Saturday Morning Rambling -- May 1, 2021

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

Good morning. 

Rambling before I get started on the top stories for the week.

Exxon issues lockout notice: oh, before I get started, Exxon Mobil has begun "escorting" union workers off its Beaumont refinery property in anticipation of a workers' strike. Wow, that seemed to have come out of nowhere. Link here to Reuters. And, also this from Reuters.

The weekly post with the top stories for the week is the last thing I look forward to every Saturday. What a pain. I will get to it later.

Movies: I slept in this morning. I enjoyed watching Hitchcock's Rebecca on DVD last night. I had forgotten how good it was. While watching, I googled if Rebecca was Hitchcock's best movie. The answer is here: "one of  his best." 

Investing: last week was quite a week for investors. SeekingAlpha reminded me how good it really was. AAPL. AMD. BRK. Those three articles are "way over the top" and I'm not that bullish on any of them but I've linked them for the archives. 

But what caught my attention -- not mentioned in any of the linked articles -- the acquisitions that companies made last year. 

In the oil patch, look at these (previously posted), from 2020:

• CVX - Noble Energy.
• Devon - WPX.
• Conoco - Concho.
• Pioneer- Parsley. 
• FANG - QEP. 

So far this year:

• Enerplus buys non-core Hess acreage in the Bakken;
• Enerplus to acquire Bruin;
• Pioneer/Parsley adds DoublePoint Energy;
• CLR buys Samson's assets in the Powder River Basin;

I assume there were a lot more but those were the ones that caught my eye.

Bitcoin: a long-time reader with an interest in the oil sector has moved on to bitcoin. He wrote/asked me if I would post my thoughts on bitcoin. I don't know enough to comment, but I sure had fun reading about bitcoin again. So much more has been posted since I last "researched" bitcoin. What interests me most about bitcoin is the incredible amount of energy -- real energy: coal, natural gas, hydro-electricity -- required to "mine" bitcoin. From The Guardian. Bitcoin proponents have "counter-arguments" putting the bitcoin energy story into perspective.

Norway and EVs: I may re-post this SeekingAlpha article on Norway and EVs as a stand-alone post. I've never understood how anyone could use Norway as the "global model" for the future of EVs. Per capita, richest country in the western world (?); least expensive electricity in the western world (?); biggest government incentives of any western country (?) to own EVs. A fairly large country, but most of it is "empty." There are only a few cities of any size and commute-distances to work must truly be minimal.

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For The Grandchildren

It's hard to believe but I have not been to a barbershop since February, 2020. The lockdown began sometime in March, 2020, in our area. The ban has been lifted now for a few weeks, but I still have no desire to visit the barber. For the past few weeks, my long hair has really been bothering me. I really could not take it any more.

I told Sophia, still six years old, she "just had to cut my hair." She had not cut it in a long time. 

She said, "fine, but I want $5, in real money." I agreed.

Normally we get set up with a mirror, etc., but this time we didn't have anything so I just gave her a pair of scissors and waited for her to call me, when it was my turn.

Her barber shop is/was on the balcony, a simple chair, a beach towel, and a pair of scissors. Nothing else. After she took care of her other make-believe customers, she called me. Again, I had no mirror. I just told her to cut my hair.

I think it looks pretty good for $5.

That's me this morning, listening to "The Best of George Harrison" and blogging.