Busy Week Ahead:
- IPAA New York. April 23 to 25. A list of the participants, their meeting times and a link to their webscast can be found here:
- Earnings of interest:
- April 23: (ACI), (GRP)
- April 24: (ESV), (PPP)
- April 25: (COP), (ECA), (RRC) (SII) (XTO)
- April 26: (APA), (EEE), (XOM), (HAL), (NFX) - see report, (NXY), (POT), (TDW), (VLO)
- April 27: (CVX), (CAM), (WHQ)
Last Week Wasn't So Go For The Commodities Or The Stocks
Nigeria Watch: Pitiful excuse for an election, no surpirse in outcome. I'd be surprised if some parts of the populace don't rise up and trash scattered oil infrastrature facilities and /or take more hostates. The new president elect, Umaru Yar’Adua, is the guy I think you wanted in terms of settling the country down and instituting reforms but with widespread fraud and violence during the elections it will take some time before things change.
Odds & Ends
Holdings Watch: (SCU) - Breaking out. They speak at 2:25 e today at IPAA. See above for link information.
Analyst Watch: (VLO) increased to buy at Goldman Sachs; (TSO) cut to hold at FBR; (XTO) and (EOG) cut to hold at Citigroup - this is the 5th consecutive day Citi has targetteda group within the energy sector for downgrade. (XOM) and (COP) cut to hold at Deutsche Securities. HSBC trims PT on (ACI) but boosts it on (BTU), (CNX) and (MEE).
USO Followup: ETF analysts and others say the vast underperformance of USO to WTI is primarily attributable to contango and not expenses or investments straying from the benchmark. As the fund continually rolls forward into higher priced out month contracts near each expiry it is getting further and further behind its benchmark. So, if oil futures are normally in a state of contango why buy and hold the USO? Trade it? Sure. But buy and hold? Nope, it's built to lose. If the oil futures ever get back into backwardation maybe you'd want to be in but then, that would mean oil is expected to fall, right?
Shame On You Watch: Two weeks ago (or so) I took some flak for my treatment of the second Iran hostage "crisis". I actually took it for adding the quotes to the word crisis. Well here 's a story for you.
Alaron Watch Day 4: Alaron's Price targets $68 crude and $4 gasoline. This morning June crude opens just under $64 gaining $1.50 from contract expiry. The nationwide average price for retail gasoline is $2.87 per gallon. Phil Flynn of Alaron did say $4 /gallon "somewhere in the U.S." A San Francisco station set the record last well hawking gas for $3.37 per gallon. Here's a Bloomberg story that will warm Alaron's heart.
re: earnings
add Apr 26 (VLO)to the list
Done, thanks.
Is this a desperation move to get ahead of the refiners earnings by GS today? Just doesn’t make sense to upgrade when the inventory report should show more of a build in gasoline stocks and ref rate should be higher. Only sense I can make of it is for them to take advantage(like they always do) and lighten up on their positions, then buy them back after earnings and before the driving season actually kicks off. What do you guys think?
Kevin – my two cents is they missed the move on refiners. They’ve been at a hold during this whole run. No way they can justify TSO upgrade now … even if it goes to $120, it’s not going to double (again) any time soon. VLO did not have the same appreciation as Gulf Coast cracks hadn’t moved up yet. Also, I think they like slapping the Bear analyst around (who downgraded it Friday)…nobody in the industry thinks that guy is very smart.
What is ZBWI? A quick google came up with nothing.
Sorry for that – It’s my Barrel Weighted Index for the independent refiners. I think the weights are on the cracks page but it’s about 60% VLO, then SUN, then TSO and HOC; ranked by throughput capacity in which VLO dwarfs the others. There’s a chart of it that I update whenever I get around to it or on request. The equal weight of those company’s looks a bit different and both can be seen on the cracks page.
Cheers z
Site has been down since Stephen’s post. Out of my hands but not a good ad for my host. If anyone has any ?s or comments I’ll be back in about 3 hours and will answer then.