OIL CUTS CONTINUE

Harold Hamm, the CEO of Continental Resources, of late was in the news owing to his bitter divorce case and the size of the check (pictured above) that he wrote his ex-wife. She originally rejected the check but eventually cashed it, according to reports.

The check was for $974 million,790 thousand,317 hundred and 77/100.

Last time we checked the census there are supposed to be seven billion of us currently inhabiting the planet. Probably one-half of one-half of one-tenth of one-fourth of one-eighth of one-sixteenth of one-twenty fourth will ever get a chance to write a check like that let alone cash one.

Hamm is an oil magnate and his views are of interest to anyone who follows the industry. Recently, he spoke at a conference in Houston.

Hamm: Oil prices could rise sooner than you think

Posted on January 28, 2015 at 12:39 pm by Ryan Holeywell in Crude oil, Production

(AP PhotoKevin Cederstrom)

HOUSTON — The market doesn’t understand just how quickly oil companies are scaling back their activities, and as a result, oil prices could rebound faster than many observers expect, Continental Resources CEO Harold Hamm said Wednesday.

Hamm, addressing the Argus Americas Crude Summit in downtown Houston, noted the slew of companies that have quickly pulled back on their capital expenditures as oil prices have fallen by more than 50 percent since the summer.

He said exploration and production companies can’t afford to borrow money, and falling stock prices make it hard to raise cash by issuing equity. “You’re limited in what you can do if you don’t conserve cash,” said Hamm, whose company is primarily active in North Dakota and Oklahoma.

Continental Resources recently cut its 2015 capital budget from $4.05 billion in 2014 down to $2.7 billion this year. Hamm — considered one of the pioneers of hydraulic fracturing — noted that his own company went through five or six budget revisions before settling on that figure.

He said oil companies will save cash by laying down rigs and deferring well completions until service companies’ rates drop further. ”Why complete a well today when these service costs are coming down?” Hamm said.

He also said some companies will likely stop producing oil from existing wells and simply leave it underground as they wait for oil prices to increase. “It’s not going anywhere,” Hamm said. “It’s locked in a rock.”

Daily oil production from the country’s biggest plays — the Bakken, the Permian Basin and the Eagle Ford — could actually start to decrease mid-year or even earlier, Hamm said. That’s considerably sooner than other observers’ forecast, who’ve said production would still likely increase this year even if drilling activity slows.

“U.S. producers will demonstrate market discipline and act uniformly,” Hamm said. “We have the same market forces on us, so we do the same thing.”

“The market does not appreciate how rapidly U.S. producers are reacting,” he added.

Hamm acknowledged he didn’t know at what level oil prices will bottom out. In the longer-term, he said, they’ll likely be less than $100-per-barrel the industry has enjoyed in recent years as the markets come to understand the size of the resource base U.S. shale drillers have access to.

Hamm apparently is not alone in his view. For another view, see Montana Bakken.

MONTANA BAKKEN

The Bakken oil boom in Montana has gone bust, or at least that’s the belief held by Terry Johnson, director of energy research at the University of Montana’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research.

Montana Public Radio reports that Johnson said, “I would argue that the Bakken boom in Montana actually occurred back in 2005 and 2006. That the boom is really no longer that present in Montana at this point in time.”

Last Friday, Johnson gave a presentation in Missoula and said it appears that Montana’s oil wells in the Bakken formation have reached maturity and yielding less with each passing year. Now that the price of oil has declined over half within the past year, there’s not much motivation for companies to drill new wells.

According to MPR, Johnson said, “Continental Resources, the largest oil producer in Montana, is projected to cut their spending by 40 percent, and they also are projecting that they will reduce the number of drilling rigs by about a third, or 33 percent.” Oil production in the state has already declined compared to last year, and when combined with the decreased price of oil, the total value of the resource being extracted will be substantially less than the previous year. He predicts the overall value of oil produced in the state will drop by half with the coming year.

Related: Oil may boom, but infrastructure is busting Montana oil, gas counties

Natural gas production isn’t looking up either. Johnson said, “I’m not seeing any positive signs there because of our maturing wells, reduced investments, so I’m seeing probably about a 10 percent decline in natural gas.” Coal production, however, is expected to hold steady throughout the year, despite the shrinking of domestic demand as many coal-fired plants are decommissioned or converted to use natural gas.

The production decline of fossil fuels will inevitably reduce incoming tax revenue, though not in areas many would suspect. He explained, “When you talk about the state general fund budget, which is the budget that primarily funds the general operations of government, oil, natural gas, etc. are not a real large component.” The regions that will be most impacted will be county governments and school districts, due to the high percentage of oil and gas revenues they receive.

