No Rapid Rebound for Oil Prices ( MorningStar Energy Forecast )

Energy: No Rapid Rebound for Oil Prices

The rapid decline in oil prices has created significant investment opportunities, but downside risk remains in the short term.

• The United States has rapidly become the critical source of incremental supply for global oil markets, and growth has come overwhelmingly from unconventional drilling. The large increases in U.S. output did not upset global supply/demand balances over the past few years, largely because significant amounts of supply were disrupted by political/security issues (Libya and Iran, for example). But in 2014 the scales finally tipped: Combined with weakening demand and OPEC’s decision not to reduce its own production, major supply imbalances resulted that, as of today, have yet to dissipate.
• In the current market environment of high costs and low oil prices, upstream firms face extremely challenged economics where new investment is not value-creative. Such conditions are not sustainable over the long term, however, and we expect the combination of rising oil prices and falling costs to provide significant relief in the coming years.
• Despite our belief that tight oil has considerable running room from here, it can’t completely meet future global demand. The marginal barrel, therefore, will come from higher up the global cost curve. Our forecasts show that higher-quality deep-water projects will be the highest-cost source of supply needed during the rest of the decade. As a result of this meaningful move down the cost curve, our midcycle oil price forecast for Brent is $75 per barrel (WTI: $69/bbl), meaningfully below 2014 highs.
• Although U.S. gas production is likely to slow in the near term as oil-directed drilling hits the brakes, the wealth of low-cost inventory in areas like the Marcellus points to continued growth through the end of this decade and beyond. Abundant supply is holding current prices low, but in the long run we anticipate relief from incremental demand from LNG exports as well as industry. Our midcycle U.S. natural gas price estimate is $4/mcf.

Given both its remaining growth potential and ability to scale up and down activity quickly, tight oil has effectively made the United States the world’s newest swing producer. Drastic spending cuts will lead to a meaningful decline in near-term production, but the strong economics of the major U.S. liquids plays means production will begin growing again as soon as oil prices recover.

About the Author

David Meats is an equity analyst for Morningstar.

Based on our belief that U.S. unconventionals will continue to be able to meet 35%-40% of incremental new supply requirements in the coming years, we believe that additional volumes from high-cost resources such as oil sands mining and marginal deep-water will not be needed for the foreseeable future. This disruptive force that already has upended global crude markets isn’t going away anytime soon. U.S. shale once again is proving truly to be a game changer.

Meanwhile, demand tailwinds from exports and industrial consumption will help balance the domestic gas market eventually, but ongoing cost pressures from efficiency gains and excess services capacity–as well as the crowding out of higher-cost production by world-class resources such as the Marcellus Shale and associated volumes from oil-rich areas such as the Eagle Ford and Permian–are weighing on near-term prices. Even under these circumstances, however, undervalued, cost-advantaged investment opportunities remain.

Top Energy Sector Picks
Star Rating	Fair Value Estimate	Economic Moat	Fair Value Uncertainty	Consider Buying
Encana		$16	Narrow	Very High	$8
ExxonMobil		$98	Wide	Low	$78.40
Cabot Oil & Gas		$43	Narrow	High	$25.80
Data as of June 22, 2015

Encana (ECA)
Encana is our top pick within the U.S. oil-focused exploration and production group. The company’s growth is underpinned by high-quality Permian and Eagle Ford acreage. The company has transformed dramatically in the past 12 months, with two major acquisitions and a string of divestitures and is emerging leaner and meaner. The company now has a footprint in several top-quality oil plays in the United States and Canada.

ExxonMobil (XOM)
We view ExxonMobil as offering the best combination of value, quality, and defensiveness. Exxon will see its portfolio mix shift to liquids pricing as gas volumes decline and as new oil and liquefied natural gas projects start production. The company historically set itself apart from the other majors as a superior capital allocator and operator, delivering higher returns on capital than its peers as a result.

Cabot Oil & Gas (COG)
On the gas side, Cabot controls more than a decade of highly productive, low-cost drilling inventory targeting the dry gas Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania. Fully loaded cash break-even costs are less than $2.50 per mcf.

