Some good stock market podcasts

I regularly listen to the following Podcasts available on the Itunes store for free:

S&A Investor radio with Frank Curzio - Weekly show largely U.S. focused but some good guests and Curzio is excellent.

The Disciplined Investor - Weekly show again with a U.S. focus but good market commentary from Andrew Horowitz and interesting guests.

Shame there's no decent U.K. focused share podcasts, unless I've missed something?

Good start to 2011 in U.S. and Contrarian, not so bright for FTSE 100

Despite all the tension in the Middle East, the Dow Jones Industrial Average ended up 68 points, to 11,892 making it a 2.7% rise for the month, its best January since 1997. The FTSE 100 has not been so fortunate, with the index falling 0.6% in January to 5,881. The discrepancy in performance is largely explained by the larger presence of cyclical stocks such as industrial group Caterpillar (CAT) in the DOW. Also the fact that it is a price weighted index (i.e. the higher the price of a stock the greater its weighting within the index) whereas the FTSE 100 is a market cap weighted index is not widely recognised (and hence the U.S. S&P 500 is a better measure of U.S. stock market performance).

The Contrarian Investor UK portfolio suffered again today on the market sell off and unfortunately Imagination Technology (IMG) fell through a stop loss set 10% below buy price. The strong start to the year precipitated by some good gains in Xcite (when it went close to 400p) and Bowleven, have been marred by the Imagination loss (fortunately not a huge position) and a stupidly set stop loss on Sirius Minerals which caught me out and which was only set to control my required margin requirements (daft to do given the volatility of SXX).  But still up nicely for the Month so a good start to 2011 but it could have been a lot better. Now for Xcite and Bowleven to come in February!

Will tomorrow bring the long awaited Xcite Energy RNS?

A day of anticipation of an RNS from Xcite Energy relating to the rig contract came to nought. However, no panic here. Disappointing that the share price dropped 8.5p late in the day to £3.62 after holding firm despite the FTSE taking a beating in the morning but I guess some of my fellow private investors are looking for bad news even if there's no hint of one!

Oil prices rose today to their highest in more than two years with WTI Crude for March delivery gaiing 3.2%, at $92.2 a barrel (its highest sine October 2008) and Brent Crude rose to more than $1.50 to as high as $101.08 a barrel. Its all time high is $147 a barrel hit in July 2008 before the financial collapse.

The reason for the oil price hike continues to be Egypt, with 2 million barrels per day passing through the Suez Canal plus a a further 1 million barrels move through the Suez-Mediterranean pipeline.

Xcite Energy - still no Rowan Norway rig RNS!

The deadline for the Rowan Norway jack up rig is here but no RNS so far!

As a reminder:

4 January 2011

Xcite Energy Limited

("Xcite Energy" or the "Company")

Extension of Letter of Intent for "Rowan Norway" N-Class Jack-up Rig

Xcite Energy announces that its 100% subsidiary, Xcite Energy Resources Limited ("XER"), has entered into an extension to the binding letter of intent ("LOI") with British American Offshore Limited("BAOL"), part of Rowan Companies, Inc. for the N-Class "Rowan Norway" jack-up rig.

The LOI has been extended by mutual consent to 31^st January 2011 with no amendment to the existing termination fee payable by XER in the event it does not enter into a definitive agreement by this date.

If they were extending negotiations I would have thought we would have an RNS by now. Issuing an RNS saying "we have extended by an additional 7 weeks day blah. blah. in order to finalise detailed elements of the contract.". It doesn't smack of the Xcite board of directors that we know. The longer the wait, the more intriguing it gets! Maybe the directors have taken a well deserved break in the Caribbean with their share sale profits and they forgot to tell the PR to send the RNS out??!!!