Liberty County just south of Savannah. At the time, we traced how the Trump administration's trade war with China was affecting prices.

[kemetic-dreams]

In the stock market, a short squeeze is a rapid increase in the price of a stock owing primarily to an excess of short selling of a stock rather than underlying fundamentals. A short squeeze occurs when demand has increased relative to supply because short sellers have to buy stock to cover their short positions.

What's a Short Squeeze and Why Does It Happen?

Key Points

A stock that rallies hyperbolically when there are no obvious current events driving the response, could be experiencing a short squeeze.

A short squeeze can potentially be worth trading, but only if you exercise great care.

The aim of short selling is to generate profit from a stock that declines in value. (Short selling involves borrowing a security whose price you think is going to fall from your brokerage and selling it on the open market. Your plan is to then buy the same stock back later—hopefully for a lower price than you initially sold it for—and pocket the difference after repaying the initial loan.) While there are potential benefits to going short, there are also plenty of risks. One big risk is when a bullish catalyst (earnings, news, technical event, etc.) pushes the stock price higher, prompting short sellers to "head for the exits" all at once. As the shorts scramble to buy back and cover their losses, upward momentum can build on itself, causing the stock to move sharply higher. This is known as a short squeeze.

Understanding the short squeeze

What makes a short squeeze so dangerous? Think of it this way: When you buy a stock, the worst thing it can do is drop to zero. But the upside is unlimited. If a stock has a growth narrative and there are enough believers, the share price can go well beyond what looks reasonable by traditional fundamental metrics.

Classic signs of a short squeeze can include:

A security has a significant amount of short sellers (short interest) who believe the stock price is going to fall, and then instead the stock price sharply rises, forcing many of these leveraged short sellers to quickly exit their positions, buying back the stock in the face of potentially increasing losses.

A dynamic narrative that tries to justify the detachment of share prices from a company's intrinsic value

A case for massive growth as well as for financial stress

Traders with deep pockets aligned on both sides of the trade, often using options and other leveraged instruments

With GameStop (GME) in 2021 and Tesla (TSLA) in 2020, there were many classic signs of a short squeeze. Traders with short positions were covering because they had to, either because they had sustained large losses or shares were no longer available to be borrowed. In 2022, short sellers targeted troubled companies such as Bed, Bath & Beyond (BBBY) and Carvana (CVNA). In early 2023, the most heavily shorted companies included Coinbase Global (COIN), a cryptocurrency firm, and Occidental Petroleum (OXY).

When a stock suddenly experiences a dramatic climb, with or without good news, it's important to ask yourself, "Who would buy shares up here?" The answer? Someone who doesn't have enough money to hold on any longer, or someone whose pain threshold has finally been crossed.

Proceed with caution

If you're a long-term investor who happens to own a stock that's getting squeezed, it's probably not a good time to trade. Instead of acting on emotions, remember what got you to where you are in your investing journey—and where you'd like to be. If buying a stock that's in squeeze territory doesn't fall within your long-term objectives, you might want to step aside and not trade. If you do decide to venture in, make sure you have no illusions and no misconceptions of the dangers. Understand that when you’re dealing with a stock that’s being squeezed, you're taking a big risk. 

Identifying a short squeeze can be relatively simple—after the fact. The trick is to identify the conditions that could lead to a squeeze ahead of time, and then determine how you might want to play it (or not). 

Shorting a stock is a complicated business. Because you can't sell something you don't own, shorting requires the seller to "borrow" the stock (and pay interest to the stock lender), then sell it. Locating the shares can sometimes be difficult for your clearing firm because of high demand or a small number of outstanding shares.

Measuring a short squeeze can involve a metric called the short interest ratio, a.k.a. "days to cover." It indicates, in days, how long it would take to cover or buy back all the shorted shares. Basically, you divide the number of shares sold short by the average daily trading volume. The more days to cover, the more pronounced the effect can be.

Another measure is "short interest as a percentage of float," which reflects the number of short-sold shares in proportion to the total number of shares available for trading in the public markets. Most stocks have a small amount of short interest, usually in the single digits. The higher that percentage, the greater the bearish sentiment may be around that stock. If the short % of the float reaches 10% or higher, that could be a warning sign.

