Americans did vote for tariffs when we elected Donald Trump. Many perhaps thought they’d be implemented with a clearer strategic purpose. I had hoped we’d use them to open up foreign markets such as the EU, reducing our trade deficit by exporting more not by importing less. And most voters probably weren’t voting for a […]

Which is a more important measure of an investment manager’s skill – the return on the first dollar invested at inception, or the return on the average dollar? Return since inception is widely used because it covers the longest period. If performance is reasonably consistent, both methods should tell the same story. That this is […]

$1.4TN is a huge sum by any standard. It’s more than Spain’s entire stock market capitalization and just behind Switzerland’s. It’s more than Indonesia’s GDP and not far below South Korea’s. This is the sum that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has committed to invest in America over the next decade. It’s probably the best […]

In recent years climate extremists have become adept at weaponizing the legal system in pursuit of their dystopian aims. The Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), which was built to move natural gas from West Virginia to Virginia, faced extensive delays with only a few miles left, because climate activists were able to persuade a judge to […]

There are few parts of America redder than Naples, FL.  Kamala Harris signs were nowhere to be seen last year. Florida has shifted from purple to red in recent years. A friend once received hostile comments from a local who noticed his Connecticut license plate, demanding that he not relocate but should keep his liberal […]

I spent a few days last week at the Catalyst Funds National Sales Conference in Puerto Rico. Catalyst is our mutual fund partner. It is about ten degrees warmer than Naples, FL where we’ve spent most of the winter, and the conference was once again thoughtfully located at the Royal Sonesta Hotel on the beach […]

On Monday the market dipped back below its pre-election level. The proximate cause was Trump’s ambiguous response when asked if there will be a recession. He has warned that the tariffs will likely cause “a little disturbance.” To this observer, the problem is more the rapid unpredictability with which new import taxes are announced and […]

Midstream companies are generally unaffected by the current round of daily tariff updates. Their stock prices may gyrate with the rest of the market, but nobody is revising guidance. It’s worth remembering that these are toll businesses, focused on volumes not commodity prices. Consumption of petroleum products is remarkably stable. It’s been between 20 and […]

Last week I gave a lunchtime presentation to a local investment club organized by Elliot Miller, a friend and long-time investor in midstream energy. Afterwards one of the participants came up to me and, disclosing that he used to work as a nuclear physicist, asked me what I thought of the prospects for Small Modular […]

Daniel Yergin is right to call it the Energy Addition. In an essay in Foreign Affairs called The Troubled Energy Transition, he notes that since 1990 hydrocarbons have dropped from 85% of primary energy to around 80% today. That can hardly be called a transition. Since 2000 global energy consumption has increased from 397 Exajoules […]