Sweet

Is it not obvious? No they haven’t.

Anas Alhajji said that nearly all of Irans stored ‘oil’ was actually condensate that few actually want. The market is short heavy crude, the light stuff not so much.

That’s a false framing though. You can be pro-west and also believe the world is not black or white. Many books are critical of the West and our governments. Good luck criticising Putin or Xi in their respective countries.

That would be a bad thing?

Key question to this is how much you need each year to live off. Currently a no for me, and I don’t think I would ever want to live off investments.

Iran deal looks likely, my own view is Iran has been getting a lot more oil to the market than it lets on. Still for sure some production will come back in the next 1-2 years plus they will be able to get the market price. The cynic in me says that Iran agreeing to a deal may be related to Russian sanctions kicking in. EU embargo on Russian oil is only a few months away, Russian oil may end up be exported from Iranian ports as ‘Iranian’ oil.

Can you trust China? Do you believe your capital is protected and would be free from interference by the Chinese government? Can you trust the financials of companies, that they are telling the truth and not lying or masking problems at the heart of businesses? Is there a regulator that is independent, and will do the right thing even if the government don’t like it? For me the answer to all of the above is no. Therefore I have to stay away from any company based or have the vast majority of their business in China. I think there is an unappreciated chance that your holdings would go to zero.

Xi and the CCP control China, therefore it is a China problem. Like the Nazis made Germany a global problem in WW2.

This guy is a clown: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/03/un-secretary-general-urges-governments-to-tax-immoral-oil-profits.html Didn’t hear anyone talking about the greedy oil companies at the bottom of covid. The modern world wouldn’t last too long without O&G.

My opinion, and it is only that, is that you were wronged by the Frankfurt exchange. Short of lawyering up, I’m of sure what you can do. Sometimes a strongly worded letter from a lawyer threatening legal action can produced outsized results. Might be worth a go if the money lost is sizeable.

@Vikingi hope you aren’t blaming the US here? The investment angle for me has long been stay away from China.

Depends on API of crude produced, you aren’t getting diesel is the longer chain hydrocarbons aren’t there. Much of US shale, especially more recently, is very high API and unsuitable for producing diesel. It’s blended with the lower API grades: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=30852 ^ That’s several years ago, increasingly the oil just becomes lighter from Shale plays. Saudi less and less important, and would be irrelevant if Canada could produce full tilt. North America could be energy independent.

The US is not energy independent. It produces too much light sweet crude that makes gasoline. This grade is exported. It doesn’t have enough of the heavy crude that makes diesel. This grade is imported from Saudi among others. Counting the barrels only gives the impression it is energy independent, factor in the grade of that crude and it’s a very different story.

Saudi isn’t our global competitor trying to undermine our influence. The prospects of a war with Saudi is very low. In short they aren’t a threat but China is. The Saudis provide a product we can’t currently live without. We could ween ourselves off their oil over time. China produces cheap products that could be produced by any number of developing countries who admire and want to cooperate with us. No reason to be aiding their rise for them just to undermine our influence and threaten our way of life.

I think the approach to open up China by integrating them into the global economy was at the time a smart move. Since that policy has been failure, and in fact lead to the strengthening the hand of the CCP, it needs to be reversed fast. For me Tianamen should have been the cut off point. The policy of open up the economy had lead to that moment. The hardliners in the CCP won and they crush the protestors. I don’t know why we keep fooling ourselves anymore. Xi’s stance is very clear, he’s not our friend, he doesn’t have to be our enemy, but we should be careful that one day he might be.

We should never have been doing business with them, the second it became clear that doing business with them only strengthened the hand of the authoritarian government. We should be doing business with like minded nations, and we should cease to do business with China even if it makes us poorer.

Definitely @Gregmal I’ve learned that the hard way too. Chanos is OK I think, he is a short seller I listen to, but never copy his positions. I think he uses the short positions he has to go long the general market. He loses money on the short side but (think?) makes it up on the long. The guys I really dislike are the like of Peter Schiff, Marc Faber, John Hussman - those guys are parasites that have cost investors huge sums of money.

@formthirteenagree with all of that. I think they should focus on acquisitions rather than trying to innovate themselves. I think Metaverse is going to be a huge waste of money. Better would be to have an acquisition team who buys up the best companies. They bought Instagram for a billion - what a purchase that was.

I also think META needs a new CEO, but I can’t recall a big mistake yet, I think the ‘metaverse’ will become a big mistake. What are the other big mistakes he has made in your opinion.

I doubt anyone in this thread is wagering that it will blow up, things can rumble on for a long time before they do… if they ever do. Plenty of people on Twitter and YouTube like to constantly predict doom. Very few of these guys must make any money outside of the revenue stream of being a constant doomsayer. So many of those guys are broken records, lured me in when I started investing and cost money sitting out when I should have been participating. Wonder how much money they have collectively cost investors, must be huge sums.

Just because commentators have wrongly predicted the decline of China in the past doesn’t mean they are wrong about the serious economic challenges. A country growing at a rapid clip, with lots of inwards investment, and a huge current account surplus, can mask these challenges through sheer momentum. When the economic momentum slows / stops / reverses, economic challenges can become serious economic problems. For China, the inward investment appears to be slowing, and it may cease to be the workshop of the world, with Western government hostile and suspicious. The greatest economic miracle might yet become an economic disaster - I think there will be a reckoning.

I’m reminded of this in 2018. Totally mad. And we are doing it with China too.

Yep, Europe’s biggest problem is natural gas, no SPR for that. Going into winter any power plant / industry that can switch to coal or oil will be doing so. The boom and bust nature of the industry is bad enough and it’s compounded by energy ignorance and arrogance from Western governments. Shunning reliable energy sources like fossil fuels and nuclear, in favour of internment energy like wind and solar which cannot be easily stored is crazy. Further idiocy is outsourcing our energy production to unreliable and rogue states like Russia, meanwhile the West which produces some of the most ethical energy in the world has tried to kill off home grown production. The generalist media blame oil companies, not the insane government policies. Leads me to believe that the media is infested climate activists, eager to blame the greedy oil companies and shareholders that got decimated not 2 years ago, not to take a serious look at the root causes. Politicians are at least consistent, it’s nearly always somebody else’s fault.

Thanks @fareastwarriors

He is correct shareholders have been wrecked, but wrong about it being profitable only recently. Oil companies were spending huge money to grow production as fast as possible. Moderation of that growth is now finally showing all the doubters that Shale is extremely profitable. It was the ‘drill baby drill’ approach, which crashed prices and destroyed shareholder value, it was never that shale was uneconomic. The fundamentals of shale are sound, it’s not the marginal cost barrel in world oil markets. It only took two oil downturns, and a near death experience with covid, for the producers to find religion again. Thanks for posting what was behind the paywall. Cheers