BIG Oil Stocks Good Long-term #Investments?

The Future of Oil Companies: A Slow Decline

Market watchers are announcing the demise of the oil majors. Not for the first time. According to Jilles van den Beukel, former geoscientist with Shell, the oil companies are indeed seeing their world shrinking. But they are not dead yet: their reason for being – the world’s demand for oil and gas – is still there.

NGO’s refer to the oil majors as slowly moving dinosaurs, sitting on stranded assets that cannot be (fully) produced. They maintain that their shares are massively overvalued and that the majors should rapidly change their business model or perish. Financial analysts are worried about high costs, future oil demand and low reserve replacement ratios. They point out that the companies should prepare for an oil price that stays lower for longer rather than to keep on repeating that the current low oil prices are not sustainable. Are things really that bad for the majors?

http://theenergycollective.com/energy-post/2323568/future-oil-companies-slow-decline

Moody's warns global slowdown could spark sovereign downgrades

Credit rating agency Moody's warned on Tuesday there could be another wave of sovereign and corporate downgrades if a wider global economic slowdown started to take place.

European Bonds Gain as Economic Growth Backs Case for ECB Easing

European government bonds extended gains from Monday while the region’s stocks declined as data confirmed economic growth slowed in the second half of 2015, underpinning the case for more stimulus from the European Central Bank.

OECD Leading Indicators Point to Slowing Global Growth

The Paris-based research body said its gauges of future economic activity—which are based on information available for January—continue to point to slowdowns in the U.S., the U.K., Canada and Russia, but now also suggest growth is set to ease in Germany and Brazil.

U.S. Government Bond Yields Fall as Japan Drops to Record Lows

 Government bond yields in Japan on Tuesday fell to record lows, and the ripple effect pushed down yields in the U.S., Germany and the U.K.

Strong auction demand for a 30-year Japanese government bond sent investors piling into bonds. The buying sent the yield on the benchmark U.S. 10-year note below 1.9% again and stalled the yield’s uptick momentum over the past month. As bond prices rise, yields fall. 

http://www.wsj.com/articles/government-bond-yields-in-u-s-europe-japan-drop-1457449179

www.firstfinancialinsights.blogspot.com

Regulators Are Destroying Free Markets, Marc Faber Still Goes For Gold, & More

When Authorities "Own" the Market, The System Breaks Down: Here's Why

Panicked by the possibility of declines that undermine the official narrative that all is well, authorities the world over are purchasing assets like stocks, bonds and mortgages directly. Central banks are explicitly taking on the role of buyers of last resort on the theory that if they place a bid under the market to arrest any decline, private buyers will re-enter the market once they detect that the risk of a drop has dissipated.

The idea is that once private buyers flood back into the market, central banks can unload the assets they bought to stem the panic. In this view, the market is not based on fundamentals such as revenues, profits and price-earnings ratios--it's all about confidence. If central banks restore confidence by reversing any drop with massive buying, this central-planning manipulation will restore the confidence of private investors.

This Time Is Different: Chesapeake Energy Scraps Dividend Amid Oil And Gas Plunge

“We believe this decision is prudent as we continue to invest and redirect as much capital as possible into our world-class assets,” Chesapeake CEO Doug Lawler said in a statement. The company paid out 35-cents on an annualized basis, or approximately $240 million, funds that now can be plowed into revenue producing oilfields.

Marc Faber recommends Gold & Real Estate for an Investments outside The Banking System

“Gold is insurance if the banking system fails,” he said. “As an investor I’d like to own something outside the banking system, and that includes real estate, art and gold.”
 
Mr. Faber, publisher of the “Gloom, Doom and Boom” newsletter, made his comments Thursday July 16, 2015 at the CFA Analyst Seminar in Chicago in a presentation titled, “Inflating Asset Markets and Deflating Real Economic Activity? Strategies for Global Investors.” 

The Breakdown Of 2015 Is Now A Fact 

Part of the problem resides in China. As the next chart shows, the correlation between the price of copper and the Chinese Manufacturing Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) has been very high. In particular, the copper price has a track record of anticipating the direction of the PMI index. The latest PMI reading earlier this week came in at 48.2 this week, still below the critical 50 level. It indicates that purchasing managers believe economic contraction is prevailing at this point.

Aging Infrastructure Plagues Nation’s Busiest Rail Corridor )

These troubles have become all too common on the Northeast Corridor, the nation’s busiest rail sector, which stretches from Washington to Boston and carries about 750,000 riders each day on Amtrak and several commuter rail lines. The corridor’s ridership has doubled in the last 30 years even as its old and overloaded infrastructure of tracks, power lines, bridges and tunnels has begun to wear out. And with Amtrak and local transit agencies struggling to secure funding, many fear the disruptions will continue to worsen in the years ahead.

