Jet Lag and Boiling Oil

It has been one of those traveling weeks again. Hopefully, I’ll be getting my silver club membership soon with the airline I fly. That’s the least of my problems. Long flights can be tiresome. And jet lags can be horrendous. Hence, I am awake and writing this blog in the middle of the night. So, I’ve picked up this new hobby besides Origami. And that is Stocks. I have been religiously following the world of stock markets. And the reason I am following the Markets (as they are known in the world of finance) is because I have invested in stocks. My portfolio boasts of stocks which when sold today would fetch me enough for precisely one oil change for the car and leave me with enough spare change to buy jujubes. I am sure you’ve never come across another guy who’d invest so much of his time mulling over oil change and jujubes. Well, when I first decided to invest, I was under the opinion that a few years from now on, the same portfolio will let me buy a good car. So, I started to worry over how I would invest my hard-earned money. My friends say that I should stop worrying and might as well spend the money on oil change and buy jujubes and be done with. I’m giving this idea a serious thought with the way the Markets are playing around with my investments.

Another suggestion from my friends is that I should place my bets on oil. Seems crude oil is getting more expensive by the minute on the NYMEX. Speaking of which, I read this interesting article in the WSJ (yea, yea the very same Wall Street Journal. I read it. No kidding. Thanks to my investments). I read it in more detail than any Wall Street Investment Banker would do. And I’m not one of them. Speaking of which, nowadays, it seems to be uncool to associate yourself even remotely to investment banking. Such is life. Have I told you that I have invested in stocks? So, coming back to the article (in case you lost track, I wanted to mention about an article in WSJ). This article I am talking about was actually an interview with the Chevron boss David O’ Reilly. And from the interview you could gather that despite the good profits, the Oil Boss was a bit skeptical as to how the oil markets were changing. He was skeptical about foodgrains being used for bio-fuels; he was skeptical about how the oil policies are working or not working and so on. But the part that caught my attention was that this big man has switched from Cadillac Escalade to Cadillac STS!! Whoa! Oil baron who earned $45m downgrading his car is a little scary! Or maybe he is becoming environmentally responsible, which could be a good thing. Whichever way you look at it, it’s a sign of changing times. And I hope it will not be the “There will be blood” type. Maybe I should stick to my friends’ first advice and go for that oil change and buy those jujubes while I can still afford them.