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The Sunday Tribune had a rather odd article today about commodity ETFs. Eddie Lennon seems to get his facts wrong, or at least misses the point with regard to the advantages ETFs provide:

ETFs are bought and sold on the stock market just like shares. They offer an easy, inexpensive entry to the markets and can be bought through a stockbroker for a standard brokerage fee or from an investment company, preferably for a flat fee. The minimum investment is usually €5,000, but can be as much as €20,000.

ETFs are listed on the stock market like ordinary shares. You can buy and sell them like you do with ordinary shares. They are also priced like ordinary shares. So where does this minimum investment of €5,000 come from? And a maximum? It makes no sense. (Though I guess he may be directing the article at the pensions market specifically) He goes on:

They can also be bought from the likes of Eagle Star, Irish Life, Canada Life and Rabodirect, which have their own commodity-linked investment funds. These companies buy commodities indices on the world’s stock markets.

Eagle Star’s Global Commodities Fund was the top Irish performer in this area over the past year, until last Wednesday. It rose in value by an impressive 48.16%. Next was Irish Life’s Commodities Index Fund, which grew by 20.19% over the same period, followed by Rabodirect’s BlackRock World Gold Fund (up 18.61%), Rabodirect’s BlackRock World Mining Fund (up 12.48%), Canada Life’s Quadrivium Fund (down 12.37%) and Rabodirect’s JPM Global Natural Resources Fund (down 16.79%).

Ah. Now I see. Let’s take the Eagle Star Global Commodities Fund as an example. According to the information in the prior piece, there is a minimum investment level of €5k. But that’s only if you go through one of this firms who are simply reselling ETFs. The one mentioned actually just tracks this. Which traded at $67.80 a share on Friday.

Why would I go through Eagle Star when I can just buy the ETF myself on the market? I could buy one share for $67.80, that’s the real minimum investment level. And the maximum? Well I guess I could theoretically buy all the ETF shares, but that would cost quite a bit of money. Or better yet I could dollar cost average my investment in ETFs, and buy at regular intervals. See here.

Strangely, expense ratios are nowhere mentioned. It is one of the biggest factors for anyone buying ETFs. Vanguard offer some of the lowest.

The Fool has a good roundup on the difference between mutual funds and ETFs.

I suspect all of these firms are simply reselling ETF products and taking a cut for themselves. If you want commodities exposure you would be better advised to avoid all of these firms. Technically the least you can invest is one share, not €5,000.

Just open a cheap online broker account with Firstrade or Zecco and do the buying yourself for next to nothing.

And no matter what you do, either doing it yourself or through one of these firms, you will be dollar exposed since the ETFs are listed on US markets.

This has led to a class division in the financial affairs of the nation. There are now two monetary classes in Ireland: the ‘investor class’ and the ‘lotto class’ (see Barbara Defoe Whitehead, ‘A Nation in Debt’; www.theamericaninterest.com).

A Nation in Debt, July 1.

Or maybe we just read the same stuff.

Well it’s that time of year again. I started blogging on July 19, 2002, making this blog six years old today. Coincidentally my visitor numbers will pass 1,400,000 today too. A rather cool coincidence.

Of course the blog didn’t start out in its current form. I started in pure HTML, and later moved on to Dave Winer’s Radio Userland. After losing a month or two of posts I abandoned the unreliable software. Since it was client side rather than server side, it just ran into too many problems. I then made the move to Movable Type, which was not a bad piece of software. I think the version I used for the longest period was 2.661. It ran into some problems too, mostly to do with spam comments.

After evaluating a few options for blogging software, I settled on Wordpress, which I still use. It has always proved reliable, and since installing it it has captured over half a million spam comments. Big thanks to Donncha for helping to create this cool software. I think in the early days his blog was on a linux server, bit I still remember reading him back when there were very few bloggers in Ireland.

Other bloggers back then were Karlin, Bernie, Tom, the lads at Back Seat Drivers (including Jon Ihle of the Sunday Tribune and Dick O’Brien of various publications).

