Thursday, February 20, 2020

Post-Debate; Nevada -- Let's Not Over-Think This -- February 20, 2020

EIA weekly petroleum report: I assume the weekly EIA petroleum report will be delayed / released tomorrow, Friday, February 21, 2020, due to the holiday earlier this week. If I'm wrong, I'm sure some reader will let me know. Thank you in advance. [I was wrong; report has been released. Report summary here. The report was delayed a day; I forgot that the report normally comes out on Wednesdays. Sorry.] See comments.

Let's check the market:
  • two of the three indices up slightly;
    • NASDAQ down 7 points, but it has had a huge run; better than the other two, I believe 
    • individual ticker symbols:
      MPC: at $59.63, up 3.40%; up $1.96; paying 4%
    • AAPL: down 30 cents, or 0.05% -- which be the way is about how much the average global temperature will change over the next century, 0.05%; AAPL down due to coronavirus fears, they say;
    • ETFC (E*Trade): up 25% (this was predictable following Schwab-TD Ameritrade)
    • SRE: up slightly after being down yesterday
    • MDU, on a buying binge late, is up slightly today;
    • BKH: down slightly
    • D: up 0.7%
    • ENB: up slightly
    • EPD: up half a percent, paying almost 7%; trading at $26; target: $34;
    • OKE: up 2%; trading at $78.28, target: $76.73; paying almost 5%;
    • UNP: up slightly; trending toward its 52-week high; 
Disclaimer: this is not an investment site.  Do not make any investment, financial, career, travel, job, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here.

Re-posting: ETFC (E*Trade): up 25% (this was predictable following Schwab-TD Ameritrade).


Fact-Checking Breaking News -- February 20, 2020

Updates

Later, 10:41 p.m. Central Time: I spoke too soon. Market sell off. Dow down 310 points; down 1%. Reason: "a" Federal Reserve governor said this morning: don't expect any rate cuts any time soon. Buying opportunity. Panic vs FOMO. Traders on the floor, according a Fox Business News talking torso -- this has to do with coronavirus out of China. Yeah, panic. Sell-off began immediately after WHO press conference: pandemic. Reminds me of the Obama era; following every one of his speeches, it seemed, the market fell. Gold at 7-year highs. GS: probable correction; coronavirus not adequately factored in.


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.


Original Post

Fake news: we're so lucky to have the internet. We can do fact checking ourselves. Here's the top of the banner headline over at Yahoo!Finance! OMG! Stocks drifting lower! The Trump economy is tanking! Time to sell. Coronavirus will get us all.


Here's the rest of the story:
  • all three major indices reached all-time highs yesterday, although two of the three did not close at all-time highs, pulling back a little before the end of the day;
  • today, after the market hit all-time highs, we would expect some profit-taking; and, 
  • the pundits provided that narrative -- coronavirus fears / stocks drift lower:
In fact, all three major indices -- after hitting all-time record highs yesterday, are drifting higher:



**********************************
Post-Debate

This morning I got up early -- prepare for an early morning of Uber-granddaughter driving -- eager to see how "Morning Joe" would report the debate.

They were interviewing some "scholar."

The question: "Which candidate has the gravitas to be the next commander-in-chief?"

The answer, and I kid you not: "It was a great debate, nice to see come competition."

In other words: no one on stage had the gravitas to be the next commander-in-chief. That's probably not the question that MSNBC executives want their talking heads to ask.

*************************
To Answer Your Question

"Yes, senator, to answer your question, I am calling you dumb. I am not mocking you. Facts are facts."

I was aware that Senator Klobuchar -- a legend in her own mind, and said to be the smartest candidate of either party -- could not remember or did not know the name of the Mexican president.

What I did not know, from the AP:
And ongoing animosity flared between Buttigieg and Klobuchar when the former Indiana mayor slammed the three-term Minnesota senator for failing to answer questions in a recent interview about Mexican policy and forgetting the name of the Mexican president. [Did she forget or did she not know? Huge difference.]
Buttigieg noted that she’s on a committee that oversees trade issues in Mexico and she “was not able to speak to literally the first thing about the politics of the country.”
She shot back: “Are you trying to say I’m dumb? Are you mocking me here?”
Obviously, Klobuchar was not punching above her weight last night.

By the way, the Founders were smart to include a minimum age limit for president (otherwise AOC would have been on the stage) but they really, really, really dropped the ball when they failed to include a maximum age limit. That was brought home when VP Biden, although unable to name them, mentioned that he had met a dozen past Mexican presidents, including, no doubt, President General Antonio López de Santa Anna. 

Notes From All Over, Part 1 -- February 20, 2020

The coronavirus story update:
  • link here;
  • Chinese "change" way of reporting numbers (again)
  • despite that, interesting update
Fact check: Maria keeps saying the Morgan Stanley-E*Trade deal is the biggest banking deal since the banking crisis back in 2007 - 2008. You decide:
  • Schwab - TD Ameritrade deal: $26 billion
  • Morgan Stanley -  E*Trade: $13 billion
  • the reason she can say that this is the biggest bank deal since 2008: three of the four are not banks; Morgan Stanley is the only bank
  • my thoughts: splitting hairs / quibbling / headline
Disclaimer: this is not an investment site.  Do not make any investment, financial, career, travel, job, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here.

