All things STOCKS

#10,552
#10,552
walkenvol said:
What do we want to buy from Russia that’s not available elsewhere?
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If "we" is the USA then it's quite a variety of elements, like lithium, which everybody talks about, catalysts that cost a lot, like platinum, and basic construction metals that don't cost a lot. There's a headline today saying Boeing will stop buying titanium. It's a basic materials supermarket, and since they're at the bottom of the food chain, you can't sanction them; it hurts you more than them. You can get a lot of platinum in a five gallon bucket, so it doesn't matter where it comes from, but they are a major supplier.

If "we" is Europe then oil and gas are the more obvious. Europe has a highly developed economy and Russia is supplying gas to the bottom of that elaborate structure. Geography is key here; you don't get much natural gas in a five gallon bucket. You can ship it liquified, but typically, by the time you build facilities to load and unload it, the supply and demand picture have changed.
 
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#10,557
#10,557
Biden is the worst. But if people think Biden is the cause for high gas prices, they don't really know what they are talking about.
 
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#10,558
#10,558
Carp said:
Biden is the worst. But if people think Biden is the cause for high gas prices, they don't really know what they are talking about.
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Politics is a cancer that kills whatever discussion it infects. It always happens when an economic issue becomes a national news story (stock market crash, inflation, recession, etc.).

Those issues are primarily, or occasionally exclusively, economic discussions that become political discussions because people are convinced a politician they don't like caused the problem. Don't conservatives who are blaming Biden for gas prices remember when liberals blamed Dubya for high gas prices during his admin, and how annoying/stupid it was?
 
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#10,559
#10,559
And honestly people who take an interest in politics are getting dumber and dumber all the time. There is evidently no limit to what story people will believe. We are living in a drivel-filled world.

I just tell people Donald Trump is a democrat and always has been. That way, no matter what sort of moron is speaking, they'll typically just shut up.
 
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#10,560
#10,560
Firebirdparts said:
And honestly people who take an interest in politics are getting dumber and dumber all the time. There is evidently no limit to what story people will believe. We are living in a drivel-filled world.

I just tell people Donald Trump is a democrat and always has been. That way, no matter what sort of moron is speaking, they'll typically just shut up.
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Politics has been and always will be a tribal thing, but I think it has become more so over the last 20 years or so, and especially since social media came along.

I think a big part of why people are drawn to tribal political arguments is because it gives them a very simple framework to view the world through. There's this problem in the world that everybody is talking about, it is complicated, multi-factored, and you don't know precisely why it is happening. However, you want to weigh in, and so you say "it is Politician XYZ's fault."
 
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#10,561
#10,561
05_never_again said:
I thought the President had a dial on his desk that set gas prices.
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He does, and the oil companies always promise to do their patriotic duty. That has been a topic of discussion in Econ as long as we've had Corporations. Some say corps have no civic obligation. They exist strictly to make money. Others believe they do have a civic obligation. It seems they typically say the right thing.
 
#10,562
#10,562
05_never_again said:
I think a big part of why people are drawn to tribal political arguments is because it gives them a very simple framework to view the world through. There's this problem in the world that everybody is talking about, it is complicated, multi-factored, and you don't know precisely why it is happening. However, you want to weigh in, and so you say "it is Politician XYZ's fault."
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Correct.

It is true that the Biden administration had policy which discourage domestic production.

But it's also true that the oil companies themselves have withheld production because they lost a lot of money on unprofitable wells in the teens.

There can be more than one reason for a problem.
 
#10,563
#10,563
Velo Vol said:
Correct.

It is true that the Biden administration had policy which discourage domestic production.

But it's also true that the oil companies themselves have withheld production because they lost a lot of money on unprofitable wells in the teens.

There can be more than one reason for a problem.
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That's my entire point. I think people forgot that just a couple years ago, for a brief moment, they were paying (literally) people to take oil off their hands because they had no place to store it. And once that moment passed it traded in the $30-40 range for a while, which is unprofitable for much of the domestic production (particularly shale).

It was patently obvious that at some point in the not too distant future we'd be paying for all the production that was taken offline.
 
#10,564
#10,564
In the business there is a saying: The cure for high oil prices is high oil prices.

There's some more of it in the ground if you really want it.
 
#10,565
#10,565
05_never_again said:
That's my entire point. I think people forgot that just a couple years ago, for a brief moment, they were paying (literally) people to take oil off their hands because they had no place to store it. And once that moment passed it traded in the $30-40 range for a while, which is unprofitable for much of the domestic production (particularly shale).

It was patently obvious that at some point in the not too distant future we'd be paying for all the production that was taken offline.
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Here's an interesting podcast (from a few weeks ago) on the economics of shale oil drilling today.

‎Odd Lots: This Is What Needs To Happen for Oil Prices to Finally Come Down on Apple Podcasts
 
#10,568
#10,568
05_never_again said:
That's my entire point. I think people forgot that just a couple years ago, for a brief moment, they were paying (literally) people to take oil off their hands because they had no place to store it. And once that moment passed it traded in the $30-40 range for a while, which is unprofitable for much of the domestic production (particularly shale).

It was patently obvious that at some point in the not too distant future we'd be paying for all the production that was taken offline.
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You're talking about the commodities market. Lots of investors buy fuel but don't actually own storage for the bought fuel. When it went negative, those investors were essentially paying people with storage to take their losses off their hands.
 
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#10,569
#10,569
9296potsguy said:
You're talking about the commodities market. Lots of investors buy fuel but don't actually own storage for the bought fuel. When it went negative, those investors were essentially paying people with storage to take their losses off their hands.
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I know. That's what I said.

90% of the players in the markets never take delivery of the product, period. Just roll the contract forward to the next month.
 
#10,570
#10,570
9296potsguy said:
You're talking about the commodities market. Lots of investors buy fuel but don't actually own storage for the bought fuel. When it went negative, those investors were essentially paying people with storage to take their losses off their hands.
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This!

There’s a bunch of commodities speculators who got caught with their pants down on contracts they couldn’t fulfill. Much like how GameStop got over shorted except in the commodity market the SEC didn’t step in to try and save their buddies
 
#10,572
#10,572
I believe it was @Rasputin_Vol that touched on it in an earlier post, but think about what really set off sanctions, pull outs by major corporations and back and forth market gyrations….Social Media. The profound effect it has had and the speed at which it has taken place against Russia, the rapidity of reporting real time events, information or misinformation has blown past the 24 hour news cycle into another dimension. SM has, essentially, usurped all others and made itself the de facto One World Govt in a sense, maybe r at least the arbiter of public opinion.

The pressure applied is immense and the piling on, for lack of a better word, has been swift and with blunt force trauma. And the fact that any country, person, corporation etc. can be the target of a vicious cancellation or campaign to bankrupt them financially and societally is downright scary. That’s not a tacit endorsement of Putin at all. The world is probably better off without his kind. My concern, although we’ve seen it in action for several years now, is that SM is now weaponized and ripe for serious abuse with its new found power, social credit scoring and its new status quo, guilty till proven innocent.
 
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