Member Info for Love_You

So if John Major was not typical middleground Conservative, then what was he? You've just shaken my belief that the country would now be a far better place if Major had won (not Bliar) in 1997.

Just to make my point clearer - unless there are higher wages consumers will not have enough purchasing power to give private enterprise the confidence they would rationally require to invest in manufacturing in the UK. Since 2008 National Insurance has risen from around 7% to 12%, energy bills have gone up from £800 to £1150 (not too bad really in the grand scheme of things), rents have gone up by a shed load (as well as house prices), pension contributions have increased, and all of this leaves the consumer with less purchasing power than a decade ago. Such an environment of higher taxation is hardly going to give businesses the confidence to invest in UK manufacturing is it? So I'm sorry to take a different view BoomerBower but my view is that the loss of manufacturing jobs does not reflect a true desire amongst the population for less manufactured goods ….. rather it reflects the influence of a decade long trends towards lower disposable incomes on their purchasing behaviour.

ExxonMobil sees even bigger growth out of the Permian over the next couple of years after its continued evaluation of the region revealed that it's sitting on much more oil than initially thought. Add that to its foresight to work with pipeline developers to help them push forward with much-needed projects, and the company won't need to worry about infrastructure constraints slowing it down in the future. As a result, Exxon now expects to generate an even bigger gusher of earnings growth by 2025, which positions it to potentially deliver significant returns for investors in the coming years. - https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/exxon-mobil-now-sees-even-230400245.html

Pokerchips …. thank you for your illuminating comments!

The company now sees that region (the Delaware basin) pumping out more than 1 million barrels of oil equivalent per day (BOE/D) by 2024, which is an 80% increase from last year's forecast. That faster growth in the Permian, when combined with Exxon's successes elsewhere, now leads the oil company to believe it can grow earnings 140% by 2025 from 2017's level.

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/exxon-mobil-now-sees-even-230400245.html

Oil Production from XOM in Permian basin to grow 80% more than forecast by 2024 to more than one million barrels per day - meanwhile Norway's government has outlawed all petrol/diesel cars from 2025.

One of the two sides in this battle for the future is stark raving bonkers - personally I think it is companies that create wealth and that citizens are self-interested and sooner or later will put pressure on companies to improve their standards of living. Otherwise why wouldn't the "wealth creators" just find it in their interest to leave the company they currently work for (if their are no pay rises and no decent perks) and start new companies of their own …. if enough of them feel that the economic boom from 2008-2018 was a fake boom that benefitted stockholders (many of whom were scared into selling by the financial crash and then didn't benefit from the boom in share prices), and the richest 1%.

So if it comes down to a battle between governments on one side and companies not knowing which way to turn but eventually their being enormous pressure on them to do the "right thing" by their workers and to start to increase salaries and perks then what will the eventual outcome be?

Personally I don't think governments have any moral legitimacy to make their citizens poorer just because they think (if they were god which they are not) that perhaps climate change is a concern worth basing their whole economic policy around …. a view which I suspect is they were honest about with their citizens would see them quickly voted out of office - as I think Brexit was a vote of anger against the austerity of the past decade …. and I don't think it was a sign that citizens would ever genuinely vote to be poorer ...however on this occasion (the occasion of Brexit) perhaps they were angry about having seen no increase in their standard of living for an entire decade … something which personally I find unacceptable and think the government should be extremely ashamed of.

Neil Woodford, Britain’s most prominent income investor, has come down firmly on the side of those who think the oil giants’ dividends are unsustainable.

He doesn’t mince his words. “I believe that both BP and Shell have unsustainable dividends that are being financed by a combination of debt and asset disposal. In effect, these companies are liquidating themselves rather than facing up to the need for a dividend cut,” he wrote in his blog on Friday.

“The only thing that can save them from that eventuality, in my opinion, is a return to sustainably higher oil prices – something that I think is very unlikely to happen.”

But don't forget that the share price went as low as £11.76 in early 2016!

(Yes, you could have doubled your money since then even without leverage - so you have to decide were the people who put the price so low back then completely bonkers or did they have some well-founded fears that the dividend would be cut or completely axed, in the future).

