Thursday, August 11, 2005

YoYo Poker

This poker week is apparently destined to be of the yo-yo variety, as I seem to either book big daily wins or junk-kicking losses, with nothing in between. Yesterday was of the junk-kicking variety. Moving right along...

The only bad thing about PokerAce HUD that I've discovered so far as how easily it pulls up info as far as net profit/loss for each player. No, seriously. I really don't need to see that the guy with a VPIP of 72 and an AF of 0.4 has won $14,852 over 3,122 hands. It only spleens me when I see that, yet I cannot prevent myself from looking. The horror...

Tuan Lee, I hope you got a good price when you sold your soul to the Suckout Gods. Sweet Jebus. Was wearing goofy-ass sweaters part of the deal? I hope so...

I had a comment or two asking recently about my thoughts on Prima poker sites. By and large, I don't mind playing on them at all. The software definitely isn't flashy but it works, which is all I ask. The only real gripe I have about it is that for some reason they don't often open new tables, so the waiting lists for some limits can get ridiculous at peak times. The players are pretty fishy, as many of the sites have sister casinos, and you can now automatically download hand history data into PokerTracker. At limits of 5/10 and above you'll run into the same regular players fairly often, which can be good or bad. Lots of them offer decent bonuses and are pretty good places to build a bankroll, if you're playing lower limits. All in all, not that great, not that bad. Pretty much your normal, standard poker experience, if a bit on the fishy side due to the spillover casino traffic.

I'd been on a nice roll of late, as far as investments in assorted stocks and funds, but Cryptologic absolutely murdered me this week. They announced that Betfair was thinking of dropping them and developing their own in-house poker software and the stock immediately tanked, dropping 25-30%. Which makes very little sense, really, as Betfair more than likely only accounts for ~5% of their net revenue, but the stock had been drifting down anyway and all the shorts piled own, exacerbating the situation. I added some more to my position after the carnage was over but am a little wary at loading up too much, even when it's pretty ridiculously oversold. As time goes by I get much more safe and boring with investing, which is a bit ironic given my degenerate activities. I've been plowing more and more money into US listed Canadian energy trusts the last few months, which are still insanely good investments even with oil prices at pretty ginormously high levels.

Canadian energy trusts are just that, energy trusts, but they're actively managed, able to acquire other companies and assets, etc., so it's not a case where they pay out dividends until things wind down and everyone takes their toys and go home. They're largely required to pay out a certain amount of profits as dividends, and the dividend payments are pretty hefty, with some paying in the 12-13% range. They've also got some tax advantages, including the 15% ceiling on taxing dividends that went through in Bush's 2003 tax cut plan. The trusts traded on exchanges also offer the chance for the common stock itself to appreciate in value (which is gravy on top of the dividend payments), with many of of the US-listed Canadian energy trusts sporting 30-40% gains in their common stock in 2005.

The obvious risk (and the reason the dividend payments are so high) is that they're not really fixed income investments, as their performance is pretty directly tied to the price of oil. Oil goes up, they do really well, you make lots of money. Oil goes down, they don't do so well, you don't make as much money.

All in all, though, they're worth checking out, especially if you're looking for a relatively safe way to invest in energy and a hedge against US equities in general. Some of the US-listed Canadian energy trusts include Enerplus Resources Fund (ERF), Enerplus Resources Fund (ERF), Petrofund Energy Trust (PTF), PrimeWest Energy Trust (PWI), and Provident Energy Trust (PVX).

1 comment:

Jason said...

Wow, I really thought Tuan Le was playing some bad poker there. calling an all-in with A-4, calling an all-in with 8-4, etc. he just used up his luck for the year.