April 19, 2021: someone's reading the blog. After I posted the note below, others on social media took up the discussion. Link here.
Original Post
Last night there was yet another report of a deadly crash and severe fire involving a Tesla; two men died. The story and links were posted here earlier.
I don't know how many deadly accidents, fires, incidents there have been involving Tesla but the number of deaths is way more than the one death reported out of 6.8 million J&J Covid-19 vaccinations. With six severe reactions (blood clots) with one reaction leading to death following 6.8 million vaccinations, the J&J Covid-19 vaccination was pulled off the market for an indefinite period of time, despite the fact that the disease can be much more life threatening than the vaccine.
It should be noted that the blood clots had not been confirmed to be the result of the vaccine when the decision was made to take the vaccine off the market.
And yet here, with what seems to be many more fires and "accidents," and way more deaths than the one death noted above, Tesla has not been pulled off the market.
For Covid-19 protection we are advised to wear a mask. Perhaps Nomex should be required for those riding inside a Tesla. It goes without saying social distancing is good advice for both.
******************************* Mouse Houses Along The Baseboards
For the archives.
According to a reader, these "little things" increased the re-sale value of a house. Who would have guessed?
The video is of an extraordinary shot in an NBA game the other night.
The shot was interesting but the point of the post is to point out a couple of things.
First,
this is an NBA game. Note how full the stands are. I believe there are
more folks on the court than in the stands. Can you imagine how much
money these venues are losing? And the television audience? Except for
hardcore NBA fans, I can't imagine many folks actually watching these
games on television.
Second, check out the "masks" and social distancing. LOL.
The reason for re-posting? This Breitbart story: panic time -- the NBA is fast-approaching historic ratings lows.
The NBA has suffered another ratings disaster, with ABC falling 45 percent since the 2011-12 season, while TNT was down 40 percent, and ESPN was off 20 percent.
The ESPN number is the most interesting, considering that "sports fans" tune in to this station.
And then this, more entertaining than the last two minutes of an NBA basketball game:
******************************** In The Manner of Norman Rockwell
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation released 24-month projections this week
forecasting that less Colorado River water will cascade down from the
Rocky Mountains through Lake Powell and Lake Mead and into the arid
deserts of the U.S. Southwest and the Gulf of California.
Water levels
in the two lakes are expected to plummet low enough for the agency to
declare an official shortage for the first time, threatening the supply
of Colorado River water that growing cities and farms rely on.
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.
CVX: SeekingAlpha contributor -- Chevron could deliver a 20%+ total return this year -- summary --
Chevron currently yields 5% and the stock closed Friday at $103.
Yet the last time WTI was at the current level of $63/bbl (last January), Chevron was trading at $121.
That
was before the addition of ~215,000 boe/d of Noble production, before
taking an estimated $2.5 billion out of op-ex, and before implementing
an even more disciplined cap-ex plan.
Add
it all up, and CVX should very easily trade back up to $121 this year
(and I think significantly above that level) and deliver a 20%+ total
return for investors
This is likely one reason Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway holds 48.5 million shares of CVX stock. Buffett really likes dividends -- as long as he's collecting them, not paying them.
The lede:
Over the past 10-years, Chevron has almost doubled its annual dividend from $2.60/share to the current $5.16/share - making it one of the best dividend growth stocks in the energy sector.
The last dividend increase in January of 2020 was 8%.
The company will restrain capital spending this year to ~$14 billion, which is only 3.7% higher than last year's $13.5 billion (excluding the Noble Energy acquisition) and a drastic reduction from the ~$20 billion plans prior to the global pandemic. That fact, combined with the recent strength in oil and gas prices, means that Chevron will likely resume its long-term track record of meaningful dividend increases after a pause last year due to the dramatic oil demand destruction caused by the pandemic.
Then this:
Unlike its peer Exxon Mobil, Chevron has pragmatically embraced the new era of energy abundance and has taken steps to mitigate the impact of generally lower oil and gas margins.
