Trades with cats wrote:Couldn't agree more with Miyagi on CL. Watch the rig count.
It looks like we are getting ready for a crisis. The shale drillers have been borrowing a billion a year to keep going. With junk bonds blowing wide open the money won't be there. If the rig count starts dropping like a rock US production will fall fast. But, there is always a but, when China stops filling it's strategic reserves watch out below, because they are the marginal source of demand.
So watch the weekly rig count, the shipping report for VLCC rates by route and the two (at least there were two) weekly oil inventory reports.
The set up will be when nobody wants to talk about oil anymore and Huston real estate is taking a dive. I think the first tell will be when we start reading about commodity traders using VLCC's for storage. It is ridiculously cheep per barrel to have one anchored in the Gulf or in a bay in Scotland.
Posted this week on Cobra's overnight board:
"The number of shale rigs drilling in Eagle Ford/Texas has fallen by 16 to 190 since October.
The number of rigs in Bakken/North Dakota dropped by 10 to 188.
Junk bond debt issued by US oil and gas producers over the past decade is approximately $163 billion."
Single stocks: high debt-ratio stocks will either go bankrupt or more likely be taken over by the bigger guys with lower debt.
Do you have links to the “weekly rig count” and “shipping report for VLCC rates” and “weekly oil inventory reports”?
thank you