Three New Permits; Four Permits Renewed -- July 9, 2025

Locator: 48701B.

Tech: I've suggested before that Oracle is the poor man's Palantir. This certainly suggests this could be correct. Link here.

Tech: Meta said to be looking to borrow $29 billion to build US data centers. Link here. That's a lot of blades.

Tech: link here. And here.

HES, CVX, XOM: what's the hold-up? 

Supposedly the arbitrator made the decision over the past weekend. It's been at least eight days. My hunch: the summary is lying underneath the Epstein file on Bondi's desk.

Tariffs:

• Brazil: massive tariffs being considered, at 50%, pending
  
• Japan: 25%; administration accused of not making time to meet with Japan's trade representative 
• my hunch: administration not interested in "more talk." Wanted to see some action.
• same with EU; tea leaves: Trump getting tired of "talk," being slow-rolled.
  
• probably not good that some started TACO talk.
  

Market:

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

WTI: $68.38.

Active rigs: 30.

Three new permits:

• Operator: Hunt Oil
• Field: Parshall (Mountrail)
• Comments:
• Hunt Oil has permits for two Burke wells and one Meyer well, SESE 36-155-90, 
• to be sited 864 / 906 FSL and 859 / 902 FEL.

Four permits renewed:

• Hunt Oil (2): two Oakland permits, Parshall oil field, Mountrail County;
• Enerplus: one fort Berthold permit, Eagle Nest, Dunn County;
• CLR: one Langved permit, Beaver Lodge, Williams County;

NVDA Just Hit A Market Cap Of $4 Trillion -- First Company Ever -- Chart To Watch Today -- Nvida -- NVDA -- As It Trends Toward $4 Trillion -- Magic Number: $163.93 -- July 9, 2025

Locator: 48700NVDA.

Hit the mark at 9:40 a.m. ET, just ten minutes after the open. Now trading just above $164 shortly after the market opens.

Has since dropped back a bit. 

History suggests NVDA will drop back at 10: 30 a.m. ET and then pivot and go through $164 by the close. Maybe $165. 

Up $96 billion today. 

Up 2.4%.

Here's the market right now:

Others: it looks like NVDA will lift all tech boats --

• AVGO: it looked like it might be down today in pre-market trading; now, up over $6.00
• new 52-week high today
  
• AMD: up $2.00
• TSM: up $4.00

Tech: senior analyst at CNBC has noted --

• equal weight tech ETFs have been dead money for quite some time;
• right now, it's all about Broadcom and Nvidia.

But again, on another huge day for the market, BRK-B is down.

Still waiting for HES, CVX, XOM: still no word on what the arbitrator said --

• HES: down slightly after huge jump yesterday
• CVX: ditto
• XOM: ditto

Google vs ChatGPT, link here:

The fallacy in the link / chart above: ChatGPT is just one of many chatbots. Google is pretty alone in its category.

"Click-To-Cancel" Rule -- "Judge Boasberg" Strikes It Down -- July 9, 2025

Locator: 48699FTC.

This is a no-brainer.

I think I will start using Judge Boasberg as a metonym for appellate / federal courts (not including the US Supreme Court).

I learned a long time ago not to subscribe to anything with automatic renewals. 

Link here. 

Focus On Dividends -- July 9, 2025

Locator: 48698DIV.

This is the challenge "old school," legacy, non-tech companies have right now -- keeping old and new investors interested in their companies in view of the gains being made in the Mag-7 or the Next-33. One way to do that: increase their dividends. In fact, that's about the only way.

EPD press release.

Link here. 

EPD just announced most recent quarterly dividend, it's an increase from the dividend, q/q. EPD dividend history. CVX dividend history.

*******************************************
Disclaimer
Brief Reminder 

 Briefly:

• I am inappropriately exuberant about the Bakken and I am often well out front of my headlights. I am often appropriately accused of hyperbole when it comes to the Bakken.
  
• I am inappropriately exuberant about the US economy and the US market.
• I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Apple. 
• See disclaimer. This is not an investment site. 
• 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 something appears wrong, it probably is. Feel free to fact check everything.
  
• 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. 
• Reminder: I am inappropriately exuberant about the Bakken, US economy, and the US market.
• I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Apple. 
• And now, Nvidia, also. I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Nvidia. Nvidia is a metonym for AI and/or the sixth industrial revolution.
• I've now added Broadcom to the disclaimer. I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Broadcom.
• I've now added Oracle to the disclaimer. I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Oracle.
  