ADD UPDATE at close of market:

Each week we look at the level of crude oil located in U.S. storage tanks around the country, which offers a glimpse into the inner workings of production and consumption levels. After peaking earlier this spring, U.S. crude inventories have undergone successive weeks of drawdowns, indicating slowing production and higher demand from consumers. In Europe, however, the story is different. Crude storage is reaching a multi-year high at the trading hub of Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp, known as ARA. In fact, storage levels have spiked since the beginning of the year to 60.6 million barrels in June. European storage is growing so rapidly because a lot of oil coming from Africa is having trouble finding interested buyers, forcing it into storage.

Growing storage levels in the U.S. pushed down oil prices earlier this year, and the same could hold true for European storage. That points to a persistent glut in global oil markets, with production exceeding demand by around 2 million barrels per day according to IEA estimates. Even if some of that supply can get soaked up by extra demand, there is a lot of oil sitting idle in tanks right now. That means oil prices likely won’t jump in the near term because the markets will need to work through the excess sitting in storage first.

While inventories are drawing down in the U.S., a group of companies are proposingincreased storage along the U.S. Gulf Coast. Magellan Midstream Partners and LBC Tank Terminals are proposing a $95 million oil storage facility near Houston. The facility would be able to hold around 700,000 barrels of crude and would be connected to existing distribution infrastructure. If it moves forward, the site could be completed by 2017. Magellan’s project would greatly expand storage along the Gulf Coast, helping refiners access and store product.

In another major construction project along the Gulf Coast, Cheniere Energy (NYSE: LNG) announced that it would take on $5.8 billion in new debt to build a fifth LNG train at its Sabine Pass facility in Louisiana. Lining up financing is a crucial step before construction can begin. Cheniere hopes to further expand by building a sixth LNG train, but has not secured financing for that yet. The company expects to liquefy and ship its first load of LNG later this year when its first train finishes construction, kicking off a new era in which the U.S. becomes a natural gas exporter.

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Greek Crisis Crushes Stock Futures

US futures are open and stocks are getting crushed.

Shortly after futures opened at 6:00 pm ET, S&P 500 futures were down 1.7%, or 37 points, to around 2,060.

FinViz

Dow futures were off 298 points, or around 1.7%, while Nasdaq futures were also off 1.7%, or around 79 points.

FinViz

 

Stocks were following the lead of the euro, which was dropping hard against the dollar, falling 1.7% to below $1.10 while losing more than 2% against the Japanese yen and falling to its lowest level against the British pound since 2007.

The drop in stocks comes after a wild weekend of headlines out of Greece that saw talks between Greece and its creditors break down, Greece call a referendum vote on the latest bailout terms for next Sunday, while Greek banks and the Athens stock exchange have been closed for at least the next week.

Greece also has a €1.6 billion payment due to the IMF on Tuesday, which it appears they will miss.

Greek debt crisis: Banks to stay shut, capital controls imposed

Greeks are queuing for cash, but only 40% of ATMs have money in them, the BBC’s Gavin Hewitt reports

Greek debt crisis

• What are capital controls?
• Is Greece’s exit from the euro inevitable?
• Greece’s bank holiday from hell
• Greece on the brink

Greek banks are to remain closed and capital controls will be imposed, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras says.

Speaking after the European Central Bank (ECB) said it was not increasing emergency funding to Greek banks, Mr Tsipras said Greek deposits were safe.

Greece is due to make a €1.6bn (£1.1bn) payment to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Tuesday – the same day that its current bailout expires.

Greece risks default and moving closer to a possible exit from the eurozone.

Greeks have been queuing to withdraw money from cash machines over the weekend, and the Bank of Greece said it was making “huge efforts” to keep the machines stocked.

Greek banks are expected to stay shut until 7 July, two days after Greece’s planned referendum on the terms it had been offered by international creditors for receiving fresh bailout money.

The Athens stock exchange will also be closed on Monday.

Greece’s capital controls

• A maximum of €60 (£42; $66) can be withdrawn from an account in one day
• Overseas transfers of cash prohibited, except for vital, pre-approved commercial transactions.

Capital controls – how do they work?

Eurozone finance ministers blamed Greece for breaking off the talks, and the European Commission took the unusual step on Sunday of publishing proposals by European creditors that it said were on the table at the time.

But Greece described creditors’ terms as “not viable”, and asked for an extension of its current deal until after the vote was completed.

“[Rejection] of the Greek government’s request for a short extension of the programme was an unprecedented act by European standards, questioning the right of a sovereign people to decide,” Mr Tsipras on Sunday said in a televised address.

