Delaware Basin Still Selling For $60,000 / Acre -- October 14, 2016

Active rigs:

	10/14/2016	10/14/2015	10/14/2014	10/14/2013	10/14/2012
Active Rigs	31	66	190	183	192

RBN Energy: Supplying Mexico's growing natural gas demand. This is quite a story. One graphic tells the complete story why Mexico needs more US natural gas.

RSP Permian acquires Silver Hill for $2.5 billion. I've posted RSP Permian on the blog for the past several days. Interesting how things turn out. Data points:

• RSP Permian to buy two privately held entities
• together, they control 41,000 net acres in the Delaware Basin of the Permian Basin
• $2.5 billion
• sellers: Silver Hill Energy Partners and Silver Hill E&P II (controlled by equity firms Kayne Anderson Capital Advisors and Ridgemont Equity Partners

$61,100 / net acre. In line with other recent deals.

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The Market

On a pretty good day for the market, TSLA drops well below $200/share. 

Early morning trading: Dow 30 up 140 points. NYSE:

• new highs: 47 -- Encana
• new lows:  20

US retail sales rose in September by most in three months.

US business inventories increase as retailers boost stocks. It looks like the Hanjin bankruptcy was managed well. 

JP Morgan beats forecasts ... by a lot.

SoftBank and Saudi Arabia team up for $100 billion tech fund. How big is the new SoftBank investment fund backed by Saudi Arabia's PIF? From Ahemd Al Omran, in a twitter:

To put this into context, companies backed by venture capital raised a total of $130 billion last year globally. A $100 billion fund would be able to buy all of Salesforce.com, LinkedIn, and Twitter, GoPro, and Fitbit and still have a few billion left over. SoftBank's current market capitzlization is $75 billion. 

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A Note For The Granddaughters

The other day our 13-year-old granddaughter -- who says history is her favorite subject -- said she would like a "book on world history."

That was a hard one. Did she want a book that was fun to read, good literature, or did she want a textbook with a lot of "dry" history? My wife and I checked out Barnes and Noble where they had not less than four double-sided back cases in the history section, but no single book on "world history." Except for textbooks, I was not sure one would exist.

I then went to google and to Amazon.com and found what is perhaps the classic, or the "Bible" in this genre: The History of the World by J.M. Roberts, older editions. It has since been revised by Odd Arne Westad, c. 2013, published by the Oxford University Press, Sixth Edition.

It was delivered two days ago and I am immensely impressed. I will give it to our granddaughter this weekend with a few notes from me regarding the book. At 1,187 pages, it is not meant to be read from cover-to-cover over the weekend. At the end of the day, it is a reference book.

Its index is 71 pages long, but there is no bibliography, no end notes, not footnotes, no nothing. Just 1,187 pages of narrative.

There are very, very few dates in this book (relative to the size of the book). It is a narrative, in the sense that one's uncle is telling a niece the history of the world, attempting to explain why things happened when they did and in the context of what was going on around the world at the same time.

There are a lot of black and white, relatively small, maps but adequate and serve their purpose. There is no timeline. We will buy a separate timeline that she can post on her wall.

The book is divided into eight "books" and again, no dates are given (but obviously the book is laid out chronologically).

Some reviewers suggested that the volume is Euro-centric -- of course, it is. Reading the book, one quickly understands why. I was curious to find an example. For that, I turned to Book Four: The Age of Diverging Traditions, and to Chapter 8 in that book: Worlds Apart.

This book [Book Four in this huge tome] runs from the 2nd century to the 14th century AD. The early chapters begin well south and east of Europe, Eurasia (modern day Turkey), India, China, before moving on to Europe, which we finally get to in Chapter 4 (of Book Four): The New Middle East and The Making of Europe. Then, in three later chapters, India, Imperial China, and Japan.

Chapter 8 in Book Four: Worlds Apart, in just a few pages, covers the history of Africa and the Americas during this same time period. For the first time in my life, I finally have a rudimentary picture of what was going on in Africa during the first 1500 years following the birth of Christ.

Obviously in just a few pages, the history is not comprehensive, but it's like an unadorned Christmas tree. From that short chapter, I have the general idea of Africa at that time. Now, if I want, I can buy the ornaments -- additional books on the history of Africa during this time period.

I've provided an overview of the book for our granddaughter. Whether she uses it or not, my hunch is she won't use it at first, but maybe later on. As noted, we will give her the book this weekend, but I will probably order a second copy for my own bookshelves.