Week 22: May 29, 2023 -- June 4, 2023

Locator: 44837B.

Top story:

• US default averted. 
• US Dow surges 700 points.
  
• Joe Biden is still president.

Top international non-energy story:

• Russian-Ukraine war continues.
• Drones "hit" Moscow residential areas; possibly hit Russian refinery.
  

Top international energy story:

• Saudi frustrated with price of oil. 

Top national non-energy story:

• "Movement": continues to target Bud, Target; trying to target Chick-fil-A;
  

Top national energy story: 

• WTI keeps dropping in price; broke below $70;

Focus on fracking: most recent edition.

Top North Dakota non-energy story:

• 
  

Top North Dakota energy story:

• 
  

Geoff Simon's top North Dakota energy stories:

•  Quick connects.
  

Bakken economy:

Commentary:

Entertainment: 

Nine New Permits -- June 2, 2023

Locator: 44836B.  

Market at the close:

• the Dow closed up 2%
• the NASDAQ closed up barely 1%
• did your portfolio do better than that?
• DE: up 5.25%
• NVDA: down 1%
• AAPL: up 0.5%
• CVX: 2.7%
• T: down almost 4%
• OXY: up 2.7%
• UNP: up 1.52%
• CRH: up 1.6%
• TSLA: up 3%
  

OPEC+: discussing one million bopd cut.

Short-sellers:

• in the equity market in general, short-sellers had a really, really bad week;
• short-sellers in crude oil might want to pay attention; history doesn't repeat, but it certainly rhymes, as they say
  
• I'm sure Saudi watched the US Dow today with amazement -- what happened to short-sellers in the US Dow.

*************************
Back to the Bakken

Active rigs: 35.

WTI: $71.86.

Natural gas: $2.177.

Nine new permits, #39937 - #39945, inclusive:

• Operators: KODA Resources (8); Hunt;
• Fields: Fertile Valley (Divide County); Bailey (Dunn County)
• Comments: later.

Amazon, Apple, Tesla -- Pick The Outlier -- June 2, 2023

Locator: 44835AAPL.  

Link here.

This is (seriously) what Amazon is all about.

 

 
Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, and Elon Musk: three of the most brilliant entrepreneurs in my lifetime. 

Most fun: of the three, pick the outlier -- as an investment:

• Jobs (Apple)
• Bezos (Amazon)
• Musk (Tesla)

There is no right answer, but there is an outlier. I'll provide my thoughts later, if I remember.

WTI-Brent -- The New Benchmark -- June 2, 2023

Locator: 44834WTI.  

Link here. 

I understand oil is a commodity and I understand the concept of fungibility, but I can't but think this development won't be / will be bullish for American shale companies.

A Trifecta -- Putin's War -- June 2, 2023

Locator: 44833RUSSIA. 

The big story today -- Russia -- of this in the past week:

• Ukraine strikes Moscow
• Russian seaborne diesel plummets in May
• Russian economy implodes

Seaborne diesel plummets, link here:

Economy implodes, link here:

Drones and thrones:

From the linked WSJ article:

The opening months of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year drove an increase in oil and natural-gas prices that brought a windfall for Moscow. Those days are over.

As the war continues into its second year and Western sanctions bite harder, Russia’s government revenue is being squeezed and its economy has shifted to a lower-growth trajectory, likely for the long term.

The country’s biggest exports, gas and oil, have lost major customers. Government finances are strained. The ruble is down over 20% since November against the dollar. The labor force has shrunk as young people are sent to the front or flee the country over fears of being drafted. Uncertainty has curbed business investment.

“Russia’s economy is entering a long-term regression,” predicted Alexandra Prokopenko, a former Russian Central Bank official who left the country shortly after the invasion.There is no sign the economic difficulties are bad enough to pose a short-term threat to Russia’s ability to wage war. But state revenue shortfalls suggest an intensifying dilemma over how to reconcile ballooning military expenditures with the subsidies and social spending that have helped President Vladimir Putin shield civilians from hardship.

Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska warned this month that Russia is running out of cash. “There will be no money next year, we need foreign investors,” the raw-materials magnate said at an economic conference.

Having largely lost its European market next door, and with other Western investors pulling out, Moscow is becoming ever more reliant on China, threatening to realize long-simmering fears in Moscow of becoming an economic colony of its dominant southern neighbor.

Much more at the link.

Russia is a gas station on an island. And that was before Putin's war. 

From what I can tell, this pretty much summarizes Russia:

• Dr Zhivago
  
• Stalingrad;
• nukes;
• oil; and,
• not much else.