“This decision led the ECB today to limit the liquidity available to Greek banks and forced the Greek central bank to suggest a bank holiday and restrictions on bank withdrawals.”

 

Become The Keeper Of Your Own Future – Here’s Your Wealth Pathway

 

Thinking about taking action isn’t going to create wealth.

Reading this blog without taking action to create your International Business Corporation, using tax havens to reduce your tax burden – does not create wealth.

Government shutdowns, ridiculous breaches of privacy, massive debts…

All around, the news these days is bad. But I don’t need to remind you of that. You know as well as I the state of the world right now.

You also know you can’t rely on bungling politicians for help. What you may not realize is how to pull yourself out of this mess and take control of your own future.

How can you ensure that you and your family are ok, no matter what the rest of the world decides to do?

Become The Keeper Of Your Own Future

Not enough people realize this, but this is the key to establishing a secure financial future for you and your family.

This sounds like a simple change of mindset, but it’s not. We are all used to a lifetime of believing that the government is there to help, that no matter what happens, they’ll be there as a safety net.

In the 21st century, those days are over.

I can’t say it loudly enough: You are the one in the driver’s seat. You have the power to make the decisions that will shape your future, and that of your family.

And yes, it’s work. Managing your own destiny is harder than leaving it to others, but, when you recognize the consequences of not taking control of your own future, it’s a no-brainer. You’ve got to act. And you’ve got to act now.
This first critical step is really a personal commitment to yourself–a promise that you will take full responsibility for your own life.

I realize this can be a scary prospect. Some folks are so overwhelmed by this idea that they would rather leave things be.

In today’s world, nobody can afford to be dependent on any one economy…on any one government…or on any one currency.

The way to protect yourself is to diversify outside your home country’s borders. The reality of the world we’re living in is that this is the only effective strategy available to you…to me…to all of us.

It’s a simple insight. We all know about diversity when it comes to stocks and bonds. Yet few people realize the fundamental importance of taking this basic concept to the next level.

I’ve been in the room with educated, experienced investors, who’ve bragged of their diversified portfolios. They hold stocks, bonds, real estate…

But once I’ve probed a little deeper, I’ve often found that their portfolios all share one problem. All are “diversified” in U.S. dollars…their investments are all domiciled in the United States…and they’re all at the mercy of anyone’s lawsuit filed under the U.S. legal system, including suits after their retirement funds.

What happens to these “diversified” investors if the dollar radically declines in value?

What if an angry litigant attacks your assets with a frivolous lawsuit?

1) CONTACT Jack A. Bass and set up your corporation offshore.

2) Open a bank account offshore

3) open a trading account offshore

4) accumulate your wealth in a low tax jurisdiction.

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call Jack direct at 604-858-3202 ( no cost or obligation).

 

Is Fitbit A One Hit Wonder ?

as Palm’s experience showed, one thing the world doesn’t need—not for long, at least—is a company that does only one thing.

When you strap a new Fitbit onto your wrist, it’s programmed to vibrate once you’ve taken ten thousand steps. From there, it keeps on counting. Fitbit can also track other aspects of your health—sleep patterns, calories burned, heart rate—and store the data in its software, so that you can track your progress over time. For Sedaris, who describes himself as “obsessive,” beating his own records becomes a kind of addiction: “At the end of my first sixty-thousand-step day, I staggered home with my flashlight knowing that I’d advance to sixty-five thousand, and that there will be no end to it until my feet snap off at the ankles,” he writes.

One man’s neurosis is another man’s business opportunity. By the end of last year, Fitbit Inc. had close to seven million active users and was nearing a billion dollars in annual revenue. On Thursday morning, the company went public, under the ticker symbol “FIT,” in an offering that initially valued it at 6.5 billion dollars. Fitbit’s most loyal users are a fervid crowd, but the company’s long-term success is far from guaranteed. It has, essentially, one line of products, with variations on the theme, and, while its product was novel in 2008, when it was first introduced, much larger companies have since noticed its success and started putting Fitbit-like features into their own products. In a filing with the S.E.C. in preparation for going public, Fitbit openly acknowledged that this presents a risk:

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Many large, broad-based consumer electronics companies either compete in our market or adjacent markets or have announced plans to do so, including Apple, Google, LG, Microsoft, and Samsung. For example, Apple has recently introduced the Apple Watch smartwatch, with broad-based functionalities, including some health and fitness tracking capabilities.

