economy

Book value as a determinant for buying a stock: The case of Petrobakken

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At the current time, I am investing in the oil and gas industry for a number of reasons:

(1) Oil is a commodity based upon a US dollar price.  As the US dollar inflates, commodities will maintain their value.  As a result, there is likely a coming surge in the commodities in the market as everybody and his brother starts looking for value as they catch on to the severe devaluation of the US currency.  Already the Chinese, who are usually huge investors in US treasury bills, have begun to establish enormous positions in the Canadian oil sector.

(2) Current prices in the Canadian oil sector are mostly well below their 5 year highs.

(3) Canadian oil and gas companies pay really good dividends or distributions.

(4) Canadian oil companies, particularly in the junior oil sector, are often selling below “book value” or what is also called “shareholder’s equity”.

Today, for example, Petrobakken (PBN)  in their quarterly report stated that their total assets were 5.5 billion; their net debt 0.698 billion.  This means shareholder’s equity per share (total shares outstanding, 0.188 billion) = 5.5-0.698/.188=$25.54 per share.  I am not a stock analyst, so my calculations could be incorrect (and I would appreciate anyone correcting me on this).  Despite this report, because of the net loss during Q2, PBN shares fell to as low as $21.28 today, as disappointed shareholders dumped the stock.  Others like me were obviously establishing long positions.  I established long positions at an average of $21.56, which in my view means that I immediately gained equity of nearly $4 per share.  Meanwhile, before yesterday’s financial report both TD Waterhouse and Scotia Captial had given PBN excellent ratings, with a $30 and $31 52-week target price respectively [Update:  I learned that the book value of Petrobakken is probably closer to 21.52, and TD Waterhouse has lowered their 52 week target to $25].

I’ve read that Warren Buffet, the value investor par excellence,  does not like too much the commodities sector.  I comfort myself with the fact that there have been other billionaires who have made fortunes on black gold.

Canadian banks

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Canadian banks have done very well and are strong in comparison to their neighbors to the south.  But one reason to be wary about investing in them is that they are expanding into the US.  While the bankruptcies are making it possible to pick up deals, my impression is that the US Federal government regulation which often led to bankruptcies is becoming worse rather than better.  Now RBC (RY) is selling a US insurance company that they picked up a few years ago, which may be an indication that they too realize that that business is becoming more difficult in the US.  But it is not surprising.  Obamacare is going to bankrupt the health insurance companies.

Despite the strength of Canadian banks, I am down to an uncovered put on BNS (agreement to buy at $45).  It’s been a great run for me.  I’ve traded successfully on TD, RY, NA, though I lost on BNS and LB (but I have overall net gain from my positions on the banks–thank you very much!).

Americans saving more: too bad

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At the Wall Street Pit, Donald Marron says that Americans are saving more to the point that the US government has borrowed less from foreign investors:

Individual Americans started saving again, reducing our nation’s borrowing needs [He means from foreign sources, PWD] by $455 billion at an annual rate. And private investment plummeted, reducing borrowing needs by another $458 billion. Together, those two changes largely explain how U.S. borrowing from the rest of the world could fall by $400 billion over the past year, despite booming government deficits.

In the long run, the increase in personal saving will be a welcome development, as Americans rebuild their wealth and help finance government deficits (in the short run lower consumer spending may weaken the recovery). The decline in private investment is more troubling. In the short run, some of that decline is healthy as we work through excess inventories of products, houses, and some types of commercial real estate. In the long run, however, we will need growing investment to boost the nation’s productive capacity.

Well, first of all, foreigners are catching on to how buying US debt is a major trap, so the Chinese and the Indians, e.g., are investing in such things as gold and Canadian oil companies.  But second, while it is good for Americans to reduce debt and to save, it is folly for them to put it in fixed income assets, especially government debt, when inflation is nigh.  When that hits, those who are holding government treasury bills or bonds will be holding worthless paper:

… those who had supported the government during the war by buying State bonds had lost heavily by the depreciation of the mark, and the whole population were now engaged in evading taxation and devoting their money to speculative purchases, … [British Consul-General in Munich, Mr. William Seeds, cited in Adam Fergusson, When Money Dies:  The Nightmare of the Weimar Collapse (1975), p. 70.

Government Ponzi

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It is the height of irony that the US federal government has put Bernie Madoff in prison for running a ponzi scheme: he took people’s retirement funds and spent it frivolously instead of investing it.  Many have pointed out that the largest ponzi scheme in the history of humanity is actually run by the US federal government itself:  the Social Security System.  The US government has taken people’s retirement–but not voluntarily, as the felon Madoff, but by force through payroll taxes.  Then it spent it frivolously instead of investing it.