I would especially like to thank Bernie though. We met via blogging, and ended up discussing a good few subjects over the phone in the early days. He prodded me into using blogging software in the first place, and encouraged me no end over the years. Karlin also passed on some media inquiries in the early days which was very helpful for getting noticed, though I’m not sure if she reads my blog!

Blogging has allowed me to meet some really cool people over the years, and not just in Ireland. In 2003 I moved to London and got in touch with lots of trail blazing bloggers, the lads at Samizdata, Tom Watson MP (blogging got me into the houses of Westminster several times, usually boozing with Tom), my internship at the New Statesman and writing I did for them was with the help of Roger, who I knew via Chris.

After the whole John Gray controversy (Which drove a large portion of that 1.4m visitors to this blog after being mentioned on all of the top US blogs), I holidayed in Toronto and met some of the coolest Canadian bloggers, including Rannie Turingan a several time blog award winner. He also took the portrait photos I still use to this day. A really cool guy.

And then even in Washington in 2005 I met up with Steve Clemons, who’s blog continues to grow in leaps and bounds. Steve introduced me to Juan Cole and at the conference Steve organised I got to see George Soros, Wesley Clarke, Francis Fukuyama, Madeleine Albright and many others, live and in person. A truly amazing experience. But it didn’t end there. Blogging seems to get you certain places, so after the conference myself and some other people from the New America Foundation went back to Steve’s house for beers and music. A brilliant night too, and you could not meet more welcoming people.

Going back to university impacted on my blogging, but over the years it has more than paid for itself in experiences and people. As well as getting a job in the Examiner on foot of my blogging. Anyone who asks why I would write for free, or put all this time and effort into something that I get little direct reward… well just look at the indirect rewards.

Blogging rocks, to say the least.

Update: Thanks to Steve for the shout out!

Besides the coincidence of 1.4m visits on my sixth blogiversary, it is also the birthday of an old and dear friend, who I only met after my blogging started. And today the coincidences grew.

My paternal grandmother died at 7.30 this morning, after a long illness. My abiding memory of my grandmother is the best baking you can imagine. As a child I would visit her home and delight in her apple and rhubarb tarts (always tonnes of sugar on top), she would always treat me to potato bread with eggs, the best boxty I’ve ever tasted, and home made jam that was right from the back garden.

She was a deeply Catholic woman, who had 14 children in her lifetime. This means I have a heck of a lot of cousins.

I will always be proud that I was one of the first relatives (along with my uncle and brother) to visit her uncle’s grave in the Somme. Despite him having been buried there after the First World War, we were the first to venture there and visit the grave in 2000. She was very pleased with that indeed.

As long time readers will know, I rarely talk about personal things on my blog, it was a decision I made right at the start. And it is a decision I usually stick to. Maybe some find it cold to put the two together, but normally I would not have posted the news at all, were it not for the significance of the date.

I guess death makes you think a little more about life. I appreciate the times I spent with my grandmother, and I don’t believe I will ever see her again. When you die, you die. And memory is a powerful tool when you apply it, that seems like the best way to an afterlife - live in people’s memory.

I can entirely sympathise…

I like her comparison between the crazy stories told to us by Mormons, and the equally crazy stories told to us by Catholicism.

Eamonn points to the rather good Carling iPhone app:

I always find Wikileaks a source of amazement. The latest leaks included:

UK Counter Insurgency Operations Doctrine 2007
Secret Ritual of Sigma Phi Epison 1984
US Special Forces counterinsurgency manual FM 31-20-3
UK Tactics for Iraq and Afghanistan 2007
US Suppression of Enemy Air Defense chapter 2
Venezuela buying millions in spy equipment from US Phoenix Industries 2000
US Army CALL 05-6 Operation Enduring Freedom III 2005
UK and Danish Rules of Engagement for Iraq 2006

Some very interesting reading.

The Guardian have a story that George Bush will establish a US diplomatic mission in Tehran for the first time in 30 years.

The Guardian has learned that an announcement will be made in the next month to establish a US interests section in Tehran, a halfway house to setting up a full embassy. The move will see US diplomats stationed in the country.

