US equity futures: look surprisingly good -- okay, not a surprise, absolutely expected.
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.
For Investors
Post-Biden Election
Could China move on Taiwan in 2021?
Re-locations: tracked here.
US politics: tracked here.
Batteries: link here.
Prior to Biden Election
Periodically I post a commentary to bring readers up to date with regard to my interests other than the Bakken. These are the major stories that currently interest me. This post will be linked at the block of commentaries at the sidebar at the right.
Covid-19 pandemic:
Saving(s) rate:
Mass transportation: dead
All things shale
Refineries going away.
US stock market investing.
How Covid-19-changes America
The big migration, commercial and residential, the meme.
Corporate moves: California to Texas
NYC: another national lock down will be the final nail in this city's coffin.
Saudi Arabia in deep doo-doo;
Mexico going down the road to Venezuela:
The US grid:
Forest management:
Investing in general:
American companies that fascinate me:
Companies that don't fascinate me:
EVs are not on my radar scope: new page here.
Graphics, miscellaneous:
Re-posting. This is an incredibly good article on so many levels.
Flood of cash for investors:
Big Oil's renewable shift seen flooding investors with cash -- Bloomberg. Early this week COP made a huge announcement along this same line. COP is linked at the sidebar at the right. The story has a data point that I brought up years ago and no one else has mentioned it until now. [Obviously it's been mentioned before/elsewhere but I've not been able to find other examples.]So, the story.
The lede:
Shareholders of global oil giants will be “drowned” in cash from dividends and buybacks for the next 20 years as the firms shift their capital structure to finance renewable projects, according to Rystad Energy.Majors such as Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp. have traditionally had to hoard cash as they looked to their own balance sheets to fund billion-dollar megaprojects, founder Jarand Rystad said at his firm’s annual summit in Singapore.That will change as they gravitate to wind and solar projects, which tap debt markets backed by project financing for as much as 95% of their cost, he said.The shift will create huge amounts of surplus cash that majors can return to investors as they increasingly tap pension funds and other lenders for lower-risk renewable projects, said Rystad. It underscores the massive changes oil and gas giants will need to undertake as they transition to wind and solar projects, the fastest-growing sources of energy.Again, this is from Bloomberg, not a source that is usually inappropriately exuberant about Big Oil. LOL.
It would be interesting for the analysts who wrote the article above (and the studies that led to the story) respond. My hunch is that though things look bleak right now, the final chapter has not yet been written on this subject.
Disclaimer: I am inappropriately exuberant about the Bakken.
Anyone have any doubts about Apple?
Note this "urgent" update from the school that Sophia will be "attending" tomorrow.
We are so excited to have your child in First Grade at O.C. Taylor this year!
The school day begins at 7:40 each morning.
We encourage your child to use the time from 7:40-8:00 a.m. to prepare for the school day by locating the Learning Toolkit and folder that was given at the Meet/See the Teacher Drive Thru.
This is also a great time to unplug the school iPad from the charger and get it ready to join Webex.
All First Graders and First Grade Teachers will meet at 8:00 a.m. on Webex for the first day of school on Monday, August 17. If you encounter any technical difficulties when logging in on Monday morning, please call the GCISD help desk at: 817-251-5629. If your child has forgotten their username and password, please contact the GCISD help desk. We do not have a list of their usernames/passwords.Wow, Sophia with her own username and password. Awesome.
But look at that in bold: I don't know the details but it certainly sounds as if students were issued an iPad.
And, if so, this is happening all across the country.
On another note. Sophia has been attending Tutor Time / Montessori for the past couple of years. The mobile device they use at Tutor Time / Montessori? The Apple iPad.
They have a bank of iPads in Sophia's classroom. My hunch is that they will be doubling the size of that iPad bank by the end of the year. I assume Facebook, Amazon, YouTube are blocked. Not sure about Google and/or Yahoo.
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.
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Texas Wildflowers
-- by Sophia; August 15, 2020
-- age six years and 1.5 months
The US national debt doesn't matter ... Paul Krugman ...
....until it does -- ZeroHedge.
Forbes says national debt to be $78 trillion at the end of the Kamala Harris presidency. The lede:
The coronavirus pandemic pushed the government into the proverbial corner, prompting it to borrow heavily from the future to ward off a serious threat today. Without this intervention, the U.S. economy would be in a much worse recession or possibly even a depression. Even though borrowing excessively may have been the lesser of two evils, the burgeoning debt will have ramifications in the future.
With the debt approaching $27 trillion, and projected to rise to $78 trillion by 2028, it will present significant challenges. How has the national debt changed during past presidential administrations? How will a Biden or Trump win in November impact the future? How will the current fiscal crisis affect future taxation?
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US Supreme Court Staffers Burning The Midnight Oil
Prepping For Every Contingency
The Covid-19 pandemic is already having an impact on elections in the United States, with more questions arising as November draws nearer. We asked Professor Douglas Spencer, a professor of law and public policy at UConn, to explain what is happening and what the long-term implications may be.
If this were a sports tournament, the semifinals:
The finals: TBD
Pad drilling: I had expected to see this earlier, maybe a year ago, but we are finally seeing it -- the "mass effect" pad drilling. See the list of wells coming off the confidential list this next week -- we've seen this off and on over the last twelve months, but it's now become the norm. I think it's too early to call it Bakken 4.5 but I'm considering it.
Bakken 4.5 would be "pad completions become the norm" in the Bakken.
"New" and very common well designations started appearing just as we went to Bakken 4.0: SI/A; F/A; F/NC. Link here for examples. SI/A are wells that have been completed, have come off the confidential list, but are immediately shut in, sometimes with no production or very minimal production (less than 500 bbls) but often 15 days of great production, such as 17K bbls crude oil over 14 days. I didn't know whether to highlight them in "red" or "blue," but because they came off confidential list "on time," had been completed and had production following a frack, I highlighted them in "red." F/A; F/NC were wells that producing wells (DUCs) reported as completed. It appears that in Bakken 4.0 we will have wells that come off the confidential list, or the SI/NC list, but are immediately shut in or choked back significantly. See this post, dated March 26, 2020, first time I tagged a post with "Bakken_4.0."Bakken 101: across all "eras."