Brazil's Newest Deep Sea Oil and Gas Exploration Platform.

PMXL-1, Brazil's biggest oil and gas sea exploration platform is in final construction stages. It will stand at 230m high (equivalent to a 70-story highrise). It will be capable of processing 15 million cubic meters daily and will start operation in Q1 2009. You can see a picture below (sideways, while it is being built). The platform is visible from the Rio-Niteroi bridge and it stands taller than the bridge.



The platform will operate in the Mexilhao field, in the Bacia de Santos area, off Sao Paulo's state northern coast. The platform is being built at a cost of $1.2B.

Ring Of Fire Report

A report on the Ring Of Fire is presently available HERE. The report shows market caps, claims, and chart prices. This is part of a much larger report that is being finalized.

The current market caps as of the end of the day yesterday are shown below.

Ring of Fire Market Cap and Claim Units by Company

Here is an updated table based on the latest area claim map of the Ring of Fire region in Ontario, where Noront made its discovery. This map shows new companies in the area. The tables below show them sorted by current market cap and by the number of claim units they own. Some of the players have appreciated significantly in recent days, including the top names NOT, BMK, FNC, PRB and FWR.

Market Cap:



Click on each image to enlarge.


Claim Units:

The Ring of Fire Players (Re. Noront)

Here is a list of the current market cap of the Ring Of Fire players, where Noront (NOT.V) made is significant discovery. There are several companies exploring in the area (e.g, Probe, MacDonald, Freewest, Fancamp and others). I am working on a much bigger report on these. If anyone is interested please send me a note.

All figures in $M.

Performance of ETFs and Indexes on Each Weekday Show Very Interesting Results

This article discusses the daily performance of a number of indexes and ETFs. It shows the performance on each weekday ( Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays). The results are quite interesting as there is quite a difference for a couple of specific days of the week.

The table below shows the performance of the Dow30 (through DIA), SP500 (through SPY), XLF, EWZ (Brazil), XFI (China), and the SP500 itself. The SP500 closely follows the Dow30 as they are highly correlated (see our post on correlation).



(Click on image to enlarge)

If you guessed one of them was Fridays, you are correct. Fridays are very good days to go short, most likely because people do not want to leave money on the table for unexpected bad news on the weekend?). The Dow 30 has gone down on 19 out of 25 Fridays for the first half of this year from January 2 2008 to June 30 2008. The average daily performance on Friday was -0.69%. If you shorted the Dow index at the end of the day on Thursdays and sold it at the end of the following day on Fridays, your cumulative performance would have been -15.95%. In comparison, the total return for the 6 months was -12.21%.


Note also that since the start of the year Brazil gained 10.3%, while its performance on Fridays was a cumulative -7.19%.

As for the best days to go long, it is clearly Mondays, where the Dow has gained 3.88% in spite of what was clearly a bear market in this first half of 2008.

The table also shows the number of days with returns over +0.5% and under -0.5%.

The graph below shows the performance of the Down on each weekday. You can clearly see how people usually sell on Fridays, perhaps afraid of whatever bad news might come on the weekend.



The Excel file used is also available for your viewing pleasure.