Updates
August 17, 2016:
Cisco says it will layoff 5,500 employees, much fewer than the rumored 14,000, and in line with previous summer layoffs. Seems to be a non-story.
Original Post
NOG ex-CEO facing SEC sanctions,
from a press release:
On
August 16, 2016, Northern Oil fired its Chief Executive Officer,
Michael Reger, after he admitted to the Company that he is facing
sanctions in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigation.
Northern Oil said that Reger was sent a Wells Notice from the SEC
regarding its 2012 investigation of Dakota Plains Holdings Inc. Reger
was an investor in Dakota Plains Holdings Inc. since 2008. Northern Oil
announced that Reger was removed from its board, effective immediately,
and that Northern Oil does not believe that Reger will be entitled to
any severance payment. Following this news, Northern Oil stock dropped
as much $0.31 per share, or 7.79%, to $3.67 during intraday trading on
August 16, 2016.
NOG, from a press release dated August 16, 2016:
Northern Oil and Gas, Inc.announced today that Michael L. Reger has been terminated as Northern's Chief Executive Officer and has ceased being a member of Northern's Board of Directors, effective immediately.
Thomas W. Stoelk has been named Interim Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Stoelk has served in several executive positions in the oil and gas industry over the last 25 years and has been Northern's Chief Financial Officer since December 2011.
Prior to joining Northern, Mr. Stoelk served as the Vice President of Finance and Chief Financial Officer at Superior Well Services, Inc. from 2005 to 2011, as the Chief Financial Officer of Great Lakes Energy Partners, LLC from 1999 to 2005 and as the Senior Vice President of Finance and Administration for Range Resources Corporation from 1994 to 1999.
Chad Allen, Northern's existing Corporate Controller, has been named to the position of Chief Accounting Officer. Chad has over 10 years of public accounting experience with firms servicing public companies.
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Breaking news: Russian government sees sale of country's largest oil producer Rosneft as top priority. Over at
Reuters.
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Active rigs:
| 8/17/2016 | 08/17/2015 | 08/17/2014 | 08/17/2013 | 08/17/2012 |
|---|
| Active Rigs | 32 | 74 | 194 | 183 | 199 |
RBN Energy:
LNG exports impact US natural gas supply, demand and price.
Fillooon: Bakken update --
breakeven prices continue to lower in the US.
Summary:
- Mega-Frac well designs continue to impress in all US unconventional plays from the Bakken and Eagle Ford to the Wolfcamp
- Although the Permian and STACK plays have been better, the Bakken/Three Forks are seeing huge production improvements
- This
analysis of core Three Forks locations in North Dakota shows the
Mega-Frac well design produces over 200K barrels of oil in the first 365
producing days
- The core Three Forks, at 365 producing days, seems to model near the middle Bakken in areas of higher well pressures
- Mega-Fracs are significantly improving decline rates and breakeven prices
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ObamaCare is killing jobs. Over at Yahoo!Finance.
Turkey will release 38,000 prisoners to make room for coup plotters.
Over at Los Angeles Times.
Aetna foreshadowed ObamaCare exit if merger denied.
Over at The Huffington Post.
Perfect timing. Note the time
this story was posted yesterday, August 16, 2016, at 1:32 p.m. Eastern Time.
The Cisco story that the company would layoff 20% of its workforce (14,000 employees) hit the wires just after midnight, early this morning, August 17, 2016. Futures were up about 30 points before the Cisco story. Immediately after the story was posted, futures were down about 80 points (a swing of over 100 points). On opening, CSCO is down about 2%.
Barnes and Noble ousts CEO after a year.
Story over at CBS Money Watch.
Saudi strikes back.
Story over at Yahoo!
Chariot on fire.
Video over at Fox News.
XLNX up about half a percent on a day a) the market is down about 80 points on opening; and, b) reports that Cisco could layoff 14,000 employees.
TGT: down a staggering 6%; losing $4.60. Wow.
Target cuts outlook as it sees fewer customers in stores. Social media is all over Target: apparently the transgender bathroom policy emanating from Minnesota not impressing folks. Bigger problem: folks shop once or twice a month at Target; fresh produce spoils in between visits. Both my older daughter and I prefer produce at Wal-Mart compared to that of Target.
[Update, later, 4:50 p.m. Central Time:
Target has announced it will add private bathrooms to quell transgender debate. Comment: I think the damage has already been done. This company is making as many "PR" mistakes it seems as Fidelity/MDU made operational mistakes. Just my personal opinion.]
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Barnes And Noble
Barnes and Noble ousts CEO after a year.
Story over at CBS Money Watch.
Previous posts on B & N:
- adult coloring books driving B & N's earnings, March 7, 2016
- Amazon considers opening 400 bookstores, February 3, 2016
- commentary, September 10, 2015
- commentary, January 8, 2015
- commentary, February 22, 2014
- will axe the Nook; thoughts on B & N, January 9, 2014
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Saudi Strikes Back
Mideast On Edge
Saudi strikes back.
Story over at Yahoo!
For
those concerned about the fallout from President Barack Obama and his
administration’s nuclear deal with Iran — the Joint Comprehensive Plan
of Action, or JCPOA — the hits just keep on coming. The recent revelation
that the United States handed over $400 million in cash to Iran on the
same day that it was releasing four American captives is but the latest
disturbing detail in the saga that has become Obama’s extended
experiment in appeasing the mullahs.
Add it to the long list of other
threatening post-deal developments, including the intensification of Iran’s ballistic missile program, the continuation of its efforts to illicitly procure nuclear materials, and the expansion of its aggressive and destabilizing activities across the Middle East. Oh, and don’t forget the detention of three new American hostages, of course.