Although Johnson projects that fossil fuel production will be in decline over the coming year, he asserts that renewable energy is expected to continue growing.  Johnson told MPR, “I would argue the only real bright spot is wind. We’ve seen incredible growth, somewhere in the range of about 20 percent per year since about 2006 through 2007. From 2013 to 2014 it was almost 29 percent.” The continued growth of wind energy, however, will be highly dependent on the re-authorization of the federal wind energy production tax credit.

Cheaper oil makes more expensive alternatives less attractive. So there's a push-shove bind here that will have to get worked out. 

Part of the current consensus thinking is energy companies will complete current projects, but Hamm seems to imply something different as does this article.

Unlike a cat the energy glut may have a much shorter life than many expect.

QE GONE AMUCK

In a recent post, "Whatever It Takes," we noted the following:

In a weekend editorial, "No need for hostilities in the money currency war," one anointed genius writes, "The ECB should ignore accusations of competitive devaluation."


Much of the justification for EU QE we have read came from those citing U.S. and UK monetary policy, the assumption being they were not only successful but worth emulating. After all, it seem to work for them. Why not us and what's the holdup?

Talking that up with a litany of excuses why QE is pure and devoid of any nasty ulterior motives, especially those as nasty as competitive devaluation, the Financial Times quipped:

There is little to suggest that the ECB is skewing its policy easing towards weakening the exchange rate.


There were two points in our post, one about the currency wars--Singapore without any warning yesterday cut its interest rates and Denmark which cut rates there--and the idea as expressed in the above quote about emulating what as yet is an unproven successful consequence to the Fed's QE programs.

Reuters today reported:

The Danish central bank cut its key interest rate for the third time in two weeks to another historic low after intervening in the market to keep the crown within a tight range against the euro. 

The central bank cut its certificate of deposit rate to -0.5 percent from -0.35 percent, making a reduction of 45 basis points since Monday last week. 

While analysts said last week that its actions might not be enough to weaken the crown, few expected another cut so soon, especially as Denmark's rate went below the eurozone equivalent of -0.20 percent, making it less attractive than the euro. 


From MarketWatch, Stephen Roach, former chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia and now a Yale University faculty member, yesterday wrote: 

The ECB, however, will have a harder time making the case for wealth effects, largely because equity ownership by individuals (either direct or through their pension accounts) is far lower in Europe than in the U.S. or Japan. For Europe, monetary policy seems more likely to be transmitted through banks, as well as through the currency channel, as a weaker euro EURUSD, +0.06%  — it has fallen some 15% against the dollar over the last year — boosts exports.

The real sticking point for QE relates to traction. The U.S., where consumption accounts for the bulk of the shortfall in the post-crisis recovery, is a case in point. In an environment of excess debt and inadequate savings, wealth effects have done very little to ameliorate the balance-sheet recession that clobbered U.S. households when the property and credit bubbles burst.

MarketWatch

Real consumption has grown slowly since the recession, despite massive quantitative easing by the Fed.

Indeed, annualized real consumption growth has averaged just 1.3% since early 2008. With the current recovery in real GDP on a trajectory of 2.3% annual growth — two percentage points below the norm of past cycles — it is tough to justify the widespread praise of QE.

Japan’s massive QQE campaign has faced similar traction problems. After expanding its balance sheet to nearly 60% of GDP — double the size of the Fed’s — the BOJ is finding that its campaign to end deflation is increasingly ineffective. Japan has lapsed back into recession, and the BOJ has just cut the inflation target for this year from 1.7% to 1%.

Finally, QE also disappoints in terms of time consistency. 

For Roach's full article here's the link.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-lemmings-of-qe-2015- 

THE EUROPEAN MESS

There is never a shortage of fear mongers. Like last year's Scottish referendum, the fear-inspiring crowd rolled out the big dogs the closer and the more in doubt the outcome came.

The same holds true for the current mess called Greece. Greece is a country like others in the EU which has lived above its means. Hardly anything new here, except one might get an argument about who is better at it, the Italians or the Greeks.

And despite what Brussels bureaucrats might be saying now, they knew way back when the EU was being formed, but decided as is their want to look the other way.

The Greeks have been getting handouts from the Brussels' crowd for a long time, far more monies than they sent to  Brussels. All this ranting against the Germans for their fiscal probity, including references to the Marshal Plan after WWII, is blatant verbal legerdemain to cover up the real issue:

Brussels bureaucrats rolled the dice on a known economic half-stepper and the dice came up snake eyes. End of story. Man up and take a tip from Moses--let the Greeks go. The globe will be better off and so will an ill-conceived, poorly-thought-out and improperly-executed creation called the European Union.

