For Investors Only

Sanchez Energy, up 17%, breaks out to all time high after purchasing Eagle Ford shale assets from Royal Dutch Shell. I posted the link to the article regarding this deal yesterday. At $,6000/acre -- de-risked, and producing, it seemed like a steal.

Trading at new 52-week highs, though may have pulled back by the close: CLR, CPG, HES, NFX, NSC, PES, SN, SE, TRGP.

Demise of the big box store: Gap's quarterly profit gaps down, 22%.

And this is not good at all: H-P posted a bigger-than-expected 1 percent drop in quarterly revenue. Wow. Not good at all.

Demise of the sorta-big bog store: Aeropostale shares plunge after hours as loss widens. Wow, I guess: after-hours, shares plunge almost 20%. In a year, this stock has dropped from $16/sh to $4/share (in round numbers).

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New record: the price of gasoline has been above $3.00/gallon for 1,245 days. President Obama has been in office about 1,947 days.

On May 18, USA Today turned to the issue of gas prices again writing that "rumors about the demise of U.S. gasoline demand have been greatly exaggerated." Javier E. David of CNBC wrote for USA Today that international factors were keeping prices high and "defied the gravitational pull" of factors "that should blunt demand." 

ABC, CBS and NBC morning and evening news shows haven't spent much time on gas prices, lately. A Nexis search yielded only 11 stories mentioning what was going on with gas prices in the past three months.

After 1,245 days of high prices, it's no longer news. Duh.

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A Note to the Granddaughters

When I was my very busiest, the first two years of graduate school at the University of Southern California, and in some ways among the happiest days of my life, I subscribed to a gazillion weeklies and monthlies. Al Gore had not yet invented the internet. In fact, I don't recall using any computer during those years. Now, that I have more leisure time than ever, I subscribe to very little. Gradually, that's changing.

For the past several years my only subscription has been The Wall Street Journal. I first subscribed to The Journal back in 1983 and have had subscriptions to it off and on over the years. From the beginning, I subscribed to it because of the good writing; the business end of it was secondary. That holds true today.

About the same time I first subscribed to The Journal, I subscribed to The New Yorker, again for its excellent writing. But, for whatever reason, I quit subscribing years ago. Lately, I found myself missing it, and subscribed once again. 

And that's it. But it could change. I am enjoying more and more each day discussing current events, as well as history, geography, physics, math, and almost anything else of interest, with the granddaughters. 

A couple of days ago, my wife asked the younger one if the older granddaughter knew any species of hummingbirds. It turns out that our older granddaughter, Arianna, new four species of hummingbirds by name. I mentioned to Arianna that I knew only one species, the red-throated hummingbird, and that was because we play "Bird Bingo" so much. Arianna replied, "Well, actually, it's the ruby-throated hummingbird." LOL.

I was reminded of that story because I am reading 40s: The Story of a Decade, an anthology of articles from The New Yorker during the decade of the 1940s. The New Yorker was born in 1925, but the editor chose the 1940s for a reason; it has to do with WWII. I asked Arianna the other day if she knew what the big event in the 1940s was. A bit hesitant, but she answered correctly, "World War II?" She was hesitant, I suppose, because she thought it must have been a trick question.

Last week I picked up the latest issue of The Scientific American. I last subscribed years ago. The cover story intrigued me: "A Crisis in Physics: If Supersymmetry Doesn't Pan Out, Scientists Need A New Way To Explain The Universe."  The four of us (my wife and I, and the two granddaughters) are watching "Cosmos" every Sunday night (two more episodes left). We all find it very interesting. Even my wife wants her turn at the paperback I just finished reading: The Particle at the End of the Universe: How the Hunt for the Higgs Boson Leads Us to the Edge of a New World, by Sean Carroll.

I had forgotten how really good The Scientific American can be. It looks like I will subscribe again. Unlike The New Yorker which is "hit or miss" with regard to articles I enjoy, The Scientific American always has many articles of interest. 

The best thing about some of these subscriptions: even when traveling one has access to digital copies, and subscribers have access to the archives.