Meaning Is Healthier Than Happiness 

"Happiness without meaning characterizes a relatively shallow, self-absorbed or even selfish life, in which things go well, needs and desire are easily satisfied, and difficult or taxing entanglements are avoided," the authors of the study wrote. "If anything, pure happiness is linked to not helping others in need.” While being happy is about feeling good, meaning is derived from contributing to others or to society in a bigger way. As Roy Baumeister, one of the researchers, told me, "Partly what we do as human beings is to take care of others and contribute to others. This makes life meaningful but it does not necessarily make us happy.”

Top Weekly Ideas and Insights

An

 Inconvenient 

Truth:

What Happens When Science Confronts Unsubstantiated Fiction?

 EXISTENTIAL REALITY 

"Humanity's Coming of Secular Age"

 - The Last Days of Theism -

FED Chair Warns Rate Hike Coming, & More

Platinum Wealth Partners Insights

For the record just over two weeks ago the Fed warned of two rate hikes, now we are down to one. Our bet is that by the time all the other issues in China, Greece, Brazil , Puerto Rico and elsewhere get worse they will be no rate hikes and "QEnth" are going to be effected. Any rate hike is bound to be immaterial regardless, and purely symbolic - while posturing against the IMF's creeping authority - the real invisible issue here.

So don't leave yet, there is much more to come....   

Good luck; Be careful out there

Yellen says a rate hike likely needed this year

Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen on Friday said she saw signs the economy was improving and said she expects a rate hike to be needed this year.

“I expect that it will be appropriate at some point later this year to take the first step to raise the federal-funds rate and thus begin normalizing monetary policy,” she said.

Stocks SPX, +1.23% trimmed gains after Yellen’s comments were released. Treasury yields rose after the remarks and the dollar edged higher.

Though the Yellen comments aren’t out of line with previous pronouncements, traders have priced in a dovish view of when and how fast U.S. interest rates will be hiked.

Fear and uncertainty on Wall Street: investors, buckle up for a bumpy ride

Are we heading for another stock market crash? The signs are ominous. The New York stock exchange – the world’s largest stock market – shut down for three and a half hours due to a mysterious “technical issue” on Wednesday; China’s speculative stock market plunged still further, despite tens of billions of dollars of spending on the part of the government in a futile attempt to halt the carnage; Greece is sailing into uncharted territory and teetering on the brink of leaving the Eurozone; and meanwhile Puerto Rico is mired in its own debt crisis.

Euripides and Sophocles couldn’t have asked for better material for a financial markets melodrama. Little wonder, therefore, that yesterday turned into a day of carnage on Wall Street, from the moment that US stocks prepared to open for trading early in the morning. There may be more to come.

Five Things Everyone Will Be Talking About Today

What we've been reading

This is what's caught our eye over the last 24 hours.

• Don't panic - global growth is accelerating.
• The Chinese bear market by the (astonishing) numbers.
• Japan's 17,000 tons of nuclear waste in need of a new home.
• How a Greek business owner survives the economic meltdown.
• Greek newspapers are running out of ... paper.
• Kansas City Fed paper - Weighing the Costs of Waiting.
• The NYSE floor shutdown was bad, but it wasn't 1914 bad.

• IMF Sees 2015 Global Growth at Weakest Rate Since Financial Crisis   

• IMF trims U.S. forecast as it says world to weather Greece, China

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  WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) - The bank holiday in Greece and the meltdown in the Chinese stock market "have not changed the broad outlook" of moderate growth for the global economy in 2015, the International Monetary Fund said Thursday. The IMF trimmed its outlook for global growth by two-tenths, to 3.3%, slightly slower than the 3.4% growth rate seen in 2014. Most of the decline was due to slower growth in the first quarter in North America, which led the IMF to 

• downgrade its outlook for U.S. economic growth by six-tenths to 2.5%, just above last year's 2.4% growth rate. But the first-quarter weakness was expected to be only a "temporary setback," the international financial agency said. The recovery in the eurozone seems broadly on track, the IMF said. Risks to the outlook remained slightly tilted to the downside, notably from asset price shifts and financial market volatility.

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• More Leading Global Headlines

  

  Ranking The States By Fiscal Condition 

  
  Greek Banks Prepare Plan To Raid Deposits 

  
   U.K. Welfare Spending Increases $43 Billion Under Cameron

  
  Chinese Trading Suspensions Freeze $1.4 Trillion of Shares Amid Rout

  
  Central Banks Across the World Pressured to Fight Against Euro Depreciation

  
  
  European Central Bank’s Nowotny: If Greece Misses Payment, Funds Will Be Cut Off

  
  
  

  Top Weekly Ideas and Insights

  
  

  LESSON ONE:

  How It All Began?

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  IS EXISTENTIAL REALITY 

  
  

  Science or Archaic Fabrications?

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  
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