The Market And Energy Page, T+9 -- January 30, 2018

Market. I am thrilled to see the market "down" today. I was starting to get concerned that folks were blindly moving the market up. Hopefully we are back to a period of volatility. It reassures me that folks are paying attention. It also provides buying opportunities. Also, I've never complained about buying inexpensive shares with automatic reinvested dividends.

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial, travel, job, or relationship-related decisions based on anything you read here or think you may have read here.

A political note: this is the first time in eight years that we will hear a non-Democratic president deliver a SOTU address. In addition, it's been decades since a Reagan-SOTU address. My hunch is that this will be one of most-watched presidential addresses in history. Could be wrong; there will be a lot of effort to encourage folks to not watch the address. Me? I have no plans to watch the address. I quit watching the SOTU address sometime during the Bush-Obama era.

Market-SOTU: the timing for the market dropping could not come at a better time for Trump. If the market recovers tomorrow, it's going to be hard not to connect the market recovery to Trump.

ExxonMobil: from SeekingAlpha:

• Exxon Mobil says it plans to triple total daily production to more than 600K boe by 2025 from its operations in the Permian Basin in west Texas and New Mexico, as it attempts to fill in some details from yesterday's pledge to invest $50B in the U.S. over the next five years [to put that 600K boepd in perspective, North Dakota is producing 1.5 million boepd
• XOM - which says it has doubled its footage drilled per day on horizontal wells in the Permian Basin since early 2014 and reduced per-foot drilling costs by ~70% - expects to increase the horizontal rig count in the Permian by a further 65% over the next several years
• XOM says it plans to invest $2B to expand the recently acquired Wink crude oil terminal and add key infrastructure upgrades that will efficiently move production from the Delaware, Central and Midland basins in the Permian to its operations and other market destinations in the Gulf Coast region

ExxonMobil: huge bonuses reported by glassdoor.

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Notes To The Granddaughters

I always get a kick out of the kids at Tutor Time and their Spanish lessons once or twice a week. These students are in the 3-year-old room and don't move up until they've had their fourth birthday. Sophia, on the ride into Tutor Time this morning, said she was looking forward to her birthday. It's still more than five months away.