First Things First -- Focus On Fracking -- December 6, 2021

AAPL: explodes! To the upside. Whoo-hoo! Link here. It's behind a firewall at the Financial Times but over the weekend, analysts spotted unusual options trading regarding AAPL. Archived.

The article begins: 

Puzzling activity in Apple shares this week has strategists pointing to a possible cause: an explosion of trading in options linked to one of the world’s most valuable companies. 

As the US stock market sank on news of the spreading Omicron coronavirus variant, shares of Apple levitated mysteriously. 

And as the market later found its footing, Apple slid sharply on a news report that demand for its flagship iPhone was slackening. 

The moves have been accompanied by a few of the hallmarks of the “meme stock” craze this year, traders said, when ferocious trading in options markets combined with fevered discussions on retail investor message boards propelled stocks a fraction of Apple’s size. 

“Flow begets flow and . . . the evidence is there that there’s been an explosion of retail account openings and then an explosion of option volumes,” said Greg Boutle, a strategist with BNP Paribas. 

Apple’s market capitalisation reached a high of $2.7tn on Tuesday, and its share price is up about 8 per cent over the past month, while the benchmark S&P 500 index is down. 

Investors pointed to several reasons for its strength, including the fact the company is a defensive play as uncertainty abounds over the coronavirus and as monetary policy shifts at the US Federal Reserve. 

Trading volumes in Apple have been impressive as mentions of the company have climbed up the ranks on Reddit message boards. It was the most discussed stock this week on the r/WallStreetBets, a forum popular with retail investors, according to data provider Breakout Point. 

Investors have purchased an extraordinary number of Apple call options, derivatives contracts that pay off if its shares rise in value. On Wednesday and Thursday, more than 5m call contracts in total were purchased, with both days ranking among the 15 busiest Apple options trading days in history. 

The purchases have been concentrated on soon-to-expire options contracts, which are often favoured by retail investors. Strategists debated whether the large call option purchases had in turn forced up the price of Apple’s stock as derivatives dealers tried to hedge their exposure. 

The sheer size of the trades indicated that hedge funds and other institutional investors were executing similar trades, hoping to catch some of the momentum sparked by retail investor buying, according to Amy Wu Silverman, an equity derivatives strategist at the Royal Bank of Canada. 

“Institutions are literally waiting for the scent of retail, because they know it increases the momentum,” she said. “The retail footprint becomes the institutional footprint very quickly. It almost snowballs what was a pure retail move.” 

On Tuesday, the S&P 500 fell almost 2 per cent, while Apple gained more than 3 per cent without news that would serve as an apparent trigger. A day later, the stock struck a new high while options trading intensified. 

But a Bloomberg News report on Thursday saying Apple had warned suppliers of weakening demand for the iPhone 13 was enough to knock the euphoria, briefly sending Apple down more than 4 per cent. In turn, the value of many call options plummeted. 

“Call options, by their nature, increase volatility because market makers have to hedge [themselves], which pushes the price up even more,” said Peng Cheng, a strategist at JPMorgan Chase. “But there is another effect, the information effect, when fundamental news comes out. When information is released, the information effect dominates the volume effect.”

CLR: 297.231207 million / 365.58 million = 81.3%

• 07:09 AM EST, 12/06/2021 (MT Newswires) -- Harold Hamm, 10% Owner, Director, on December 01, 2021, executed a purchase for 250,000 shares in Continental Resources (CLR) for $11,012,129. Following the Form 4 filing with the SEC, Hamm has control over a total of 297,231,207 shares of the company, with 14,050,217 shares held directly and 283,180,990 controlled indirectly. The market value of the direct and indirect holding, based on the transaction price, is approximately $12,290,272,624. CLR outstanding shares: 368.58 million. 297.231207 million / 368.58 million = 80.6%.
  

Link here.  Focus on Fracking.

• This is a particularly interesting issue, several items regarding North Dakota. 

For investors: Santa Claus rally set to begin. 

Blogging will be intermittent today. 

Covid-19:

• prior to the Biden mandate: trending toward 750,000 vaccines per day being administered; now, trending toward 2.2 million vaccinations being administered daily.

	Total Doses Administered	Delta: Difference in daily doses from previous day
December 5, 2021	470,698,738	2,181,956
December 4, 2021	468,516,782	2,168,650
December 3, 2021	466,348,132	2,042,143
December 2, 2021	464,305,989	2,042,144
December 1, 2021	462,263,845	1,490,337
November 30, 2021	460,773,508	1,538,717

Prior to the Biden mandate:

October 1, 2021	393,756,866	868,097
September 30, 2021	392,888,769	868,098
September 29, 2021	392,020,671	868,097
September 28, 2021	391,152,574	487,651
September 27, 2021	390,664,923	646,117
September 26, 2021	390,018,806	646,117
September 25, 2021	389,372,689	805,580
September 24, 2201	388,567,109	745,405

Clearing out the in-box: link here. 

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Back to the Bakken

CLR: 297.231207 million / 365.58 million = 81.3%

• 07:09 AM EST, 12/06/2021 (MT Newswires) -- Harold Hamm, 10% Owner, Director, on December 01, 2021, executed a purchase for 250,000 shares in Continental Resources (CLR) for $11,012,129. Following the Form 4 filing with the SEC, Hamm has control over a total of 297,231,207 shares of the company, with 14,050,217 shares held directly and 283,180,990 controlled indirectly. The market value of the direct and indirect holding, based on the transaction price, is approximately $12,290,272,624.

Active rigs:

$68.29	12/6/2021	12/06/2020	12/06/2019	12/06/2018	12/06/2017
Active Rigs	32	16	55	63	53

Monday, December 6, 2021: 55 for the month, 58 for the quarter, 309 for the year:
38250, conf, CLR, Candee 10-9H1, Chimney Butte, some early production;
36863, conf, Whiting, Satterthwaite 13-7XH, Sanish, producing, mediocre;

Sunday, December 5, 2021: 53 for the month, 56 for the quarter, 307 for the year:
38251, conf, CLR, Kukla 8-16HSL, Chimney Butte, some early production;
37624, conf, Oasis, Nikolai Federal 5297 11-6 10BX, Banks, a nice well, 

Saturday, December 4, 2021: 51 for the month, 54 for the quarter, 305 for the year:
38252, conf, CLR, Kukla 9-16H1, Chimney Butte, no production data,
37440, conf, Oasis, Wold 5297 11-6 2B, Sand Creek, a big well, producing;

Friday, December 3, 2021: 49 for the month, 52 for the quarter, 303 for the year:
38046, conf, Slawson, Muskrat Federal 3-28-33H, Big Bend, no production data,

RBN Energy: how will rejection of Enbridge's plan for Mainline contracting affect crude oil flows? Archived.

This is the opening: The nearly relentless rise in Western Canadian crude oil production over the past decade or more has been both a blessing and a curse. A blessing in that — despite some wild fluctuations in prices over the years — investment, jobs and export revenue have grown, pushing Canada into the ranks of the Top 5 oil-producing countries in the world. A curse in that exporting ever-increasing volumes of crude oil has created never-ending regulatory and legal challenges for midstream companies and often forced takeaway-constrained producers to sell their crude at steeply discounted prices.

Just think: "...a nearly relentless rise in Western Canadian crude oil production..." that would have, all things being equal, dropped North American gasoline prices to record lows, but that was stopped in its tracks when Brandon killed the Keystone XL. What a doofus.  

How many bbls of oil would have been brought into the US through the Keystone XL? To paraphrase Brandon's SecEnergy: "I don't have those number in front of me."