Give them the benefit of their beloved drachma.



For once in your pathetic bureaucratic existences, be a group of good cupcakes, suck up the losses and move on. You might even gain a little respect in the process. And for that matter, a name change is also in order, EM--European Mess, you've created.

For the record here's a brief recap of Greece's and the EU's problems. Looks like there's enough blame to go around.

How did Greece and the EU get into this mess in the first place? The seeds were sown back in 2001, when Greece finally qualified to adopt the euro as its currency. Greece had been an EU member since 1981, but its annual budget deficit was never low enough to satisfy the eurozone's Maastricht Criteria.

All went well for the first several years. Like other eurozone countries, Greece benefited from the power of the euro, which meant lower interest rates and an inflow of investment capital and loans.
http://useconomy.about.com/od/Europe/p/What-Is-The-Greece-Debt-Crisis. 

However, in 2004, Greece announced it had lied to get around the Maastrict Criteria. Surprisingly, the EU imposed no sanctions! Why not? There were three reasons.

1. France and Germany were also spending above the limit at the time. They'd be hypocritical to sanction Greece until they imposed their own austerity measures first.
2. There was uncertainty on exactly what sanctions to apply. They could expel Greece, but that would be highly disruptive and possibly weaken the euro itself.
3. The EU wanted to strengthen, not weaken, the power of the euro in international currency markets. This would put pressure on other EU countries, like the UK, Denmark and Sweden, to adopt the euro. (Source:Bloomberg, Greece Cheated, May 26, 2011; BBC News, Greece Joins Eurozone, January 1, 2001; Greece to Join Euro, June 1, 2000).

As a result, Greek debt continued to rise until the crisis erupted. Now, the EU must stand behind its member or face the consequences of either Greece leaving the eurozone, or even worse, a Greek default.

http://useconomy.about.com/od/Europe/p/What-Is-The-Greece-Debt-Crisis.

CROSS POLLINATION HAS ITS RISK

The dismal science is another of those institutions we've alluded to that are hardly held in high esteem by the public today. From our interesting trips and reads around the web here's the best line in the post.

The whole field may end up doomed to failure and hopefully won't become another dismal science, but I thought it was worth a look, and was wondering if any other specs are familiar with it.

If nothing else, it might cross pollinate with some ideas for trading.

source: .dailyspeculations.com
 

Cliodynamics, from Dylan Distasio January 27, 2015 | Leave a Comment

  

 
 
I recently stumbled across the work of Peter Turchin, an evolutionary biologist, who is attempting to applying quantifiable scientific techniques to the study of history as part of a field known as cliodynamics. From the Santa Fe Institute's blurb on it:

The past does not repeat itself, but it rhymes," Mark Twain once said, a reference to the patterns of history, perceived anecdotally. Today, a new field is coalescing around the notion that historical patterns are, to some degree, measurable, and that the future can, also to some degree, be predicted. Researchers involved in the field call it "cliodynamics" after Clio, the Greek muse of history.

Scholars of human history traditionally have studied the past as a chain of idiosyncratic events, with each event a unique response to unique circumstances, says SFI External Professor David Krakauer. Historical fields such as paleontology have relied on collections of evidence—fossils, for example—to draw inferences about the past.

A few fields have made strides in approaching history as a science. In archaeology, for example, rigorous field survey methods have provided new, quantifiable information about the location, distribution, frequency, and organization of certain human activities. In population genetics, evolutionary outcomes are modeled as probabilities. Cliodynamicists would like to see the historical fields sharing methods among themselves and adopting approaches and theories from physics and other long-quantified fields.

The tools of complexity science are now beginning to make the task tractable, Krakauer says. Mathematical and computational techniques such as agent-based models, power-law relations, and more classical differential-equation models are in several fields helping scientists develop new theoretical frameworks, for example.

Although he did not perhaps agree with how reductionistic cliodynamics seems at first glance, I can't help but see echoes of Giovanni Battista Vico's New Science in this effort.
I have to give credit for the sheer audacity of this pipedream.
Turchin has published a book called Secular Cycles related to this topic and also maintains a website. I started to wade through his paper on analyzing the "Dynamics of political instability in the United States, 1780–2010" also. It's not without flaws, but is worth a look.
The whole field may end up doomed to failure and hopefully won't become another dismal science, but I thought it was worth a look, and was wondering if any other specs are familiar with it.
If nothing else, it might cross pollinate with some ideas for trading.

anonymous writes: 

This sounds VERY much like the premise behind Isaac Asimov's Foundation Series, the books that got me hooked on his work and Sci-Fi in general.