Consider the fundamentals

If you're buying a stock that seems to be in the throes of a short squeeze, especially at high levels, it helps to understand other potential reasons why the stock might be moving. 

Consider checking the fundamentals. Is there anything that would make you want to own the stock? Are you tempted to buy it because everyone else is? It's important to always do your homework, and remember it's never wise to go all in. A stock that's in a short squeeze may still have a long way to climb, and if you don't think the fundamentals support higher prices, then perhaps you should look elsewhere.

In the case of TSLA in 2020, there were some positive fundamentals underlying the short squeeze, including the company's more consistent profitability and hopes of it being included in the S&P 500 Index (SPX). The stock saw its share price run up to new highs, then decline nearly 60%. 

But then TSLA rallied again and split its shares, and its addition to the SPX became a reality, illustrating that a short squeeze doesn't always have to end badly. Other stocks that were caught up in short squeezes haven't always fared so well, in part because they didn't have the fundamental support. 

Playing the squeeze on the long side? 

If you want to trade a stock during what might be a short squeeze—that is, buying a stock with a higher short interest in order to potentially play the upside of a squeeze—here are some things to consider:

Trading such a stock may be okay as long as you understand the risk and how to control it. Whether you make small or large trades, you have to control and limit the risk. Decide how much money you would be comfortable losing in any trade ahead of time.

Don't underestimate how high the stock can go and how long it can take. When a stock gets caught up in a short squeeze, analysts generally expect it to correct eventually, but no one knows to what price and when; if it happens at all. 

If the stock still has very weak fundamentals, yet is moving significantly higher without any real, structural changes in the corporation, then be extremely careful buying on this type of upward momentum. The markets may run out of new buyers willing to pay higher and higher prices and the stock may in the end fall quickly. 

The bottom line

A short squeeze is a high-risk situation and it may cause havoc in the market, but most don't last forever. Most eventually subside.

[dailyanarchistposts]

Chapter 4. Environment

The only way to save the planet

When it comes to protecting the environment, nearly any social system would be better than the one we have now. Capitalism is the first social arrangement in human history to endanger the survival of our species and life on earth in general. Capitalism provides incentives to exploit and destroy nature, and creates an atomized society that is incapable of protecting the environment. Under capitalism, ecocide is literally a right. Environmental protections are “trade barriers”; preventing a corporation from clear-cutting land it has purchased is a violation of private property and free enterprise. Companies are allowed to make millions of tons of plastic, most of it for throwaway packaging, despite the fact that they have no plan for disposing of it and not even any idea what will happen with it all; plastic does not decompose, so plastic trash is filling up the ocean and appearing in the bodies of marine creatures, and it may last millions of years. To save endangered rhinoceros from poachers, game wardens have started sawing off their valuable horns; but the poachers are killing them anyway because once they are extinct, the value of the few remaining bits of rhinoceros ivory will go through the roof.

And despite all this, universities have the audacity to indoctrinate students to believe that a communal society would be incapable of protecting the environment because of the so-called tragedy of the commons. This myth is often explained thus: imagine a society of sheepherders owns the grazing land in common. They benefit collectively if each grazes a smaller number of sheep, because the pasture stays fertile, but any one of them benefits individually if he overgrazes, because he will receive a greater share of the product — thus collective ownership supposedly leads to depletion of resources. The historical examples intended to corroborate this theory are generally drawn from colonial and postcolonial situations in which oppressed people, whose traditional forms of organization and stewardship have been undermined, are crowded onto marginal land, with predictable results. The sheepherding scenario assumes a situation that is extremely rare in human history: a collective comprised of atomized, competitive individuals who value personal wealth over social bonds and ecological health, and lack social arrangements or traditions that can guarantee sustainable, shared use.

Capitalism has already caused the biggest wave of extinctions to hit the planet since an asteroid collision killed off the dinosaurs. To prevent global climate change from bringing about total ecological collapse, and stop pollution and overpopulation from killing off most of the planet’s mammals, birds, amphibians, and marine life, we have to abolish capitalism, hopefully within the next few decades. Human-caused extinctions have been apparent for at least a hundred years now. The greenhouse effect has been widely acknowledged for nearly two decades. The best that the reputed ingenuity of free enterprise has come up with is carbon trading, a ridiculous farce. Likewise, we cannot trust some world government to save the planet. A government’s first concern is always its own power, and it builds the base of this power upon economic relationships. The governing elite must maintain a privileged position, and that privilege depends on the exploitation of other people and of the environment.

