Touched By The Son: January 2017

Indexhausted

Indices to infinity. You know what I was saying about getting your stock exchange information from Wikipedia? Well, when I was looking up AMEX disk drive index, I noticed that some of the site links went on to list even more indices than were covered on these lists, making the whole assessment of how many energy indices there were compared to technology indices redundant. Unless the more recently uncovered links maintained the same ratio but, sheesh, better to just know of the few major ones unless you have an abiding interest in the niche market as it were.

Bullcharts in particular has an extensive list of indices so if you want to take a look at what The Investable Volatility Index is all about, they can tell you.

II

We started almost by accident looking at money February last year. I don't know if that had anything to do with finishing up work or the apparent evolution from looking at the richest countries or, earlier again, newspapers. So it has chiefly occupied 2016 Touched by the Son.
I want to finish up speculation on this strand of monetary gain and commerce by going back to the list of biggest companies and seeing how they feature or operate in what we've learned. BP is short for British Petroleum and petroleum is but one oil product it produces and sells, which makes it an easy leader in the field during the twentieth century and has yet to lose ground in the twenty first. For our purposes, it is our sample commodity.
Glencore is in the related field of mining; both rely on the extraction of natural resources to either refine or sell on. We've got Total Oil and Phillips 66 here represented by BP and Glencore. Not to mention much larger companies like ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell and the China National Petroleum Corporation who have had their share of guernseys even for this blog.

BNP Paribas was the first major foreign bank in Australia. We will use its example to contrast those out in the oilfields and mines from those who finance others' expeditions.

For contrast to the fiscal and assets holding, we'll dodge Wells Fargo and JP Morgan Chase and turn our attention to Toyota as they represent manufacturers, fashioning raw materials into equipment and machinery as Toyota does with the automobile and that renowned vehicle, the Toyota Landcruiser.

In other manufacturing, WestRock is a corrugated packaging company.

So far, commodity, oil and gas, natural resources, primary vs secondary

The strongest companies in the service industry include those in vocational education "total spending by international students in Australia – including course fees, accommodation, living expenses and recreation – was $19.2 billion in 2015, up from $17 billion the previous year.
Read more: http://www.afr.com/news/policy/education/education-revenue-soars-to-become-australias-20-billion-export-20160203-gmke3k#ixzz4VtteHb8C
Follow us: @FinancialReview on Twitter | financialreview on Facebook"

And as for retail, by happy trails, pharmaceuticals and healthcare are writ large in the shape of McKesson Corporation so we get further insight into their power and influence and, in turn, our dependence on the thing they are selling.

While we might have spent more cybertime in China over this extended stock stretch, it behooves us to select China Railway as our representative for another most important service: transport. Yes, it is true that Total Oil is a goliath of its field but we've been to that field.

I'd need to know more about Vitol before I considered its inclusion. It is described as a global energy and global trading company so how much of it is engaged in extraction and production, and how much is involved in locating viable lodes and then leasing or trading them (or the entities who control them or part own them) Much as such an intriguing company, based in Rotterdam to boot, is tempting to include, I think a more unambigous company purely involved in trading, or a venture capitalist, is required to, again, see how they all interact - which appear in the various financial instruments and which drop off or are not relevant to that category.

And, sneaking in behind Vitol's back, a company that diversifies "Seaboard Corporation is a diverse multinational agribusiness and transportation conglomerate with integrated operations in several industries." This can then contrast those other companies we have in our ambit who occupy just one of those fields or interact within a more limited market.

I probably don't know what I'm letting myself in for but the final entity for our consideration is MORL which I have some notion is a supersuccessful trade fund and would bring us to our last point of differentiation.

So, OK, our team of BNP Paribas, BP, China Railway, McKesson, MORL, Seaboard, Toyota,Vitol (blogger prerogative) and Westrock are going to demonstrate how they fit in if we are investing in different kinds of shares

Electronix indecs

I was wrong. The AMEX indexes [sic] are different to those listed under US

Did you say Windex?

Wikipedia (a free site that allows public editing so perhaps not the ultimate authority on the subject) goes on to repeat those same indices but this time grouped by equity: energy, electronic, environment and clean energy, finance, raw materials, metals, technology sector, real estate, space and water.

That alone is enough to take in; separating finance on other things that are reveue-raising or of a mercantile nature, figuring out why 'electronic' and 'technology sector' are different or need a different index even if there's overlap, "Hang on, aren't metals raw materials?" "Do we just use a different index because metals take up such a large part of the capital floating out there?",
there's an index for (outer) space, "Is water a raw material?"
I'm also interested in the environment and clean energy indices, both because of how exciting that is, and because of the faith there is that commerce can get onboard with something that encourages harnessing resources we already have at minimum cost (in all respects)

I don't see much profit in repeating them all ad nauseum so I'll note some highlights. There are but four indices grouped under Energy and three of those are international

You'll see why I keep baulking at electronics when I tell you that Amex has five indices, Dow Jones has four, Oslo and Stockholm have a three apiece and there are more companies indexing electronics I'm sure we've covered by now.

Environment and Clean Energy must be harnessing a different kind of energy as it also has just four indices