71% of S&P 500 boards have a mandatory retirement age - the most frequent being 72 (43%). 77% of companies have term limits. So America’s largest and most influential companies believe that there is an age and duration at which point you become less ... useful. It begs the question: why don’t the legislative, judicial and executive branches of our government follow best practice of the companies that drive the economy? Something to think about when our government is shut down and our 85 year old Supreme...

Open your favorite newfeed and discover: "There is no news to analyze.  Have a nice day..."

Oil at $51! A trade deal coming! Jobs report amazing! Fed not raising rates! All in 3 days. Wow, that was easy.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMJXvsCLu6s

2 weeks ago - I asked - “What happened to hostile takeovers?” Frankly - they are the only way to get deals done in this commodity environment and hedge fund/ private equity capital are the best positioned to get it started. With so much money on the sidelines in energy waiting to be deployed - what better way to recalibrate the industry? I, for one, am excited for the implications for the energy industry of Elliott Management’s hostile takeover bid for QEP. Elliott has $35b...

Elliott Management proposes $8.75/share to buy QEP this morning. Hostile, opportunistic and brilliantly timed. What’s that I smell in the air.... the American Dream!

How does a situation where one party says “I will never sign any bill without my wall funding” and the other says “We will never give you your wall funding” get resolved? There is no out that saves face. Unless the objective is to keep government shut down until 2020, I don’t get it.

I am not in sales so I don’t know official statistics on this. However - my natural instincts yield the following: I cannot imagine that “Linking In” with me and immediately sending a note about your product has a high sales conversion ratio with anyone. I’ve probably had about 100 of these in the last few weeks - many from duplicative products and almost always in the hours following my accepting a request. Maybe I’m the only one who feels this way but ... wtf? Like...

Everyone’s favorite part about the internet is it’s free. But then we (myself included) get mad by the behavior it generates. Sometimes we have to remind ourselves of the rules of the game. Content is produced to generate clicks because clicks get ad revenue. Ads pay for our addiction to free content. So as a result, the media write salacious and extreme articles to elicit those clicks. It has made our society worse. It has made it more extreme. It has made it volatile. That...

To December 2017, China consumed 12.8 mmbo/d of oil, 4% growth from 2016 (500 mbo/d). The US consumed 19.9 mmbo/d, up 200 mbo/d from 2016. If AAPL is cutting $6b (5%) from its quarterly revenue projection - all from China - what does that tell you about the Chinese economy when the worlds largest (though 2nd largest now if the pre markets are any indication) company misses projections by that wide a margin in 1 quarter? 1 quarter?? They didn’t think to lower guidance in...

“Do you think it's just luck that gas prices are so low, and falling? Low gas prices are like another Tax Cut!” No, Mr. President. It isn’t luck. The supply fundamentals in the world have been changed because of US shale production. We are now producing 11.7 mmbo/d. In large part, this has been financed with debt. Demand is slowing, in part because tariffs have slowed China’s economy. So with high supply and falling demand, prices fall. And, since debt financing drove the production growth in...