The Fitbit I.P.O. comes right as Apple stores are beginning to sell the Apple Watch, which has underscored the question : Will Fitbit be able to compete with bigger and better-financed rivals—especially those whose products do more than just track their wearers’ health. (Why settle for just tracking your heart rate in an app, when you can also text your loved ones an image of a heart that pulses to the rhythm of your actual heart?)

Single-product companies have gone public before, of course. The most obvious cautionary tale, among makers of consumer-tech devices, is the experience of Palm Inc. In 2000, when Palm went public, its Palm Pilots—those handheld organizers that were marketed as replacements for paper planners—seemed cutting-edge. Al Gore and Robin Williams had their own; in the Times magazine the previous year, the journalist David Colman had called the  device “a perfect amulet.” At the time, cell phones existed but were far from ubiquitous, and they didn’t do much more than send and receive calls. In 2003, though, Research in Motion came out with the BlackBerry, and in 2007, Apple released the iPhone—devices that could do what Palm’s organizers could do, plus much more. Palm tried to stay competitive by creating smartphones with revamped software and striking deals with cell-phone carriers to sell them, but, as The Verge has documented, it was too late. Several missteps, compounded by competition from Apple and other devices, such as Motorola’s Droid, that emerged in the late two-thousands, doomed the effort. In 2010, Hewlett-Packard acquired Palm. By 2011, its brand was dead.

 

/The problem for single-product tech companies is that, no matter how much they spend to develop devices with cool features, bigger companies like Apple—and, more recently, Samsung and China’s Xiaomi—can always spend more. This allows them to rapidly bridge feature gaps with smaller companies, and to incorporate those features into multi-purpose devices. And the threat goes beyond R. and D. Bigger firms also tend to have deeper and longer-standing ties to the suppliers that build their products—and, perhaps more to the point, more influence over those suppliers. They also have more established avenues to advertise and sell their wares and more clout with publishers and retailers. And they have the flexibility to undercut smaller rivals on price. When Nest, a startup that made connected devices for homes, announced last year that it would be acquired by Google, Nest’s C.E.O., Tony Fadell,  in a blog post the importance of its acquirer’s impressive resources. “We’ve had great momentum,” he wrote, “but this is a rocket ship.”

 

What if a company could sidestep the Palm problem? That’s what GoPro, which makes small cameras that record footage from the user’s point of view, appears to be trying to do. The company went public around this time last year, with a valuation of three billion dollars, and its stock price doubled by October. By March of this year, its shares had fallen to close to their original levels, partly because of Apple and Xiaomi (which, incidentally, also sells a fitness-tracking device), though in April, GoPro reported earnings that suggested that it has, so far, managed to do well despite those threats; its cameras are only becoming more popular. In May, the company’s founder and C.E.O., Nick Woodman, announced that it is developing drones and viral assistants Erinn Murphy, an analyst at Piper Jaffray & Co., : “This puts some of the naysayers on their heels, who thought this was just a one-hit wonder.”

 

It might seem that GoPro is doing something similar to what Palm did in the two-thousands by branching out into new products, but there are important differences in its strategy. As Matt Burns of TechCrunch wrote earlier this month, GoPro wants to position itself not only as a maker of hardware but as a service that people can use to store and share their footage. “GoPro doesn’t want to be known just as a camera company,” Burns wrote. Instead, it “wants to be a lifestyle media company” that can “give owners an easier way to share all that rad action footage.” The goal is to “build a new business based on content, not hardware.” Viewed in that context, drone and virtual-reality technologies could be as much about hardware as they are about allowing people to capture, store, and share more interesting content.

It’s not difficult for companies such as Apple and Xiaomi to replicate hardware features—and even to render single-use hardware products obsolete, as smartphones did to handheld organizers like the Palm Pilot. But, as companies like Facebook and Instagram have shown, once people have stored all of one kind of content with one company, they are often reluctant to leave it all behind and start over somewhere else. Facebook and Instagram also benefit from what is known as the network effect: the more users that a given social network connects, the more useful it becomes—thus making it difficult for other companies, even more established ones, to come along and steal the users away. (This phenomenon is partly to blame for the failure of Google’s social network, Google Plus.)

