Seeing Alpha (November 10)
“CPI came in red-hot again, up 0.9% month-over-month and 6.2% year-over-year, showing broad-based increases. The biggest contributors to price gains were energy, rent, food, and used cars and trucks.” As a result, “real average hourly earnings for American workers are down 1.2% year-over-year. Not exactly what we’re hoping to see.”
South China Morning Post (October 18)
Coal prices have “more than tripled in a year to near historical highs” and look poised to keep climbing, driven by a coal shortage that could threaten the global economic recovery. “Blackouts could spread from China and India to all the emerging economies still mostly reliant on coal. As supply can’t be ramped up in the near term, the shortages could worsen as energy demand rises with winter’s arrival. That may trigger another emerging-market crisis.”
Tags: Blackouts, China, Coal, Demand, Economic recovery, Emerging-market crisis, Energy, India, Prices, Reliant, Shortage, Supply, Threaten, Tripled, Winter
The Economist (October 9)
“Spending has come roaring back, as governments have stimulated the economy and consumers let rip. The surge in demand is so powerful that supply is struggling to keep up. Lorry drivers are getting signing bonuses, an armada of container ships is anchored off California waiting for ports to clear and energy prices are spiralling upwards. As rising inflation spooks investors, the gluts of the 2010s have given way to a shortage economy.”
Tags: Consumers, Container ships, Demand, Economy, Energy, Gluts, Governments, Inflation, Investors, Ports, Powerful, Roaring, Signing bonuses, Spending, Supply, Surge
Wall Street Journal (October 7)
“Natural gas stocks are alarmingly low around the world, and prices in most places have never been higher after surging to new records…. Demand has jumped as economies have bounced back from pandemic shutdowns, and the squeeze has caught traders, shipowners and energy executives off guard.” Nations that “have wound down coal-fired plants and become more dependent on gas” are particularly vulnerable and, in some cases, restarting mothballed power plants despite higher GHG emissions.
Tags: Coal, Demand, Economies, Energy, GHG emissions, Natural gas, Pandemic, Prices, Records, Shipowners, Shutdowns, Squeeze, Stocks, Surging, Traders, Vulnerable
The Guardian (September 28)
“Queues at the petrol pumps are never a good look for a government. They are especially bad in a pandemic, when so many people already have reason to feel anxious.” Panic buying comes natural after “gas price rises that have led to around 2m households losing their energy supplier” and “empty shelves in supermarkets…. There is a palpable sense that Britain is careering from one crisis to another.”
Tags: Anxious, Careening, Crisis, Empty shelves, Energy, Gas, Government, Households, Pandemic, Petrol, Prices, Queues, Rises, Supermarkets
New York Times (February 20)
“The nation’s energy delivery system, not just in Texas but everywhere, needs a radical overhaul if it is to withstand future shocks and play the role that President Biden has assigned it in the battle against climate change.”
Financial Times (February 3)
“The pandemic’s devastating impact on Big Oil was illustrated yesterday when some of the world’s largest energy groups reported record annual losses, marking a brutal 12 months of an industry under mounting pressure to speed up a transition to cleaner fuels.”
Tags: Big oil, Brutal, Cleaner fuels, Devastating, Energy, Impact, Largest, Losses, Pandemic, Pressure, Record, Transition
Wall Street Journal (September 1)
“Five venerable Japanese companies were sitting in the bargain bin in plain sight. It took a 90-year-old Warren Buffett to scoop them up.” His company Berkshire Hathaway bought “stakes in Japanese trading companies shunned by others, seeing low valuation and healthy dividends.” The stakes of about 5%, are in trading companies that “resemble none other than Berkshire Hathaway itself,” with “holdings in energy, mining and consumer goods, sometimes owning companies outright and other times taking smaller stakes.”
Tags: Bargain bin, Berkshire Hathaway, Buffett, Consumer goods, Dividends, Energy, Japan, Mining, Shunned, Stakes, Trading companies, Valuation
The Economist (July 18)
“Big change is coming, as countries around the world adopt cleaner sources of energy. Peak demand for oil may still be years away, but covid-19 has given the Middle East and north Africa a taste of the future. Prices of the black stuff plummeted as countries went into lockdown…. Even when the virus recedes, a glut of supply will probably keep prices down. Faced with budgets that no longer add up, Arab states must adapt.”
Tags: Budgets, Change, Cleaner, COVID-19, Energy, Glut, Middle East, North Africa, Peak demand, Plummeted, Prices, Supply
LA Times (December 19)
In its first climate risk assessment, CalPERS, the largest U.S. pension fund, “found that one-fifth of the fund’s public market investments were in sectors that have high exposure to climate change. Those include energy, materials and buildings, transportation, and agriculture, food and forestry.” The report by CalPERS, however, didn’t go into much detail because “less than half of the 10,000-plus companies in their portfolio voluntarily disclose information about their carbon emissions.”
Tags: Agriculture, Assessment, CalPERs, Carbon emissions, Climate change, Energy, Exposure, Forestry, Investments, Materials, Pension fund, Portfolio, Risk, Transportation, U.S., Voluntary disclosure
