How to bypass free article limit?
https://github.com/nextgens/anti-paywall
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For Firefox users, there's an xpi hidden in the releases tab.
The global oil market is broken, drowning in crude nobody needs
291–300 of 303 posts
Re: The global oil market is broken, drowning in crude nobody needs
#292Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not to mention the strategic advantages of leaving oil in the ground in your own territory. It'll still be there when the middle east runs dry.
I think the strategic advantage is to drill, baby, drill, and profit from those natural resources as much as possible while we're still in the Oil Age. If the Middle East runs dry it will be a strategic victory for all those countries and a loss for the other countries where high production costs kept the remaining oil in the ground, just sitting there never having generated a penny in profits, with renewables and el…
Bit of a win/win though. Either the oil age ends before the ME runs out and we potentially avoid an environmental disaster, or it doesn't, in which case our reserves might prevent a strategic disaster.
Re: The global oil market is broken, drowning in crude nobody needs
#293Earlier quoted context omitted.
Put options are called options for a reason You never have to exercise if you don't want to so there's a fixed maximum cost
I'm no expert in this, but my understanding is that futures are a mutual obligation and options are a one-sided obligation. So in case of a put option, it's optional for the other side - in case of a call it's optional for me. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I assume there is a good reason why banks require additional paperwork from people who want to trade options/futures that must be renewed on a regular base.
I think you're probably thinking about the difference between Writing (or selling) options and buying them
Both call and put options are optional for the option holder to exercise (realistically you only ever exercise if they are in the money, or worth something). You usually don't need any additional paperwork to buy options
Writing options on the other hand has unlimited potential downside. It's much harder to get brokers to allow you to do this. Many will only let you write "covered" options - meaning you also hold the underlying shares, which limits your downside
Re: The global oil market is broken, drowning in crude nobody needs
#294Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not to mention if Methane Hydrate comes online - endless natural gas for the price of a drill and pipeline.
In that case also invest in beachfront properties in northern russia and Antarctica. The weather there will be awesome
Do so then, because Japan is already tapping it. Estimated 6X the energy there, than all the oil reserves we ever discovered. Seems inevitable.
Re: The global oil market is broken, drowning in crude nobody needs
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wouldn't you expect the rate of return to approach the risk free interest rate, rather than profit being zero?
The risk free interest rate is zero. Heck, by the time you read this, it could go negative!
It already did nominally for a brief moment there
Re: The global oil market is broken, drowning in crude nobody needs
#296Re: The global oil market is broken, drowning in crude nobody needs
#297Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not unit cost. Companies spend money on advertising when they're new because it pays dividends for decades. It's not inherently loss-making, it's just investment that hasn't returned its full yield yet.
It's an investment that the company can't afford to make at the moment. An existing, efficient, and self-sustaining player can be drowned out by a few VCs subsidizing costs and making it impossible to compete for a few years. The American VC system is disgusting. It allows a few wealthy individuals to choose winners not because they are the best solution, but just because through nefarious tactics they are the last o…
> It's an investment that the company can't afford to make at the moment.
This is nonsense logic and the very reason not to use cash-based accounting for anything serious.
They raised capital, therefore they have the money. Basically all companies start off "losing money" because most investments don't instantaneously produce their full return. How would anybody ever open a factory or a restaurant if they had to be profitable before spending any money on anything that generates profit? You can't use the profit from making widgets to build your first widget factory because you need a widget factory to make widgets.
Re: The global oil market is broken, drowning in crude nobody needs
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
> See also: rideshare. VC pumps in billions so that Lyft & Uber can be cheaper than taxis at a HUGE loss -> taxis go out of business -> Lyft & Uber jack up their prices because they own the market. Did the rideshare companies actually jack up their prices at any point? How would they do that when they're still in competition with each other and the barrier to entry to the market remains low? Any attempt to raise pric…
Taxis haven't gone out of business yet. Medallians only apply to NYC. Cities have been hit hard (portland, austin). But to be fair, it caused Radio Cab to modernize with an app. Profitabilty: Here, I did your research for you, not too hard: https://www.forbes.com/sites/lensherman/2019/06/02/can-uber-... https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-lyft-... Please take at least one second to google next time…
> Taxis haven't gone out of business yet.
