Tuesday, June 16, 2026

Investing -- A Look At IPOs -- June 16, 2026

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Locator: 50985COVID.   

How many IPOs 2015 to 2020 compared with how many IPS from 2023 to today, June 16, 2026?

Of course this is in the eye of the beholder, but was the quality of the IPOs from 2015 - 2020 better/same/worse than the IPOS of the past three years?

Tuesday - June 16, 2026

Locator: 50984B.  

Josh: UNP -- this is gonna be good. 

Longevity: the lead-up to the dot-com bust took about five (5) years (1995–2000), marked by a slow-building speculative frenzy before the market peaked and collapsed. In contrast, the current retail AI market has lasted roughly 3.5 years since the mainstream generative AI boom began in late 2022, though its momentum has been driven more heavily by corporate earnings

Jargon: IDE -- integrated development environment.  

Cursor and Anthropic's Mythos: competitors. Same outcome; different methods. 

Cursor is an AI-powered code editor originally developed by Anysphere, a San Francisco-based software startup founded in 2022 by Michael Truell, Aman Sanger, Sualeh Asif, and Arvid Lunnemark;

Mythos is Anthropic's most powerful, or “frontier”, model. When first announcing the model in April, the company said it was too good at hacking to release immediately. Instead, Mythos was made available to a handful of organisations (mostly US tech corporations) to use to patch weaknesses in essential digital systems.  

Cursor and Anthropic increasingly operate as competitors. While Cursor built its reputation as an AI-first IDE that routes queries to models like Claude, it has evolved into a comprehensive coding platform. It now features its own powerful, native, multi-file agentic models like Composer and has expanded its ecosyste

AI: two huge stories -- 


Interest rates:

  • EU raises rates;
  • US Fed will make no changes in the US Fed rate tomorrow ;
  • consensus: US Fed rates will remain unchanged for the next year;
  • CNBC: US Fed rates will drop this next year 
  • me? for investors (not traders) the Fed is irrelevant in the face of AI 
  • for investors — this is what is relevant
    • AI
    • memory shortage
    • FOMO
Interest rates:
  • Mangos: minimal effect on decision making
    • similar to the rush to drilling in the Bakken in 2007; money not an object; time was the issue;
  • S&P 500 companies excluding Mangos
    • financial decisions significantly effected by US Fed rates
Gasoline prices:
  • dropping way faster than “expert” analysts projected
US consumer / retail market:
  • even CNBC says retail / market is much more resilient than expected;
  • of course, Trump not mentioned.

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Back to the Bakken

WTI: $77.65.

New wells reporting:

  • Wednesday, June 17, 2026: 23 for the month, 179 for the quarter, 336 for the year,
    • 42417, conf, Kraken, Emerson 33-28-21 4H, 
  • Tuesday, June 16, 2026: 22 for the month, 178 for the quarter, 335 for the year,
    • 42416, conf, Kraken, Emerson LE 33-28-21 11H, 

RBN Energy: Alberta's oil sands producers poised to significantly ramp up crude oil output. Link here. Archived.

With another 180 Mb/d of pipeline capacity out of the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin (WCSB) expected online by late next year, and potentially another 1.7 MMb/d of capacity being proposed over the next several years (excluding a new pipeline to the West Coast of Canada), WCSB producers are looking to grow their crude oil production. With no shortage of resources to develop in the oil sands, in today’s RBN blog, we look at all the Alberta oil sands growth projects currently proposed over the next several years.

In Part 1 of this series, we discussed the drivers behind WCSB crude oil production nearly doubling from 2010 to 2025, as well as its seasonal trends. In Part 2, we reviewed the major pipeline projects that expanded capacity to move barrels out of the WCSB up to this point, how the timing of those projects matched up with supply growth, and current export pipeline capacity. In Part 3, we examined how WCSB crude oil price discounts are impacted by pipeline scarcity and production seasonality. In Part 4, we looked at where WCSB crude oil goes, how it gets there, and how its end markets have evolved over time. Finally, in Part 5 ,we reviewed all the projects in the works to expand crude oil pipeline capacity out of the WCSB.

Figure 1. Alberta Oil Sands Projects, Athabasca and Cold Lake Regions. Source: Novi Labs

Monday, June 15, 2026

Five New Permits; Five Permits Renewed; New Acronyms -- Investing -- June 15, 2026

Locator: 50983B.  

Mag 7: Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Nvidia, Tesla.

Mangos: gaining traction on X stands for Meta, Anthropic, Nvidia, Alphabet (GOOG), OpenAI, and SpaceX. (The "A" can also stand for Apple)

Magna Atoms: a concept referring to the original Magnificent Seven plus SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic.

Mag 10 Index: Launched by Cboe Global Markets, this index tracks ten prominent tech titans. However, it consists of the original Mag 7 plus AMD, Broadcom, and Palantir.

Hey! Micron? Up 808% in one year; market cap: $1.23 trillion. 

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Back to the Bakken

WTI: $80.75.

Active rigs: 28.

Five new permits, #43029 - #43035, inclusive - 

  • Operators: XTO (4); KODA Resources;
  • Fields: Lost Bridge (Dunn County); Divide County;
  • Comments:
    • KODA Resources has a permit for an Altbier well, SESW 18-160-101, 
      • to be sited 450 FSL and 1484 FWL.
    • XTO has permits for four Mason Federal wells, SWNe 26-148-97, 
      • to be sited 1821 / 1825 FNL and 1909 / 259 FEL.

Five permits renewed:

  • Formentera Operating (5): four LIG2 wells and one LAR1 well; Burke County.

Re-Building Iran -- No Money Will Exchange Hands -- June 15, 2026

Locator: 50982IRAN.

Trump's plans to rebuild the Gaza Strip? 

Wherever that may be, the fact is that Iran could receive $12 billion to $25 billion for "rebuilding."  This will be "rebuilding Gaza on steroids." 

"Performance-based."

This is pretty interesting. 

"Money won't exchange hands." Nope, not directly. 

Ships will be tracked and a dollar amount per "free" passage for each ship paid for by Iran's frozen funds will be determined. Re-building Gaza. Be that as it may, re-building Iran with be re-building on steroids.  

Hezbollah has no role in controlling the strait but it wants to get paid for continuing to put pressure on Iran.  

And even more interesting, we discussed this not too many days ago. 

But, yes, Iran will get lots of money per ship that "freely" transits the strait. 

This is not rocket-science. 

Bakken Deals -- 2025

Locator: 50981B.

Nothing new here. Simply some updating / book-keeping. Bakken deals on an annual basis are consolidated at the sidebar at the right, about two-thirds of the way down.  

Chord acquires XTO. Link here.

CVX acquires HES. Link here

KMI Outrigger $640 Bakken deal. Link here