Wow, I'm Gone For One Day And Social Media Explodes -- December 13, 2021

Reality sucks: the Bakken revolution (fracking) -- the leading technological innovation that drove reduced CO2 emissions over the last decade, not renewables

• Montana Bakken: began in 2000
• North Dakota Bakken: began in 2007

Reality sucks:

• in Europe right now, it costs 2 - 3x more to charge an EV than it is to power an ICE
• well, you know what I mean

There you go, Pocohontas and Bernie: 

• Brandon won't extend student loan relief; student load payments to restart February 1, 2022 -- source, Forbes -- plenty of jobs available to help pay off student loans
• 2022 is an election year, is it not?
  

Asking for a friend: is GasBuddyGuy being sarcastic, or living in a parallel universe? He tweets today:

• the national average is now $3.323 / gallon and falling -- should be under $3.30 / gallon in the next 72 hours 

I'm tired of the whining: I'm talking about all the folks going nuts over Omicron

• Alec Baldwin has killed more people that Omicron
• California: governor reinstates statewide mask mandate (remember: the state had an opportunity to recall him -- he's now bullet-proof)

Bitcoin: from "Walter Bloomberg": "Boe's Bailey says crypto investors may lose all their investment. Link here. Some social comments:

• it's always surprising when people who benefit most from the legacy banking system warn of the risks involved with bitcoin. Shocking even.
• it's almost like, it's a pyramid scheme?
• I had not idea crypto was volatile
• meanwhile in Turkey
• instead, let the government take all your money through inflation

Net-zero:

• if the entire EU went net-zero today and stayed net-zero for the rest of the century, the impact would be a rise in global temperature by 0.14°C -- Bjorn Lomborg
  

US dry natural gas production: to reach 97.5 billion cubic feet per day by December, 2022, one year from now

• would be the highest US monthly production on record
• source: EIA;

Los Angeles: from an out-of-town visitor:

• dinner where pasta entrees were $70 - $90
• sushi rolls for $22
• avocado toast for $18.50, and, of course,
• gasoline: $5.25 / gallon
  

Tankers:

• if the pandemic ends and oil supply can keep up with demand, tankers will do well in 2022
• if the pandemic ends and oil supply cannot keep up with demand, tankers will be at least 10x in 2024

Rimrock With Two New Permits; Sixteen Permits Renewed, Including EOG With Five; and One Permit Canceled -- December 13, 2021

 Active rigs: NDIC's active rig list shows 32 active rigs. I did not check to see if any "duplicates."

$71.02	12/13/2021	12/13/2020	12/13/2019	12/13/2018	12/13/2017
Active Rigs	32	15	53	67	51

Two new permits, #38697 - #38698, inclusive:

• Operator: Rimrock Oil & Gas
• Field: Moccasin Creek (Dunn County)
• Comments: 
• Rimrock has permits for two MC 14-11 permits, a Polar Bear and a Narwhal; 
• the wells will be sited in SWSE 11-147-93; 
• between 971 FSL and 1000 FSL and between 1639 FWL and 1644 FWL

Sixteen permits renewed:

• Hunt Oil (6): two Oakland permits; two Trulson permits; and, two Palermo McNic permits;, all in Mountrail County:
• CLR (5): one Chicago permit; two Charlotte permits, one Akron permits, and, one Brangus FIU permit, all in McKenzie County;
• EOG (5): five Round Prairie permits, all in Williams County;

One permit canceled:

• 37491, CLR, Gibb 11-24HSL, Williams County

Non-Bakken Ramblings -- December 13, 2021

Dividends: I've lost the bubble on this. I can't remember if I've already posted this. PFE, TRN, and UNP have announced an increase in their dividends. Link here.

• PFE: increased to 40 cents from previous 39 cents. Record date, 1/28/22; pay date 3/4/22.
• PFE up 5.16%; up $2.73; trading at $55.52
• TRN: increased to 23 cents from previous 21 cents. Record date 1/14/22; pay date1/31/22.
• TRN down slightly today
• UNP: increased to $1.18 from previous $1.07; this is earlier than expected; see below;
• prepandemic, 88 cents/share; now $1.18/share --> 34% increase over ten quarters (?)
• record date, 12/17/21; pay date 12/20/21 -- wow -- next Monday.
• if UNP is a proxy for BNI, Warren Buffett must be happy today

Staggering: I simply find this number staggering. Link sent by reader, thank you.

• corporate relocations have delivered more than $235 billion in market valuation to north Texas
• this is corporate relocations; doesn't even begin to include all the new non-relocation activities
• these are corporate relocations, not necessarily corporate headquarters locations
• writer noted that DFW already had such big players like Exxon and Texas Instuments
• added McKesson and Charles Schwab

"Big John" Sold For Almost $8 Million At Paris Auction -- December 13, 2021

Gene Munster: raises AAPL target to $250.