So you have no evidence that they'll raise prices and the claim that they would is pure speculation. Which still doesn't explain how they would be able to when they still have to compete with each other and when the barrier to entry is very low such that if they ever did they would quickly get new competitors.
> Profitabilty: Here, I did your research for you, not too hard
Websites explaining why they currently spend more than they take in (answer: long-term investments like R&D and advertising), not how they would lose money on the average ride.
> Fair Trade absolutely has an impact, by your own admission! You are applying the "if you can't fix everything don't bother fixing anything" fallacy.
I never claimed it doesn't do anything. It's just not an example of dumping or anti-competitive behavior. Non-fair trade coffee isn't excluded from the market in any way. The higher price for fair trade coffee doesn't come from market power, it comes from marketing and selling a different product (a specific brand of morality) which is worth more money to some customers.
There is no cartel there. There is nobody stopping anybody new from paying higher wages and marketing their coffee as such, nor from paying lower wages and charging lower prices.
Re: The global oil market is broken, drowning in crude nobody needs
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
California could probably get a carbon tax passed. Especially if it's on the consumption side and not the production side, because the demand reduction would only be from California but the impact to producers would be spread across producers everywhere in the world and not hit the California producers especially hard. You could also just pay them off to shut up with some tax credits or something when it's a closer f…
California is going for a more direct route which using cap and trade funds to pay for buy backs and down payment support for electric vehicles. That's being handled through the California Air Resource Boards. I tend to dislike consumer carbon taxes because I feel it tends to punish people for decisions they made previously. Like a old fart who bought the last car he's ever going to own in 2005. Which results in poli…
> I tend to dislike consumer carbon taxes because I feel it tends to punish people for decisions they made previously. Like a old fart who bought the last car he's ever going to own in 2005.
This is what the dividend is for. If you bought a Toyota Camry in 2005 and now you're paying more for gas but receiving a dividend, the dividend is more than the higher gas prices -- some of the tax gets paid by oil producers (since lower demand lowers prices) but all of it goes to individuals, and some of it gets paid by carbon emissions by corporation, but once again all of it goes to individuals.
The people who would get screwed are the people who just bought a 12 MPG SUV rather than buying one fifteen years ago, expecting to keep it for a long time, because their carbon footprint is enough above average for enough time that it could exceed the dividend. But why should we have any sympathy for this behavior? The writing has been on the wall for a long time here. You bought a high-MPG gasoline-powered car in 2005 when viable electric cars weren't really available, you're fine. You buy a low-MPG one in 2020, you can't claim you didn't see this coming.
Re: The global oil market is broken, drowning in crude nobody needs
#300Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's an investment that the company can't afford to make at the moment. An existing, efficient, and self-sustaining player can be drowned out by a few VCs subsidizing costs and making it impossible to compete for a few years. The American VC system is disgusting. It allows a few wealthy individuals to choose winners not because they are the best solution, but just because through nefarious tactics they are the last o…
> It's an investment that the company can't afford to make at the moment. This is nonsense logic and the very reason not to use cash-based accounting for anything serious. They raised capital, therefore they have the money. Basically all companies start off "losing money" because most investments don't instantaneously produce their full return. How would anybody ever open a factory or a restaurant if they had to be p…
> They raised capital, therefore they have the money.
Right, and as a result of this, the companies that have capital can always beat out the ones that don't. Who gets to decide which companies get capital? VCs. So that means that it's not the market that decides who wins and loses, it's VCs. Does that sound like the intention of capitalism to you?
Having a better or more efficient idea is meaningless in today's economy. All that matters is how big your warchest is, and how many rich investors you have in your pocket.