From the above wiki:
The premise of the series is that the mathematician Hari Seldon spent his life developing a branch of mathematics known as psychohistory, a concept of mathematical sociology. Using the laws of mass action, it can predict the future, but only on a large scale.  

As long as it doesn't cross pollinate into the dismal science, we're all for it. 









 

YOU DECIDE

We continue to write about what many want to overtly deny, currency wars.

Countries are no different from people. Most will not sit sidle when threatened. The present mess currently called Greece is an example irrespective of the debate. There are other examples. Just before the super rich convened their annual party in Davos reports surfaced how widely disgruntled many felt.

Confidence and respect for elected officials around the globe is sinking faster than a leaky boat. A recent report in the U.S. showed confidence in Congress at all time lows. The same holds for other institutions like MSM.

Most people now suspect research whether its about markets, unemployment or climate change. Many now realize much of it is produced to serve those who paid for it and little if anything about accuracy and truth.

People are beginning to have a much better idea of what's going on than any other time in history, thanks in part to the Internet. For the establishment crowd that a dangerous turn. Central bankers are part of that establishment.

What many fail to discern is, "Doing what it takes" is about as financially dangerous as it gets because the flip side of that is starting currency wars. Push beget push back, not pull.

Here's just one more warning about currency wars.

SOURCE: ZERO HEDGE

Merv "The Swerv" King - former governor of The Bank of England - has joined the ranks of thoseex-central-planners-who-feel-the-need-to-protect-their-legacy-by-rewriting-history-and-admitting-the-entire-thing-is-crazy. Speaking in Tokyo overnight, King said he’s concerned that financial markets believe real interest rates will remain very low for a very long time which has created "a significant disequilibrium in the world economy," adding that he does "not believe and expect a market economy to thrive on real interest rates that are close to zero." Warning that many nations realize "they have pushed monetary policy as far as it can go," King added that with the additional risk of currency wars, "markets will discover that they have been pushing asset prices to an excessively high level and there will be a major downward shock to asset prices."

As Bloomberg reports, Former Bank of England Governor Mervyn King says central banks and governments are becoming more and more strident in their determination to talk down their exchange rates.

“Many countries today can see that they have taken monetary policy as far as they can go.”

“Exchange rate policy may now become an instrument of monetary policy.”

“Since exchange rate changes are a zero sum game, there is a risk of currency war.”

King says disequilibrium in world economy is causing chronic weakness in demand

The must be addressed, says King, noting that monetary and fiscal stimulus may not be able to bring a recovery unless the disequilibrium is addressed

King also explained that he’s concerned that financial markets believe real interest rates will remain very low for a very long time.

“They may be right, they may be wrong,”

“If they are right, I think we have a significant disequilibrium in the world economy. I do not believe and expect a market economy to thrive on real interest rates that are close to zero.”: King

“If they’re wrong, then at some point markets will discover that they have been pushing asset prices to an excessively high level and there will be a major downward shock to asset prices and with debt levels fixed in nominal terms, that could cause some serious problems at some point in the future.”: King

Former central bank chief or not, King is obviously just one guy. So it's just as obvious that the in-crowd will claim the disgruntled-lone wolf defense to marginalized him or anyone else who bothers to question their tactics.

By the same token it's most likely much more dangerous to speak up now than at any other time. So we'll leave you for now while you enjoy the Super Bowl with one of our favorite sayings: 

You decide.

STRONG DOLLAR WINDS

In case you didn't know it, Procter and Gamble, the largest consumer goods firm by sales, is 178 years young.

Back to that in a bit.

Falling energy prices were touted as a big positive for consumers who were expected to get those savings out of their hot little hands in a hurry.

In fact, this was a popular MSM meme second only to last year's big Wall Street one about rising bond yields, something that never happened.

Such memes usually come gift wrapped in the typical, arrogant Wall Street "No-Brainer" packaging. Race track touts used to call them "Sure things."

Consumers and the economy in the eyes of most half-blind economists are Siamese twins attached at the pocketbook. Consumer spending numbers may get revised upwards when they hit the street next month. But the spillover effect has yet to hit industrial firms reporting 4Q earnings, the Financial Times reports.

Headwinds so far include a stronger U.S. dollar, low energy prices, slow global growth and, yes, even those much revered by many bureaucrats, economists and politicians, low interest rates. And a once popular advertising slogan, "Where's the beef?' has now become--with the so-called unemployment rate at 5.6%--where's the average hourly earnings?

Wage growth for all the talk about economic strength in the U.S. has disappointed so far. And that brings us back to Procter and Gamble, the 178-year-old largest consumer goods company by sales and its recent announcement that it's been hit by the "most significant fiscal year currency impact" in its history. 