As a whole we have about 60% of our national wealth, £6 trillion or so, tied up in land and real property. We fetishise land as a country, historically (as in many other places of sufficient heritage) land ownership determined how important you were. People who wouldn't dream of dipping their toes into the market with us coo and speculate over their house going up by X% a year. Buy to let was free money for a long time. Partly this is harking back to our feudal past, partly it is that we have had 1,000 years of stability (so people see it as worthwhile to buy houses), partly it is Thatcher's fault/doing, partly it is because we are densely populated and very concentrated in certain areas.

Just reposting your comments as they made so much sense to me - thanks for your insights!!

Posters, you're invested in an oil company - so why aren't you out driving Ferraris rather than posting on here? I mean what else are you going to do with the investment returns from an oil company - oil is an old-fashioned way to heat homes ….. so unless you are going to put it in your Ferraris and Lamborghinis then I struggle to think what else you could do with 20,000 bopd fresh from the West of Shetland. So I assume that quite a few of the people on here own a fairly decent collection of cars with medium to large engines? Hence I do question why you spend your time posting on here rather than driving your Ferrari through the vineyards of Southern Italy, Greece or Tunisia.

I love that post of yours Boyobach! I especially love, "The trick is (JL) to avoid buying when he’s in the left hand (upper) lane and avoid selling when he’s in the right (lower) UNLESS he starts going off the road altogether, of course ;-)"

:-)

...But some things snige are far more valuable in life than money!

I agree that Brexit is a metaphor for change … learn to read the subtle clues and you will be amazed at how you suddenly find all sorts of signs that give clues to the future! How else do you think that the rich have become rich.... they're not geniuses like Einstein...they're just good at reading the subtle signs as they go through life.

Auson, some people are rich enough not to care about getting the best prices - perhaps the people who manage Norway's Sovereign Wealth Fund believe that global warming is a threat and that tackling it is more important than trying to increase the financial value of their fund.

Also you don't know what personal motives people have - perhaps a lot of the people who manage that Sovereign wealth fund are actually already short of the shares which they know the fund will be selling down over the next couple of years! So they would personally stand to gain whilst the majority of Norway's citizens become poorer …. sounds like a perfect plan if you really believed global warming was a threat to you and your family in the future …. selfish behaviour - yes, but when has that ever stopped humans from screwing over the vast majority of others if it will stand to benefit themselves personally.

Also, I'm not saying that climate change is caused by emissions from burning petrol …. nor am I saying that any such climate change is a genuine threat …. but people used to believe in Witches ...hence if these people managing the money really believe (even if wrongly) that climate change is a threat then they won't care about getting the best prices when they sell out of the oil sector ...they will just want out and at any price …. you'll be picking up their shares for next to nothing over the next few years!! And then what you need is for the next government to realise that the switch to electric can't be done as fast as was originally envisaged, and that based on the most recent data that climate change was overhyped and isn't really much of a concern … and then a few years later the shares you bought of the Norweigens for pennies will be worth ten times as much if not more …. now that's how to make money!!

It's just a battle isn't it - everyday it's a battle. The people without enormous wealth want an improving standard of living - more cars, better pay, better healthcare, more holidays. The people who already have vast wealth are mainly worried about protecting what they own - hence the interests of the rich and of the majority are completely diametrically opposed to each other. Hence it's an ongoing battle, just as it ever way, and always will be I suppose?