In addition to the reduction in cap-ex mentioned earlier, note in 2019 CEO Mike Wirth refused to get into a bidding war with Occidental Petroleum over Anadarko and in the process walked away with a cool $1 billion break-up fee.
More recently, Chevron has announced the sale of its upstream and downstream Marcellus dry-gas assets for $735 million to further bolster the balance sheet, secure the dividend, and lower operating expenses.
The result is that Chevron has the strongest dividend growth and strongest balance sheet in its peer group.
As mentioned many times on the blog, I never would have ended up with my
position in CVX had I not taken advantage of the Texaco bankruptcy
decades ago.
The Noble deal (compare with Pioneer - DoublePoint Energy):
As for the well-timed Noble Energy deal - which was announced during the bottom of the cycle last year - Chevron added 18% more proved reserves at less than $5/boe: an eye-popping cheap deal. At the time, Chevron said the deal would be accretive to ROCE, free cash flow, and earnings per share within one year assuming $40/bbl Brent. Brent closed Friday at $66.77. Can you say "pull-forward" on the accretion timeline?
God. I knew the Mossad was good but this suggests they have powers well beyond anything previously imagined or a direct line to God, perhaps both:
********************************* The Big Question
The big question: what were the "two guys" doing in the back seat? Asking for a friend.
A typical fine engine is designed to carry 500 gallons of water and pumps water from a hydrant - generally 1,500 gallons per minute.
So,
32,000 / 500 = 64 engines; or,
32,000 / 1,500 = 21 minutes (minus the first few minutes of sorting out what to do).
From another source:
According to KPRC 2, the brother-in-law of one of the victims said the men were taking the car out for a spin, and that the driver was seen backing out of the driveway and may have hopped in the back seat before the crash.
A sheriff's department spokesperson said the vehicle immediately burst into flames following the crash, and that local firefighters worked for four hours to put out the blaze, which required 32,000 gallons of water to extinguish.
At one point, responding deputies had to call Tesla at one point to ask them how to put out the fire in the battery, which kept reigniting.
Officials are still reportedly investigating whether the front passenger air bag deployed and whether the vehicle's advanced driver-assistance system was enabled at the time of the crash and will conduct autopsies on the two men.
*********************************** Global Warming
Global warming: This may, in fact, be the best proof that the global-warming-due-to-rising-atmospheric-CO2 story may be true.
It would explain:
the results of the most recent US presidential election;
Biden's choice for VP:
AOC;
Greta;
Dr Fauci.
Was there a subliminal, Freudian, "woke," culture-canceling reason why a stock photo of a male in a library was selected to highlight a story on stupid people?
Maybe "stupid" was too strong a word; let's just stick with "less intelligent."
**************************** Millennials Leaving The East Coast; Flocking To These Cities
In 1907, while enjoying a bowl of soup made with dashi broth and kombu
seaweed, the Japanese chemist
Kikunae Ikeda
had an insight that would change the culinary world. He noticed a
taste that wasn’t sweet, salty, sour or bitter. Ikeda gave this
hard-to-describe savory taste a name—umami—and went on to identify the
specific amino acid that triggered it. See monosodium glutamate.
Scientists in Europe and the U.S. remained skeptical about
whether umami really was a taste until a receptor for it was discovered
on the tongue almost a century later, in 2000. Today, it is taken for
granted by most scientists and chefs, but interest is now growing in
another taste first detected in Japan.
The newer taste, kokumi, is even harder
to describe than umami, but it is potentially just as important for
understanding how and why we enjoy food. In Japanese, the term koku
describes foods that have the kind of mouthful “thickness” often
imparted by fats—what English speakers might describe as rich. “It feels
like a physical sensation,” says the culinary scientist
Joshua Evans.
It works “by coating the mouth and becoming more intense and being
extended in time.” When asked what foods have koku, Japanese food
experts list wild boar, adult wasps, duck eggs and aged sake, as well as
long-simmered and fermented dishes.
None of which (wild boar adult wasps, duck eggs or aged sake) are in my pantry or refrigerator.