Somewhat
less noticed in the JCPOA’s aftermath, but potentially no less
consequential for regional security, has been the steadily escalating
confrontation between Saudi Arabia and Iran. This was not a wholly
unexpected development. Many analysts warned that the Saudis would not
look kindly on a U.S.-Iranian agreement, negotiated largely behind their
backs, that ended up leaving the country’s arch-enemy, the Shiite
theocracy across the Gulf, with a large nuclear infrastructure, hundreds
of billions of dollars in sanctions relief, and a more or less open
field to indulge its quest for regional hegemony. The Saudis,
inevitably, would read it as America abandoning its historical role as
the guarantor of Gulf security in favor of some new dispensation with an
unreconstructed Iran — one that threatened to irreversibly alter the
region’s correlation of forces in Iran’s favor.
Obama’s
penchant for stoking Saudi paranoia and fears has no doubt made matters
much worse: Declaring, for example, that his aim was to establish an “equilibrium”
between the Saudis, a longstanding U.S. ally, and Iran, a revolutionary
power that has systematically attacked U.S. interests for four decades.
Or publicly complaining about the fact that he’s “compelled” to treat Saudi Arabia as an ally at all. Instead, Obama has opted to diss the Saudis repeatedly as free-riders who seek to exploit
American muscle for their own narrow, sectarian purposes. In Obama’s
telling, the Iranians — handmaidens to the Bashar al-Assad regime’s
multi-year campaign of war crimes and mass murder — have legitimate “equities”
in places like Syria that deserve to be protected (Could he mean the
land bridge via Damascus by which Iran supplies its Lebanese client, the
terrorist group Hezbollah, with tens of thousands of missiles and
rockets that will be used in its next war with Israel?). Rather than
seeking to counter Iran’s revisionist agenda, Obama’s view is that the
Saudis need to accommodate themselves to “sharing” the Gulf with the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.
Needless to say, the Saudis beg to differ. Confronted with a newly empowered Iran and a retrenching America, the kingdom is striking back, not rolling over.
It believes Obama’s policies have purposefully created a dangerous
vacuum in the region, one that is primarily being filled by an Iran bent
on sowing chaos and destruction, ultimately targeting the downfall of
the House of Saud itself.
No longer able to rely on Pax Americana, and
unwilling to watch passively as the mullahs slip the noose over their
collective neck, the Saudis have increasingly taken matters into their
own hands, especially since the ascension of King Salman bin Abdulaziz
Al Saud in 2015, adopting a much more assertive and high-risk, even
provocative, national security posture with a single-minded mission to
challenge and confront Iran.
The
opening shot (literally) in Salman’s new anti-Iran campaign was fired
even before the JCPOA was finalized in July 2015. In March of last year,
the Saudis intervened in Yemen to stop Iran-backed Houthi rebels from
taking control of the country. The Obama administration subsequently
supported the effort, reluctantly, by supplying intelligence and
military equipment. Though the Saudis — and a handful of Sunni allies,
led by the United Arab Emirates — succeeded in rolling back rebel gains
in southern Yemen, the war has been bogged down for months, with the
Houthis still entrenched in the capital, Sanaa, as well as their
strongholds in the north, including strategic positions on the Saudi
border. Peace talks and ceasefires have come and gone.
Prospects for a political settlement appear dim. Desperately poor and
dysfunctional even before the war, Yemen has largely been laid to waste,
a failed state that — already home to one of al Qaida’s most dangerous
affiliates — appears destined to be a fertile breeding ground for
jihadism, sectarian conflict, and regional instability for yeas to come.
Much more at the link.
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Blind Spot
To Say The Least, This Is Really Strange
Target reported disappointing Q2 earnings on Wednesday, and management placed part of the blame squarely on Apple.
Comparable
store sales at Target overall fell by 1.1%, but Target executives noted
that electronic sales decreased by double digits and “accounted for 70
basis points [0.7%] of overall comp decline.”
Even
more notably, Target specifically pointed out that Apple product sales
were down by “more than 20%” year-over-year and were to blame for a
third of the overall plunge of electronic sales at Target.
Apple’s
growth has been running into a bit of trouble recently, as the
astounding success of the iPhone 6 has made for tough comparisons.
Earnings growth for the tech giant was bad enough in the second quarter to shift overall tech sector year-over-year earnings growth from positive to negative.
Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial, relationship, travel, or job changes or decisions based on what you read here. For the record, I bought shares in Target for the first time back on June 9, 2014, and sold all shares that I had in TGT two days ago, August 15, 2016. I no longer own any shares in Target and have no plans to initiate a new position in TGT. I did use that cash to buy something else, not in retail and not in energy.
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The Market
Closing: will probably close slightly up, about 15 points. NYSE:
- new highs: 73, including BKR (a big whoop); CAT; Enerplus; Pioneer Natural Resources; WPX (a huge whoop); XLNX is trading near its 52-week intraday high; it may close at a new closing high (a big, huge whoop -- at $52.19 closing, I see an intra-day high of $52.43 in the past 52 weeks, but no closing higher than $51.74)
- new lows: 11 (somewhat of a surprise, so few; after all, the market was down 80 points in early trading)
Mid-day trading: this is almost predictable. Once traders got the Cisco story behind them they move on. Market up is (barely) by about 10 points.
Opening: market opens down almost 80 points after futures being up about 30 points last evening; that all changed with story that Cisco likely to layoff 14,000 workers (20% of its workforce).
