THEME: ENERGY
Shocking run up in gasoline today. We aren't even close to the summer driving season and gas is making new highs. This can't be good for Bush. What happened to theory that occupying Iraq would mean cheap gas for as far as the eye can see?
The trade is to get long energy stocks ASAP!!!

From WSJ.

Gasoline futures climbed amid news of the report, which showed a much bigger draw than analysts had expected. The draw in gasoline stocks of 1.6 million barrels to 203.4 million barrels last week was greater than energy analysts' projections for a decline of about 146,000 barrels.

Gasoline inventories have fallen in four of the past five reporting weeks, leading the DOE's Energy Information Administration to warn that markets will remain tight at least through the high-demand summer driving season.

The draw in gasoline leaves inventories 1.2% below the year-ago level and 4.5% below the five-year average, the EIA said.

U.S. gasoline demand rose 69,000 barrels a day last week to 8.796 million barrels a day, the highest ever for any week in February. It's also the highest since Dec. 19, when demand registered at 9.166 million barrels a day. A year ago, gasoline demand was 8.619 million barrels a day.

Most analysts pegged gasoline as the product most likely to drive prices across the Nymex petroleum complex in the near-term.

"Gasoline, I definitely think, is solid and the leader," said Kyle Cooper, an energy analyst for Citigroup in Houston. "The drop in gasoline is a concern. Normally, you see gasoline inventories pick up a little bit by now, and they're not."

The EIA also reported that refining operations fell by 3% last week to 87.3% of operable capacity. Analysts had expected a much smaller decline of 0.1 percentage point.

While the plunge in refinery utilization may have prevented a draw in crude inventories, it also may have hampered gasoline production, analysts said.

Mr. Cooper attributed the drop in refinery runs to "the little refinery glitches we had across the country last week. I thought they were going to be offset by refineries coming back up, but that didn't happen."

THEME: Insiders inside the Beltway
Now for the real reason why Ralph Nader is running...
From NYT...

US senators' personal stock portfolios outperformed the market by an average of 12 per cent a year in the five years to 1998, according to a new study.

"The results clearly support the notion that members of the Senate trade with a substantial informational advantage over ordinary investors," says the author of the report, Professor Alan Ziobrowski of the Robinson College of Business at Georgia State University.

He admits to being "very surprised" by his findings, which were based on 6,000 financial disclosure filings and are due to be published in the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis.

"The results suggest that senators knew when to buy their common stocks and when to sell."

First-time Senators did especially well, with their stocks outperforming by 20 per cent a year on average - a result that very few professional fund managers would be able to achieve.

"It could be argued that the junior senators most recently came out of private industry, so may have better connections. Seniority was definitely a factor in returns," says Prof Ziobrowski.

There was no difference in performance between Democrats and Republicans.

A separate study in 2000, covering 66,465 US households from 1991 to 1996 showed that the average household's portfolio underperformed the market by 1.44 per cent a year, on average. Corporate insiders (defined as senior executives) usually outperform by about 5 per cent.

The Ziobrowski study notes that the politicians' timing of transactions is uncanny. Most stocks bought by senators had shown little movement before the purchase. But after the stock was bought, it outperformed the market by 28.6 per cent on average in the following calender year.

Returns on sell transactions are equally intriguing. Stocks sold by senators performed in line with the market the year following the sale.

When adjusted by the size of stocks, the total portfolio returns outperformed by 12 per cent a year on average. The study used a total market index as the benchmark for comparison.

The study took eight years to complete because there was no database of information and the documents had to be gathered and examined manually. Stocks held in blind trusts are not included in the disclosure documents.

THEME: GREENSPAN'S POLITICS

It is interesting to note that Greenspan has tackled two thorny subjects this week: Social Security and Freddie & Fannie's special status. It seems that Greenspan is finally getting so sick of the Administration and the Republicans and the Hill that he feels he needs to be the voice of reason in a city gone mad.

This must be watched closely.

Interesting bit from Greenie: the first wave of Baby Boomers would be eligible for Social Security retirement benefits when they reached age 62 in 2008. Three years later, those people will be eligible for Medicare.