Over the past week we’ve witnessed a negotiation of monumental incompetence. Greece’s Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras successfully won a referendum rejecting bailout terms that were no longer on offer, presided over the subsequent freezing up of the economy as the banks were forced to close and finally agreed to worse terms than he and Greek […]
Countless investors and financial advisors wrestle today with the conundrum of how to approach bonds. We are reminded constantly of the likelihood of rising interest rates; most recently Fed chair Janet Yellen reiterated the case for a hike in short term rates later this year. She argued that uncertainty over Greece was likely to be […]
Last Monday, June 22nd, Energy Transfer Equity (ETE) went public with their rejected merger proposal to Williams Companies (WMB) in an effort to force WMB to the negotiating table. WMB’s stock rose by most of the 32% premium ETE has offered, and in recent days has held on to most of that gain as the […]
A question I’m often asked is how the business prospects of many MLPs will respond permanently to lower prices for oil and gas, perhaps lower than where they are today. From a high level, markets often appear vulnerable to a correction. This is especially true with the S&P500. You rarely hear anyone simply say the […]
People often ask me how I think equity markets, including Master Limited Partnerships (MLPs), will perform when interest rates are rising. It’s a timely question, since bond yields have been moving higher for the past couple of months. The yield on the ten year U.S. treasury recently touched 2.5% as markets look ahead to a tightening […]
Plains All American Pipeline (PAA) held their Investor Day on Thursday. The presentations included a fascinating analysis of the global oil market with a view to forecasting prices as well as regional supply/demand, since these are important drivers of PAA’s planned infrastructure development. The chart at the left, reproduced from PAA’s Investor Day deck, plainly […]
Inspiration for these posts often comes from conversations I’ve had with investors during the prior week. For a great many investors, the decision to invest in an MLP mutual fund or ETF goes something like this: 1) MLPs have generated attractive historical returns over (choose your time period) number of years 2) The yield on […]
Data recently released by the Energy Information Agency (EIA) highlighted the continuing shift in U.S. terms of trade regarding natural gas. The North East U.S. (NY, OH, PA, NJ, MD, DE and VA) was for the first time in 2014 no longer a net importer of natural gas from Canada, as production in the Marcellus […]
Last week Williams Companies (WMB) simplified their structure by acquiring the assets of their Master Limited Partnership (MLP), Williams Partners (WPZ). As was the case with Kinder Morgan’s (KMI) move last year, the objective was to move to a simpler structure with a lower cost of equity driven by faster dividend growth supported by a […]
