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I Tried to Buy an Actual Barrel of Crude Oil

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Re: I Tried to Buy an Actual Barrel of Crude Oil

#151

Post by sumedh »

VLM wrote: post #135
cfontes wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an awesome book "Reminiscence of a stock operator" by Edwin Lefevre, the story is about one guy and he does that with coffee in the US, not one, but 2 times. The government actually had to come in and take it from him... The book is a mixture of fiction and real life and it's just great! One of my favorites

It is an awesome book and its an extremely thinly disguised biography of Jesse Livermore. Its interesting to read up on why its thinly disguised. Its widely believed the author both got, and planted, stock tips for Livermore, but the author wanted no written legal document connecting them in case things went wrong and he ended up in court discussing his documented long financial relationship w/ Mr Livermore. Legally…

> its a comedy in the sense that market prices currently have no relationship to fundamentals from a Graham perspective

You missed the whole point of Security Analysis and Intelligent Investor(another Graham book). The market is irrational from time to time, so you patiently wait on the side when prices are overvalued and invest in fundamentally good companies when prices are undervalued.

Re: I Tried to Buy an Actual Barrel of Crude Oil

#152

Post by ggchappell »

takinola wrote: post #101
comex wrote: post #4

Another notable excerpt from the linked state safety agency document ( http://www.michigan.gov/documents/cis_wsh_cet5041_90142_7.do... ): -- Two employees of a fertilizer company in Riga, Michigan, were assigned to install a new float valve in an old 35-foot deep cistern for a new 300-foot well. This cistern was covered with a concrete slab with entry through a covered manhole. The first worker entered the cistern an…

I once took an H2S safety training class. The first rule of working in an area with known H2S is if you see one of your colleagues suddenly drop to the floor for no apparent reason get the hell out of the area and whatever you do, don't stop to render aid to the fallen. After you have reached a safe well ventilated place, you should put on your safety gear and then head back to rescue the incapacitated. There are too…

> It only becomes odorless at deadly concentrations.

That is really strange. Because at non-deadly concentrations it seriously stinks. Do you know why it has this weird backwards smelliness property?

Re: I Tried to Buy an Actual Barrel of Crude Oil

#153

Post by idlewords »

ggchappell wrote: post #152
takinola wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once took an H2S safety training class. The first rule of working in an area with known H2S is if you see one of your colleagues suddenly drop to the floor for no apparent reason get the hell out of the area and whatever you do, don't stop to render aid to the fallen. After you have reached a safe well ventilated place, you should put on your safety gear and then head back to rescue the incapacitated. There are too…

> It only becomes odorless at deadly concentrations. That is really strange. Because at non-deadly concentrations it seriously stinks. Do you know why it has this weird backwards smelliness property?

It paralyzes the nerve cells in your nose.

Re: I Tried to Buy an Actual Barrel of Crude Oil

#154

Post by neuronic »

prawn wrote: post #116
ptaipale wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shit kills. I guess this happens everywhere in the world, but over here (Finland), there are the occasional deaths at farms where H2S released from remains of cow manure, stored in a tank, kills people. https://www.mela.fi/sites/default/files/lietelanta.pdf "Description of event A farm-owner suffocated inside a manure tank which was lacking oxygen and contained toxic gases. Also his brother, who went in to help, died…

Another case involving pig shit. "The lagoons themselves are so viscous and venomous that if someone falls in it is foolish to try to save him. A few years ago, a truck driver in Oklahoma was transferring pig shit to a lagoon when he and his truck went over the side. It took almost three weeks to recover his body. In 1992, when a worker making repairs to a lagoon in Minnesota began to choke to death on the fumes, ano…

Ok this is going to sound silly, and I apologize if this isn't a nice contribution.

But I believe to have read quite a while back that H2S is why poop stinks so bad for us. It can lead to anoxic events: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian%E2%80%93Triassic_extin...

So evolutionary speaking we might have adjusted our olfactory sense to stay clear of any H2S sources.

