Starting at the end of 2014, I wrote a number of pieces (There Will Be Blood!!, There Will Be Blood!! (Part II), There Will Be Blood!! (Part III), There Will Be Blood!! (Part III.V)) detailing how QE was facilitating the production of certain real assets like oil where the production decision was no longer being tied to profitability. For instance, shale producers could borrow cheaply, produce at Read More

Many years ago, when I still invested in mining companies, I visited a promising exploration target in South America. As we drove up a river valley towards the deposit, we entered a lunar landscape where nothing grew. The valley walls were denuded of vegetation and the river ran orange from acid mine drainage. As we travelled the next 10 or so miles, the earth Read More

Modern central bankers are from the school of thought where there is always an eloquent academic model to approach each crisis with. Naturally, volatility is their enemy—in a highly leveraged world, volatility usually leads to dislocation and crisis. Central bankers obviously know that the halving of oil’s price in a few short months adds unnecessary volatility to their carefully orchestrated worlds. What they want Read More

Let me be clear: I am no expert on shale wells. I’m not even an “almost” expert in the shale sector. If you called me an idiot when it comes to shale drilling, I wouldn’t argue with you. With that caveat out of the way, I’m going to generalize about the shale sector (anyway). In oil and gas, most of the money is spent up front in Read More

In 1324, King Edward II of England codified something that had already been taken for granted for nearly half a millennium—the definition of the inch. Henceforth, the inch was defined as “three grains of barley, dry and round, placed end to end, lengthwise”. A foot was then 36 barleycorns and a yard was 108 barleycorns. Taken to its logical extreme, five yards make a Read More

Decades ago, index funds were created with the view that many stock pickers have no real ability to pick stocks—therefore, those people would be better off simply owning an index of stocks and receiving the performance of the overall stock market. Since then, studies have shown that index funds have outperformed the majority of actively managed funds. There are now index funds and ETFs Read More

Two weeks ago, I received a spam email from Prescience Point Research, asking me to click a link (LINK TO THESIS) and see a short selling thesis on Chicago Bridge & Iron (CBI: USA). I read about a third of the report, found the allegations regarding CBI to be intriguing but quickly lost interest. I have no position in the stock, don’t short stocks Read More

The greatest honor in the blogosphere is to be quoted by another blogger. I will now return the favor to my friend at Buyside Notes who has done an excellent job of expanding upon my Kashagan piece, to show all of the many reasons that oil prices will not be declining any time soon. I have found his writing to be very informative and Read More

  Yesterday, I walked into my local bank branch to get a reference letter needed for a travel visa (long story…) and I was immediately pounced on by tellers hungry for a commission. “Do you have a HELOC??” If you remember from Part I of this series, in December, I didn’t qualify for any sort of standard loan product since my irregular income meant that Read More