WTI Surging -- Happy St Patrick's Day -- Investing -- March 17, 2022

Fed: one does realize, I hope, that by the end of the year, the US could be facing a Fed rate of 1.50%. 

• OMG.
• with inflation running nearly 8%; 
• is inflation in "catch-up" mode? 
• boon for insurance companies
• does Warren Buffett/Charlie Munger/BRK hold any insurance-related companies?
  

LNG exports: all that talk about banning fossil fuel exports? Just talk -- at least for now

• Biden administration approves more LNG exports to Europe; paywall at HartEnergy:
• authorization means every operating US LNG export project now has approval to export its full capacity to any country where not prohibited

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. 

Driftwood: Driftwood LNG nears FID, backed by 10-year contracts in break from the norm.

• S&PGlobal. US LNG export facilities tracked here. 
• RBN Energy: link here.
  
• Driftwood -- Tellurian’s Driftwood LNG, a 27.6-MMtpa liquefaction/LNG export terminal planned for an 800-acre site in Louisiana’s Calcasieu Parish, south of Lake Charles. 
• big question: will Biden administration approve? From what I can tell, the FERC has approved back in 2019, but a) I don't know how to read these things; and, b) the Biden administration can "vacate" anything it wants whenever it wants. Exhibit A: Keystone XL but there are others.
• recently posted: huge "contingency" of US organizations mobilized to stop all new fossil-fuel related projects along Louisiana coast. 
• not sure if the National Save-The-Crawdad Association has weighed in.
  

WTI: surging overnight on news that Japan is shutting down a dozen northern power plants; 

• Fukushima earthquake.
  

BRK:

• Munger's a genius: Alibaba call; stunning reversal; surges 37% in one day;
  
• BRK breaks out to new highs; two days in a row; looks like a trifecta / three-peat today;
• OXY: could he buy it all?
• I suggested this on March 9, 2022; now others suggesting same thing;
  
• why he might be buying more OXY;
  
• boosts stake in OXY to 15%;
  
• a long way from 50%; an even longer way from 100% and a huge commitment;
  
• but easily done on paper; $50 billion market cap vs $150 billion cash hoard which keeps growing
• OXY throws off huge amount of "dividends" or free cash flow
• 
  

Fertilizer: remember -- North Dakota has huge phosphate reserves; discussed a long time ago;

Energy spending to hit record 13% of global GDP in 2022 (that's this year), mostly fossil fuel:

• didn't see much "renewable energy" in this report;
  
• US crude oil including SPR: down 20 million bbls ytd;
• this has traders salivating, but US could easily cut SPR in half and still do fine;
• US total liquids with SPR: steep decline but graphs are incredibly misleading;
• the delta from an all-time high:
• all-time high: 2.125 billion bbls in mid-2018
• now: 1.75 billion bbls
• with surge in production expected, the trend line could change quickly;
• doesn't get me excited
• supply of days in crude oil is the important number: at 27.0 days, unchanged week-over-week;

Weekly EIA data remains bullish. 

• implied fair value price: $115 or $19 undervalued from latest reading;
• 1Q22: on pace of largest 1Q petroleum stock draw since at least 2012;

Russian sanctions: remember, they haven't kicked in yet;

• watch for significant increase in Russian deliveries in new reports over next few weeks;
• at least ten vessels carrying Russia-linked cargoes of crude oil and refined products were approaching the US on Wednesday, March 16, 2022;
• suppliers rushing to deliver ahead of US government's deadline
  

AAPL:

• this is what happens when I stop watching CNBC, the stock market, LOL
• weren't we just watching when AAPL market cap would hit $2 trillion
• trading at recent lows, it still commands a market cap of $2.6 trillion
• at end of 2021 -- December 31: $2.9 trillion market cap
• 16.32 billion outstanding shares x $180 = $2.94 trillion

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. 

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The Book Page

The five best books on "walking." 

Paywall at The WSJ. If you want list of the five books, let me know.

I've ordered The Rings of Saturn, W. G. Sebald, c. 1995, from Amazon. Will arrive today.

I'll bet there's no reader that has walked more miles / day in England than I have. Counting only the days I was actually assigned to England after 2000.

Some days I walked so far, I almost did not have the strength in my legs to get back home. Fourteen-hour hikes. 

Similar walks in San Antonio, TX, when we lived there for a few years. Amazing what one finds / sees on these walks.  

In Paris, my family would taxi from spot to spot if the walk was long; I walked.

From the linked review:

W.G. Sebald’s genius has arrived at the stage where it’s widely accepted as fact. “The Rings of Saturn” isn’t the best known of his books, but like the others it seems impossibly sublime. In its pages Sebald—or someone else—makes a tour on foot through the southeast of England in the hope of dispelling an emptiness he feels, only to find himself confronted by more of it in the form of remote places succumbing to decay. 

Wherever he goes, he finds fodder for digressions devoted to parsing the passage of time or to limning the tragedy of mortality and dissolution. Readers may feel brought low by all this, but more likely they’ll be stirred by Sebald’s depth and range as the terrain occasions in him prolonged ruminations on everything from silk moths and the decline of the herring fishery to the English author Thomas Browne and China’s Empress Dowager Cixi. For Sebald, the conventions of travelogue are cursory at best, or a frame from which to hang his formidable abundance. This book has an itinerary all its own.

I actually read a book on China's Empress Dowager Cixi, just before Covid-19 hit and the local library closed.

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The Glamour Page

Channeling Taylor Swift, her favorite celebrity.