Re: I Tried to Buy an Actual Barrel of Crude Oil

#155

Post by neuronic »

oxymoron wrote: post #33
comex wrote: post #4

Another notable excerpt from the linked state safety agency document ( http://www.michigan.gov/documents/cis_wsh_cet5041_90142_7.do... ): -- Two employees of a fertilizer company in Riga, Michigan, were assigned to install a new float valve in an old 35-foot deep cistern for a new 300-foot well. This cistern was covered with a concrete slab with entry through a covered manhole. The first worker entered the cistern an…

I once took a university course called "Chemical Equilibrium" which required some lab time. The labs were about examining solutions with unknown ions and figuring out what they were. A common tool in doing so is by bubbling hydrogen sulfide gas through the solution, which will cause the precipation of certain cations. Needless to say, we were warned about the dangers of H2S, and told that if it ever escaped the fume…

I just wanted to add an evolutionary perspective on why H2S might smell so bad for us. Sure it's dangerous, but so are many gases that don't smell. However:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian%E2%80%93Triassic_extin...

Re: I Tried to Buy an Actual Barrel of Crude Oil

#156

Post by oxryly1 »

slyall wrote: post #127
oxryly1 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, in the commodities trading business there have GOT to be stories of this sort of thing happening.

http://thedailywtf.com/articles/Special-Delivery Edit: Oops, somebody already posted, later in the thread.

Ok, neat story, certainly.

But is there any indication that it isn't completely fictional?

Edit: similar info here http://www.minyanville.com/businessmarkets/articles/futures-...

It seems these stories tend to be apocryphal. Oh well.

Re: I Tried to Buy an Actual Barrel of Crude Oil

#157

Post by mikeash »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #136
flyinghamster wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His article on chlorine trifluoride was an absolute classic as well, and some of his articles make me very glad I don't live anywhere near Dr. Klapötke's lab. The FOOF article pointed out one other nasty problem, namely, how easy it is to game search systems: "But I do note that if you run the structure through SciFinder, it comes out with a most unexpected icon that indicates a commercial supplier. That would be the…

Yeah, the (usually Chinese) spammy chemical suppliers have an interesting selection. I've seen several offering to sell you 99% pure isopropane, which is a bit like offering a RESTful service that keeps track of state on the server.

Somebody really needs to place an order for some of this stuff and see what happens.

Re: I Tried to Buy an Actual Barrel of Crude Oil

#158

Post by gech »

sachingulaya wrote: post #51
pjc50 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do people handle QC issues with Alibaba orders? I dipped my toe in when ordering a crate of allegedly "CE marked" chargers that turned out to be obviously unsafe, and haven't been back.

You receive samples first and check them. Another option is having an agent in find on your behalf perform QC before you pay the balance on your initial deposit. That's what I do..

How do I do what you do? What skills should I bring to the table?

Re: I Tried to Buy an Actual Barrel of Crude Oil

#159

Post by auntienomen »

oxryly1 wrote: post #122
jallmann wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a recurring nightmare of mine: forgetting to close out a commodity futures contract, then suddenly having 20,000 bushels wheat (or whatever it was) show up on my doorstep one morning. Brrrr.

Ok, in the commodities trading business there have GOT to be stories of this sort of thing happening.

One of the better ones I've heard is that John Maynard Keynes took delivery of a grain contract while running the Chest Fund of King's College Cambridge. Not having any better place to store the grain, he filled up the college's chapel with it, leading a reverend to remark "Mr. Keynes must believe that God is some sort of enormous chicken."

Re: I Tried to Buy an Actual Barrel of Crude Oil

#160

Post by SixSigma »

strictnein wrote: post #131
SixSigma wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> since they were used as a condiment rather than a staple food such an unstaple food that The Times of India has a page dedicated to track the price of onions http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Onion-prices

My first snarky response was: "Do they also track beef prices?" But yes, they do (sort of): http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Beef-prices But then I wondered if those pages were auto-generated, so I tried other things: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Taco-prices Ok, how about non-food: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Obama-prices Yeah, it's kind of free form: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.co…

I found it by searching Google. I think the articles it lists illustrate my wider point that onion prices are a concern to multi-billions of people.
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