We generally don’t keep CNBC on at our office. Its relentless focus on the short term, punctuated with incessant commercials, make it a needless distraction. That’s why they hire attractive presenters. However, when passing the office next door I did notice a headline saying we’d gone 33 consecutive days without a 1% move in the […]
Stocks have in recent years been the destination of choice for bond refugees. The guiding strategy behind monetary policy since 2008 has been to drive investors into riskier assets so as to boost economic growth. Amid mounting evidence that this objective was being achieved, the Federal Reserve has contemplated the timing around ending this strategy […]
For information on our MLP mutual fund, please click the link below: Last week’s blog post (Williams Satisfies Two Masters) highlighted the different views of cash payouts by the MLP investors who hold Williams Partners (WPZ) and the C-corp investors who hold Williams Companies (WMB), the General Partner of WPZ. WPZ investors value regular payouts […]
Williams Satisfies Two Masters Master Limited Partnership (MLPs) have been reporting earnings over the past couple of weeks. They were largely as expected with several names providing modest positive surprises. There were also some other interesting announcements – notably the sale by Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) and Sunoco Logistics (SXL) of part of their interest […]
Earnings season is here, and with it the quarterly ritual of the earnings conference call. Quite a few MLPs have declared their distributions, and of the 32 that we’ve seen so far none have cut while half have announced increases. Those we care about include Western Gas Equity Partners (WGP), which announced a year-on-year increase […]
The expression “like sending coals to Newcastle” can be traced back to the 17th century, reflecting the insight that whatever else Newcastle needed in those days did not include coal. This windswept port on the North Sea was conveniently located near some of the biggest coalfields of northern England. During its heyday, American trader Timothy Dexter […]
A few weeks ago we wrote Why Oil Could Be Higher for Longer, and since then it has elicited quite a few comments back to us from clients and blog subscribers. We won’t repeat it in detail here since readers can simply click on the link above to see it. But our view is that […]
The Brexit vote is now two weeks behind us and I still watch developments with jaw agape. Rarely in history has the consequence of a popular vote led so directly to a recession. The IMF has forecast that the UK economy will shrink by 1.5% through 2019 if they agree to a Norway-style EU access (i.e. […]
As regular readers know, the proposed merger between Energy Transfer Equity (ETE) and Williams Companies (WMB) has been a rich source of material. Last week a judge’s ruling enabled ETE to cancel the deal since a needed tax opinion was not forthcoming. WMB found it convenient to say the least that ETE’s tax counsel Latham […]
It’s been 34 years since I left the UK and moved to the U.S., and 25 years since I became a U.S. citizen. I long ago lost the right to vote in UK elections, having by now spent two thirds of my life in the New World. But I shall never lose my pride at […]