Palm came of age before anyone had heard the terms “cloud” or “social network”—too early to learn from Facebook or Instagram. But companies like GoPro and Fitbit, whose appeal has as much to do with the material they help store and share as with the devices themselves, might have the best chance at staying in business if they think of themselves not as hardware companies but as providers of services that let people manage and share their content. Fitbit has already announced its own version of a smartwatch—the Fitbit Surge, which sells for two hundred and fifty dollars and includes call and text notifications and music controls. Competing directly with Apple on hardware isn’t a bad move; after all, the success of the Apple Watch is far from guaranteed. Fitbit might want to focus, too, on the health information it stores and lets users share with one another. It may not be able to become a Facebook for health stats, but as Palm’s experience showed, one thing the world doesn’t need—not for long, at least—is a company that does only one thing.

 

 

Cramer Rates Chesapeake Energy : SELL SELL SELL

Our favorite AVOID gets a celebrity endorsement:

Chesapeake Energy is an oil and natural gas company based in Oklahoma City with positions in the Eagle Ford, Utica, Granite Wash, Cleveland, Tonkawa, Mississippi Lime, and Niobrara unconventional liquids plays.

TheStreet Ratings team rates CHESAPEAKE ENERGY CORP as a Sell with a ratings score of D. TheStreet Ratings Team has this to say about their recommendation:

“We rate CHESAPEAKE ENERGY CORP (CHK) a SELL. This is driven by several weaknesses, which we believe should have a greater impact than any strengths, and could make it more difficult for investors to achieve positive results compared to most of the stocks we cover. The company’s weaknesses can be seen in multiple areas, such as its deteriorating net income, disappointing return on equity, weak operating cash flow, generally disappointing historical performance in the stock itself and feeble growth in its earnings per share.”

Highlights from the analysis by TheStreet Ratings Team goes as follows:

• The company, on the basis of change in net income from the same quarter one year ago, has significantly underperformed when compared to that of the S&P 500 and the Oil, Gas & Consumable Fuels industry. The net income has significantly decreased by 979.8% when compared to the same quarter one year ago, falling from $425.00 million to -$3,739.00 million.
• Return on equity has greatly decreased when compared to its ROE from the same quarter one year prior. This is a signal of major weakness within the corporation. Compared to other companies in the Oil, Gas & Consumable Fuels industry and the overall market, CHESAPEAKE ENERGY CORP’s return on equity significantly trails that of both the industry average and the S&P 500.
• Net operating cash flow has significantly decreased to $423.00 million or 67.23% when compared to the same quarter last year. In addition, when comparing the cash generation rate to the industry average, the firm’s growth is significantly lower.
• Despite any intermediate fluctuations, we have only bad news to report on this stock’s performance over the last year: it has tumbled by 59.08%, worse than the S&P 500’s performance. Consistent with the plunge in the stock price, the company’s earnings per share are down 1159.25% compared to the year-earlier quarter. Naturally, the overall market trend is bound to be a significant factor. However, in one sense, the stock’s sharp decline last year is a positive for future investors, making it cheaper (in proportion to its earnings over the past year) than most other stocks in its industry. But due to other concerns, we feel the stock is still not a good buy right now.
• CHESAPEAKE ENERGY CORP has experienced a steep decline in earnings per share in the most recent quarter in comparison to its performance from the same quarter a year ago. This company has reported somewhat volatile earnings recently. We feel it is likely to report a decline in earnings in the coming year. During the past fiscal year, CHESAPEAKE ENERGY CORP increased its bottom line by earning $1.83 versus $0.68 in the prior year. For the next year, the market is expecting a contraction of 109.8% in earnings (-$0.18 versus $1.83).
• You can view the full analysis from the report here: CHK Ratings Report

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Energy Investors Cling To False Hopes : The Lost Decade

It has been a very challenging time for investors in the energy space, but we find their resiliency impressive, considering they have endured a decade of little to no returns.

Oil companies say there will be a price to pay — a much higher price — for all the cost cutting being done today to cope with the collapse in the crude market.

Investors haven’t made any money over the past decade with the S&P TSX Capped Energy Index gaining a paltry 0.3 per cent annually while the Canadian dollar-adjusted West Texas Intermediate oil price is up only 0.7 per cent per year. This compares to the S&P TSX Index that has gained just over seven per cent per year over the same period.

Even though it remained fairly flat over the past 10 years, the energy index has experienced tremendous volatility with an average standard deviation of 30 per cent, more than double the TSX’s 14 per cent.

