MoneyNews - America's Money News Page Yamada: Oil Could Pass $450 In a Decade
Thursday, May 29, 2008 12:28 PM
You think Goldman Sachs was reaching when it said oil could spike to $200? Try Louise Yamada on for size.
The former Citigroup analyst sees oil going to $450 inside a decade.
Based upon fundamental demand and technical market factors, Yamada says much higher oil just makes sense.
“If the present rhymes with history, oil prices might be expected to advance significantly ($253 to even above $453) over the decade ahead,” she wrote in a report to clients.
Yamada is managing director of Louise Yamada Technical Research Advisors, a firm she founded in October 2005. Prior to that, she spent more than two decades at Smith Barney, where she was the top-ranked market technician for four years.
Population of “six billion…and rising to nine billion, with greater and growing energy demands (electricity for technology, air conditioning, etc.) than ever before,” leads her to believe demand will continue to outweigh supply in the oil market.
Current output of oil worldwide is expected to rise to 116 million barrels per day (bpd) by 2030 from 86 million bpd, according to the International Energy Agency.
This represents an average increase of 1.3 percent a year, just below the average increase in demand of 1.4 percent per year. Although Yamada relied on historical price charts to derive her price targets, the fundamentals support significantly higher prices.
Yamada has been right on long-term market calls before.
Her clients profited when she correctly predicted the 1999-2000 declines in tech stocks, the new bull market in gold which has lifted the metal past $1,000 an ounce, and the extended low interest rate trading range in bonds.
From a technical perspective, she relies on historical trading patterns and calculates a gain of more than 1,000 percent from the 2004 breakout point of $40 a barrel. This provides “an outstanding (and astounding) target of $452.92 per barrel!” she warns.
Besides the imbalance in supply and demand, the dollar is also contributing to higher oil prices, in Yamada’s opinion.
“One might also need to factor in our technical observation of the structurally declining U.S. dollar, which over the long run, may contribute to, and even exaggerate, these seemingly astonishing triple-digit targets,” she wrote.
Yamada is bullish not only on oil, but also on oil stocks. As a group, she points out these stocks have room to double based upon factors such as their relative weighting in broad market indexes.
She highlighted Chevron, Anadarko Petroleum, and Halliburton in recent comments.
Consistent with this analysis, she also likes agricultural commodities and food stocks, thinking inflation will increase and higher prices will lead to greater profits for producers and processors. In particular, smaller stocks are more likely to outperform, she writes.
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