nafregnum

Thanks for this! Very interesting interview - I bought "The Prize" on Audible (it's abridged, so only 2.5 hrs) and am excited to listen to it. So, Oil was a main character in the 20th century world drama, alongside nuclear weaponry. Seems like we're looking at advanced computer chips as the current alpha resource, and maybe electrical energy like Yergin said around 55 minutes in when he said Bill Gates mentioned data centers used to be measured in CPUs "20,000 CPU data center" and now it's a "3 Megawatt data center" ...

Thanks for posting that video - I didn't know any of that about wastewater. I caught myself wondering what the dynamics are like up in Alberta's oilfields. I think the pressure of the injected water eases as the water is able to spread out into the geological formation until pressure is equalized. I imagine one cheapish solution might be to drill more re-injection wells and just pump slower into each one. Seems like that might reduce seismicity and also the risk of causing nearby zombie blowouts. Here's hoping they figure it out.

Starting a position in SNDL

I've enjoyed reading this thread today, mostly for all your thoughts on holding periods and concentration. Letting my winners run has usually been my best move. My big regrets have been failures to take larger positions when I feel like I've found a winner. Haven't bought anything this year, but sold off a little GLASF to sleep better. My main taxable account looks like this - I think I bought Booking, Citi, Nintendo, and Disney last year, but I didn't feel high conviction so didn't make them large positions. Looks like I sold off most of my losers to offset gains from selling some old winners last year, so the screenshot isn't a good picture of past failures such as BABA. I was lucky to follow a lot of you guys into Energy a few years back, particularly Obsidian which I had been in and out of earlier when it was PennWest -- big thanks for SharperDingaan for defending his rationale on OBE back when it was turning around and it was still unpopular. I should've listened to him about energy being something you don't hold for the long term. I wish I had sold above $10 when Russia invaded Ukraine and oil prices were surging. My best performer and my biggest position sizing regret was Enphase, bought back in 2017. It turned into a 200 bagger before I sold off most of it, and now I just keep a sliver as a memento. It was only a 0.1% position, DAMMIT! That old lesson from Enphase influenced me to build up a bigger position in GLASF a year or two ago. Buffett has said he's proud never to have lost more than 5% due to a single bad investment - I think he said Tesco was his largest mistake ... so, if I feel particularly convicted about something, I might take as high as a 6 or 7% initial position size. The way I think about it, If I were to hold a lot of 1% positions I'd probably be better off just buying the S&P. When I'm tempted to get more active, I remember this story I heard about research at Fidelity. (I asked Claude-AI to tell the story since I didn't want to type it out)

Watched this one last night, based on a reddit.com/r/Documentaries recommendation thread. A lot of real good philosophy on teaching/training in here that doesn't just apply to horses.

https://blog.gorozen.com/blog/is-us-oil-production-surging This article is suggesting shale production in the US is going to be peaking this year, that 50% has already been extracted from all major shale basins, and that the reason for recent growth has been prioritization of best performing areas, a process known in the mining industry as "high-grading", and that the actual figures are hidden behind some funny accounting using an "EIA Crude Adjustment Factor" (graph shown on the page) ... Opinions on the usefulness/accuracy of this information? Is this the kind of information people will be pointing to if Warren Buffett's big OXY bet plays out fantastically, or am I reading a conspiracy theory website?

Ooh, thanks, I didn't know anything about Pocket Cast before - I'm going to check it out.

https://www.energypolicy.columbia.edu/methane-detection-just-got-a-lot-smarter/ Detecting methane leaks via a new satellite that the Environmental Defense Fund will be launching in a month or two, with support from Google and some funding from Bezos Earth Fund. https://www.bezosearthfund.org/ideas/satellites-for-climate-and-nature https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/sustainability/how-satellites-algorithms-and-ai-can-help-map-and-trace-methane-sources/ It will have the ability to detect methane concentrations down to the resolution of 400m square pixels, and can watch 200 sites that are 200km square, so it'll be able to keep an eye on all the major O&G basins to identify where the worst leaks are so they can be remediated. The old quote comes to mind: "Only when the tide goes out do you learn who has been swimming naked." I have read that Obsidian Energy prides itself on its monitoring and leak prevention/remediation program. I'm interested to see what this kind of transparency does. I've heard that North American O&G extraction is much cleaner than in other countries, but we will all soon find out.

Overcast. It has "Smart Speed" (cuts out silences) and you can also pay $9.99/yr for some premium features, like ability to upload your own mp3 files to your own private 10gb of file space. I take epub books that aren't available on Audible, and convert them to mp3 file using some scripts I wrote and Amazon's Polly service, then upload the mp3s so I can listen to them. The app is great, even if you don't need to premium features.

https://pracap.com/just-smash-the-buybacks/ Kuppy's rationale seems well reasoned for profitable-but-unpopular companies like O&G and coal. Obsidian (OBE) is doing buybacks. Who else is in this unpopular sector and doing buybacks at cheap valuations instead of dividends and mergers?

From a book I just read, here's some supportive evidence of this kind of thing happening: “Aducanumab is the first new drug to be approved for Alzheimer’s treatment in nearly twenty years. The FDA’s approval of aducanumab proved to be one of the most controversial in recent memory. Not only has the drug been considered to be clinically ineffective, a third of patients getting aducanumab suffered swelling or bleeding in the brain. Not a single member of the FDA expert advisory panel voted in favor of its approval, and three of the committee members resigned in protest, one calling it “probably the worst drug approval decision in recent US history.” The response from the scientific community may best be summed up by a commentary written by the head of the American Geriatrics Society titled, “My Head Just Exploded.…” Check out the whole fascinating saga in https://see.nf/aducanumab. A congressional investigation concluded the approval of aducanumab was “rife with irregularities,” raising “serious concerns about FDA’s lapses in protocol and [the drug company] Biogen’s disregard of efficacy. That didn’t stop the FDA from its 2023 accelerated approval of a similar antibody, lecanemab (Leqembi), of similar questionable efficacy and safety.” Excerpt From How Not to Age Michael Greger, M.D., FACLM

By the way, two side thoughts: (1) It'd be nice for TheCOBF to have an Amazon affiliate code, so that links to the books could generate a little extra $$ for the forum. https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/resource-center/how-to-build-amazon-affiliate-links?ac-ms-src=rc-home-card (2) Maybe we could have members submit favorite books for 2023 and vote/rank them?

I'm really liking this book. All about things that just don't change about human nature, and lots of anecdotes that investors will enjoy (about stocks, markets, economies, etc) Each chapter is about 11 minutes long (he says "You're welcome" for that, and I do appreciate it) I'm just 2/5 through it so far. It starts off with a new anecdote about Warren Buffett, and there are some good Charlie Munger quotes in here too. The opening story about Buffett: And, a quote I really enjoyed, by another investor Jim Grant: Morgan Housel wrote another book here in the forum, "The Psychology of Money", which I haven't read yet. Anybody else reading this one?

The Audible Plus catalog has Charlie's biography, "Damn Right!" so anyone can listen to it for free if you've got an Audible account at the Premium Plus level. I think I'm going to re-read my copy of Poor Charlie's too, this time with my almost-grown-up kids. They've been asking me about getting started with investing, and Charlie's generosity at mentoring others is making me feel ashamed that I haven't shared more about the topic, especially with them.

Buffett told CNBC’s Becky Quick in 2018. “Charlie has given me the ultimate gift that a person can give to somebody else. He’s made me a better person than I would have otherwise been. ... He’s given me a lot of good advice over time. ... I’ve lived a better life because of Charlie.” I've been trying to come up with some way to say how I feel about Charlie. Warren expressed it right there.