It is doubtful that many investors rode out the entire period, instead we think they pulled the ripcord during some of the periods of excess volatility. It’s even worse for those who purchased at its recent peak in mid-2014.

Which is why we find it rather amazing that investors plowed a whopping $5.5 billion into the Canadian exploration and production sector through bought-deal equity financings in the first quarter, and an additional $1.4 billion raised so far this quarter.

Which is why we find it rather amazing that investors plowed a whopping $5.5 billion into the Canadian exploration and production sector through bought-deal equity financings in the first quarter, and an additional $1.4 billion raised so far this quarter.

Looking Ahead

With regards to oil prices, we think there could more downside than upside on the horizon especially in this environment of a prolonged global supply-demand imbalance.

On the positive side, global oil demand has been improving and is up 1.2 per cent from last May. However, this may not be enough as global supply has exceeded demand for the past five quarters and could soon see the longest glut since 1985, according to financial news provider Bloomberg.

Not helping matters is OPEC production growth as the group aims to protect its market share against North American producers that have yet to curtail output despite the oil price being halved in the past year. Over the past four weeks the Lower 48 oil production has averaged 229,000 barrels a day higher than the previous four weeks.

With regard to Canadian oil producers, many companies have implied commodity prices at or near the forward curve and some a little bit higher such as Suncor Energy Inc. and Canadian Natural Resources Ltd.

 

We find this to be a useful exercise at times as a large divergence or disconnect either way can be indicative of a sector bottom like in mid-2012 or the peaks of early 2011 and mid-2014.

But today’s signals suggest more uncertainty and are creating a very challenging environment to make an investment decision in.

The bad news is that this may mean we have not yet seen the final capitulation usually needed before the start of a new bull cycle.  This is because high CAD-denominated forward prices, low interest rates and the large capital flow into the sector are providing an artificial sense of hope for marginal producers.

That said, there are still opportunities in the sector, but one has to work extra hard to mitigate the risks of uncertainty.

We continue to stay away from Alberta oil and gas producers as there is still way too much jurisdictional uncertainty. They could under perform like they did during the last royalty review and as a result have a higher cost of capital.

Instead, we look to own those well-funded, non-Alberta producers such as Crescent Point Energy Corp. that are looking to gain market share in this challenged environment.

Read more on protecting your portfolio and capital at hignnetworth.wordpress.com

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Is SandRidge Energy Built to Last? By Investopedia

When SandRidge Energy (NYSE: SD) announced last month that it was raising $1.25 billion in new debt, the move came as a surprise. This is a company whose CEO readily admitted earlier this year that if the current oil price was the new normal that it would, “probably want to remove $1 billion of debt from the balance sheet.” However, instead of focusing on ways to do just that, the company went out and piled on even more debt. It’s a move that certainly begs the question of whether or not SandRidge Energy is building a company that will last.

Piled high and deep
No matter which way we slice it, SandRidge Energy is over its head in debt. After accounting for the recent debt issuance, SandRidge Energy now has roughly $4.6 billion in net debt outstanding. If we add in its equity market value and its preferred equity, the company’s total enterprise value sits at roughly $5.7 billion.

To put that into perspective, SandRidge Energy now has almost as much net debt as EOG Resources (NYSE: EOG), which is a company roughly 10 times its size, since EOG Resources has a $53 billion enterprise value. Another way to look at it, debt as a percentage of SandRidge Energy’s enterprise value is 81% while it’s only 9% of EOG Resources’ enterprise value.

SandRidge added the new debt as a stop gap measure to boost its liquidity and therefore buy it more time to deal with the situation. However, it’s a move that could be its undoing should oil prices stay weak for the next couple of years. That’s because the company needs higher oil prices to push its cash flow higher so that it can support its debt over the long term.

$60 oil is the new $80, but that’s not enough
One of the reasons SandRidge Energy wanted to buy itself some more time is because it’s working feverishly to get its well costs down to $2.4 million per lateral. That cost represents a 20% saving from last year’s well cost and, more important, would enable SandRidge Energy to earn a 50% internal rate of return at a $60 oil price. For perspective, that’s the same return the company had been earning at a $80 oil price when its well costs were over $3 million per lateral. The problem is the fact the company still has a ways to go as its current well costs are $2.7 million.

