Stock scream room

[Dieter]

The evidence that Trump is lying is that 10 million barrels per say would be 43% of Saudi and Russian daily production!

It's impossible on it's face! KSA and Russia would never volunteer for that. That's patently absurd.

Anyone who believes that's plausible has no operating brain cells. You've just proven it to the world.

That like saying Trump claiming he is going to leap from Earth to Moon, ain't going to happen.

You know it's Easter when impossible deals miraculously come true.

Oil Price War Ends With Historic OPEC+ Deal to Cut Output

The world’s top oil producers pulled off a historic deal to cut global petroleum output by nearly a 10th, putting an end to the devastating price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia.
...
OPEC+ will cut 9.7 million barrels a day -- just below the initial proposal of 10 million.
...
The biggest winner appears to be Trump, who refused to actively cut American oil production and personally brokered the deal over phone calls with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, Russian President Vladimir Putin and King Salman of Saudi Arabia.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... production

I wonder if @ochotona will apologize now to me for insulting me with the statement "Anyone who believes that's plausible has no operating brain cells. You've just proven it to the world."

Of course I'm not holding my breath.

The Trump tweet being referenced: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/sta ... cle_inline

"Just spoke to my friend MBS (Crown Prince) of Saudi Arabia, who spoke with President Putin of Russia, & I expect & hope that they will be cutting back approximately 10 Million Barrels, and maybe substantially more which, if it happens, will be GREAT for the oil & gas industry!"

Unless close to 100% of that OPEC+ 9.7M/day cut is from Russia and Saudi Arabia, not close.

The only source of details by country I have been able to find is in https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/04/10/op ... il-output/

Two days old, but:

"Russia and Saudi Arabia, two of the world’s biggest oil producers, would make some of the biggest cuts—about 2.5 million barrels a day each, at least on paper—while other oil producers would make proportional cuts of their own."

Will be interesting to see the final numbers by country and how the markets respond.

[boglerdude]

They have to cut, there's limited storage room.

Low energy prices benefit everyone. High oil benefits oil sellers.

Starting to wonder if Trump simply spins all news as great news.

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/sta ... 9046288385

[dualstow]

They have to cut, there's limited storage room.
...

Some stock pickers are interested in storage, tankers.
#vp

[ochotona]

The real back story is that 9.8 million barrels per day in oil production "cuts" were imposed on October 2018 production levels. Kind of like buying an item 50% off. 50% off of what? So in reality only 6 million barrels per day, and almost all of it already imposed by Mr. Market (no buyers) {per my former colleague Art Berman}.

I suspect the OPEC++ participants just did what employees at so many corporation do day-in and day-out; they spun a good tale to send upstairs to the boardroom to make the idiot boss look successful so as not to incur his wrath.

In the end, it won't help. Oil industry is still toast. I'm not expecting to be working for much longer in all honesty. My daughter, the newly-minted BSEE, just got a 2 week unpaid furlough. She's beside herself. I told her she can always move back home if she gets let go. Damn hard for a 23 year old.

[dualstow]

Didn’t she just get married?

[ochotona]

Didn’t she just get married?

Yes, that's true. I'd be hosting both of them. We have empty bedrooms in the house.

[vnatale]

My daughter, the newly-minted BSEE, just got a 2 week unpaid furlough. She's beside herself. I told her she can always move back home if she gets let go. Damn hard for a 23 year old.

Curious about some things regarding engineers versus accountants. It seems like engineers generally need to seek employment one way or the other through larger organizations? On the other hand, every single organization of any type needs some accounting work done. It can be done by having an in-house person or hiring it from someone on the outside.

During my last semester in graduate school in getting my MSBA in accounting, I'd built up my own little accounting practice to 20 hours per week. And, when I graduated, it expanded and became full-time by adding other clients.

That type of path, in general, does not seem to be available to any type of engineer? Generally, either you have to work for either a large firm or only a smaller one which has some form of engineering focus?

Vinny

[mathjak107]

my daughter inlaw is a cpa .... she graduated college here in queens and got hired by ernst young ... she became an auditor for a very famous hedge fund manager ... he liked her so much he wanted to hire her directly .... at the time she had no car so he gave her 25k for a car and said if you work for me for at least 2 years you owe me nothing .....

she spent many years there and got a fabulous offer from a hedge fund started by some former managers where she was ...

they offered her multiple 6 figures as a compensation package to run the tax dept so she took the offer last year

it seems accounting is an area where you can do very very well yet not need a masters in anything . all she had was her 4 year degree unlike my son who is an attorney and first needed years of law school

[mathjak107]

My daughter, the newly-minted BSEE, just got a 2 week unpaid furlough. She's beside herself. I told her she can always move back home if she gets let go. Damn hard for a 23 year old.