Boom: I missed a couple of opportunities. Bought early (good) but sold too soon (bad): ABBV, PLUG. This one I did not miss (hallelujah!): MPC. Up 2.16% yesterday; up 4.61% in pre-market trading today. And pays 4%. And I bought is specifically as a momentum stock not too long ago; as a rule I don't invest in refineries.

Good luck to all: off the net for awhile. Granddaughter-Uber driving.

Japan: Back To The Future (Shhhh! Coal) -- Re-Posting With Graphics -- If You Have Time For Only One Story -- February 20, 2020

Back to the future: if you have time to read only one story, this is the story. Over at Watts Up With That: Japan! Back to fossil fuel (shhh! coal). This is being reported by the Midget Oligarch Reporting on News Service (MORONS):
  • MJaGA
  • a lot of graphs
  • a lot of short clips


WTI Flirting With $54 -- Thursday, February 20, 2020

Back to the future: if you have time to read only one story, this is the story. Over at Watts Up With That: Japan! Back to fossil fuel (shhh! coal). This is being reported by the Midget Oligarch Reporting on News Service (MORONS):
  • MJaGA
  • a lot of graphs
  • a lot of short clips
Shale divs: three shale producers competing to see who can grow dividends to meet investor demands: Concho Resources Inc., Diamondback Energy Inc., and Devon Energy Corp. Bloomberg via Rigzone.

Boom: US oil export story has really just started. Rigzone contributor.
Growth has been particularly impressive since the trade war with China (having a 5 percent tariff on U.S. crude) has effectively taken the world’s biggest import market away. For example, U.S. crude exports to China in November were just 62,000 b/d, compared to 231,000 b/d in 2018. Compensating, Canada, South Korea, and the UK have become the largest U.S. crude importers. Canada, for instance, imported about 170 million barrels of U.S. crude last year. This is a staggering 11-fold boom since 2010, even more notable since Canada is itself a country with rising production amid flat demand.

Fast-growing India has also become more vital for U.S. oil exporters. The world’s third largest consumer imported almost 95 million barrels of U.S. crude in 2019, a 10-fold bounce from 2017 alone. Refinery-short Mexico has dominated product purchases, taking in some 65 percent of U.S. gasoline exports and 33 percent of diesel sales. Natural gas liquids are also quickly gaining market share in the U.S. export complex, quadrupling since 2013 to ~1.9 million b/d in 2019.

Looking forward, the U.S. oil export story has really just started. China, for instance, just announced that it will half its tariff on U.S. crude to 2.5 percent and buy nearly $55 billion in U.S. energy over the next two years. This will surely put crude in the spotlight: China still has a 25 percent tariff on U.S. LNG. The prize is obvious. At 10.2 million b/d, China’s crude imports in 2019 were up 10 percent and set a record for a 17th straight year. 
Boom: oil demand growth to quintuple next year. Rigzone
  • 2020 demand: a reduction in growth demand by 793,000 bopd
  • 2021 demand: a huge demand in growth; up by 2.34 million bopd
Boom: Morgan Stanley to acquire E*Trade, in $13 billion deal. Great news for Schwab. 

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

Active rigs:

$53.992/20/202002/20/201902/20/201802/20/201702/20/2016
Active Rigs5666564038

Wells coming off the confidential list:

Thursday, February 20, 2020: 47 for the month; 154 for the quarter, 154 for the year:
  • 36691, SI/NC, Petro Harvester, FTH1 22-15 161-92B, Foothills, t--; cum 7K over 27 days;
  • 36284, 1,243, Nine Point Energy, Hovde E 150-100-6-7-6H, Spring Creek, t9/19; cum 128K 12/19;
  • 34361, 1,733, EOG, Liberty LR 49-1109H, 4 sections, Parshall, t8/19; cum 128K 12/19; see this note;
  • 33511, 1,769, EOG, Liberty LR 50-1109H, ICO, Parshall, t8/19; cum 174K 12/19; see this note;
RBN Energy: NuStar reaping benefits of Permian gathering and export investments.
The fortunes of U.S. midstream companies in 2020 and beyond will be largely determined by how shrewdly they invested during the frenzied infrastructure build-out of the past few years. One of the most interesting case studies is San Antonio-based NuStar Energy, a master limited partnership born in 2001 to hold refiner Valero Energy’s midstream assets and spun off as a separate entity in 2007.
In May 2017, as the industry was still recovering from the late 2014 plunge in crude oil prices, the MLP made a major play to capture growing Permian production through the ~$1.5 billion acquisition of Navigator Energy, which owned a crude oil gathering, transportation, and terminaling system in the Midland Basin. The purchase was widely panned as overpriced by analysts and investors, and NuStar’s unit price plummeted by 60%. But by 2019, the company’s Permian acquisition — and soaring exports from its Corpus Christi terminal — drove big year-on-year gains in NuStar’s fourth-quarter 2019 operating income and EBITDA. Today, we preview our new Spotlight report on NuStar.