Localized, egalitarian societies linked by global communication and awareness are the best chance for saving the environment. Self-sufficient, self-contained economies leave almost no carbon footprint. They don’t need petroleum to ship goods in and waste out, or huge amounts of electricity to power industrial complexes to produce goods for export. They must produce most of their energy themselves via solar, wind, biofuel, and similar technologies, and rely more on what can be done manually than on electrical appliances. Such societies pollute less because they have fewer incentives to mass production and lack the means to dump their byproducts on others’ land. In place of busy airports, traffic-clogged highways, and long commutes to work, we can imagine bicycles, buses, interregional trains, and sailboats. Likewise, populations will not spiral out of control, because women will be empowered to manage their fertility and the localized economy will make apparent the limited availability of resources.

An ecologically sustainable world would have to be anti-authoritarian, so no society could encroach on its neighbors to expand its resource base; and cooperative, so societies could band together in self-defense against a group developing imperialist tendencies. Most importantly, it would demand a common ecological ethos, so people would respect the environment rather than regarding it simply as raw material to exploit. We can begin building such a world now, by learning from ecologically sustainable indigenous societies, sabotaging and shaming polluters, spreading a love for nature and an awareness of our bioregions, and establishing projects that allow us to meet our needs for food, water, and energy locally.

[tradebrainsportalsblog]

The Role of Diversification in Mitigating Investment Risk

Investing is one of the most critical strategies you can use to minimize your investment risk and this is why diversity is essential. In other words, it means spreading your investments across various types of assets so that you do not suffer great losses due to poor performance in any one share or investment. This article focuses on how diversification can help reduce investment risks while giving practical tips on how to diversify portfolios effectively.

Understanding Diversification

You do not put all your baskets in one egg carton. Therefore, by investing in different assets like stocks, bonds, real estate and commodities, if one investment fails then it will save a lot from losing anything with a greater amount. The rationale behind this system is simple: different kinds of investments usually react differently to market conditions. For example when some are going down others may be growing hence ensuring an overall stable return.

Importance of Diversification

Mitigates risk: diversification helps spread the risks. Investing everything into a single share which collapses leads to losing mostly all one's money. However if he had a diversified portfolio such a situation would not have affected much on the entire portfolio since before there used to be good gains in some areas but now as compared it seems lesser than before.

Smooth Returns: A portfolio that has good diversification would experience lesser fluctuations. This implies that you will not experience vast changes in values brought about by investing in just one category of assets. By doing this, your profits are likely to be constant even as time passes.

The Possibility of Higher Returns: Even though the assumption of constant returns from different classes is not true, yet on average it leads to stability over all returns. If you have different kinds of financial tools some may perform well making other investments more profitable.

Conduct a proper market research and analysis like fundamental analysis, technical analysis etc. There are lot of websites which provides various tools to conduct analysis. One of the best websites for fundamental analysis is Trade Brains Portal. Trade Brains Portal has various tools like Portfolio analysis, Stock compare, Stock research reports and so on. Also the website provides fundamental details of all the stocks listed in Indian stock market.

How to Create Diversification

First Invest In Different Asset Classes: The initial stage of diversifying is distributing investments among diverse asset classes. You might include:

Shares: For instance invest into various sectors and industries which protects against any concentration risk.

Debts: Join corporate and state obligations that have various due terms.

Property: Purchase land or consider REITs which will go a long way in further diversity for the filling

Blacksmith’s tools: This allows one to hedge against stock price fluctuations since there are shares made from gold or liquid petroleum.

Asset Classes: Inside Each, Diversify More: Inside every asset class, further diversification should be encouraged. For instance, your stock portfolio may comprise both large, mid- and small-cap stocks pulled from various industries such as technology, health care or finance. Conversely, for fixed income investments you could consider both short- and long-term bonds from different issuers.

Geographic Diversification: Don’t confine your investments to just one country; consider allocating funds to global equities and debts so that you can ride on worldwide growth spurts at the same time lowering chances of going broke due to national downturns only.