Curious about some things regarding engineers versus accountants. It seems like engineers generally need to seek employment one way or the other through larger organizations? On the other hand, every single organization of any type needs some accounting work done. It can be done by having an in-house person or hiring it from someone on the outside.

During my last semester in graduate school in getting my MSBA in accounting, I'd built up my own little accounting practice to 20 hours per week. And, when I graduated, it expanded and became full-time by adding other clients.

That type of path, in general, does not seem to be available to any type of engineer? Generally, either you have to work for either a large firm or only a smaller one which has some form of engineering focus?

Vinny

being in the engineering field the problem i find is smaller companies who use engineers usually have only one level of growth .... in the company i was with engineers really have no where to grow . they do their design work and that is pretty much it ...


many have left to go on to big engineering firms with many levels to grow to .

[vnatale]

my daughter inlaw is a cpa .... she graduated college here in queens and got hired by ernst young ... she became an auditor for a very famous hedge fund manager ... he liked her so much he wanted to hire her directly .... at the time she had no car so he gave her 25k for a car and said if you work for me for at least 2 years you owe me nothing .....

she spent many years there and got a fabulous offer from a hedge fund started by some former managers where she was ...

they offered her multiple 6 figures as a compensation package to run the tax dept so she took the offer last year

it seems accounting is an area where you can do very very well yet not need a masters in anything . all she had was her 4 year degree unlike my son who is an attorney and first needed years of law school

I did not need to get my masters degree in accounting. I made my decision to get it on a whim.

However, a few decades after I got my two degrees in accounting, Massachusetts made it a requirement that you needed five years of college (essentially a masters degrees) to get your CPA certificate. I was never on the CPA track. I always knew I just wanted to work for small companies (and not public accounting firms) and, thus, never needed the credential.

Vinny

[Vil]

On a funny note, DAX caught Covid and seems its gone (at least for a while) ...

DAX_14_04.jpg (15.07 KiB) Viewed 5596 times

Joke apart, since this morning Deutsche Boerse is 'kaput'. Hope my shares are doing fine ...

[pmward]

being in the engineering field the problem i find is smaller companies who use engineers usually have only one level of growth .... in the company i was with engineers really have no where to grow . they do their design work and that is pretty much it ...


many have left to go on to big engineering firms with many levels to grow to .

I agree this has been my experience in the engineering field as well. I worked for smaller companies my first few years out of college. But at a certain point, the small companies could no longer afford to pay market rates for a senior engineer. After a few years, it only financially made sense to work for larger companies. The small companies simply cannot compete on compensation packages.

[Cortopassi]

being in the engineering field the problem i find is smaller companies who use engineers usually have only one level of growth .... in the company i was with engineers really have no where to grow . they do their design work and that is pretty much it ...


many have left to go on to big engineering firms with many levels to grow to .

I agree this has been my experience in the engineering field as well. I worked for smaller companies my first few years out of college. But at a certain point, the small companies could no longer afford to pay market rates for a senior engineer. After a few years, it only financially made sense to work for larger companies. The small companies simply cannot compete on compensation packages.

I am an EE with 30 years experience. I have been at large corps (Zenith, 3Com, Palm, US Robotics) and small.

I purposely knew I did not want to get into management and wanted to stay in design, after a foray into management at Palm where I had to manage quite a few divas and hated it.

No doubt I could be making a lot more if I wanted to go into management, but currently 14 years at a small company (40) with great management I am able to steer the company into products I think are good bets, vs. being a smaller cog in a large wheel. I would never willingly go back to a large company.

And since this is the stock scream room, man, am I glad I decided to NOT trade and buy SDOW.

Anyone out there feeling an urge to sell everything right now, take your gain (mine is 3% up currently) and call it a year or two?

[Tyler]

Curious about some things regarding engineers versus accountants. It seems like engineers generally need to seek employment one way or the other through larger organizations?

