Closing Out The Day -- July 22, 2019

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. 

HAL jumped 9% today after announcing earnings.

SDI. Coincidental to the earlier post/announcement, SDI reported earnings today. The company missed earnings expectations, $0.87 vs $0.89. Shares were up slightly, perhaps better said, flat, but the fact that shares "held," suggests to me a) folks knew the whisper number was closer ot $0.86; and/or, b) guidance was great.

Nucor: for investors, this name keeps popping up.

Futures: up slightly. Is there still some doubt about the budget deal? One week away, is there doubt about "Fed" rate cut. I'm not convinced the Fed will cut rates. If it does, a quarter point and the last cut this year? Later, this from zerohedge:

And, later, also from zerohedge:

Hmmmm! If this is accurate, it speaks volumes about the ability of the White House to "turn on a dime," to coin a phrase. A baggie of fentanyl is generally about 1/10th of a gram. The individual of interest was caught with 1,500 grams, which would yield about 15,000 doses on the street. Wholesale fentanyl runs about $6,000/kg; retail Fentanyl runs about $1.6 million/kg. Source. Obviously, prices vary considerably. New Hampshire has been particularly hard hit by opioid abuse, apparently #1 among US states for fentanyl-related deaths.

Sam Snead: 82; said  he should have been credited with 89. Tiger Woods, 81; Golf Digest says he should be credited with 95. Fight's on. Tiger Woods is 43 years old. Easily has ten more years if he can bear the pain. He can minimize the number of tournaments he plays but the PGA requires minimum number of starts each year. It appears there are only six more PGA tournaments this year.

No glass ceiling. Link here.

Can't Wait To See The Market Tomorrow -- July 22, 2019

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

Color me surprised. I had no idea this would happen so quickly. I honestly did not think this would happen before the August recess. Congress doesn't like doing anything until they absolutely have to. I guess they were afraid of hearing from their constituents during August when/if the market tanked.

Huge. But this is clearly the top non-energy story of the week. I suppose we need to see some of the details, but the headline and the lede blew me away. Link here.

Color me surprised.

Look how far out into the future this extends -- two years. That takes us well past the next presidential election, and maybe into the next mid-term cycle. Depends.

Debt? According to at least one Nobel Laureate, debt doesn't matter:

I find this whole economic "thing" absolutely fascinating.


Last Friday, in case you missed it:

Keeping America Great; Steel Mills All Along The Gulf Coast -- July 22, 2019

Updates

Later, 7:59 p.m. CT: after posting the original post, a reader noted --

It is virtually impossible to overstate the impact of an abundant, cheap energy supply ... most particularly when referring to industrial (high consuming) end users.

When we, the public, regularly note the benefits of 2 buck/gallon gasoline, these industrial heavyweights are scanning regions with 5 and 6 cent per kilowatthour with which to do their thing.

With Henry Hub pricing looking to stay low for decades, the latest iteration of Combined Cycle Gas Plants springing up all over, the USA will continue to be THE place for business, especially heavy manufacturing.

As a sharp counter point, virtually the ENTIRE Green New Deal would have taken this country in the completely opposite direction.  

Comment: when I first started blogging back in 2007, I called the Bush II era a "lost decade." Many others subsequently said the same thing. I think most of us thought a second "lost decade" would be virtually impossible, but Barack Obama managed to pull it off. Clearly, the US is starting to make up for lost time.

For much of the past decade (yes, it's been that long) I've opined that the major energy hiccup for the US was Obama killing the Keystone XL. I'm not so sure any more. If the Keystone XL had gone in on time, it's very possible the Bakken, the Eagle Ford, and the Permian may have taken another direction. Not ready for prime time, but I am starting to question whether killing the Keystone might have worked out to our advantage. Something to think about. 

Original Post

I find this fascinating. It is simply staggering what is happening from Corpus Christi to Houston to New Orleans. 

Link here. Data points:

• US steelmaker Steel Dynamics (SDI) chose this site over a site in Louisiana
• 30 miles northwest of Corpus Christ
• electric arc furnace: almost $2 billion to build; operations should begin in mid-2021
• 3 million short tons/year of hot-rolled coil (HRC)
• will also have a galvanizing line with a capacity of 550,000 st/year
• will also have a paint line with a coating capacity of 250,000 st/year 
• Sinton, TX:
• SDI's seventh EAF-based steel mill; third flat-rolled facility
• joins Butler, IN, and Columbia, MS -- the latter facilities can produce 6.4 million st/year of HRC

First question: what are all these still mills in the deep south, and not up in Pennsylvania, New York, etc.

By the way, it was George Bush II that really got Texas rolling when he declared Texas open for business some years ago.

Much more at the link, including news of other steel mills being built in the US.

Six New Permits -- July 22, 2019; Bakken Flooding Update

Active rigs:

$56.21	7/22/2019	07/22/2018	07/22/2017	07/22/2016	07/22/2015
Active Rigs	56	67	58	32	68

Six new permits, #36768 - #36673, inclusive:

• Operator: Hess
• Field: Capa (Williams); Beaver Lodge (Williams)
• Comment: Hess with six permits for a CA-Russel Smith/BL-A Iverson pad in Capa oil field/Beaver Lodge, section 24-155-96; note that some of the wells target the "Devonian" rather than the Bakken

That was all.

***********************************

Bakken Flooding

Bakken flooding update: link here. 

Notes From All Over, Part 1 -- July 22, 2019

The Royal Navy: unable to stand up to a third-rate navy, the Iranian Navy, or whatever they call themselves. 

Ice cream day: In 1984, President Ronald Reagan designated July as National Ice Cream Month and the third Sunday of the month as National Ice Cream Day. In 2019, National Ice Cream Day was yesterday, Sunday, July 21. But various outlets will continue to celebrate during this week. Sophia celebrates ice cream day as often as she can. LOL. 

Ronald Reagan: wow. Also appointed first woman to the US Supreme Court. GOP.

Fact checking, from Ther Burlington Free Press -- Did you miss out on National Ice Cream Day this past Sunday? Don't worry, the whole month of July is National Ice Cream Month, thanks to President Ronald Reagan. In 1984 there were two joint resolutions, one in the House of Representatives and one in the Senate, asking Reagan to proclaim July as National Ice Cream month and July 15 as National Ice Cream day.

Reagan signed a presidential proclamation on July 9, 1984, citing that ice cream was an important food to the American people and that the sweet frozen treat be celebrated in July.

Lutefisk? Celebrated throughout America during the autumn and winter.

Electoral College: needs to be free -- Bernie Sanders.

Apollo 11: I watched a lot of documentaries on the "moon landing" last week on "public television." The constant theme when they concluded the documentaries: "we" need to save the earth. LOL. George Carlin was right. I was not "moved" by the theme that "we" need to save the earth. What incredible hubris. Two things jumped out at me.

First: after decades of looking for extra-terrestrial intelligence, none has been found. In fact, the best "we've" been able to do it identify possible candidates where there may be intelligent life -- and yet "we" have found none.

Second: there is nothing "in the middle." At the far end of the continuum an incredibly brilliant, diverse Earth. Everything else: grey and black rocks (a lot of the universe reminds me of the burned out embers I clean out of the Weber grill every week) and/or gaseous orbs (e.g., Jupiter and the stars, including "our own" star). But that's it: the entire universe appears to be a) empty; b) black and grey rocks; c) gaseous orbs; d) one earth. Truly, truly awe-inspiring. Scientists, in general, do not like going down that road.

One exception: Privileged Planet. 

One of my favorite books is The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos is Designed for Discovery, Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay Richards, c. 2004.