I am a refugee from the Investor Village message boards where I posted under the alias of "TwoHoot", primarily on the CWEI board. Thrivial posts and shrill politics drove away the serious, experienced participants. I have watched the non-activity on the Investor Insight forums for some time and thought I would try to begin some activity here by outlining my investments and goals for comment.
I am 66 years old and invest for income and capital preservation. I also allocate a small part of our money (I'm married) to trading and speculation. I manage our money and do not employ any advisers.
My primary core holding is Eastern American Natural Gas Trust (NGT). It provides income from tangible assets (as oppose to debt) and limited capital risk. There is a $20 zero-coupon treasury bond associated with each unit. The eintire trust will liquidate in April of 2013. Some of these positions have been on our books since 1999. The interest rate risk is hedged with an appropriate amount of RRPIX. NGT currently pays about 8.25% in distributions.
We also hold other asset based income producing US LPs but in much smaller quantities - SJT, HGT, PAA and KSP. These positions are partially hedged with URPIX and UCPIX.
Taken together, these investments more than meet our retirement income needs for now. Given the current dismal state of the natural gas markets, that may not always be true. However, lower energy prices should mean declining living costs overall. Conversely, they offer some inflation protection should deflation give way to monetary inflation.
Current trading positions (1 to 4 quarter time horizon) include TBT, SDS, ID and TINY. These change all the time and amount to less than 10% of our portfolio.
Does anyone have any comment or suggestions?
Cordially,J. C. Harperwww.jcharper.net
Hi JC (twohoot),
I got a PM from Susan about this site and was pretty sure she said she posted today but the only post I see is yours. This looks like a "build from the ground up" effort but lets see how it plays out. I was originally going to use the new post feature but was given a selection of forums to pick from which was kind of confusing so I decided to play if safe and just respond to your post.
I recently took profits from a couple of NG e&p's (HK & CHK) with the intent to buy back in after the hard correction I "knew" was coming. Well, predictably, they both went up after I sold. I'm beginning to think I've gotten too analytical with the s/d data and convinced myself that NG was going to tank short term. Of course the market is saying otherwise, essential looking at a bottom here and a recovery 6-9 months out. However, Robry's production numbers have stubbornly stayed north of 60bcf/d while industrial demand has remained about 4bcf/d below last years level. The horizontal rigs (special purpose built rigs) drilling in the shale plays look like they will maintain current production levels and we have seen very small declines in these rig counts. We also have the specter of LNG trying to find a home this summer and if the speculation that many of the drilled wells are shut-in we would have a jump in supply on any bump in price. I have been looking to the domestic e&p's for capital growth while using the Canadian energy trusts for income (CPG, PWE, NAE, FRU, PMT). I've also been nibbling at a couple of other non energy Canadian trusts trying to buy on dips but of course they are now going up and staying higher than my bids...DR.UN (MFCSF) hospital/medical facilites pays 12-13% and New Flyer NFYIF manufacturers CNG busses with a huge order backlog also paying north of 10%.
I'm getting itchy fingers with over 50% cash earning next to zip but not willing to jump back in yet. Your post regarding the use of hedges to lock in income is something I plan on researching futher. It would be most helpful to hear your perspective on NG short term.
Regards,
Rich (pedriven)
Hey Two Hoot,
I too have had a difficult time figuring out this site so I will only reply to the message for now. I'm in cash and PDS with most in Real estate now. Day traded (sorta) until the 9-11 hit. I'm a retired fireman. Not really an expert in any way but wanting to dabble. Enjoyed the IV site until so many fussy whiners screwed it up and always learned more than I contributed.
Louie Wayne
Hi TwoHoot.
I also got a PM from Susan and found this site. I am note sure how we will turn it into a discussion board, but it is worth a shot. With CWEI limiting posting and/or reading of posts and practicing censorship, I think they are creating their own demise.
I don't know if this is a good place or not. I only suggested it because 1) this space doesn't look like it is being used by anyone else and 2) There are a lot of perceptive investors with O&G experience that I don't want to lose touch just because IV is changing policies. When Windfallwilley suggested an alternate place to get together, I just picked this one out of the clear blue sky more or less. It has a lot of drawbacks and I doubt it will be the final roosting place.
