EUROPE’S ENERGY CRISIS IS KEEPING ENERGY PRICES AND INFLATION HIGH

America leads the world in oil and gas production. We believe midstream energy infrastructure offers predictable cash flows to investors..

Presenting at 2012 Factset Symposium

I’ll be presenting on my book, The Hedge Fund Mirage, at the 2012 Factset Symposium Conference in Scottsdale, AZ March 19, and will be playing golf in Scottsdale over the weekend March 17-18.

MLPs And The Growth Of Natural Gas Infrastructure

We often write about companies involved in drilling for shale gas in the U.S. Their drilling success has depressed natural gas prices with little near term prospect of a bounce, and consequently we’ve focused on companies with low debt and cheap operating costs. Range Resources (RRC) Southwestern Energy (SWN), Devon Energy (DVN) and Comstock Resources […]

Why Gold and Silver Miners are Attractive Today

We’ve never been big believers in owning gold and silver. Warren Buffett’s comment (most recently in his 2011 letter released on Saturday) that all the gold in the world could be exchanged for “all U.S. cropland (400 million acres with output of about $200 billion annually), plus 16 Exxon Mobils…” with $1 trillion left over is […]

Ford's Novel Way of Paying Pensions

Last week Ford (F)  announced plans to shift their pension fund even more heavily towards bonds. At a time when interest rates are ruinously low and equities should appear attractively priced to a long-term investor such as a pension fund this represents quite a radical move. As recently as 2006 the company had targeted an […]

Optimizing Shareholder Value – A Lesson from Devon Energy’s Management

In November of last year, Devon (symbol: DVN) completed its $3.5B share repurchase program announced in May of 2010.  Under this program the company repurchased 49.2MM shares, for an average price of $71/share, reducing the share count by 10%!  During the same period, management sold non-core acreage raising the cash to fund the repurchases, pay […]