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Thursday, April 9, 2026

Amgen Update -- A Shout-Out To My Dad Who Taught Me The Most Important Thing About Investing -- April 9, 2026

Locator: 10010AMGEN.

The most important lesson about investing? Just do it. 

That's it. The most important lesson about investing. Just do it. 

I have not looked at Amgen in years. For unknown reasons, I was curious what it was doing today. And then with all the excitement about Intel today, it led to other questions. 

This is for the extended family members.  


 

The dot-com bubble was a rapid stock market surge and crash centered on internet-based companies, occurring roughly between 1995 and 2000, wiht the crash continuing until 2002. 

In 1998 my dad had the option to begin a position in Intel, which was getting a lot of press at the time, and Amgen. I have no idea how my dad would have even known about Amgen. But he chose Amgen over Intel and the rest is history.


My dad's position appreciated almost 74,000% over that time period and currently pays a nice dividend. 

Amgen initiated its regular quarterly quarterly dividend payout in 2011. Following a strategic shift announced in mid-2011, the company began returning capital to shareholders and has increased its dividend annually, positioning it as a consistent dividend payer within the biotechnology sector.

My father would have been 104 years old this year. 

I'll Be Off The Net For Awhile -- Reading -- But, WOW! -- What An Insight -- Just Noted -- And It's Not Being Reported Yet -- April 9, 2026

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Do we all agree that Iran was doing something with uranium?

Everything I've read suggests that the answer was "yes," Iran was doing something with uranium.

For those who write for public publication on this subject -- Iran and uranium -- no one has come up with the reason why? The fog is beginning to clear. Iran's 30-year strategic plan. 

So, the question is, "when was it first reported that Iran was doing something with uranium?"

Reply: 



Thirty years ago: 1996. So, that fits the timeline very nicely.

The fact that no one has publicly connected the dots (that I know of) speaks volumes. This is posted for the bragging rights. Looking forward to seeing the first op-ed on same. My hunch: Saudi Arabia was aware of this. Their failure to take action after the "revolution" is mind-boggling.

What was Trump doing in 1996?

For him, the best was yet to come. 

The two most underrated men in the 2020s: Elon Musk and Donald Trump. 

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The Book Page

Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Math Behind Modern AI, Anil Ananthaswamy, c. 2024 / 2025.

Today, the interview with Hopfield. See wiki.  
 
From the book:


 page 271: "how to efficiently train them."
 
George Cybenko. 
 
The wiki entry notes these two references, but neither is the classic paper noted by Ananthaswamy.


Here's the link. This is the classic paper that Hofield submitted to PNAS in 1982: 


 
Further notes on this book are elsewhere, but with regard to George Cybenko, look at this:
 

Intel -- They Say Lightning Never Strikes Twice -- In This Case, Not True -- Top Of The World, We've Only Just Begun -- April 9, 2026

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Disclaimer:

  • I own no shares in INTC (except perhaps in mutual funds, etc); and, probably never will.
  • see the blog's disclaimer.

Having said that, Intel under new management is incredibly fascinating.  

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Updates

I posted the original note at 8:21 a.m. -- and as soon as I went to check my e-mail, a reader sent me this link: Google expands partnership with Intel for AI chips. Link here


Ticker: at the open -- it looks like INTC will open slightly down, in line with the market sentiment. And then seconds later, up slightly, a new 52-week high for INTC.

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Original Post 

This was posted over on Blockonomi earlier this morning -- April 9, 2026. 


This chart is from yesterday and it will soon disappear -- as soon as today's market opens. It appears that at 8:08 a.m., disregarding earlier forecasts, INTC will hold onto its gains yesterday and actually open slightly higher.

Here's the earlier story with regard to the Intel - TeraFab partnership. Link here.

More excitement today: Teradyne.

Link here

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Top Of The World

Link here.  

Thursday -- April 9, 2026

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Intel: clearly the most exciting tech story right now  -- the Elon Musk-Intel partnership announcement. Link here. Intel is tracked here. We'll come back to this story in a stand-alone post later. This is really, really huge and it's only becoming clearer how huge it is as the story sinks in.

XOM vs CVX: somewhere out there today there's an investing article asking which is better, CVX or XOM as a dividend stock. Bottom line: it doesn't matter: one might as well have one or the other in their portfolio -- or both.  

Amgen: nothing really going on here. I just saw it in the news. Brought back great memories of my dad and his investing skills. How and why he bought CSCO, AMGN, AAPL when he did still amazes me. We'll have a stand-alone on AMGN later if I remember.  

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Back to the Bakken

WTI: well that dip didn't last long. Today, in pre-market trading, WTI is up a whopping $5.01, up 5.31%. Whoo-hoo. It will be fascinating to see how Trump responds to the faux-opening. Right now, a country on the edge of rushing toward the Stone Age has bragging rights to controlling the strait. That's how ineffective the GCC has become. WTI: at the moment, just under $100, again.

New wells reporting:

  • Friday, April 10, 2026: 26 for the month, 26 for the quarter, 183 for the year,
    • 42181, conf, BR, Abercrombie 2-12UTFH,
    • 40821, conf, Hunt Oil, Oakland 154-89-29-32H 1
    • 40820, conf, Hunt Oil, Oakland 154-89-19-18H 3,
    • 40635, conf, Hunt Oil, Oakland 154-89-32-5H-1, 
  • Thursday, April 9, 2026: 22 for the month, 22 for the quarter, 179 for the year,
    • 41870, conf, Formentera Operations, Wildcat Hollow-16-33-PGN S516HF, 
    • 41869, conf, Formentera Operations, Wildcat Hollow-16-33-PGN S614HF, 

RBN Energy: analyst update on Corpus Christi LNG export flow. Short report available with free account at this link.

RBN Energy: wow, wow, wow -- the best song in a long time -- "Eyes of the Ranger." Whoo-hoo. Link here. How the Iran War reshapes global gas and LNG this year and beyond. This will be good one -- compared RBN Energy analysis with my own thoughts. Published by Lisa Shidler and Lindsay Schneider. The archived link. Again, the link to the early release.

U.S. LNG has been on the fast track as new export capacity along the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast draws in increasing volumes of U.S. natural gas. But the impact of that unprecedented buildout has only intensified over the past several weeks as U.S. and Israeli forces launched surprise airstrikes in Iran, triggering retaliation that disrupted traffic through the Strait of Hormuz and knocked out key parts of Qatar’s LNG infrastructure. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll discuss how the conflict with Iran could impact the U.S. gas and LNG market in the short, medium and long term.

Today’s blog is a recap of our March 26 webcast, Invasion U.S.A. – U.S. LNG Update and Impacts of the War in Iran, available to our Backstage Pass, Arrow Model and LNG Voyager subscribers. The title of the webcast riffs on the 1985 action film Invasion U.S.A., which starred Chuck Norris as a one‑man wrecking crew fighting off a surprise assault on American soil. Predictably, the movie is a bit campy, but it fits the larger-than-life aura that Norris came to embody. Whereas we dove into the specifics around the war and LNG in the webcast, here we’ll outline the top issues.

To begin to understand the importance of the conflict in Iran on LNG markets, first note that the world’s largest gas field lies in the Persian Gulf between Qatar and Iran. Iran claims the northern part (green-shaded area to upper-right of dashed yellow line in Figure 1 below), which they call South Pars, while Qatar controls the southern part (green-shaded area to lower-left of dashed yellow line), called the North Dome. (The naming is kind of upside-down, if you ask us.)

Figure 1. The South Pars and North Dome Natural Gas Field. Source: RBN