My speeches and writing over the past two months have focused on ‘The Crisis of Balance Sheets’ that exists in our industry today. Low commodity prices don’t help, but it’s the structural capitalization that is and will remain the core issue that dominates the landscape in 2020.

Some may have been surprised by the $HK, $SN, $EPE and $AMR chapter 11 filings this year- but that just meant you weren’t looking and I want to make sure that doesn’t happen again.

So this week, the series will focus on financial literacy- and specifically how everyone can make more informed decisions about the companies you own in your portfolio and- more importantly- work for. I want to apologize in advance- accounting is very hard to make fun but I’ll do my best.

I get asked a lot by technical folks: “Do I need an MBA?” No. Not unless your employer is paying. But there are some things you can learn quickly and focus on that will bring you a very long way in your understanding of the financial side of the business. We will go over the Balance Sheet, the Income Statement, the Cash Flow statement and close with SMOG. We are a simple, resource depletion business. If you know what you have, you can model what it’s worth. So this week- that’s exactly what we are going to do.