• Longer version here.  

Hump Day -- July 9, 2025

Locator: 48697B.

Top state for business: CNBC's annual tease ... will be announced tomorrow. The CNBC hint for top state: "The Sting." ChatGPT says "The Sting" suggests Virginia. If so, it will be a repeat for the state, after it knocked off North Carolina a couple of years ago. If it's not Texas, CNBC is asking the wrong questions.

Amazon: Prime Day sales continue. Click here. 

Wow! Link here. If this doesn't get your attention, nothing will:

K-cups: I'm stocking up on coffee. Brand names I enjoy: anything with a 5-handle, that's about as good as I can find, 57 cents / K-cup. At the kiosk? $3.50 and more. 

Razor blades: stocking up. This is not rocket science.

Samsonite hardside: not getting but it's hard not to notice, high end item priced 50% off.

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

WTI: $68.45. 

• No one is talking about peak oil demand anymore, demand has surpassed predictions UAE energy minister -- link here.
  

New wells:

• Thursday, July 10, 2025: 17 for the month, 17 for the quarter, 447 for the year,
• 40849, conf, Grayson Mill, Bice 18-17 7H,
• Wednesday, July 9, 2025: 16 for the month, 16 for the quarter, 446 for the year,
• None.

RBN Energy: midstreamers using acquisitions and buyouts to shake up their portfolios. 

You might have thought the flurry of acquisitions and buyout deals that midstream companies entered into over the past couple of years would have satisfied their evident desire to refocus, expand and reshape their businesses. But you’d be wrong. In the first half of 2025 — a period of considerable uncertainty in the energy industry — midstream players continued to buy and sell pipelines and other important assets at a frenetic pace. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss some of the more interesting recent transactions and what they tell us about the midstream space. 

There’s been so much midstream M&A and asset trading in the post-pandemic era that we put together not one but two Drill Down Reports on the topic, the first in late 2023 and the second in February. Consider the magnitude and significance of the nine-, 10- and 11-figure deals we highlighted in those summaries, which included Enterprise Products Partners’ acquisition of Navitas Midstream and Piñon Midstream (total value $4.2 billion); Energy Transfer’s purchase of Crestwood Energy Partners, WTG Midstream and Lotus Midstream ($11.8 billion); and ONEOK’s deals to buy — get this — Magellan Midstream Partners, EnLink Midstream and the Midland Basin part of Medallion Midstream for a cool $29 billion.

And don’t forget Sunoco LP’s May 2024 acquisition of NuStar Energy ($7.3 billion). Or Plains All American, which in January announced three smaller deals (including the acquisition of Ironwood Midstream) totaling $670 million and oh, by the way, in mid-June reached an agreement to sell its Canadian NGL business to Keyera Corp. for C$5.15 billion (US$3.25 billion). And that’s not all Plains is up to. In February it acquired the remaining 50% interest in the Cheyenne Pipeline (a 94-mile crude oil pipeline in Wyoming) and in May it closed on the $55 million purchase of a crude oil gathering system in the Midland.

Today, we’re going to focus on a handful of deals that offer a representative sample of recent purchases and sales.

Brookfield Infrastructure Partners/Colonial Pipeline

We begin with a big one: the plan by Brookfield Infrastructure Partners (BIP) and its institutional partners to buy the Colonial Pipeline system from its five co-owners — Koch Industries, KKR, pension fund Caisse de Dépôt et Placement du Québec, Shell, and Australian investor fund Industry Funds Management — for about $9 billion. The deal is expected to close later this year.

The 5,500-mile Colonial system (green lines in Figure 1 below) is a critically important refined products delivery network. Its primary route (from Houston to Linden, NJ) consists of four distinct segments, which, like the “arms” and “legs” of an X, meet at Greensboro, NC. One of the two Houston-to-Greensboro lines moves gasoline (Line 1; capacity 1.4 MMb/d) and the other line (Line 2; capacity 1.2 MMb/d) is dedicated to moving middle distillates (diesel and jet fuel).

Figure 1. Colonial Pipeline and NGPL Systems. Source: RBN 

BRK Vs The Market -- Chart Of The Day -- July 9, 2025

Locator: 48696CHIPS.