Definitely not! The concentration of engineering jobs is more about industry than company size. Yes, engineers in smaller cities tend to congregate in larger companies that scoop them up without much competition. But in product development hubs like the Bay Area, every company from monsters like Apple down to the 10 startups on every street corner are full of engineers.

During my last semester in graduate school in getting my MSBA in accounting, I'd built up my own little accounting practice to 20 hours per week. And, when I graduated, it expanded and became full-time by adding other clients. That type of path, in general, does not seem to be available to any type of engineer?

Once they get enough experience, lots of engineers try the independent consulting route. Success depends largely on your specialty and ability to drum up business. Unfortunately most engineers have INTJ personalities that really hate sales. So it takes a special type of outgoing engineer to succeed.

Generally, either you have to work for either a large firm or only a smaller one which has some form of engineering focus?

Not necessarily. When I graduated from engineering school, the largest single recruiter for engineers was a business consulting company. Apparently they preferred the math education and problem solving skills of the engineers to what was coming out of the business school.

being in the engineering field the problem i find is smaller companies who use engineers usually have only one level of growth .... in the company i was with engineers really have no where to grow . they do their design work and that is pretty much it ...

many have left to go on to big engineering firms with many levels to grow to .

A wise engineering manager back in the day once explained to me that an engineer eventually has a choice -- the design track or the management track. People who define "growth" in terms of promotions and authority go the management track. People who define "growth" as making increasingly cool stuff go the design track. And it's virtually impossible to successfully do both. It's true that large companies are the only real place for most people to climb the management ladder, but there are lots of great small companies for growing your personal design portfolio. So it depends on what you care about most.

[Libertarian666]

Once they get enough experience, lots of engineers try the independent consulting route. Success depends largely on your specialty and ability to drum up business. Unfortunately most engineers have INTJ personalities that really hate sales. So it takes a special type of outgoing engineer to succeed.

ENTP engineer here.
Well, software engineer, but I think that's close enough.

[mathjak107]

Curious about some things regarding engineers versus accountants. It seems like engineers generally need to seek employment one way or the other through larger organizations?

Definitely not! The concentration of engineering jobs is more about industry than company size. Yes, engineers in smaller cities tend to congregate in larger companies that scoop them up without much competition. But in product development hubs like the Bay Area, every company from monsters like Apple down to the 10 startups on every street corner are full of engineers.

During my last semester in graduate school in getting my MSBA in accounting, I'd built up my own little accounting practice to 20 hours per week. And, when I graduated, it expanded and became full-time by adding other clients. That type of path, in general, does not seem to be available to any type of engineer?

Once they get enough experience, lots of engineers try the independent consulting route. Success depends largely on your specialty and ability to drum up business. Unfortunately most engineers have INTJ personalities that really hate sales. So it takes a special type of outgoing engineer to succeed.

Generally, either you have to work for either a large firm or only a smaller one which has some form of engineering focus?

Not necessarily. When I graduated from engineering school, the largest single recruiter for engineers was a business consulting company. Apparently they preferred the math education and problem solving skills of the engineers to what was coming out of the business school.

being in the engineering field the problem i find is smaller companies who use engineers usually have only one level of growth .... in the company i was with engineers really have no where to grow . they do their design work and that is pretty much it ...

many have left to go on to big engineering firms with many levels to grow to .

A wise engineering manager back in the day once explained to me that an engineer eventually has a choice -- the design track or the management track. People who define "growth" in terms of promotions and authority go the management track. People who define "growth" as making increasingly cool stuff go the design track. And it's virtually impossible to successfully do both. It's true that large companies are the only real place for most people to climb the management ladder, but there are lots of great small companies for growing your personal design portfolio. So it depends on what you care about most.

Our engineers pretty much do the same level of work daily as they design custom control panels for fans and pumps ....I am not an engineer but I did my own design work for decades which I learned after being in the business for 40 years .....today I teach motor controls and variable frequency drives to engineers one day a week and I enjoy doing it in retirement.

Actual engineering firms have a whole lot more levels of what they do so there are more growth positions.....

[CT-Scott]

I purposely knew I did not want to get into management and wanted to stay in design, after a foray into management at Palm where I had to manage quite a few divas and hated it.

Oh wow, I'd love to know more about what you worked on there. I bought the USRobotics PalmPilot, and later went on to purchase many more Palm and Handspring devices.