The big question: why has Putin not yet used tactical nukes?

The Market -- 11:19 A.M. EDT -- June 2, 2023

Locator: 44832INV. 

Updates

Later, 1:35 p.m. EDT, the VIX drops below 15.

Later, 1:33 p.m. EDT, overheard at a McDonald's in Omaha, Nebraska:

• Warren: Did you see the market today? The Dow is up over 600 points; trending toward 700.
• Charlie: Pretty disappointing.
• Warren: Say what?
• Charlie: Imagine what it would be if we weren't in a recession?
• Warren: Imagine what it would be if Trump were president, making America great again.

 Original Post

Two words: short sellers. Classic squeeze.

Along with short selling squeeze: YOLO, FOMO, MOJO. But, of the four, it's mostly about short selling squeeze.

Investors should be looking forward to the "Fed" raising rates by 25 basis points in June, with another two raises after that yet this year. In other words, three more raises in the "Fed rate" before the year is over, 25-basis points each time.

What a great country. A month from now, I'll be able to park money anywhere for 6% while looking for the "next big thing."

A reminder:

• One year ago, July 15, 2022: Nancy Pelosi "reveal": a new multi-million dollar investment in Nvidia.  At this post.

The great reset: March, 2023. 

Unemployment -- BLS -- May, 2023

Locator: 44831JOBS. 

Link here.

The media seems to prefer U-3. I prefer U-1 in a recession. I've talked about this before and my reasoning.

But seriously, does this look like a recession?

All these folks that are working will continue to pay "into" social security and Medicare. Just saying. And if working, not collecting unemployment benefits, though low-income folks do qualify for the earned-income tax credit.

Janet Yellen -- Her Champagne Weekend Begins Tonight -- June 2, 2023

Locator: 44830INV. 

The market at 10:17 a.m, ET., Friday, June 2, 2023:

The debt ceiling bill: some call it a kabuki dance. Not me. I call it a Charlie-Brown-Lucy-Van-Pelt-football joke --

• entirely predictable
• several frames leading up to the anticlimactic finish
• Charlie Brown: Lindsey Graham
• Lucy Van Pelt: Nancy Pelosi

The ending of this story was so anticlimactic it was not even the headline story in The WSJ today. The headline story: 

Debt bill is passed with incredibly little fanfare. Not even mentioned over at Drudge. I think it was passed before midnight, days before the "x-date."

Question:

• which party controls the White House? Which party controls the US House? Which party controls the US Senate?
• if any of your answers included "the GOP," you're not paying attention. LOL.

GOP caved; Lindsey Graham said he would kill the bill. I didn’t even see Lindsey’s name in any headline after the bill passed. Senate fast-track method was incredible — no fanfare, Schumer steamrolled this. The news media certainly didn’t see this coming. Or they hyped it to sell newspapers. As if anyone really cared.

VIX: trending toward 15. Whoo-hoo! The market at the open:

DVN: up almost 2% today and way, way, way off its highs. Let's go, Brandon.

Oil surges, as predicted, once the debt bill passed:

Hump Day -- Wow, What A Slow Day -- Not Much To Write About -- May 31, 2023

NOTE: this post is "out of chronological order." Note the date.

Locator: 44803SC.
Locator: 44803INV.

With regard to investing, some highlights:

• I started investing in 1984
• once my foundation (steady job, emergency savings, whole life insurance) was set, I started investing
• first investment: a no-load mutual fund, 20th Century, now American Century
• second investment: two more no-load mutual funds, a Vanguard fund and a Mutual Shares fund
• I fully funded all tax-avoidance investments, retirement funds first
• my first stand-alone equity: Burlington Northern Railroad (subsequently bought by BRK)
• second, San Diego Gas and Oil (?) ---> SRE
  
• I took investing very seriously, took several courses; didn't follow the market particularly closely
• because of the blog, I have gotten much better with regard to discipline
• discipline: developing a strategy, and executing that strategy (fairly) religiously
• "The Next Big Thing" -- started that "column no March 21, 2013, based on Netflix:
• trading at $25.90 that day
• high: $683 before the "crash
• today: $392
• for the record, I never invested in Netflix; it did not meet my criteria
  