Those are pretty big words covering a pretty long time.

It's another way of saying earnings are taking a hit. To date much of the price in p/e ratios, it's no secret, has been supported by share buybacks and raised dividends. Some of those dividends paid for with borrowed money. 

So p/e ratios become a concern. Who wants to pay more for less?

Rising interest rates could pose a threat to the wind beneath the wings of those rising dividends without support from rising earnings irrespective of what the Fed does.

SECOND WARNING

 

This is the second warning we've seen in a week about the possibility of oil hitting $200 a barrel in the near future if  searching for new supply dries up owing to a lack of  investment as most majors roll back their E&P spending and cut jobs.

See our earlier post, The Frack Thickens.

Brent crude prices steadied above $48 a barrel today, recovering from earlier losses as the dollar weakened against the euro. Prices were also supported after OPEC's Secretary-General, Abdullah al-Badri, commented yesterday that prices may have bottomed and warned of a risk of a future jump to $200 a barrel if investment in new supplies was too low. Brent is 0.7% higher at $48.49/bbl, while WTI is up 0.6% at $45.40.

Certainly, this could be smoke and mirrors owing to the pain lower energy prices seem to be causing the industry. But just today the newest  bond king, CEO of Doubleline Capital, Jeffery Gundlach, stated oil would not reach $90 a barrel this year, a view somewhat at odds with one oil magnate T. Boone Pickens had suggested earlier. 

Gundlach admitted he knew less about oil markets than Pickens but noted he knew a lot about markets and had put lots of his own money where his view was. So this ought to make for some interesting theater as 2015 rolls on.

In fairness to Gundlach he did mention that geopolitical risk were still there. As an aside, here's one of our favorite recent Gundlach quotes:  “People often repeat things people tell them without thinking,“ he said. “There are phrases in [markets] that make absolutely no sense, kind of like talk from central bankers.”

ECONOMIC OLD MAID

The skeptics--especially those who worship at the alter of central banks--will claim currency wars are more myth than truth.

Someone apparently forgot to tell the Chinese. The Wall Street Journal reported today, "China Nudges Yuan to 7-Month Low," pushed lower by China's central bank to boost growth.

The People's Bank of China set the morning reference rate--which typically sets the daily direction--weaker, with traders in Asia then pushing the yuan down to 6.2537 to the dollar, the closest it's ever been to the weak side of its 2% daily trading band.

A weaker currency should help ease two concerns confronting the world's second biggest economy: weakening exports and softening inflation.                                        

Chinese is reported;y growing at it slowest in almost 25 years, not something that a country with a billion potentially restless people favors. With falling inflation numbers, the fear about deflation spreads and like a room full of measles apparently doesn't discriminate.

The drop on the yuan engineered by the People's is the latest response to persistent global economic weakness that is a legacy of the global financial crisis.

Many central banks have resorted to letting their currencies fall against their trading partners. In the short term, weakening a currency helps exporters by making their goods more competitive in foreign markets.

This is an economic replica of a once popular card game some played growing up called Old Maid. The object was not to get stuck holding the Old Maid card at the end of the game. With Japan already at the table--not to mention other central banks--and the ECB now pulling up a chair, the picture should be getting clearer.

With the U.S. economy being held up as the big recipient of all the Fed's QE and the big dollar rally, one should by now have a decent idea about who the Old Maid is.
  
The skeptics tell whoppers. 

AMERICA EUROPEAN STYLE

From time to time we select pieces we see from the web we think our readers will find interesting. Here's one we like from
http://www.dailyspeculations.com/wordpress/.

It's unlikely that many have heard of the Ten Thousand Commandments. It's the title of an annual report which measures Congressional legislative progress and then contrasts its record with that of the "rules and regs" initiated by a host of federal agencies in the same period.

The most recent report reveals that Congress managed to enact 72 pieces of legislation. Federal agencies, chief among them the Departments of the Treasury, Commerce, Interior, Health and Human Services, Transportation, and the Environmental Protection Agency pumped through 3,659 new rules. The annual "rules and regs" price tag? $1,863 trillion - to put that amount in perspective, the Feds annual "take" from individual taxpayers was $1.234 trillion.

In addition to the enacted rules and regs, there are an additional 2,500 "proposed" regs awaiting a final go-ahead. There are also over 24,000 "public notices" regarding many of our daily concerns. Among these are issues of health care, education, energy production, finance, land and resource management, etc.

It's imperative to understand that agency rules and regs are legally binding decisions which are written and implemented by groups of nameless, faceless, and unelected individuals — many of whom, like members of Congress, have agendas of their own, but unlike members of Congress, are unanswerable to the American public.