It’s an odd recession when the economy adds 372K jobs and the unemployment rate stays at 3.6%. We seem to be talking ourselves into one. Consumer expectations are the lowest in almost a decade. High prices for energy and food are the culprit. Few are seeing their incomes keep pace with 8% inflation, so real […]

US drivers may complain about the cost of filling up, but the epicenter of the energy crisis is Germany. The world’s third biggest exporter (behind China and the US) reported a monthly trade deficit for the first time in over thirty years. Higher energy prices hit in two ways – Germany is spending much more […]

May 17 represented a memorable anniversary for me as it marked 40 years since I first moved to the US. Another Brit leaving the old world for the new. I arrived on an evening flight from Toronto where I’d spent a week with family. It was my first time in NY and such was the […]

The energy transition’s long overdue reassessment was already under way by the time Russian missiles began falling on Ukraine. Fear of stranded assets has been replaced by the sudden need for energy security. At a recent JPMorgan energy conference, CEO Jamie Dimon repeated his call for a new “Marshall Plan” to ensure energy security for […]

Every investor is aware that the market’s been volatile recently. The VIX is high but converting it into typical daily moves isn’t intuitive. Several readers like the chart below, which shows what % of the last 100 trading days have seen the market move by more than 1% in either direction. It’s currently 55, so […]

Amid the more hawkish Fed and consequent sharp drop in the market, the jump in real yields has not drawn much attention. The rise in ten year yields came with inflation expectations remaining well anchored at around 2.75%. TIPs yields rose with nominal ones. Factset earnings expectations don’t yet reflect the pessimism of public company […]

People may disagree on whether this Fed is hawkish or not, but reactionary is not a controversial adjective. They first demonstrated this in waiting eighteen months after the Covid vaccine and fifteen months after the last $1.9TN slug of fiscal uber-stimulus to roll back their monetary accommodation. Quantitative Easing (QE) is more aptly followed by […]

Vaclav Smil is a polymath whose prolific writing on energy has produced his latest book, How the World Really Works. You read Smil slowly, taking time to digest the facts and conclusions that are his trade. He combines expertise across several disciplines to explain the technology and inputs supporting modern western lifestyles. In Fossil Future, […]

There were three stories last week that can best be characterized as providing energy realism. The fire at Freeport’s LNG facility sent US natural gas prices skidding, with the loss of 2 Billion Cubic Feet per Day (BCF/D) of export capacity. Freeport warned it’ll be at least three weeks before operations can resume – meaning […]

When the MLP structure dominated midstream energy infrastructure almost a decade ago, yield was a popular valuation metric. MLPs typically paid out 90% or more (sometimes over 100%) of their Distributable Cash Flow (DCF). Comparing MLP yields with the ten year treasury provided a measure of historic valuation. By this metric, midstream isn’t cheap. The […]