It’s always interesting digging into the details of what’s happening with oil and gas production. Often there’s useful information provided by the companies themselves. Baker Hughes (BHI) for example publishes a global rig count every month. It covers most oil producing regions, and shows that the global rig count (counting those in use) has barely […]
The General Partners (GPs) of Master Limited Partnerships (MLPs) have in many cases taken quite a drubbing since the Summer when the sell-off in oil picked up steam. Plains GP Holdings (PAGP) for example has fallen 26% over this time. And yet, midstream MLPs have limited direct exposure to commodity prices. Kinder Morgan (KMI) is […]
Master Limited Partnerships (MLPs) are best when they’re boring over the short term. Predictably raising your cashflows and distributions leads to long term excitement at the very reasonable cost of being tedious to watch on a daily basis. In 2014, Linn Energy (LINE) was the antithesis of this. While most MLPs own midstream energy infrastructure […]
You’d think that following the collapse of Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme in 2008, all investors would have developed a more skeptical protective layer to ward off those who would dishonestly separate them from hard-earned savings. Sadly though, examples regularly occur of the gullible being fleeced. Joe Lewis ran a currency trading business from Istanbul, Turkey that […]
Winston Churchill has been quoted as once saying, “There’s nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at and missed.” Such must be the feeling of investors today who found recently they had rather more exposure to falling crude oil prices than previously thought. Chevron just announced the indefinite suspension of a project in the Canadian […]
Another day and another new low for crude oil. Since stocks are moving with oil, trying to figure out the short term direction of the equity market requires being an oil trader. Few of us are any good at this although it’s easy to have an opinion. For our part, we don’t bet on the […]
A couple of months ago Roger Ibbotson and I were both presenters at a CFA Conference in Toronto. Ibbotson is a professor of Finance at Yale School of Management and also chairman of Zebra Capital Management, an investment firm whose style of investing reflects his work. Liquidity as an Investment Style was the title of […]
The chart below shows the performance of different sectors of the equity market so far this year. Of course, there are always sectors that are outperforming, so nothing much new there. However, if in general as an investor you don’t commit much to health care and you are overweight energy, recent months have likely given […]
Harold Hamm, CEO of Continental Resources (CLR), has most recently been in the news because of his $995 million divorce settlement, which his wife is appealing. Far more interesting though, was Continental’s recent decision to remove all of its hedges on future oil production. Closing out the short positions in oil futures generated a one-time […]
There has been plenty of concern recently that the drop in oil prices would cause many domestic E&P names in the U.S. to curtail their activities at marginal plays. This in turn would have a knock-on effect on oil servicers and the MLPs that manage and build energy infrastructure needed to exploit America’s shale boom. […]