Utilize Index Funds and ETFs: Index funds along with exchange-traded funds (ETFs) create fantastic platforms for diversification. Basically, these are investment vehicles which collect funds from numerous investors to buy a spectrum of stocks or bonds which automatically leads to diversification in the fund itself. As such; investing in index or ETF money market accounts results in an instantily diversified portfolio.

Strategic Diversification

Design Balanced Portfolios: A balanced portfolio will include stocks, bonds and other assets. The exact mix of these three categories depend on your risk appetite, investment objectives and time frame. For example; if you are young with an extended investment period ahead like 30 years or more, then perhaps you could have a greater percentage of equity shares. Conversely before retirement age it is likely that one would move towards more fixed income securities and other low-volatility options. Inorder to reduce the risk, one can invest in large cap companies or also investing in companies which has good dividends, bonus and splits can be a better choice.

1. Re Judiciously: With the passage of time, every investment’s worth may change thus creating an uneven portfolio. “Rebalance” refers to the act of bringing back into line one's desired proportions of investments as stocks, bonds or other such asset categories. This ensures that risk levels correspond with individual investment objectives.

2. Follow Up and Amending: Literacy needs one given fiscal policy to always differ and be changing as per preferences of that certain individual in the market at a particular time upon follow up from it regularly. Periodic adjustments may be required so as to keep an overall investment mix in balance hence giving opportunity for some time before buying any new ones.

Common Mistakes

Over Diversification: It is evident that although diversification matters; it can also harm your profit margins through excessive dilution. Avoid extensionalizing too thin your assets or choosing funds too far too many Aim for a balanced approach based on few investments.

Ignoring Asset Correlation: Diversification works well when these assets are not related closely. Investing in closely related assets ends up negating the effects on one’s portfolio during downturns and making this strategy less beneficial. All your assets ought to have different levels of risks as well as respond independently to different market conditions.

Minimizing Hazardous Behavior: Asset allocation must be aligned with your appetite for risk as well as your investment objectives. Don’t just diversify simply for the purpose of it. Ensure that your portfolio represents your comfort with risk and conforms to your financial aims.

Conclusion

A potent strategy for curtailing investment risks and obtaining more steady returns is diversification. When you spread out investments throughout various asset classes, industries and regions, the effect of bad performance on one specific investment will be reduced thus enhancing stability of the entire portfolio. Remember to diversify within asset classes, utilize index mutual funds along with ETFs then periodically check and adjust the mix in order to have an ideal level of diversification throughout your life cycle; this way you will be able to handle any changes in the marketplace hence working towards fulfilling all your dreams.

[darkmaga-retard]

Marking the inevitable demise of the world’s most important cartel.

Doomberg

Sep 03, 2024

“We don't have a monopoly. We have market share. There's a difference.” – Steve Ballmer

On November 27, 2014, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) gathered in Vienna, Austria, for one of its regular meetings. The outcome of this one would prove momentous. Although Brent crude had traded comfortably above $100 a barrel for most of the prior few years, a booming US shale sector had caused prices to dip to the high $70s as attendees arrived. Led by Saudi Arabia, OPEC made the fateful decision to engage in a price war with American producers, a move that shocked market observers: 

“The stated belief from some OPEC members at that time was that this would cause a dip in oil prices, and that would put a lot of the marginal shale oil producers out of business. Instead, oil prices plummeted, some shale oil producers went out of business, but the strategy indeed cost OPEC at least a trillion dollars of lost revenue as most shale producers held on. In late 2016 the cartel waved the white flag, abandoning this strategy and returning to making production cuts to boost prices. That strategy persists to this day.”

OPEC grossly underestimated both the willingness and the capacity of US shale companies to incinerate shareholder capital in the name of growth. Even as oil prices ground lower—eventually bottoming out in the upper-$20s in January of 2016, well below the estimated marginal cost of production for most shale upstarts—US production climbed inexorably higher. The few companies that did file for bankruptcy either kept producing or sold assets to others that could, using the courts as a shield to recapitalize in the hopes of exploiting firmer prices in the future.

