Sweet

I agree that there is a strong base here to at least not drop further, not sure how high oil prices rise. Key here for investors is: 1 - companies are disciplined 2 - companies return a lot of money to shareholders If that happens shareholders will get paid.

WTI hasn’t spent a single day above 85 this year, have to go back to November. Hopefully many of these guys have locked in higher prices.

I don’t agree that the oil fundamentals are compelling right now. We have come off quite a large build in the past few months. There also appears to be a decent chunk of supply coming on the market this year - the IEA (which is terrible I know) is predicting over 2 million extra supply this year. You also have OPEC sitting on a couple of million barrels or great of spare capacity. The price action recently appears to be something related to the wider market, it’s risk off out there. Not sure I see much further downward pressure in price but I don’t see oil heading above 100 anytime soon. Many oil companies themselves are not doing enough to repair their image. They presided over a lot of value destruction and the sector is avoided like the plague. Oil companies are viewed as planet destroyers. I don’t expect these companies to re-rate at higher multiples, so they need to find discipline and figure out how to return as much value as possible to shareholders.

It's not meaningless. The disconnect is that the energy sector on any long term measure hasbeen underperforming oil price: From 2015 highs: oil -35%, XOP -65% From 2016: oil +75%, XOP -5% From 2017: oil +29%, XOP -33% From 2018: oil +14%, XOP -22% From 2019: oil +33%, XOP -10% From 2020: oil +24%, XOP +10% Companies did destroy a lot of value and that is certainly part or even most of the reason for the disconnect... but the disconnect is real. But OK, if you believe its pointless to compare with the 2015-2020 period is because of shareholders value destruction, then you should also believe that the material improvement in oil companies balance sheets, dividends, share buybacks etc. should result in energy companies outperforming oil. And these companies obviously should not have a 1:1 relationship with oil if they are making money and producing value for shareholders.

Are they? Oil price was at this level or lower for long periods from 2016 and oil company prices were higher than now.

Ditto, know almost nothing about it. I just felt like the Fed had come out with a solution for the mark to market paper losses and that this wasn’t fully understood. Unfortunately the position was so small that it means almost nothing to me, even after todays 150% rip from the lows. If I had of known more I could have sunk a lot more into it.

What price did you get filled at? I’m going to let mine run… or die

Good point. I think higher rates is a good thing for everyone. Good for savers, better long term for the economy. Interest rates at near zero for so long was a mistake.

Too soon to tell, but as weird as it may be, it might also be how it shakes out.

Couldn’t help myself, but I bought a micro position in Western Alliance - less than 1%. Its really a lotto play, I admit to know very little about the business, and I think there is a very high chance it goes to zero.

If it’s only the end of the beginning, can you give us a general price and a general time on when we can expect the end? 3,500 in October last year, nearly 6 months ago, is the current low - after many posts ITT.

Would do no harm for whatever plan there is in place to be communicated before Mondays open.

Not a semi-jerk. A full blown dick head.

Castanza, could you help me understand the chart. Obviously the more retail deposits you have the lower risk your total deposits are - according to the chart at least. However what about loans vs securities? Can we generalise that the higher the loans plus securities the better? JPM, C and SIVB are notable outliers here.

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank has been followed by expectations that there will be more runs on regional banks - who knows. Regardless of what happens it’s seems likely that stock prices of regional banks that will get throttled by the extreme shift in sentiment. If a few survivors can be identified a lot of money could be made.

Bill claims his fund is long only now and has stopped shorting stocks. I wonder if that long puts counts as not being short.

The paper losses are only a problem if they have to sell them at market value. They can just hold them to maturity and recoup par value. They may only need to sell them at market if there is a sudden withdrawal deposits or they have to get regulatory capital fast.

Even though BAC bought way too much low yielding debt during the pandemic, they still have plenty of options to shore up any deposits that may be pulled. I think we are quite a long way off from it spiralling.

Please Jim, stop this:

Perhaps, I’m really not sure.

It’s an 35% energy profit levy which the UK government announced and which the company will have to pay this year or in the near future on any oil extracted in the UK. This is in addition to a 40% corporation tax applied to UK oil and gas companies. Therefore the combined tax rate on any oil extracted in the UK is 75% until 2028 when the levy expires. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/changes-to-the-energy-oil-and-gas-profits-levy/energy-oil-and-gas-profits-levy Why this is a non-cash deferred charge I don’t understand.

Came to post this article. From the BBC: “Harbour Energy posted pre-tax profits of $2.5bn (£2.1bn) for 2022. But tax - including $1.5bn set aside for the Energy Profits Levy - left the company with $8m in post-tax profit. The company has not revealed how many jobs may go, but it is understood hundreds of posts are under threat.” Scandalous, from a supposedly free market government.

@nafregnum ChatGPT missed that nearly all the abolitionists that successfully campaigned the British government to end the Atlantic slave trade, and free all slaves in the then British empire, were devout Christians. It would be hard to talk about the ending of the Western slave trade without mentioning what motivated William Wilberforce and those like him. Absent also are many complexities to this story. The word ebed in Hebrew can mean either slave or servant, but in the English biblical translations it’s nearly always translated to slave - incorrectly perhaps. I mention this because there is a good argument that the ebeds mentioned in the bible had a very different life from the slaves in North America. The former being more akin to indentured servitude than the racial slavery seen in the colonies and USA. It's hard to make direct comparisons if that’s the case. Worth remembering also that it wasn’t until the invention of the printing press, language translations, and widespread literacy, that bible could even be read by anyone other than a select few. The King James translation was only published in 1611, and it was only in the 19th Century could most people read it, meaning that until only 2-3 hundred years ago knowledge was passed along from the pulpit. To therefore describe things as worse centuries ago is self evidently true, but to casually associate that as a result of a belief in god is not. Regarding human rights and whether they are natural or god given. I think you are a bit off in your argument. The concept of innate natural rights isn’t always associated with god, the French Revolution which championed natural and innate human rights was atheistic. The most important critique of that view came from Edmund Burke who was a Christian member of the British Parliament and noted conservative. His view was that god given rights do exist, insofar as god had given people a concept of right and wrong, and an ability to reason, BUT it was the human institutions of civilisation and an inherited tradition / wisdom that delivered rights - he considered innate human rights as too abstract. I don’t know much about these matters, but I know enough to suggest that it’s a lot more complex than you’ve summarised. My own personal view is that this is one for the too hard pile.