Or you could say that it's time for a really big crash were the people promoting excessive debt learned the truth that they are over-extended and will have to forfit their assets - because they have repeated the mistakes leading up to 2008 and perhaps this time they will not be bailed out by central banks. I do believe it is a realistic policy option for central banks to just let the over-indebted go bust this time around (unlike 2008). Last time people thought it would too much social unrest to have a mass foriture of assets - but perhaps that's what's needed to get the economy moving again - perhaps what's needed is different people to own the assets - people who are willing to be productive rather than just sitting sitting on the assets hoping that they rise in financial value over time. The more productive people are likely to be in jobs which actually mans they are unlikely to have a lot of capital to go around buying up assets or businesses (hence why there are working). However, maybe central banks could educate people that their needs to be a mass transfer of assets from the non-productive class of "asset traders" (people who only see real assets as financial instruments) to the people who actually see assets as businesses with a function in the real economy. However, it would need the managers and the people who actually run the businesses to want to own the businesses rather than always working for a wage. I just wonder whether it's possible for this to happen en masse? If it were then the productivity of the economy would rise enormously as I think people who have managed a business would want that business to serve its function (whether it be serving food, servicing cars, or providing entertainment) - and they wouldn't just leave the asset in ruins waiting for the financial value to deliver them a 15% return per year for doing nothing. I can only assume there are so many delapidated buildings about in prime locations in Europe because the people who own them have completely unrealistic expectations as to the current market value of these buildings. Either that or they prefer to live in towns where the buildings are crumbling, the cafes and shops have only one or two customers who hardly spend any money, and 30% of young men (under 25s) are unemployed. But is their financial greed really s bad that they really prefer to live in idle crumbling towns devoid of "real" human activity?

To be honest I don't think Europe needs to worry about debt levels - he debt to GDP ratio in Japan reached 220% and they have dominated foreign markets with their cars and medical technology for over 50 years.

Personally I have travelled around Europe recently and although I prefer statistics to anecdotes I do feel I must believe my own eyes and experience - and what I saw was a noticeably lower level of economic activity than I have ever witnessed before in Europe - businesses were empty of customers, many buildings were left abandoned in prime locations for tourist businesses, traffic was noticeably lower on the roads.

Hence I don't think Europe's policymakers have a choice - they either print more money or allow to happen what they probably should have allowed to happen in 2008. That is to say I still think they should of allowed the financial crash to run its natural course, i.e. for all of the crazy debts built up during the previous decade to go bankrupt - for the banks to go bankrupt, for over-indebted property owners to forfit their homes, and for the financially sane people (who hadn't indulged in the previous crazy debt binge) to pick up the assets at the prevailing market price (following all of the bankruptcies and forfitures) - and that market price would have been very low - property would now be valued a quarter of what it is - but at least people would have learned a valuable lesson that you can't just keep printing and expecting other people not to care that their hard-earned savings (sometimes their entire life savings) are quickly becoming worthless just because a madman like Sir Fred Goodwin decided that in his eyes it was normal for house prices to increase 15% every year when the governments official inflation figures were about 3.5%.

I find the share price action here weird - is the market run by a bunch of weirdoes?

Genel have just done a massive deal with Chevron - which can't possibly be anything other than in both of their mutual financial interests (as it's a farm-in, so profit sharing, for two massive new oilfields).

Apart from that Genel are cash-flow positive and have very little debt (unlike a lot of other oil companies who spend money like water and end up massively indebted and frequently raising money from angry shareholders who really don't want yet another rights issues/fundraise in the heavily indebted oil sector - yet Genel by comparison to its peers is a paragon of virtue).

So what the heck is the share price doing at 200p (barely a quarter of the level the company listed at in 2011)?

I don't think anyone will be listing their companies on the markets in future - or their will be no demand to take up the listings - because all that seems to happen is a few people get mega rich followed by a massive destruction of shareholder value for everyone else.

It's not only excessive but it's bizarre that in a supposed free-market economy that builders can make a 60k profit on a 200k house. I mean I wouldn't mind half of that 60k per house built …. so in a free-market I can start a house building company and only make 30k profit per house and hence (as I'm selling cheaper) my new company will rapidly outgrow the established companies (unless they also lower their profit margins to 30k). I can only assume it is extreme apathy amongst the majority of the unemployed and low-waged that they don't quit their jobs and demand that the banks/government employ them in the house-build sector instead - as clearly in that sector there are vast, excessive, unjustified profits within the existing market …. and that should be encouraging lots of entrepreneurs to be seeking to enter that sector because they know it is full of easy profits being protected by only a few weak established players.

Even a piece of shit has value …. it can be burned and turned into electricity …. so if you call this share a "piece of shit" you still need to say what you think this piece of shit could be sold for in terms of a "fair-value" share price …. financial markets work by comparing everything against money ….. some pieces of shit you have to pay other people to take away ….but other pieces of shit can actually be sold at a profit! Just sayin'