• the second stock was AAPL -- on/about November 22, 2020
• it was about that time I added a new column for the blog: a column on semiconductor chips
• from, there, the third stock, TSM, January 11, 2021
• the fourth stock I highlighted: Devon -- August 7, 2021
• for me, Devon was a big, big deal
• the summer of 2021 was perhaps the most important period in my investing career
• I had plenty of time on the balcony of my sister's house overlooking Flathead Lake to research and reflect
• that's when I "discovered" Devon
• I "discovered" TSM slightly earlier but, again, it was the summer of 2021, that TSM became a huge deal for me
• from the summer of 2021 on, I began concentration on semiconductor chips, making that my #2 interest after my #1 interest, crude oil
• one can follow that history at this post.
• original post: November 22, 2020
• updates through today
• And this is where it gets interesting
• a year or so ago, and popping up over the years, the controversy of elected politicos investing in the market
• I've never had any problem with politicians investing in the market as long as the trades were / are publicized
• exhibit A, from the blog, Chips, semiconductor: link here:

July 15, 2022: Nancy Pelosi "revealed": a new multi-million dollar investment in Nvidia.

• On or about that date, I started investing in NVDA hand-over-fist as they say.
• July 15, 2022: $157.62
• today: $392.19
• thank you, Ms Pelosi
• Current investment strategy with regard to equities:
• I have the same philosophy as Motley Fool (will post later)
• I have a rolling 30-year investment horizon
• "rolling": each day I wake up, the thirty-year horizon extends one more day; the 30-year horizon does not end;
• I generally invest (add to my positions); I seldom sell (one exception: I use ATT as a place to park money for three to six months)
• my new money allocation is divided into several buckets; the percentages of those buckets will change over time
• e.g., earlier this year I had five buckets for "new money" that was invested
  
• 40%: large cap; generally must pay a dividend
• 30%: oil
• 20%: beat down tech, to include copper
• 5%: Daimler truck
• 5%: Big Pharma
• today:
• 50%: large cap; generally must pay a dividend
• 40%: transition; on hold
• 5%: Daimler truck
• 5%: Big Pharma
• today/transition:
• I am done with crude oil. I no longer add "new money" to crude oil.
• I am temporarily done with technology with one possible exception.
• which presents a quandary. What goes into that that second bucket, a huge bucket -- 40% of new money?
• that's a rhetorical question; I'm not looking for advice
• although having said that, I have to thank one reader -- who I believe has written me only once in ten years of blogging -- for giving me a recommendation regarding a tech stock
  
• I'm hoping I can replicate the summer of 2023 with my summer of 2021 with regard to investing
  
• we'll see 
• I'm leaning toward a particular company that crosses several disciplines
• big cap, tech, not semiconductor or AI, per se; does not pay a dividend (goes against my general investment philosophy but it's a not a deal-breaker
• 20% of "new money" could go there
• the other 20%? half in Big Pharma, research; half in Big Pharma, retail?

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.

All my posts are done quickly: there will be content and typographical errors. If anything on any of my posts is important to you, go to the source. If/when I find typographical / content errors, I will correct them. 

Again, all my posts are done quickly. There will be typographical and content errors in all my posts. If any of my posts are important to you, go to the source.

Motley Fool investing philosophy, link here.

101 Days Of Summer -- Day 7 -- June 2, 2023

Locator: 44829B.

Today, day 7:

• biking weather, scale 1 - 10: a twelve (12)
  
• a swimming day later this afternoon

Reading:

• The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer
• The New Yorker, "Words Fail," Rachel Aviv. 
• The victim's story sounds  --- well, as Monk would say, "something's not right here" --
• "here's the thing": no evidence of rape from what I've read so far

MAGA Republicans who were willing to force the US into default over benefits for the homeless and veterans need to read Rachel Aviv's article. 

Advice for high school students: never stop reading. Never stop growing. 

***********************
Health

For the archives.

Covid-19: the immediate family member with Covid-19 is recovering nicely. I don't know if that individual was prescribed Paxlovid.

Needle biopsy: another immediate family member had a needle biopsy yesterday -- no sign of cancer!

Two, Four, Six, Eight -- Who Do We Appreciate? June 2, 2023

Locator: 44828INV.  

VIX: trending toward 15. Whoo-hoo! The market at the open:

The gambler, "don't count your money at the table ..."

I don't get this talk about only five or eight -- two, four, six, eight -- who do we appreciate -- stocks taking the market higher. Every one of my portfolios is green -- and really green -- and the portfolios cover the entire spectrum.

Back To The Bakken -- June 2, 2023

Locator: 44827B.  

The debt ceiling bill: some call it a kabuki dance. I call it a Charlie-Brown-Lucy-Van-Pelt-football joke -

• entirely predictable
• several frames leading up to the anticlimactic finish
• Charlie Brown: Lindsey Graham
• Lucy Van Pelt: Nancy Pelosi

The ending of this story was so anticlimactic it was not even the headline story in The WSJ today. The headline story: 

Debt bill is passed with incredibly little fanfare. Not even mentioned over at Drudge. 

