Friday, July 10, 2026

Friday -- July 10, 2026

Locator: 51139B. 

Schwab: this is where President Trump has a brokerage account. Link here.

Schwab, which has emerged as one of the Trumps’ go-to financial firms, is one of the major money managers at the center of that trading activity. Of the eight investment accounts detailed in Trump’s annual financial report, one managed by Schwab—identified only as “account no. 7”—held the most money, as measured by the minimum values assigned to each holding, and had among the highest volume of trades on or after the August court ruling. The $500-million ruling was in Trump's favor. 


The coming power war
: energy necessary for AI -- electricity. Link here. Nothing new here but clearly shows the magnitude of the problem. 

Market: yesterday the following were just some of the stocks that hit new 52-week highs -- CSX, Bank of New York Mellon, Marathon Petroleum. 

Background? South Carolina National Guard suspends eight Apache helicopter pilots after low altitude fly-by over the weekend. 

For the archives. This will end up being a non-story but it certainly makes the South Carolina National Guard look foolish. Pete Hegseth has weighed in on "x." Hegseth says this situation will be resolved quickly.

Soccer, FIFA, World Cup: finishing up the round of 16 on July 11. One game today; two games on the 11th. The quarter-finals start next week.

Market: tomorrow -- futures -- at 2:11 a.m. Friday, July 10, NASDAQ is down 100 points (inconsequential) but most tech companies are coming in negative in futures -- interestingly, Micro is an exception. After hours MU is up 1.1% and up a little more than $10. And that follow Thursday (yesterday) when Micron was up 4.5% and adding almost $43 per share.

The NATO summit: link here -- 

  • it seemed everyone coming was spoiling for a fight with Trump;
  • by the time it was over, almost everyone was "with" Trump -- at least, according to Trump;
  • issues: 

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Back to the Bakken

WTI: $72.27.

New wells reporting:

  • Sunday, July 12, 2026: 21 for the month, 21 for the quarter, 374 for the year, 
    • 42042, conf, Phoenix Operating, Willow Gray 2-11-14-23 4H, 
    • 42041, conf, Phoenix Operating, Willow Gray 2-11-14-23 3H, 
    • 42040, conf, Phoenix Operating, Willow Gray 2-11-14-23 2H, 
    • 42039, conf, Phoenix Operating, Willow Gray 2-11-14-23 1H-LL, 
    • 41548, conf, Oasis, Ellis 5602 13-17 4B,
  • Saturday, July 11, 2026: 16 for the month, 16 for the quarter, 369 for the year, 
    • 41619, conf, Devon Energy, Sanders 34-27 5H, 
  • Friday, July 10, 2026: 15 for the month, 15 for the quarter, 368 for the year,  
    • None.

RBN Energy: deveolper continues pursuit of a Philadelphia-area LNG export terminal. Link here. Archived.

Developing more LNG export capacity in the Mid-Atlantic region would appear to make logistical sense, given its proximity to Marcellus/Utica production and easy access to all-important European markets. But physical constraints at the Cove Point LNG site in Maryland limit the potential for an expansion there, and efforts to advance projects along the Delaware River near Philadelphia have stalled out. Or have they? As we discuss in today’s RBN blog, Penn America Energy’s moribund plan for an LNG export terminal just downriver from The City of Brotherly Love seems to have gained new life with a new company name and a new site — in Eddystone Borough, PA. 

Think back to just a couple of years ago, when the Biden administration’s “pause” on new Department of Energy (DOE) approvals and permits for exporting LNG to countries without Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) threw a wet blanket on what had been an on-fire market for new LNG export projects. During the pause, the pace of new Sales and Purchase Agreements (SPAs) slowed to a crawl, as did new-project announcements. All that changed early last year, when the Trump administration ended the pause and made clear it would do all it could to facilitate the development of new LNG export capacity.

Since then, nine projects have reached a final investment decision (FID): Woodside’s Louisiana LNG, another expansion at Cheniere Energy’s Corpus Christi LNG, VentureGlobal’s CP2 LNG Phase 1 (and, later, Phase 2), NextDecade Corp.’s Rio Grande LNG Train 4 (and then Train 5), Sempra’s Port Arthur LNG Phase 2, Catarus Energy’s Commonwealth LNG, and — most recently —Delfin FLNG, which will be the U.S.’s first floating LNG export facility. Together, these projects will add just over 80 million tons per annum (MMtpa) of LNG export capacity, or about 11 Bcf/d, by the early 2030s.

