Notes From All Over -- Wednesday, August 4, 2021

Natural gas:

• an incredible story

Hedging: shale drillers that hedged are taking huge losses; link here -- paywall; Leave $12 billion the table. Yahoo!Finance, no paywall, has same story. Original link:

Energy investing:

• ET: earnings climb as natural gas revenues jump. Link here.  
• PXD: hikes dividend; new: $1.51; was 56 cents;
• Scott Sheffield: "we aren't looking at any more Midland Basin acquisitions; we bought the best two available;
• unsaid: "RDSA is in the Delaware." I'm not the first to have noticed that.
  
• OXY: swings to profit; impresses Wall Street;
• DVN: impresses Wall Street;
• Shell Permian's assets, link here:
• $10 billion
• Devon
• Conoco
• wow: what a great opportunity for a joint venture, then divvy up the acres where they fit best; this is not rocket science
  

Geopolitical:

• OPEC needs Russia: a superpower that can stand up to the European carbon tax on imports. Link hree.

Covid-19:

• in retrospect, the UK was lucky to have those life-saving lockdowns. Otherwise they would have ended up like the reckless Sweden. Link here. Great graphic at the link. 

Market:

• bonds are the suckers at the poker table right now: Twain's Mustache. Some financial advisors still recommending a 60-40 equity/bond split. And charging excessive fees for that advice.

Jobless reports:

• does anybody care?
• yes: Jay Powell does and it appears of his two mandates, he is more concerned about jobless than inflation;
• so, another bullish report for investors
• markets being held back, not by jobless report today, but by WTI dropping below $70