Furthermore, even if SandRidge can meet its lofty goal of a $2.4 million well cost, the returns it would earn would still be well below what other peers like EOG Resources are already earning. In fact, EOG Resources is actually enjoying better well economics right now than when oil prices were $95 per barrel. As an example, the company’s after tax rate of return is 73% for wells drilled in the western Eagle Ford Shale while the company’s wells in the Delaware Basin Leonard now earn a 71% after tax rate of return, which are above the previous returns of 60% and 36%, respectively.

Investor takeaway
SandRidge Energy’s mountain of debt alone suggests the company isn’t built to last as it has almost as much debt as EOG Resources, a company nearly 10 times its size. Its problems are further compounded by the fact that the company’s asset base simply can’t produce returns on the same level as EOG Resources. Clearly, the company faces a daunting task as it won’t survive unless the price of oil moves meaningfully higher so that it can better support its mountain of debt.

Read more: http://www.investopedia.com/stock-analysis/062215/sandridge-energy-built-last-sd-eog.aspx#ixzz3dsSG8k

Protect your wealth

www.hignnetworth.wordpress.com

 

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Money Managers Brace for Bond-Market Collapse

 

 

TCW Group Inc. is taking the possibility of a bond-market selloff seriously.

So seriously that the Los Angeles-based money manager, which oversees almost $140 billion of U.S. debt, has been accumulating more and more cash in its credit funds, with the proportion rising to the highest since the 2008 crisis.

“We never realize what the tipping point is until after it happens,” said Jack A. Bass,  head of trading for Jack A. Bass and Associates. “We’re as defensive as we’ve been since pre-crisis.”

Bass isn’t alone: Bond funds are holding about 8 percent of their assets as cash-like securities, the highest proportion since at least 1999, according to FTN Financial, citing Investment Company Institute data.

Cudzil’s reasoning is that the Federal Reserve is moving toward its first interest-rate increase since 2006, and the end of record monetary stimulus will rattle the herds of investors who poured cash into risky debt to try and get some yield.

The shift in policy comes amid a global backdrop that’s not exactly rosy. The Chinese economy is slowing, the outlook for developing nations has grown cloudy, and the tone of Greece’s bailout talks changes daily.

Distorted Markets

Of course, U.S. central bankers are aiming to gently wean markets and companies off zero interest-rate policies. In their ideal scenario, borrowing costs would rise slowly and steadily, debt investors would calmly absorb losses and corporate America would easily adjust to debt that’s a little less cheap amid an improving economy.

That outcome seems less and less likely to Cudzil, as volatility in the bond market climbs.

“If you distort markets for long periods of time and then you remove those distortions, you’re subject to unanticipated volatility,” said Cudzil, who traded high-yield bonds at Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank AG . He declined to specify the exact amount of cash he’s holding in the funds he runs.

Price swings will also likely be magnified by investors’ inability to quickly trade bonds, he said. New regulations have made it less profitable for banks to grease the wheels of markets that are traded over the counter and, as a result, they’re devoting fewer traders and money to the operations.

To boot, record-low yields have prompted investors to pile into the same types of risky investors — so it may be even more painful to get out with few potential buyers able to absorb mass selling.

“We think the market’s telling you to upgrade your portfolio,” Bass said. “Whether it happens tomorrow or in six months, do you want look silly before the market sells off or after?”

Contact Details:

Information must proceed action and that is why we offer a no cost / no obligation inquiry service if you are not already a client.

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or Call Jack direct at 604-858-3202 – Pacific Time 10:00 –4:;00 Monday to Friday

The main intention of our website is to provide objective and independent information that will help the potential investor to make his own decisions in an informed manner. To this effect we try to explain in a simple language the different processes and the most important figures involved in offshore business and to show the different alternatives that exist, evaluating their pros and cons. On the other hand we intend – in terms of offshore finance, bringing these products to the average citizen.

Do something to help yourself – contact Jack A. Bass now !

 

End The Greek Ponzi Scheme: Cut Greece Loose

 

Now come Greeks bearing the gift of confirmation that Margaret Thatcher was right about socialist governments: “They always run out of other people’s money.” Greece, from whose ancient playwrights Western drama descends, is in an absurdist melodrama about securing yet another cash infusion from international creditors. This would add another boulder to a mountain of debt almost twice the size of Greece’s gross domestic product. This protracted dispute will result in desirable carnage if Greece defaults, thereby becoming a constructively frightening example to all democracies doling out unsustainable, growth-suppressing entitlements.

