Whiting And Oasis Over At Seeking Alpha; Trainwreck Experiences

XOM is trading at a new high today; has solidly broken through $100.

Jim Cramer notes that EOG has a lot of insider buying.

At Yahoo!Financial In-Play:

The price-weighted Dow owes its outperformance to a handful of top-weighted names like 3M, Boeing, Chevron, and ExxonMobil. Fittingly, the four names fall under the umbrella of either the energy (+0.7%) or industrial (+0.6%) sectors, both of which trade ahead of the remaining eight groups.  

Union Pacific is trading at a new 52-week high. This one certainly is not a trainwreck.

***************************

There are only a few contributors over at SeekingAlpha I read any more regarding the Bakken. Actually, I may read or skim articles by other contributors but generally there is only a handful of contributors I "trust." Bret Jensen is one of them.

Today, Mr Jensen has two mid-size shale plays for 2014. I haven't read the article yet, so I know as much as you do at the moment. But first, the disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment decisions based on what you read here or what you think you may have read here.

Featured in his article today: Whiting and Oasis.

Michael Fitzsimmons mentions the Wall Street darling in the Bakken: KOG.

*********************************

ObamaCare

Great article on the DC ObamaCare exchange --  

But it’s not all bad. What I like is that I can access the D.C. exchange in twenty different languages, including Apache, Navajo, and Irish. Which is great because I see so many Irish here who have a heck of a time assimilating, what with the fact that they only speak Irish and not the King's English. (You can also receive notices in American Sign Language—l'd make a joke here but I might offend the deaf. But I guess since they can't read and need American Sign Language I might as well let one rip. But I'll refrain nevertheless.)

Maybe we should blame the federal government for this, but last time I looked (and at one point it was my job to do so) a government entity was only responsible for providing assistance in a foreign language if there was a significant number of people who spoke that language and had no facility with English. Of course, we can all quibble about what "significant" means in this context, but does anyone believe that it is at all conceivable that there are even ten people in the District who speak only Apache and need to buy their own health insurance? I would bet my entire net wealth that the number is, in fact, lower than that, if not zero. Ditto for Navajo and Irish. If there's anyone in D.C. shopping for health insurance who speaks only German or French and no English I'd be shocked as well. 

But while the exchange doesn't work, at least we can get our messages telling us our application has been "disposed of" in the language of our choice, although to be honest I do not know at all what this message means and English is my mother tongue. Does it mean that I have insurance? I doubt that since I never got to select a plan. Or that I've been approved to buy a plan? if so why won't it let me do so.

**********************************

And ticker shock. USA Today is reporting:

More than half of the counties in 34 states using the federal health insurance exchange lack even a bronze plan that's affordable — by the government's own definition — for 40-year-old couples who make just a little too much for financial assistance, a USA TODAY analysis shows.

Many of these counties are in rural, less populous areas that already had limited choice and pricey plans, but many others are heavily populated, such as Bergen County, N.J., and Philadelphia and Milwaukee counties.

More than a third don't offer an affordable plan in the four tiers of coverage known as bronze, silver, gold or platinum for people buying individual plans who are 50 or older and ineligible for subsidies.

Those making more than 400% of the federal poverty limit — $47,780 for an individual or $61,496 for a couple — are ineligible for subsidies to buy insurance.

Actually, this is a non-issue. According to folks who have worked with "navigators," the "navigators" will tell folks to "make up their income" number. First of all, apparently it's not a felony and it's just an estimate anyway. On top of that, there are reports that the IRS will never audit any of this stuff. The folks I've talked to in Starbucks tell me one is a fool to be paying full price of ObamaCare insurance. The "navigators," they say, are there to help.