It goes on:

Bush has taken a hard line with Iran throughout the last seven years but, in the dying days of his administration, it is believed he is keen to have a positive legacy that he can point to.

The return of US diplomats to Iran is dependent on agreement by Tehran. But president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad indicated earlier this week that he is not against the opening of a US mission, saying Iran will consider favourably any request aimed at boosting relations between the two countries.

He has his legacy to think about I guess.

You really have to laugh. Authorities in Dubai are cracking down on lewd behaviour by Westerners, after a British woman was allegedly caught having sex with a colleague on a beach. One of her fellow expats writes in the Guardian:

The Friday brunch that Michelle enjoyed, for example, has been an institution among Middle East expats for years. On the holiest day of the Muslim week, five-star hotels entice customers with all-day feasts and unlimited alcohol from as little as £10.

“With all the ruckus surrounding Michelle Palmer, I thought about not coming to the brunch today,” says Kelly Fields, a 28-year-old editor from Manchester, and Dubai resident of 18 months, who is dining at international restaurant Yalumba a week after Michelle’s brunch there. “But it was just too tempting with the 40-degree heat outside. And the deal is so ridiculously cheap.” At Yalumba, one of the city’s higher-end eateries, it is £57 a head to eat as much as possible, with unlimited champagne.

Friday Brunch is a national institution. I went out on many many Fridays in Dubai to be greeted by pubs in midafternoon that were akin to nightclubs at home at 2am. Such was the level of boozing that people were plastered by at least 6pm. And bars stay open until 3am. You can imagine how messy it gets. And the local papers are up in arms over falling ethical standards:

“You are all as guilty as Michelle,” said one Dubai resident in the UAE’s leading local newspaper 7days. Like many of the UK’s red tops, it blames unruly British conduct for Michelle’s downfall. “You all get drunk in public and you have all dabbled in sex before marriage at some point. The only difference between you and Michelle Palmer is that you haven’t been caught yet!” The following day another reader took a shot at Dubai authorities. “It is a shame that these laws are not enforced more often in such obvious cases … Why should the residents here (and I mean expat as well as Emiratis), whether Muslim or not, have to endure the worst of ‘western’ society?”

It is laughable. Dubai is a city of contradictions. One contradiction is the apparent moral superiority of the local Muslim population as evidenced by the comments above. It is nonsensical. The muslims in Dubai are no more or less moral than the rest of us. Except they claim to be so.

The last time I was in Dubai myself and my sister went to do some shopping in the late afternoon. Spinneys is the Middle Eastern answer to Tesco. We got a taxi from Sheikh Zayed Road to the city centre and as we approached Spinneys we noticed all the pairs of girls, walking up and down outside the shop. All from south-east Asia and all plying their trade in the evening sunshine. Whatever about the rights or wrongs of prostitution itself, this is, we are told, a Muslim country with all the supposed intolerance for this type of behaviour. Yet it goes on in broad daylight. That’s Dubai.

Dubai is being propositioned in bars by Eritrean, Ethiopian, Romanian and Russian prostitutes. All of it known to the police force, and every single local that has a pair of eyes.

Dubai is wealthy sheikhs flying groups of young prostitutes from Russia to Dubai in first class on Emirates Airlines.

Dubai is a city where a Western woman can be kidnapped by several locals, brought to the desert, brutally gang raped and then beaten and left for dead by local Emiratis. And where she gets the blame for “dressing provocatively”. ]

Dubai is a city where workers are routinely tested for HIV, and if found positive are summarily sacked, escorted to the airport by police, and deported.

Dubai is a city where workers from the sub-continent routinely fall from building skyscrapers, and have their deaths go unreported. Those same workers earn about $200 a month for a 12 hour day, six day week. And if temperatures reach 50 degree celsius or above, they may be allowed to take the day off.

Dubai is a city where everything that happens like this is common knowledge among people who live there. But where it is never reported by the media.

And they complain about Western moral standards?