I even once ran a Tapwave Zodiac website/forum (which I still have floating around the web because I've been too lazy to take it down: tapland.com). I had been a member of several Palm-related forums for a while and when the Zodiac came out, I moved quickly to set up one of the first websites dedicated to it, hoping that I'd be able to capitalize on advertising revenue, affiliate links, etc., if the device became popular enough. I had several months where I made a little money from ads and affiliate links, but the fun didn't last very long before Tapwave declared bankruptcy. Because they owed me some ad money, they sent me a box with some Zodiacs and accessories as a final "payment", much of which I've also been to lazy to resell, and which is probably mostly worthless now, except to a few collectors out there.

For my personal use, though, I was very excited about the appeal of smartphones, or whatever we were calling them in the early days. I loved my Treo (I went through a few models, and forget what the last one was, and I forget if this was ever a Palm product or remained a Handspring device...I think Palm bought eventually bought it from Handspring?).

When the first iPhone came out I was in awe at Steve Jobs' presentation of it, as the UI looked so gorgeous in comparison to the comparatively low-res/boring UI of the Palm OS devices. But I liked having the physical keyboard on my Treo, so I stuck with it for a while, before finally succumbing to buying an iPhone (the first one I bought may have been the iPhone 3GS...I'm not certain). I was still an IBM Thinkpad / Windows user at the time, but would later switch to MacBooks, and we've been pretty much all-in on Apple products for some time now.

Going back to USRobotics...I was also into BBSes back in the early days (mostly around the time of owning my Commodore Amigas), so I also owned some "high speed" USRobotics dial-up modems (up to the 56K model).

On the subject of stocks...it's 2:32pm Eastern Time and the markets are up about 2-4%. The Fed has really made this into bizarro world.

[Cortopassi]

CT-Scott,

We were Palm's Chicago design group. Maxed out at about 35 engineers. We were "supposed" to come out with Palm's first real cell phone (after the Palm 7 wireless), let me say *many* years before the iPhone.

But internal management struggles with the Seattle (Palm 7) and CA groups kept us from doing that.

Instead we designed the Tungsten T series of PDAs. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_Tungsten#Tungsten_T) and before that the m500/505 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_m500_series) the first color Palm.

We survived 4 years, 1999-2003. Got to go through the IPO. See my net worth go huge, temporarily, and then drop back to normal.

My original boss and colleague, Peng Lim (at Zenith Data Systems) went on to become VP Engineering at Palm and CEO of Tapwave. (https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/ ... y-Veterans)

Palm 100% blew it. They had the ecosystem for apps way before Apple. If they had visionary management, I would not be writing this right now, or would be from my private island.

[CT-Scott]

Instead we designed the Tungsten T series of PDAs. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_Tungsten#Tungsten_T) and before that the m500/505 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_m500_series) the first color Palm.

Oh yes, I remember those models, though I never personally owned either one. I had several other Palm or Handspring-branded models, and also experimented with some Microsoft Pocket PC devices, but didn't care too much for the UI/experience. Once the first smartphones (like the Treo) came out, I was mostly hooked on those and no longer interested in "standalone" (non-phone) handheld devices.

My original boss and colleague, Peng Lim (at Zenith Data Systems) went on to become VP Engineering at Palm and CEO of Tapwave. (https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/ ... y-Veterans)

Oh, cool intersect. I think I only ever dealt with a particular marketing guy, whose name escapes me. I'd have to dig into my old MacBook's archived email to see if I still have some emails to/from him to track down his name.

Palm 100% blew it. They had the ecosystem for apps way before Apple. If they had visionary management, I would not be writing this right now, or would be from my private island.

Agree about the "app store". In fact, if you look at that tapland.com home page that's still alive, I designed it to feature a particular app, and had thoughts of starting up a Palm OS "app store" at the time. I believe there were one or two independent ones around that time, but I had some ideas for ways to improve upon them, and envisioned getting a cut of sales or just having it be more of a polished "directory" where developers would basically pay to advertise their app, but where the app itself would be downloaded from the developer's own hosting site. I remember wondering at the time, also, why Palm was so behind the curve that they weren't already leading the way in having *the* Palm OS app store of their own.

[pmward]

Well the S&P closed right at that 2850 level I've been eyeing for the last couple of weeks, on the eve of a whole slew of economic data being released and on the week of options expiration. The next week is going to be very interesting...

