The Market, Energy, And Political Page, T+20 -- May 30, 2018

Alibaba: This is pretty funny. I don't know if I ever mentioned the word "Alibaba" on the blog until yesterday. Now, today, from Fortune, "China now has two of the top ten most valuable brands in the world for the first time." And they are ... first it was, Tencent. And, now, Alibaba has joined the list. Pretty coincidental.

T+20: it's been twenty days since Trump tore up the Obama deal to go easy on Iran and somehow the world has survived.

Rueing: my hunch is that Justin Trudeau will rue the day he ever got involved with the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Pipeline project. There are bigger issues at play than what folks are talking about. The interesting thing: when you read the wiki entry regarding the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion Project one really wonders why Trudeau got involved at all. Either the wiki entry is really wrong, or Trudeau was really manipulated by the Canadian oil industry. I'm thinking the latter. President Obama would have never done this. Suggests that Trudeau is very, very naive. [Update, about an hour later: I may be the one that is very, very naive. New data suggests this pipeline is going to be built sooner than later, and Native Americans may likely lead the charge -- to get the pipeline done. You bet your sweet bippy.]

DAPL: I assume US District Judge James Boasberg is watching this with great interest. He should feel very, very good that he, Judge Boasberg, threaded the needle quite nicely, at least from my point of view. Standing Rock paid a huge price getting "used" by international faux environmentalists.

Not good. For Mexico, this is not good. Not related: 100,000 folks have been arrested crossing the US southern border in the past two months. From the first link:

Mexican left-leaning presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has consolidated his lead over his nearest rival, surpassing the 50 percent mark for the first time with a month to go before July 1 presidential election.

The markets:

• WTI surges, up over 2%, now trading above $68 again
• Dow: up 240 points
• TSLA: up 1%
• UNP: up almost 2%
• EOG: up almost 3%
• NOG: up over 5% -- whoo-hoo!
• SRE: down half-a-percent
• PLUG: under a buck/share; up about half-a-percent
• PLM: 80 cents/share; flat 
• XRP-USD: 58 cents/share; down over 2%

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