I am not saying that Westerners are moral or immoral. Nor am I saying Muslims, Arabs or Emiratis are moral or immoral. What I am saying is that you cannot accuse Westerners of double standards. But you can accuse Emiratis.

Jeff points to a rather idiotic ad taken out by the World Association of Newspapers.

We’ve done the search. You only have to turn the pages.

Wha? And quoting the Economist is just as strange for it was they who said: “Newspapers are an endangered species.” Yes they are. And quoting a newspaper that is actually doing particularly well is a little strange too.

And this today from 24/7

Gannett (GCI): USA’s Largest Newspaper Company Takes A Hit

Even though the market expects poor results from newpaper companies, the actual results can come as a shock. Gannett (GCI) is off over 5% to a 52-week low of $15.93 on poor numbers.

GCI preliminary 2008 second quarter earnings per diluted share from continuing operations were $1.02 compared with $1.24 per share in the second quarter of 2007. The preliminary results, however, do not include non-cash charges to be recorded in the quarter, which have not yet been finalized, for the impairment of goodwill, other intangible assets and certain other assets

Total operating revenues for the company were $1.72 billion in the second quarter compared to $1.91 billion in the second quarter of 2007.

At USA TODAY, advertising revenues declined 16.6 percent in the second quarter compared to the year ago quarter. Paid advertising pages totaled 831 compared with 1,034 in the same quarter of 2007.

Internet ad revenue was not front and center in the company’s earnings release, which probably says a mouthful.

Due to the news, shares in Gatehouse (GHS) are off almost 5% to $.99. Shares in McClatchy (MNI) are down 2% to $4.61, and shares in Lee (LEE) are selling down over 1% to $3.17.

Finally some sensible figures from an economist:

45% peak to trough house price falls, excluding inflation.

If you include inflation that could be over 50%. This is what happens in a typical housing correction. Not alone that, but prices tend to overshoot fair value. And it will drag on into 2010. At least. I said this to some colleagues a few weeks ago - that if a house was valued at around €300,000 in late 2006, then its trough value is €150,000, or maybe less. Astonished, one friend said there was no way that could happen.

I responded by saying that people said that on the way up too, that there was no way prices could keep going up. They did. And then they peaked. And it was a bubble.

Oh wait, RTE have taken out the 45% figure that featured on the News At One today. How odd.

Test

Update: Sorry, posted with an iPhone 3G. Maybe I will get one.

I came across this over at the Pin. Martenson posted this presentation as an explanation of the US housing bubble a couple of weeks ago. You could take everything he says and apply it to our own housing bubble. It’s very well worth a look.

I am trying to get data together on our housing bubble. Comments appreciated.

The US government is to step in and help out Freddie and Frannie. I guess it was bound to happen after the events of recent weeks, there was really no way to get let these mortgage lenders go under, in IndyMac Bank fashion.

Where are all the listeners coming from? My first podcast from May is still being listened to and downloaded a few times a day. Almost nobody has left a comment. I have no idea where all these people are coming from, can anyone help? Are the podcasts being crawled and skewing the download figures?

Like Bernie, I scan the Sunday papers. Helpfully in work we have a reading room with all Sunday papers available for reading - though I still tend to scan the papers online on Saturday night.

Here are the best news/opinion articles I found today:

Shane Ross: FAS: the €20m-a-week quango

Shane Ross calls for FAS to be the centre of government cutbacks. And with good reason. The quango wastes huge sums of money. God knows what scandals will be uncovered at the agency.

SSHH. FAS is in the wars. And billions of euro are at stake.

Whisper it. The national training and employment agency is the object of murky allegations. Inquiries are uncovering odd antics. People are asking: what does FAS do with its €20m a week?

The answers are disturbing.

Brendan O’Connor: Gang of clueless ministers need to get real and meet those in the know

Mr O’Connor seems to have lost the run of himself. His latest rant borders on the insane. It is worth reading just to see how wrong he is. Richard points to an article by O’Connor from last year that is almost the opposite of what he is saying now.

See the Property Pin discussion on it.