• says Apple, Inc., reinvents itself every five years;
• now, "we're here again"
• metaverse
• Munster is apprehensive about metaverse, but "it's the future"
• doesn't see "payoff" for several years
  
• consider Coinbase is the bank of the metaverse
• and Facebook 
  
• auto and autonomous
• AAPL trading at $181.10, up almost one percent; up $1.72
• needs to get to 182.86 to hit $3-trillion market cap
• metaverse is nothing more than the "next generation of the internet"
  
• metaverse basket: AAPL, Coinbase, Facebook
  

Global warming: link here -- 

• tornadoes in the news
• from 2000-2020 the US experienced four F/EF5 tornadoes 
• from 1954-1974 the US experienced 36 (!) F/EF5 tornadoes
• elsewhere:
• let's see: Florida -- hurricanes
• Oklahoma to Nebraska, South Dakota to Missouri: tornado alley
• California: earthquakes, wildfires, far left
• New York: winter; Cuomo, DeBlasio
• Texas, Austin to Dallas, along the I-35 corridor: traffic

Belle Fourche, SD: an unnamed private buyer purchased "Big John," a 67-million-year-old Triceratops skeleton that was uncovered in South Daota's Perkins County in 2014, for $7.7 million at a Paris auction on October 21, 2021. Multiple links. Here at National Geographic. With a lot of hand-wringing. 

The founder of a South Dakotan firm called PaleoAdventures, which digs up fossils for commercial sale, Stein nicknamed the fossil “Big John” after the owner of the ranch where he found it. 

For six years, he held on to the Triceratops in hopes that a U.S. museum would purchase it—but none came forward. Then, in 2020, he sold the fossil to an Italian firm that prepared it for auction. With much fanfare and a jaw-dropping sale price of $7.7 million (6.65 million euros) to an anonymous buyer last month, Big John became a big deal—and added fuel to an ongoing, thorny debate among scientists, auctioneers, commercial paleontologists, and private landowners. 

Where's the beef? It was on sale for six years and no museum came forward to buy it and museums have some wealthy patrons. Very wealthy patrons. Paintings go for a lot more. 

Austria: ends most Covid-19 restrictions after civil unrest and protests. Link here. Has anyone notice that the most current Austrian surge is now ending. Posted yesterday. In fact, the restrictions were due to end this week anyway. Mandatory vaccinations still on the table, starting February, 2022, as far as I know. 

Elon Musk -- TMOTY -- ICYMI: Peloton And "Sex And The City" --- December 13, 2021

Time's Man of the Year: Elon Musk. Perhaps one of the better picks in a long, long time. 

Why the market keeps going higher ... in one chart: link here.

• inflation: highest it's been since 1982
• today: 10-year Treasury -- 1.5% and trending down today;
• 1982: 10-year Treasury -- greater than 10%
• perhaps this is the time to really, really, really add debt to one's financial sheet
• how fast can the TYT move?

From that linked article -- think about this -- how fast a publicly traded company puts together a marketing initiative in response to a television show:

Peloton: Count me as in the minority here, but I kind of like how Peloton's responding to the uproar over its connected bike causing Mr. Big of "Sex and the City" to have a heart attack in the latest reboot of the series. 

First, Peloton blamed Mr. Big's lifestyle of partying and red-meat eating for him dying after a 45-minute ride. 

Then on Sunday, Peloton put a tweet out saying Mr. Big is alive and is enjoying a romantic evening with his favorite instructor Jess King (Allegra in the show). 

Having said all of that, this is still a nightmare for the company right smack in the middle of the holiday shopping season and before New Year's resolution season in January. It will do no favors to a stock that has been clobbered this year for a litany of reasons, as long-time Peloton bear Simeon Siegel of BMO Capital Markets explained.

Market commentary: IBD -- link here. Most noteworthy, Rivian reports today.

No news, yet, regarding AMD / XLNX but both are up in pre-market trading. Overall, semiconductors appear to have a good day ahead of them.

Peak demand: investors now see peak demand (crude oil) moving much farther to the right. Link to Tswvetana Paraskova. 

First group "financial / economic" indicators:

• 10-Year Treasury: link here. At 1.467% trending down.
  
• DXY: link here. In a very narrow range. Today up slightly at 96.32.
  
• Silver: link  here. Up one-half of one percent at $22.31.
  
• CBOE volatility index: link here. Explained at Investopedia. At 19.13, up 2.35%.

National debt / GDP: link here.

That's an interesting graph: of course the jump is all due to Covid-19 -- well, "almost all." And it probably didn't matter who was president during fiscal years / calendar years (?) 2019 - 2020 but for the record it was Donald Trump. Interestingly enough, assuming recent spending has been factored into the graph above, the ratio will drop every so slightly during the Biden administration. Just trolling. Interesting but not actionable. 

US budget deficit, FY2021: link here. A record was not set. 

The U.S. incurred the second-largest budget deficit on record in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, reflecting government expenditures tied to the coronavirus pandemic and adding fuel to congressional debates about proposed spending.

The $2.8 trillion deficit was the second largest since 1945 as a share of the nation’s gross domestic product and trailed only the prior fiscal year’s $3.1 trillion shortfall, when not adjusting for inflation.

The deficit for the fiscal year was 12.4% of all economic output, down from 15% the previous year, the Treasury Department and Office of Management and Budget said Friday. The deficit was 4.6% of GDP in the 2019 fiscal year, before the pandemic began.

The fund rate: incredibly low, according to Steve Liesman. Take out inflation, and the "easy money" gap is widening. The gap between investors and savers continues to widen, favoring the former. 

The big story on CNBC this morning: Apple (AAPL) -- closing in on that $3-trillion market cap.

Biggest decision I have all day: whether to watch CNBC. Decision made. Television off.  Good luck to everyone.