Updates

July 20, 2025: link here.

Original Post

Link here. The Buffett Indicator: at its highest level ever. Ever.

Charts:

Five-day:

One-month:

Five-year:

***********************************
Re-Posting

A couple of days ago,  I posted a note about BRK / Warren Buffett being on the wrong side of history. See below, below the fold.

Today, Barron's discusses BRK / Warren Buffett and is much more optimistic than I am with regard to current state of affairs over at BRK. Barron's, as I read the article, is way too optimistic and way off the mark.

Barron's provides six reasons why BRK has lagged the market and is even behind its S&P 500 benchmark. Without question the authors have completely missed the mark. BRK is behind the market because Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett simply and completely missed the AI revolution. Their investment in Apple was not an AI investment. It was simply an "old school" investment and right now Buffett, et al, are resting on their "old school" laurels. 

Quick: name the top ten movers and shakers in the NASDAQ 100. Quick, name the ten companies that have a market cap of $1 trillion (or trending toward $1 trillion).

Now, name the top ten holdings of BRK.

Compare the two lists.

End of discussion.

Back to the ticker. "Old school" folks remain excited that BRK's return for the past five years is 165%. Yes, that is quite incredible. Really, really reassuring, but:

• ORCL: 313%
• NVDA: 1,420%
• AVGO: 762%
• PLTR: 1,360%

There's no way apologists for BRK / Warren Buffett can sugarcoat BRK's share appreciation in light of ORCL-NVDA-AVGO-PLTR numbers. Two of those (ORCL and AVGO) have been around forever and Charlie Munger, for all the reading he did, should not have missed them. NVDA surged but there was still more than enough time for BRK to jump on that bandwagon. I can sort of see why they -- Charlie and Warren -- missed Palantir -- but not really -- they have some of the brightest people working for them and someone should have seen Palantir coming. 

At the end of the day, apologists for Buffett keep talking about making that one big investment Buffett is looking for. They often cite BNSF. To see how. BNSF is doing, the proxy is UNP: up 42% over the past five year. Times have changed. It would be better to make ten relatively big tech investments and even if only one "hit," it would more than make up for the other nine that don't.

BNSF: one of Buffett's huge success stories. Up 42% in the past five years. Starting from July 15, 2024, one year ago, UNP is absolutely flat. Flat. And it's no longer a growth company. The best it has going for it (UNP) is its 2.3% dividend. 

Oil is dead money. Really, really dead money. BRK made a lot of money on OXY using methods I don't understand (warrants, etc) but once that plays out (probably already has) OXY is really, really dead money. I hope I'm wrong. I still hold a lot of oil stocks in my portfolio.

Warren Buffett will look like a genius if Apple / AAPL gets back on track but it's a two-edge sword -- if AAPL gets back on track, folks will wonder why in the world Warren sold so much of his only tech stock of note.

Right now, Warren Buffett looks like a stodgy "old school" mutual fund sitting back, enjoying 5 to 7 percent return on its cash hoard. 

Meanwhile, over the past five years:

• ORCL: 313%
• NVDA: 1,420%
• AVGO: 762%
• PLTR: 1,360%

 ***********************************
BRK / Warren Buffett Lagging The Market

From July 2, 2025, on the blog:

*******************
Warren Buffett: On The Wrong Side Of History?
It's Beginning To Look That Way

The S&P 500 hit another record high today.

This is starting to not look good.

BRK-B's benchmark: the S&P 500.

BRK-B:  down 12.5% from its 52-week high.

*******************************************
Disclaimer
Brief Reminder 

 Briefly:

• I am inappropriately exuberant about the Bakken and I am often well out front of my headlights. I am often appropriately accused of hyperbole when it comes to the Bakken.
  
• I am inappropriately exuberant about the US economy and the US market.
• I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Apple. 
• See disclaimer. This is not an investment site. 
• 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 something appears wrong, it probably is. Feel free to fact check everything.
  
• 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. 
• Reminder: I am inappropriately exuberant about the Bakken, US economy, and the US market.
• I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Apple. 
• And now, Nvidia, also. I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Nvidia. Nvidia is a metonym for AI and/or the sixth industrial revolution.
• I've now added Broadcom to the disclaimer. I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Broadcom.
• I've now added Oracle to the disclaimer. I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Oracle.
  
• Longer version here.