[Cortopassi]

Instead we designed the Tungsten T series of PDAs. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_Tungsten#Tungsten_T) and before that the m500/505 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_m500_series) the first color Palm.

Oh yes, I remember those models, though I never personally owned either one. I had several other Palm or Handspring-branded models, and also experimented with some Microsoft Pocket PC devices, but didn't care too much for the UI/experience. Once the first smartphones (like the Treo) came out, I was mostly hooked on those and no longer interested in "standalone" (non-phone) handheld devices.

My original boss and colleague, Peng Lim (at Zenith Data Systems) went on to become VP Engineering at Palm and CEO of Tapwave. (https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/ ... y-Veterans)

Oh, cool intersect. I think I only ever dealt with a particular marketing guy, whose name escapes me. I'd have to dig into my old MacBook's archived email to see if I still have some emails to/from him to track down his name.

Palm 100% blew it. They had the ecosystem for apps way before Apple. If they had visionary management, I would not be writing this right now, or would be from my private island.

Agree about the "app store". In fact, if you look at that tapland.com home page that's still alive, I designed it to feature a particular app, and had thoughts of starting up a Palm OS "app store" at the time. I believe there were one or two independent ones around that time, but I had some ideas for ways to improve upon them, and envisioned getting a cut of sales or just having it be more of a polished "directory" where developers would basically pay to advertise their app, but where the app itself would be downloaded from the developer's own hosting site. I remember wondering at the time, also, why Palm was so behind the curve that they weren't already leading the way in having *the* Palm OS app store of their own.

Come to remember it, the absolute worst thing Palm management did was to split the hardware and software groups into two companies. We were tied at the hip, then not, all of a sudden. Everything started falling apart after that.

They wanted other companies to make the hardware and run PalmOS on a variety of PDAs and I assume hopefully cell phones. Like a Microsoft Windows model, I guess. It never really took off, and both sides just kind of slowly died off, while Apple, keeping full control of both HW and SW, took over the market.

Still, it was the most fun 4 years I ever had at a company. They were rolling in money for a long time. Many offsites, patent bonus trips to Barcelona and Hawaii (I did not go to either because my kids were being born). Great bonuses, parties, swag, etc.

I was the last guy to turn off the lights in the Chicago group. They offered really amazing stay on bonuses to stay to the end, and I took it. It also just got me over my 4 year mark, so I got paid for another 4 weeks which would have been a sabbatical you got every four years. Sabbatical. Hah. Crazy just thinking about that.

[Cortopassi]

Well the S&P closed right at that 2850 level I've been eyeing for the last couple of weeks, on the eve of a whole slew of economic data being released and on the week of options expiration. The next week is going to be very interesting...

So what do you think will result? Up or down? Biased because you have a pile of money?

[pmward]

Well the S&P closed right at that 2850 level I've been eyeing for the last couple of weeks, on the eve of a whole slew of economic data being released and on the week of options expiration. The next week is going to be very interesting...

So what do you think will result? Up or down? Biased because you have a pile of money?

Haha. Well I trade on the intermediate term. So on the intermediate term signals are mixed. But on the short term, obviously a lot of signals are pointing bullish. But this is the general area where I would expect the next leg down to start *if* we are going to get it. There's just nothing but resistance and past indecision/inflection points between 2850 and 3000. It's also possible that we don't get another leg down, but just pullback of maybe a couple hundred S&P points before the next leg up. I'm trying to keep an open mind at this point and trade the chart I have, not the chart I want.

I'm still hoping to deploy my cash lower, but I also have an intermediate term trend following signal I'm watching for on QQQ, and if that fires I'm going to buy into QQQ. I may get whipsawed in the process, but I have to at least have a plan on where/when to get back into the market if I'm wrong, as well as a way to sell back out if I was right but early (haha) and get whipsawed. Using a well backtested trend following signal seems as reasonable and unbiased of a plan as any if I'm wrong and the market keeps rallying. Also QQQ's chart has looked really strong relatively speaking.

[vnatale]

Once they get enough experience, lots of engineers try the independent consulting route. Success depends largely on your specialty and ability to drum up business. Unfortunately most engineers have INTJ personalities that really hate sales. So it takes a special type of outgoing engineer to succeed.

ENTP engineer here.
Well, software engineer, but I think that's close enough.

Other than the "T' we are complete opposites!

Vinny

[vnatale]

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