Just as there are concerns that the ongoing buildout of data centers may leave the U.S. with a big surplus of “compute” capacity for AI, there are worries that too much LNG export capacity is being added and that markets in Europe, Asia and elsewhere will not be able to absorb all the LNG the new terminals will be capable of sending out. But that hasn’t stopped developers from planning still more LNG export capacity — for example, Glenfarne Group may be nearing FID on its Texas LNG project in Brownsville, TX, Cheniere and VentureGlobal are considering possible expansions and, as we will discuss today, the developer of a long-planned LNG export terminal near Philadelphia apparently “won’t back down” in its efforts to get its project sited and built.

When we last blogged about a possible Philly-area project back in 2022, the developer was named Penn America Energy LLC and was considering four possible sites along the Delaware River. Our thought at the time was that it would likely pick one in Marcus Hook, PA, which is already the site of an Energy Transfer marine terminal that (among other things) exports LPG and ethane. However, Penn America tried to locate the project in nearby Chester, PA, and encountered strong local opposition; the Biden-era pause also set back the company’s push to secure long-term offtake deals to underpin the multibillion-dollar project.

More recently, right-to-know (RTK) requests and related efforts by Delaware Riverkeeper, a regional environmental group, indicated that Penn America’s development team has rebranded itself as Eddystone Energy LLC and is working to win over state and local support for a project called Eddystone LNG in Eddystone Borough, a tiny riverfront municipality (1.5 square miles, 2,500 people) just northeast of Chester and a couple of miles southwest of Philadelphia International Airport. Despite its small size, Eddystone in the early 1900s was the home of the world’s largest steam locomotive manufacturing plant and, during World War I, the largest rifle-making factory in the U.S. Oh, and Jennifer Aniston lived in the borough briefly in her. youth and attended Eddystone Elementary School.

Thursday, July 9, 2026

Today Feels Like A Watershed Day For The Market -- July 9, 2026

Locator: 51138MARKET. 

See this post

SoftBank soars

Sell in May, go away.

For me, with regard to investing, today felt like a watershed day. Connecting all the dots suggest the "AI Buildout" will last another ten years. Apple, alone, is going to be spending a lot of money over the next ten years. And as big as Apple will be with spending, Apple is not even the biggest. 

It will be interesting six months from now to look again at the market action today.

Micron says it will spend $250 billion through 2035. Comes to about $25 billion / year. And that's just one company. Announced today. It's a big, big deal. The story garnered headlines everywhere.

BRKB: absolutely flat since February 21, 2025.  

Mag 7: anything but flat since February 21, 2025. In fact, Micron didn't start to take off until February 2026. 

End-Of-Day Report -- Daily Activity Report — July 9, 2026

Locator: 51137B. 

Note: the NDIC EOD report was not posted at the time I posted the information below. It's possible that my information is incorrect, but this is what I found on other NDIC sites. 

Note: much later -- NDIC posted the July 9, 2026, EOD report.  

WTI: $72.08.

Active rigs: 26.

Nine new permits, #43099 - #43107 -- note: #43100 and #43101 were SWD permits.

  • Operators: Oasis, Formentera Operations (8); 
  • Fields: Lake Trenton (Williams); Baukol Noonan (Burke); Black Slough (Burke);  
  • Comments:
    • Formentera has seven new permits; 
      • SESE 13-162-96, to be sited 608 FSL and 360 / 390 FEL; Laguna Vista; Rainbows End;
      • SESE 8-162-93, to be sited 530 FSL and 395 / 570 FEL; Griffin; Rabbit; 
    • Oasis has a new permit for a new Jaffa well; lot 1, section 1-153-103, four-section spacing unit.
      • to be sited 349 FNL and 1138 FL.

Four permits canceled:

  • Formentera Operations (3): Shorty, Bervik, and Lincoln State, all in Divide County; file numbers: 27804, 28644, and 28718;
  • KODA Resources: Amber, Divide County (#42633).

Thursday -- Cramer's First Hour — July 9, 2026

Locator: 51136CRAMER. 

Bonnie Tyler dead at age 75.

Info tech stocks:

  • more than 2/3rds of all stocks are down 20% from high. 
  • AVGO, QCOM, MU, TSM, AMDGLW
  • SNDK. Currently 1,800. New: 2,000. This is a catch-up play.

Jobless claims in-line.

Ohio. CNBC's best state for business. Link here.

