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Andy Serwer Commentary:
Street Life by Andy Serwer Column archive
Serwer: Risking a Prudhoe Bay play
BP's royalty trust has taken a beating, so it may be a buying opportunity.
Market insight from Fortune Editor-at-Large Andy Serwer.

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- Mmmm, hmmm! That crow tastes pretty good. Yesterday I decided to get cute and say that Bernanke would hike rates one more time. Hey, I figured I had a 25 percent chance of looking like a genius. Yeah, right... Meanwhile, the Saudis and Mexicans saying they will make up oil shortfalls should be a tonic for the markets. Guess the Saudis DO have excess capacity.

BP PRUDHOE BAY ROYALTY TRUST: Okay this company distributes royalties to investors coming from BP's Prudhoe Bay's property. Obviously this security, BPT (Charts), has gotten whacked ... much more so than BP ... in the wake of BP's pipeline shutdown in Alaska. Stock's fallen from high $80s to $73 this week. (Where as BP (Charts) itself only fell from $73 to $70.) Get this: The stock now yields 10 percent. (P/E is low too.) Is there risk here? Of course. That's what the yield is telling you. And the problems there could get worse. But I bet you make out pretty well here...

NEWS CORP: To me this is the best run big media company. Murdoch has the global vision and I think his acquisition of MySpace was a good move. The company announced results last night. Fox TV continues to be strong. (Can you say "American Idol": Number One juggernaut on TV.) NEWS-A (Charts) is now at a five year high and not cheap. Let's face it. This is not a hot sector, and Time Warner is the stock that hasn't moved ... flat is the new up? ... So maybe it has the most upside, but News Corp is about innovation.

SASOL: This is a South African oil and energy company that trades here (ticker SSL (Charts).) Here's what we got: The company does exploration and production offshore of Gabon; it also refines crude into liquid fuels in South Africa and has gas stations too. Big deal here is that it does coal to liquid fuel and gas to liquid fuel. Stock has gone from high single digits to $37 over past five years, but P/E is 12. To me this is a very nice alternative energy play. Lookin' good! Reader Deep Blue brought this to my attention....

Loose Change: Okay hats off to our amazing new email spam filter! Just discovered an email from my colleague Bethany McLean in my junk mail telling me that the last day to register for a conference we wanted to go to was "today." By the time I got mail, "today" was several days ago. Thanks! ...

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E-mail Andy Serwer at serwer@fortunemail.com

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