[rjzimmerman]

Harris adviser Deese calls for Marshall Plan on clean energy. (Reuters)

Brian Deese, one of my friends from our HIV/AIDS charity work in Africa, is the Institute Innovation Fellow at MIT. He was recently appointed as an economic adviser for Vice President Harris' presidential campaign. Prior to that, he was the 13th director of the National Economic Council for President Biden, and he previously served in several capacities in the administration of President Obama. He also was a key player in negotiating the Paris Climate Accord, working with John Kerry.

His article in Foreign Affairs, which is summarized in this Reuters story, is brilliant. Here's the link to the original article (beware the paywall) entitled, "The Case for Clean Energy Marshall Plan."

Excerpt from this Reuters story:

Brian Deese, an economic adviser for Vice President Kamala Harris' presidential campaign, called on Thursday for an economic program to loan allies money to buy U.S. green energy technologies as part of a wider strategy intended to fight climate change.

Deese, who was an economic adviser under President Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama, billed it as a new version of the Marshall Plan, a mechanism of grants set up by President Harry Truman and Secretary of State George Marshall, to help Europe recover after World War Two.

"It should be as generous to our allies as it is unapologetically pro-American in its interest," Deese told Reuters.

While Deese is promoting the plan independently of his work as a Harris adviser, it could offer insight into potential policies of her presidency should she win on Nov. 5. The Harris campaign did not immediately comment.

Deese helped shape the Inflation Reduction Act, opens new tab, Biden's landmark legislation that contains billions of dollars to help spur clean energy and fight climate change. He said the IRA and other legislation created one of the biggest opportunities to speed clean energy, but the effort needs a mechanism to bring technologies to allies.

To support the plan, the U.S. should create a Clean Energy Finance Authority, with the ability to issue debt and equity for clean energy projects, Deese said in an article in Foreign Affairs published earlier this week. The plan could be part of a U.S. alternative to China's "Belt and Road" infrastructure initiative and assure U.S. leadership in a period of friction between global powers.

The new U.S. agency could draw on expertise of the Department of Energy's Loan Programs Office in assessing the risks and benefits of emerging technologies like advanced nuclear energy, hydrogen power, carbon capture, and geothermal power, Deese said. The LPO issues loan guarantees and low-rate loans to companies with promising technologies that have difficulty getting financing from commercial banks.

To support the plan, Deese also called for tools such as tariffs that favor imports from countries that cut emissions while making steel and other products, and the development of a strategic mineral reserve.

Such reserves would be held by the U.S. and allies to protect against supply chain shortages for the materials key to clean technologies and the domination of critical minerals trade by China.

After Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Deese helped set up a record sale of oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve to help moderate gasoline prices for U.S. drivers. That experience helped him see the importance of developing reserves for minerals, he said.

"My hope is we were moving out of the idea stage and into the opportunity to experiment and then build," such reserves, Deese said.

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in a Reuters interview in June that the U.S. has been having conversations with allies in the International Energy Agency about collective reserves for critical minerals.

[mar-jef-sblcs]

I have a genuine lender from London, U.K who offer financial instrument lease and sale at a reasonable price with affordable procedure and condition. Our bank instrument lender offer Fresh Cut and Seasoned bank instrument such BG, SBLC, MTN and Confirmable Bank Draft (CBD), which can be engage into PPP Trading, Outright Discounting, signatory project(s) such as Aviation, Agriculture, Petroleum, Telecommunication, construction of Dams, Bridges, Real Estate and all kind of projects.

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We deliver with time and precision as sethforth in the agreement. Our terms and Conditions are reasonable. Below procedure is for BG/SBLC and MTN lease, other bank instrument procedure will be provided on request.

DESCRIPTION OF INSTRUMENT:

1. Instrument: Bank Guarantee {BG/SBLC}

2. Total Face Value: Eur 10M{Minimum} to Eur 10B{Maximum}

3. Issuing Bank: HSBC Bank Plc and Barclays Bank Plc {London, U.K}

4. Age: One Year and One Month

5. Leasing Price: 6%+2% =8%

6. Delivery: MT-760 {Bank-To-Bank Swift}

7. Payment: MT103/23

8. Hard Copy: Bonded Courier Service {within three banking days}

Thank you

Marty Jeffrey.

email:marjefsblcls@gmail.com

[nicklloydnow]

“In 1932, Adolf A. Berle Jr. and Gardner C. Means wrote a book entitled The Modern Corporation and Private Property. A critique of corporate management for being aloof and complacent, out of touch with the consumer and irresponsible to the stockholder, this volume became the bible of Marxists, left wing intellectuals and interventionist politicians. Under the banner of separation of ownership and control, the Berle-Means thesis led to an attack on the corporate structure from which today's top executives are still reeling.