Yet today, Zacks (via Yahoo) defends the ponzi security system:

There is a huge amount of hysteria in the country that says that Social Security is nothing but a ponzi scheme and is about to go bankrupt. This is simply not true, and is mostly being propagated by those who would love to see Social Security turned over to Wall Street. Doing so would put the retirement security of millions of Americans into grave danger. …

Starting in 1982 with the Greenspan Commission, Social Security recognized the demographic time bomb posed by the “baby boom” and subsequent “baby bust.” As a result, the idea was that people would pay in more than required for Social Security to run on a pay-as-you-go basis (which is how it was run up until that point). The extra funds would go into a trust fund. That trust fund now holds $2.5 Trillion. So how is that money invested? It is invested in the safest assets around: T-Notes and Bonds. The government holding its own liabilities is a bit strange, and that is where the claim that the Social Security trust fund is composed of nothing but “worthless IOUs comes from. However, if that is true, then it is equally true that the assets of a T-bond fund run by Vanguard or PIMCO are also composed of worthless IOUs.

So the Social Security System has basically taken people’s retirment money and lent it to the Federal government which has spent it as part of its continual deficit spending. It did not invest it in anything that could give workers a return on their investment, but spent it.  Now, in order for the government to pay back the Social Security System–all those wonderful t-bills and bonds–it will have to either borrow from someone else, or steal it a second time in the form of further taxes from the very people who are paying into the system.   Either the anonymous author of the article is dumb, or she thinks all the rest of us are.

Meanwhile, Monty Pelerin asks his readers to name the author of the following quote:

The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth.

… the welfare state is nothing more than a mechanism by which governments confiscate the wealth of the productive members of a society to support a wide variety of welfare schemes. A substantial part of the confiscation is effected by taxation. But the welfare statists were quick to recognize that if they wished to retain political power, the amount of taxation had to be limited and they had to resort to programs of massive deficit spending, i.e., they had to borrow money, by issuing government bonds, to finance welfare expenditures on a large scale.

In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case of gold.

And Vasko Kohlmayer writes about the demise of the US dollar:

The dollar has already entered its terminal phase. The word “doom” is written across it for anyone with the eyes to see. Sad to say, there is no way to reverse its downward slide. With more than $13 trillion in public debt and some $100 trillion in unfunded mandates, our federal government has assumed far more obligations than it can ever make good on. Worse still, these figures are growing larger every year.

Thus, the basis of a civil society is breaking down in the US because the world’s most powerful political entity is a criminal organization which is running ponzi schemes and uses its power to borrow and create money, producing inflation which robs citizen’s of their wealth.

What’s wrong with inflation? Do you have enough to eat?

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Monty Pelerin has a excellent article on inflation this morning.  He maintains that the great temptation for government will be to try to solve the problem of debt and unfunded obligations by inflating it away, and that, since politicians are cowards, they will not make the tough decisions to avoid inflation.  He writes, however, about the consequences of inflation:  “Inflation is as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber and as deadly as a hit man.”

I believe that the real danger of inflation may lie in the consequences it will  have on the food supply.  Never mind that food shortages have never been a problem in the living memory of most North Americans (unless they are over 75 or immigrated here from a war zone or something).  Today, obesity in developed countries is feared more than starvation.  So I made the following comment on Pelerin’s blog:

I am reading Adam Ferguson, When Money Dies (1975). He tells the story of Frau Eisenmenger, an Austrian who at the end of WWI had sufficient investments to live on and care for her family (31). She went into her bank in 1918 to withdraw some funds and her banker advised her to buy Swiss Francs, but it was illegal to hoard foreign currencies, and so she declined. Eventually, her savings became worthless. Her situation was greatly helped by her daughter working in the “American mission” paid in dollars, renting a room in her apartment to an American, and speculative investments in the Austrian stock market.

I fear that what will happen is similar to Europe in that period, when food was scarce and required a large percentage of income to procure. Eventually, the price of food will sky rocket and so more dollars will be created ex nihilo. Eventually the farmers will refuse to supply their food to people for worthless dollars and foods stamps from the government, and they will have to stop producing–because their costs have to be covered too. Then, we will see shortages like never before. A farmer offered Frau Eisenmenger three month’s provision for her grand piano (33); and acquaintance of hers sold her own piano for a sack of wheat flour.