The strength here is the blogs. There is a wealth of research and professional analysis here. Much of the information on the old board is available via the Investors Insight blogs. We won't need to post as often here as we did at IV. We can comment and ask questions on the blogs. Now if we can get some feeds from Platts and the Oil Drum here, we will have a pretty good source of general investment information with an energy focus.
The forums here are not very convenient or intuitive, at least for me. Maybe I will learn how they work in time or maybe we will need to find another spot to discuss O&G in the context of broad investment considerations. At first, I couldn't find my own initial post from the home page and still am not sure how it is done. I don't know who Ian Wyatt is but I like the idea of Wealth Building. If he objects, we can go elsewhere.
Hopefully, the 40 or 50 people with engineering degrees and practical experience with the E&P business from developing prospects through land work, leases, drilling, completion, production, metering, transportation, refining on to downstream marketing will drop by. They are the ones I will miss. Most of them haven't posted much since last summer when the political stuff got so shrill and abusive at IV. If you know any of them, let them know we value their input.
Hi TwoHoot,
This site looks okay to me - at least for awhile. If we find something better, we can move. I'm holding PBR, DNR and TBT with a tad bit of a gold investment that isn't my bag, so I forget that I'm holding it most of the time. I have been selling put opitons at times, and I trade in and out of DXD at times. I'm overweight cash right now - and think there is a high liklihood of a market correction near term. For years I have been invested heavily in energy, but I'm concerned about the macro-picture in natural gas at this time - and watching fundamentals in oil closely. I'm not a trader at heart, and have had to trade more than I like this year. In this market, I'll do what I have to do. I'm still sending out PM's informing people of this site. In fact I have quite a few more to send out. We might be surprised at who shows up here....
Susan
I just hope we are welcome here. I didn't ask anyone if it would be all right to crash this pad. They may run us off.
One thing I do notice is that the spell checker here has to be downloaded. I haven't done that yet. I type pretty fast and make a lot of typo errors without it.
At least maybe we can regroup here.
The High Yield Income Investing Message Board on IV is sparsley used but it does have two very knowledgeable posters...Petere1 and Carswell. They pretty much dominate the board with informative posts that have a broad sweep of economic and investment subjects. Take a few moments and check it out.
I will check it out. Invite them over if you think they might be interested.
If we plan to regroup at IV we should do it soon. We could be losing more valuable posters anytime - the way the board looks currently. I'll be happy to notify people of any move ( minus the trolls etc.). I'll look at the High Yield Investing Boad and maybe look around for any other emtpy boards. I would say we could move to the All Energy Board, but I think the trolls would find us rather quickly there.
There's a board at IV called Oil and Energy. There has not been one post there, since the board was started with an Admin post.. I just marked it with a post. We wouldn't be intruding on anyone there.
Does anyone know what the "Conversations" and "Friends" features are? How do they work and what is their purpose?
I have a new "Friend" this morning and don't know just what that means. Normally, children, dogs and very old women seem to like me. Everyone else keeps their distance.
Hi gang. I'm 10 % in the stock market. I lost 70% of my life savings in the stock market over the last year, never again. I'm buying gold, land , minerals and more oil wells. I own a small oil co. in Oklahoma. I'm good at finding oil, I should stick with it, but I drift at times. Did I mention that I do not like liberals? I have been buying bpz lately, I like the play that they have in Peru I have 75000 shares and might add more. Enough about me, what are you gals doing/buying?
Many of the good posters are at BRY on IV. No trash there yet. I expect a crash in NG. The Canadian production has only dropped by 1BCFD and the laid down their rigs in 2006. I think production is going to remian stubbornly high. I also sold CRK HK and CHK. Wanting to short CRK and am short PTEN. They have 63 out of 348 rigs running now and they say they are likely still falling. They make .11 in the first quarter mainly from poeple paying contracts on stacked rigs that are still under contract. Wall Street has upgraded NG on the lower rig count but I think they are early.