Question:

• which party controls the White House? Which party controls the US House? Which party controls the US Senate?
• if any of your answers included "the GOP," you're not paying attention. LOL.

GOP caved; Lindsey Graham said he would kill it. I didn’t even see Lindsey’s name in any headline after the bill passed. Senate fast-track method was incredible — no fanfare, Schumer steamrolled this. The news media certainly didn’t see this coming. Or they hyped it to sell newspapers. As if anyone really cared.

VIX: trending toward 15. Whoo-hoo! The market at the open:

DVN: up almost 2% today and way, way, way off its highs. Let's go, Brandon.

Oil surges, as predicted, once the debt bill passed:

****************************
Back to the Bakken

Active rigs: 36.

WTI: $72.03.

Natural gas: $2.199.

Peter Zeihan newsletter. E-mail campaign archive.

Sunday, June 4, 2023: 8 for the month; 118 for the quarter, 373 for the year
39243, conf, CLR, Meadowlark FIU 6-6HI,

Saturday, June 3, 2023: 7 for the month; 117 for the quarter, 372 for the year
39190, conf, Ovintiv, Rolfsrud 152-96-32-29-15H,
38967, conf, Hess, GO-Aslakson-156-97-2734H-6,
38629, conf, Whiting, Kannianen Federal 11-4TFHU,

Friday, June 2, 2023: 4 for the month; 114 for the quarter, 369 for the year
39294, conf, Petro-Hunt, Hot Rod 149-102-27B-26-3H,

RBN Energy: Hawaii -- the move away from fossil fuels is easier said than done.  

t has become abundantly clear over the past couple of years that energy transition isn’t going to be a straight line leading directly to abundant carbon-free power and a net-zero world. All sorts of obstacles have popped up, indicating that the energy industry’s trilemma of availability, reliability and affordability not only clash with each other, they can also conflict with environmental priorities. The challenge is being felt now in Hawaii, where a commitment to expanding energy production from renewable sources and tamping down the use of fossil fuels while also keeping prices under control and reducing pollution is turning out to be no easy feat. In today’s RBN blog, we look at Hawaii’s recent efforts to phase out coal- and oil-fired power generation, why that’s turned out to be easier said than done, and what it all means for environmental performance and energy prices. 

Temporary Post: Blogging Delayed For One Hour — June 2, 2023

Locator: 44826JOBS. 

Not ready for prime time:

Yesterday analysts missed the ADP number by 54%. Today, the jobs number was missed by 78%. 

Jobs:

• forecast:190,000
• actual: 339,000 

Someone at CNBC is completely missing how incredible this economy is. I’m sorry I missed Steve Liesman’s analysis. Not. 

Unemployment finally increased to 3.7% but still incredibly low. I still prefer U-1 vs U-3. I’ll post U-1 later. 

Liz Sonders addresses that. I’ll post graph when I start blogging. 

AAPL is up in pre-market trading. 

Debt bill is passed with incredibly little fanfare. Not even mentioned over at Drudge. 

GOP caved; Lindsey Graham said he would kill it. I didn’t even see Lindsey’s name in any headline after the bill passed. Senate fast-track method was incredible — no fanfare, Schumer steamrolled this. The news media certainly didn’t see this coming. Or they hyped it to sell newspapers. As if anyone really cared. 

NVDA up another $3.50 today. 

That Phoenix water story was so far off the mark, embarrassing. The WSJ explained it; it’s a non-story. TSM has huge problems in Phoenix but it’s not due to water. TSM up 3% in pre-market. As I was saying, TSM is having huge problems. 

Know who IS having huge problems? ChargePoint. IYKYK. 

Busy day for blogging. People who sold in May and went away …. wow …. what a mistake …. at least as of today. Maybe when the market crashes this month, we will hear “in June, the market to swoon.” 

**************************** 

Updates. Still waiting for the spellchecker and editor to get up out of bed before I can start blogging. Just because school is out for the summer, she thinks she can sleep in. While waiting: Liz. What I like about Liz -- she posts so many graphs every day, one can pick and choose the graph that supports your narrative. 

Exhibit A, link here:

Pre-market:

Healthcare: 20 best. Link here.

Oil surges, as predicted, once the debt bill passed:

 

The Big Story Tomorrow — The WSJ’s Assessment Of Russia’s Economy — June 1, 2023

Locator: 44826RUSSIA.