In January, Greek voters gave power to the left-wing Syriza party, one third of which, The Economist reports, consists of “Maoists, Marxists and supporters of Che Guevara.” Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, 40, a retired student radical, immediately denounced a European Union declaration criticizing Russia’s dismemberment of Ukraine. He chose only one cabinet member with prior government experience — a leader of Greece’s Stalinist communist party. Tsipras’ minister for culture and education says Greek education “should not be governed by the principle of excellence … it is a warped ambition.” Practicing what he preaches, he proposes abolishing university entrance exams.

Voters chose Syriza because it promised to reverse reforms, particularly of pensions and labour laws, demanded by creditors, and to resist new demands for rationality. Tsipras immediately vowed to rehire 12,000 government employees. His shrillness increasing as his options contract, he says the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund are trying to “humiliate” Greece.

How could one humiliate a nation that chooses governments committed to Rumpelstiltskin economics, the belief that the straw of government largesse can be spun into the gold of national wealth? Tsipras’ approach to mollifying those who hold his nation’s fate in their hands is to say they must respect his “mandate” to resist them. He thinks Greek voters, by making delusional promises to themselves, obligate other European taxpayers to fund them. Tsipras, who says the creditors are “pillaging” Greece, is trying to pillage his local governments, which are resisting his extralegal demands that they send him their cash reserves.

Yanis Varoufakis, Greece’s finance minister, is an academic admirer of Nobel laureate John Nash, the Princeton genius depicted in the movie “A Beautiful Mind,” who recently died. Varoufakis is interested in Nash’s work on game theory, especially the theory of co-operative games in which two or more participants aim for a resolution better for all than would result absent co-operation. Varoufakis’ idea of co-operation is to accuse the creditors whose money Greece has been living on of “fiscal waterboarding.” Tsipras tells Greece’s creditors to read “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” Ernest Hemingway’s novel of the Spanish Civil War. His passive-aggressive message? “Play nicely or we will kill ourselves.”

Since joining the eurozone in 2001, Greece has borrowed a sum 1.7 times its 2013 GDP. Its 25 per cent unemployment (50 per cent among young workers) results from a 25 percent shrinkage of GDP. It is a mendicant reduced to hoping to “extend and pretend” forever. But extending the bailout and pretending that creditors will someday be paid encourages other European socialists to contemplate shedding debts — other people’s money that is no longer fun.

Greece, with just 11 million people and 2 per cent of the eurozone’s GDP, is unlikely to cause a contagion by leaving the zone. If it also leaves the misbegotten European Union, this evidence of the EU’s mutability might encourage Britain’s “Euro-skeptics” when, later this year, that nation has a referendum on reclaiming national sovereignty by

withdrawing from the EU. If Greece so cherishes its sovereignty that it bristles at conditions imposed by creditors, why is it in the EU, the perverse point of which is to “pool” nations’ sovereignties in order to dilute national consciousness?

The EU has a flag no one salutes, an anthem no one sings, a president no one can name, a parliament whose powers subtract from those of national legislatures, a bureaucracy no one admires or controls and rules of fiscal rectitude that no member is penalized for ignoring. It does, however, have in Greece a member whose difficulties are wonderfully didactic.

It cannot be said too often: There cannot be too many socialist smashups. The best of these punish reckless creditors whose lending enables socialists to live, for a while, off other people’s money. The world, which owes much to ancient Athens’ legacy, including the idea of democracy, is indebted to today’s Athens for the reminder that reality does not respect a democracy’s delusions.

NOTE: Our Managed Accounts have no Greek Exposure/ no Greek Banks or Bank Accounts – you deserve that attention and ability.

Contact Details:

Information must proceed action and that is why we offer a no cost / no obligation inquiry service if you are not already a client.

Email :                info@jackbassteam.com

or Call Jack direct at 604-858-3202 – Pacific Time 10:00 –4:;00 Monday to Friday

The main intention of our website is to provide objective and independent information that will help the potential investor to make his own decisions in an informed manner. To this effect we try to explain in a simple language the different processes and the most important figures involved in offshore business and to show the different alternatives that exist, evaluating their pros and cons. On the other hand we intend – in terms of offshore finance, bringing these products to the average citizen.

Do something to help yourself – contact Jack A. Bass now !