Natural Gas and Cash Hordes

Thanks to the kindess of strangers, blogging goes uninterrupted, as Tony Vahl has come to my rescue. Tony is a serial blogger and the author of the off-beat Dream Seeker book series. 

His own highly regarded site, The Daily Skew, is now also available for monthly subscription on the Kindle. Today's guest blog marks his second for me, as I am currently under general anesthesia, in recovery, dead or recuperating at home.

Maybe all three, if I hedged properly.

Seeing that my last post here did not result in the death of the lowly regarded TheAcsMan blog, I decided to come back and share two things I learned this week while listening to Bloomberg Radio and reading a Seeking Alpha missive. 

To make this post a little more relevant to the legion of TheAcsMan blog readers (all 39 of you), I will go ahead and compare what I learned with what George has said about the topic in the past.  Okay, so what did I learn this week listening to Bloomberg?  Here goes:

1. The United States has a twenty year competitive edge on the rest of the world when it comes to Natural Gas resources

I know there's a flatulence joke in here somewhere, but I'm going to leave that alone.  I'm reminded of the scene in Star Wars where the Storm Trooper says, "It's just a gas tick," on the closed captioning. A co-worker once swore to me the Trooper actually said, "I'm just a little gassy," as Obi-Wan scampered off.

Anyway, a few Talking Heads this week talked about how demand for oil is leveling off, how the US will be a net exporter of oil in 20 years, and how auto makers are eager to offer natural gas-fueled vehicles to consumers, even with an option to go back to regular 87 octane at the flip of a switch. 

So, tell Clint Eastwood the U.S. has the advantage in the second half, as we enter into the post-Madonna era.

Click to read more ...

Oracle as an Oracle

I've never done well investing in the technology sector, with a couple of notable exceptions

Let me list my failures: Intel, Dell, Hewlett Packard and Yahoo. There may be some others, but there are times when I buy stocks in companies without even knowing what it is that they actually do.

Probably not a good idea.

Nearly 30 years later, I still recall a close call in the technology sector.

I received an allocation in the IPO for  hot company called Eagle Computer. It was perceived as a real competitor to the IBM PC back in the very early days when a PC cost about $5,000 or more, if you wanted a second floppy drive for storage.

Funny story.

Its charismatic CEO was killed in a car crash on the day of the IPO.

Only an oracle could have foreseen that.

The underwriters actually refunded money to IPO investors and ran their next IPO a few months later without me. Eventually, the proprietary Eagle Computer, bereft of its guiding light, morphed into an IBM clone and then was sued out of existence by IBM along with some other early players.

In hindsight, maybe that's not such a funny story.

I was spooked by the reliance on a single individual and continue to be so.

Technology seems to be highly linked to charismatic individuals.

Okay, sometimes, like Bill Gates, they're not really charismatic, but in his own way, he was. Who else could turn mosquito netting into a sexy way of saving lives?

Ballmer?

Click to read more ...