Best Books Of 2018 -- NY Times -- December 19, 2018

Still time for last-minute gifts? Got books?

Link here. The book(s) that caught my interest. Only one, sorry to say:

The Personality Brokers: The Strange History of Myers-Briggs and the Birth of Personality, Merve Emre (Doubleday). On the face of it, this is supposed to be a history of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator; it turns out to be something much stranger — an inventive and beguiling biography of the idiosyncratic mother-daughter pair who developed the indicator using their own, decidedly unscientific, interpretations of human behavior. If there’s a theme in this book, woven throughout and never belabored, it’s that the self is more slippery than we allow. (Read the review.)

Winners and losers:

The Market, Energy, And Political Page, Part 3, T+44 -- December 19, 2018

The Fed: will raise the "rate" another quarter point today, all but guaranteeing a recession next year. That's fine. Great opportunity for those with a long horizon. Some publicly traded companies may take the opportunity to "re-organize." LOL.

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial, job, travel, or relationship decisions based on anything you read here or think you might have read here.

Local economy: yesterday, the traffic was so bad in the local area around our new mall that it was impossible to get around by car. I managed to find an "escape route." I drove home, got my bicycle, and then explored the new mall. It is incredible. It's an "outdoor" mall -- a gazillion anchor stores -- all of which have a nice parking lot in place. I guess one can divide it into four phases. The first phase was the Target store and a huge, huge field, and then a Walmart on the other side of a small sleepy country road. That was all there was when we moved here in 2013.

Then phase two: about five new stores including Belk's and Dick's and Tuesday morning and Five Below and Dave & Buster's. Several new fast food restaurants, Those went up in 2014, or thereabouts. Then the huge build-out that began in 2016 or thereabouts. You name it, and it's there, including a hotel (are they called motels or hotels, these days?). I don't think I've quite seen anything like it before. How fast it grew; how much they squeezed in; how much more they plan to build. Best restaurant? Hopdoddy's? Yesterday on my bike I discovered a whole new area in the complex, including a brand new movie theater -- with bar and restaurant. Across from the theater, a sushi and hibachi place. The theater prices are very, very competitive. $7.50 per senior; about $8.00 for non-senior adults.

The satellite image below was probably taken in the summer of 2017, maybe 2016. They moved quickly. I was only able to get about 2/3rds of the area into the screenshot. The new apartment/townhouse complex is not shown. The Super Walmart is farther south, off the screenshot at the bottom. The shopping center is right at the apex of the triangle formed by the shopping mall, Ft Worth, and Dallas. DFW airport is about a mile to the east.

He lost his base.

The Market, Energy, And Political Page, Part 2, T+44 -- December 19, 2018

Mark Perry has some great Monday night links.

Also, note, at the same link: organic farming = inefficient farming. Inefficient farming will increase emissions and do nothing to improve the environment. Another scam.

And finally, the internet is faster without Obama-era internet rules. Who wudda thought?

Feeling Cynical This Morning, Are We? -- December 19, 2018 -- The Market, Energy, And Political Page -- T+44

Call for the wall: like global warming, "the call for a wall" appears to be simply playing to the "base" and a "fund-raising" issue. Apparently it wasn't all that important. The delta between $5 billion (Trump) and $2 billion (Congress) is $3 billion. The cost of a B-2 bomber, according to a wiki source, $2.1 billion. Actually, there's a bit of irony here: according to news reports yesterday, Trump will get "his wall." But it will be farther south than he implied. It will be a wall along the southern border of Mexico, and it will be paid for with US money.

Antarctic: so, tell me, again. When does it ever get warm enough in the Antarctic for any melting? See this link.

Fool me once: yesterday morning, I was unable to get to a headline story that said the Salvation Army put out an "urgent plea" with regard to its "red bucket" campaign.  I was curious what the "urgent plea" was all about. I was worried that elves might be stealing the buckets or playing pranks on the bell ringers. So I googled salvation army red bucket urgent plea. It turns out that the Salvation Army apparently puts out an "urgent plea" several days about this time every year. This was just the first page of "hits":

Active Rigs In North Dakota Hold Steady At 67 -- December 19, 2018

Wells coming off confidential list today -- Wednesday, December 19, 2018:

• 34205, SI/NC, Hess, BB-Chapin-151-95-0506H-9, Blue Buttes, no production data,
• 34204, SI/NC, Hess, BB-Chapin-151-95-0506H-8, Blue Buttes, no production data,

Active rigs:

$46.73	12/19/2018	12/19/2017	12/19/2016	12/19/2015	12/19/2014
Active Rigs	67	54	41	64	182

RBN Energy: part 4, how responsive will Cove Point LNG exports be to economics?

The latest weather forecasts for the second half of December have taken the edge off the U.S. natural gas market and reduced the chance of a true doomsday storage scenario. But U.S. gas storage inventories nonetheless remain at historically low levels, and long-term weather forecasts are notoriously fickle. So this winter could still see a resurgence in volatility before the market finds a balance. And while Henry Hub prices went on a wild ride earlier this month before settling back in below $4/MMBtu, for most of December thus far, Eastern gas prices have traded at levels that make LNG exports from there uneconomic. In today’s blog, we continue our review of the winter U.S. gas market with a closer look at how Cove Point Liquefaction (CPL) might respond to high prices.

Earlier we analyzed how low gas storage inventories heading into winter set the market up for more gas price upside — and more gas price volatility — than has been the case in recent years, particularly if winter weather turns unusually cold. And indeed, as cold weather materialized early in the 2018-19 heating season, the NYMEX Henry Hub gas price took off, then bounced up and down within the $4-5/MMBtu range through November before mild December weather forecasts brought the January contract down to about $3.75/MMBtu.

We pointed out that the traditional governor for gas prices — switching between gas and coal in U.S. power generation — may not materialize in the same way it has in recent years, due to low coal inventories and some structural changes in the coal market.

We outlined the economics (and logistics) of turning off Sabine Pass LNG exports, coming to the conclusion that Henry prices would need to reach at least $5.50/MMBtu before we saw a material reduction in feedgas volumes.