  • At the top -- 
    • Ohio -- #1 
    • North Carolina, #2; was first last year;
    • Virginia, #3.
    • Texas, #4.
    • Minnesota, #5. Okay. Bogus story.
  • Bottom five:
    • #46: West Virginia.
    • #47: Louisiana.
    • #48. Rhode Island.
    • #49.Alaska.
    • #50. Hawaii.

Crack spread: at record highs. Trending toward $60. Valero. MPC.  

  • profit margin for refiners: 3:2:1 --> three barrels of oil for two barrels of gasoline and one barrel of diesel
  • formula: [(2xprice of gasoline, bbls) + (price of diesel, bbls)] - 3xprice of oil, bbls] = crack spread.

*************************************
Back to the Bakken

WTI: $73.94.

New wells reporting:

  • Friday, July 10, 2026: 15 for the month, 15 for the quarter, 368 for the year,  
    • None.
  • Thursday, July 9, 2026: 15 for the month, 15 for the quarter, 368 for the year, 
    • 41917, conf, Murfin Drilling, MH Hecker 1-14H, 

RBN Energy: spike in the D4 renewable identification number price about more than a higher mandate. Link here.

The price of the D4 Renewable Identification Number (RIN) has increased 130% so far in 2026. The jump in the price was a response to both a 70% increase in the minimum bio-based diesel volume mandate set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for 2026 and a higher price premium for soybean oil relative to ULSD (Ultra Low Sulfur Diesel). In today’s RBN blog, we analyze the additional factors at play in the increase, from both theoretical and practical standpoints.

Let’s start with a bit of background about how the mandates for renewable fuels work. As we noted in Something’s Gotta Give, the federal Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) requires certain minimum volumes of biofuels to be blended into fuel sold in the U.S. The required minimum, known as the Renewable Volume Obligation (RVO), is determined each year by the EPA. A RIN is the regulatory mechanism for tracking the production and blending of renewable fuels and also allows refiners and importers to prove they’ve met their RVO mandates.

To see the importance of the RIN system, let’s consider a bio-based diesel producer who buys used cooking oil — a common feedstock for bio-based diesel production — for $6/gal, processes it into bio-based diesel, then sells it for $3/gal to be blended with refined petroleum diesel for eventual sale as diesel fuel to truckers. With a $6/gal feedstock cost and $3/gal product value, the producer’s profit margin is negative $3/gal. Without a subsidy, production and sales would be zero. The RIN credit is the primary instrument that provides that subsidy. 

To see how this works, think of the RIN as having three functions: 
First, it is a subsidy. A gallon of bio-based diesel comes with an embedded virtual coupon (that’s the RIN) whose purpose is to stimulate increased sales by reducing its price to a level that makes it competitive as a substitute for petroleum-based diesel. 
Second, the D4 RIN functions like a tax on petroleum diesel and gasoline. The dollar value of the tax varies — the higher the RIN price, the higher the pseudo-tax. This raises the question of whether the RIN tax, like a sales tax, passes through the supply chain from the refiner or importer to downstream biofuel blenders, distributors, retailers and consumers. (For more on that important question, see our Misunderstanding blog series.) 
The third function of the D4 RIN is to ensure the volume of bio-based diesel delivered to the U.S. market is at least the minimum EPA mandated volume. A higher mandate requires a higher subsidy to draw more volume into the system. The RIN price adjusts to draw in precisely the volume prescribed by the control system. 

Midnight, CT -- July 8/9, 2026

Locator: 51135AAPL.

Tag: Baltra. 

Futures, midnight, July 8/9, 2026, "little changed," but all indices are green. Certainly better than losing 600 points earlier today.


Broadcom: will expand facility in Fort Collins, CO, after $30 billion deal with Apple; a $1.5 billion capital expenditure.

Apple, Query:

Gemini: Apple had a good day today -- $30-billion deal with Broadcom; continuing with Qualcom chip; says it will develop server chip in-house. May get HBM chips from China. Is that correct? Anything else?

Reply

Query: what is Apple's server chip roadmap?


Query: how does SMC's advanced packaging tech (SoIC) fit into the Baltra architecture?
 
Reply:

Furthering the conversation with Baltra, is Apple building a physical center for its cloud services? 

Reply:

Query: Where, what city / state, is Apple building is own physical server infrastructure to run its PCC? 

Reply:

Query:

The data center locations, six are mentioned, not including the Fort Collins, Colorado, site. How much money is Apple devoting to this buildout and how does it compare to what Meta or Google are doing?

Reply:

Query:

Earlier, you mentioned an "arms race" between Google and Meta. How does AWS fit into all this?

Reply