Joseph Dancy's Contributions

Last month the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization’s twice yearly Food Outlook report noted that food prices are rising rapidly putting the world ‘dangerously close’ to a new food crisis. The report also predicted higher prices next year, and noted the need for farmers to ‘expand substantially’ their production, particularly for corn and wheat.

The global economy continues to expand and is using more energy. In our opinion demand increases coupled with technological advances in extraction has created one of the best investment environments in years.

Trends in the energy sector remain positive. We think current conditions and trends have created one of the best investment environments for us in years.

We were interviewed by Jim Puplava of the Financial Sense news team last month. We noted that 37% of all the corn produced in the U.S. this year will be used for ethanol production under the biofuel mandates adopted pursuant to the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. The U.S. is the world’s largest corn producer and largest corn exporting country, so the increased biofuel demand has added pricing pressure to the grain sector.

Two investment themes have emerged over the last few months that are very positive for our portfolio. First, merger and acquisition activity has increased substantially. Secondly, the price of many agricultural commodities have increased and U.S. exports are booming – all very positive for the agricultural sector.

Since the early 1900’s the U.S. has been the world’s largest energy consumer and the world’s largest auto manufacturer. It took a century to accomplish, but last year China knocked the U.S. from its perch as the world's largest auto market. Last month the International Energy Agency claimed China’s total energy usage exceeded the U.S. for the first time last year – making China the world’s largest energy consumer.

Around ten years ago we interviewed a scientist about the potential for the ‘DNA Chip’ - a silicon based tool to analyze thousands of genes simultaneously. We were looking for an investment opportunity in this field due to the potential growth in demand for these research tools.