With this background, one would have thought that the people urging a greater role for the public sector would have welcomed the advent of the corporate raider. For this new breed of capitalist has sent shivers down the spines of the denizens of the boardroom. Swooping down, launching "unfriendly" or "hostile" takeover bids, these corporate raiders have succeeded in replacing management from coast to coast in dozens of industries, and in frightening thousands of other out-of-touch chief executive officers into greater responsibility.

At least under the theory of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," it might have been expected that critics of the marketplace, noticeably the followers of Berle and Means, would have rallied `round the cause of the corporate raider.

In the event, however, this expectation has remained unfulfilled. Not only has the activity of the corporate raider been deprecated by the champions of government interference in the marketplace, but it has been roundly condemned by practically all pundits and commentators on public policy. In 1987, the left-leaning film director Oliver Stone distilled the common image of the corporate raider into the supposedly loathsome Gordon Gekko, brilliantly portrayed in an Oscar-winning performance by Michael Douglas. And this is the image of Gekko under which the corporate raider must labor in the present day.

Yet, despite this all-but-universal criticism, the unfriendly takeover bid has benefited consumers and stockholders, and served notice on complacent management across the board. In one celebrated case that unfolded shortly before Stone's film Wall Street was released, corporate guerrilla Carl Icahn put in a bid for a block of shares of Phillips Petroleum. Stung by Icahn's bid, Phillips' executives offered to improve a recapitalization plan they had been forced to put forth in response to an earlier planned takeover, this one by T. Boone Pickens. As a result, Icahn walked away with a cool $50 million, Pickens registered a profit of $89 million on a resale of his holdings to the company, all Phillips' shareholders gained from the better offer, and the oil firm itself was left far leaner and meaner than before.

Needless to say, neither Icahn nor Pickens nor any of the other masterminds of "the 1980s takeover boom," were publicly thanked for the good they had done. On the contrary: both men were not only mocked by Oliver Stone, they were also robbed of the opportunity to do any more such good by a rash of anti-takeover statutes adopted late in the decade. Henry Manne reported that hostile takeovers had "declined to four percent from fourteen percent of all mergers."

The conventional wisdom holds that this outcome is a good one for investors, but the facts show otherwise. No story of the corporate raider can ignore the role of the heroic Michael Milken. Assume there was a hotel worth $20 million as a present discounted capital value. Given an interest rate of 5%, this concern should throw off roughly $1 million to its owners. But stipulate that due to inefficiency, or general avarice, or to the fact that the CEO salary was far higher than justified, or a combination of all such phenomena, the owners were earning far less than that in dividends. And, guess what? The stock was trading at a lower value than might have prevailed, had these tape worm factors not been in operation.

Enter the "evil" Michael Milken. He swoops in, purchases enough of the stock in this corporation to kick out the old board and replace it with his own nominees. This is considered a "hostile" takeover by a corporate "raider." From whence springs the hostility? All Milken did was buy up a mess of stocks. Did he threaten any of these stock owners that they would walk the plank if they did not sell to him? No, of course not; we are talking arm's-length stock market deals here. We can logically infer that the owners of these stocks preferred the price offered them by the "raider," otherwise they would not have sold out. No, the "hostility," instead, stems from the CEO and his cronies who were mismanaging this hotel into the ground.

The Milkins of the world are akin to the canary in the mine; they are the Distant Early Warning Line for the economy.

When they get active, it is in response to something rotten that is going on. And what was the public reaction to this corporate raider? Instead of hoisting him up on their shoulders and holding ticker tape parades in his honor, he was given the back of the public's hand to his face. To wit, he was prosecuted by the Securities and Exchange Commission for insider trading, violations of U.S. Securities Laws and other financial felonies. He pled guilty only after the authorities threatened to go after his ailing brother. For shame.” - Walter Block, ‘Defending the Undefendable II’ (2013) [p. 41 - 44]