Jody Corcoran: Don’t believe me, John? Believe this: repeating lies is bad news

Jody is suing The Phoenix over a recent article that said he sought a job at the Department of Education. Here he rants away rather badly. Made me chuckle for its sheer vanity.

Cliff Taylor and Niamh Connolly: State agencies to be abolished in reform move

The Post gets sight of what agencies face the axe.

David McWilliams: Central Bank must finally show leadership in the face of crisis

The Central Bank needs to do a helluva lot more.

Vincent Browne: Does Brian Cowen really know what he is doing?

Loses it over Lenihan, Cowen and government incompetence.

Cowen seems to have been unnerved by the Lisbon defeat. He has seemed unsure, vacillating and unsettled since then. His performances over the last few days have been his worst, aided and abetted by Lenihan.

Did you see Lenihan at that Japanese company function last Thursday, going on about how the company, which has been here for 20 years, had not yet ‘‘come of age’’? How Irish people don’t get the vote until they are aged 21? Scary, wasn’t it?

This can’t be shrugged off on the basis of a slip of the tongue - we all misspeak from time to time, but this was not of that order. At the time of making that remark, he believed the voting age was 21.

I must digout that Lenihan reference.

Eamon Quinn: Plan to bail out first-time buyers not a runner – NTMA

Some sense from the NTMA.

Johann Hari: ‘As the world’s oil dries up, the lies will begin to gush to gain control of Venezuela’s supplies‘

Hari makes no sense to me here. He seems to believe that Chavez is some kind of benevolent leader and that elections do a democracy make.

First they announced Chávez was a dictator. This ignored that he came to power in a free and open election, the Venezuelan press remains uncensor­ed and opposed to him, and he has accepted losing a referendum to extend his term. When that tactic failed, the oil industry and the politicians they lubricate shifted strategy.

Hari glosses over the referendum to extend his term. The details of which would scare any democrat. Democratic institutions make democracies, free and fair elections elect people to those institutions, which have a mix of checks and balances. When those institutions are undermined by leaders, democracy itself is undermined - free elections or not.

Any articles you found interesting? Leave a comment.

In July 1999 the man on this cover of the Economist, Ahmad Batebi, was arrested by Iranian authorities. He was tortured and told he would be killed.

During his interrogation he was blindfolded and beaten with cables until he passed out. His captors rubbed salt into his wounds to wake him up, so they could torture him more. They held his head in a drain full of sewage until he inhaled it. He recalls yearning for a swift death to end the pain. He was played recordings of what he was told was his mother being tortured. His captors wanted him to betray his fellow students, to implicate them in various crimes and to say on television that the blood on that T-shirt was only red paint. He says he refused.

Last month he escaped via Iraq and is now in Washington DC. His blog is here. The Economist spoke to him last week:

Looking at the picture that sparked his ordeal, he says that another man in his place might be angry, but he is not. Mr Batebi is a photographer himself. He says he understands what journalism involves. Had we not published the picture, he says, another paper might have. Looking at the same picture, his lawyer, interpreter and friend Lily Mazahery says she is close to tears: in it, the young Mr Batebi’s pale arms are as yet unscarred by torture.

The protests Mr Batebi took part in nine years ago frightened Iran’s rulers. The students were angry about censorship, the persecution of intellectuals and the thugs who beat up any student overheard disparaging the regime. Mr Batebi thinks Iran could well turn solidly democratic some day. In neighbouring states, religious extremism is popular. In Iran, he says, the government is religiously extreme, but the people are not.

He is cagey about how exactly he escaped. But he says he used a cellphone camera to record virtually every step of his journey, and will soon go public with the pictures and his commentary. Meanwhile, he seems to be enjoying America. He praises the way “people have the opportunity to become who they want to be”. Shortly after he arrived, he posted a picture of himself in front of the Capitol on his Farsi-language blog, with the caption: “Your hands will never touch me again.”

I look forward to an account of his life and his escape.

I had a mess around with it today, a colleague in work got one. Hmm. It is rather nice, not much different to its predecessor. Would be handy for blogging, among other things.

Should I, or shouldn’t I?