Analyst On Fire's blog

Natural gas that is! I’m currently invested in Atlas America, one of the largest domestic developers of natural gas and oil.

Why is this a part of my portfolio you ask? Good question. The answer is that it’s positioned nicely within a number of large macro trends. We live in a world where U.S. citizens want to be beggars and choosers demanding unlimited amounts of not only energy, but clean energy, and energy that does not potentially enrich foreigners who want to kill us.

Essentially this leaves us with natural gas investments developed in the U.S. I realize there are lots of alternatives, and some that I’ve even featured before, but there is none that fits the descriptions above, already has usage infrastructure / technology in place, is still relatively cheap, and can be delivered in substantial quantities.

Now that we have the big picture in place, let’s look at a few reasons why I’m excited about ATLS in particular. Read more »

I'm writing you today to request that you defend International Oil Companies (Shell, Exxon, Chevron, etc) from the recent attacks from Members of Congress, and in so doing, defend the free market, a bedrock principle of our Republic.

IOCs only own about 15% of world oil reserves, while NOCs (Nationalized Oil Companies) own the remaining 85% of reserves. My point is that if you want to blame someone for the price of oil, and the resulting price of refined gasoline, the lion's share of the blame, 85%, should rest on the NOCs.

If you want to grill a group with Congressional Hearings about energy prices, invite the members of OPEC, Saudi Aramco, Venezuela's Cartel, Mexico's Cartel and the Russian Cartel. These are the organizations with the resources and power to make significant changes to energy prices. Read more »

SilverCorp first came to my attention when Jim Puplava interviewed the Company Secretary, Lorne Waldman on the Financial Sense News Hour a few months back. I was driving and half listening to the podcast when I heard Lorne Waldman mention their cost to produce an ounce of silver was negative $13.62 / ounce, the lowest in their industry.

At that point I paused and rewound the podcast to make sure I heard it right, and after hearing it again I thought to myself, “How can their cost to produce silver be a negative number?”

As I listened further, I realized that precious metal companies at times report a negative cost / ounce in their production figures when backing out byproduct credits for other minerals they produce. In this situation, while SilverCorp focuses on silver mining, it also produces significant amounts of zinc and lead. Read more »

Like many of my readers, I subscribe to Peak Oil Theory - where depleting geological resources and the resulting higher market prices for hydrocarbons are going to change life on the planet as we know it.

My basic investing philosophy is to follow the big world-wide macro economic trends, and, as best as I can, keep my eyes open for the next major long term trend.

When I join these two convictions together I come to the conclusion that we are on the cusp of a long term bull market in renewable / alternative energy. After all, if we run out of hydrocarbons, or the ones left in the ground are no longer economically viable, we don’t have much of a choice if we don’t want to retreat to the Stone Age.

The problem with this industry is that it has enough vaporware, hype, obscene valuations and outright BS to make the excesses of the tech bubble look like responsible and restrained investing.

With about five months of research I managed to find a company that is an exception to the rule: WFI Industries Ltd. WFI manufactures and installs geothermal heating and cooling systems. Read more »