energy stocks

Energy Stocks Up In 2021 Article

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energy oil production

As a freelance finance writer, I get a steady feed of financial news stories and articles. I thought I would share this one from investors.com. Headlines Matter A lot of financial writers are under instructions to post something every day, or even several times a day. Under those circumstances, they can’t all be diamonds, but this one about 2021’s runaway sector, is cracking me up. For those of you not paying attention, today is January 14. That just the 9th trading day of the year (New Year’s Day is a holiday, plus weekends). So the sector that’s running away “so far” in 2021 is not exactly a meaningful time period. Why Are Energy Stocks Up? Saudi Arabia announced it would cut production. As the world’s largest oil producer, that is big news to the energy markets and resulted in oil prices rising, even though Russia says that it will increase production because it doesn’t want U.S. shale oil markets benefiting from the higher prices. Whatever higher oil prices happens to trickle through is good news for U.S. oil producers, hence the quick runup in the last few days to make it the “runaway” sector for 2021… so far. My favorite …

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Ratings Agency Downgrades British Petroleum

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Recently, we talked about how Warren Buffet’s Congressional testimony about Moody’s responsibility for causing the banking crisis and stock market crash by rating collateral mortgage options (CMO) triple-A up until it was already obvious to everyone that these investments were in trouble, was wrong headed. Today, the ratings agencies Fitch and Moody’s gave us all another reason to wonder why we listen to rating agencies at all with its downgrade of British Petroleum. It is not that downgrading BP is incorrect. It is both the timing and the sanctimonious nature of how the downgrades British Petroleum (BP plc – NYSE:BP) stock and debt came about. It has been six weeks since the April 20th explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig and the company’s stock has already fallen over 40% since the incident. Which has been a big hit on Members of Congress are calling for BP to put $20 billion into some sort of escrow fund out of concerns that the company may end up not being able to fully pay its legal obligations resulting from the massive gulf oil spill. Yet, both Moody’s and Fitch’s statements act like their concerns about BP are actually news to anyone. “Today’s …

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