If it’s Friday, this must be Nigeria
Cramer in Real Money explains that Nigeria is today’s excuse for oil trading to a new record high (Reuters says today’s mini-crisis is Venezuela, not Nigeria, by the way). Next Monday it’ll be something else of course:
Nigerian unrest. Yep, that’s why oil went up $5 in the last few days. And the dollar, too. That’s big. (I know, it’s going down today, but it doesn’t matter — buy the stocks on weakness.) OK, everyone repeat after me: We are running out of supply, and worldwide demand is off the charts.
Does anyone think that National Oil Varco goes up 5 points for no reason? Go read the Transocean conference call from Wednesday. It’s eye-opening. The premier deepwater driller — with the best technology and expertise, and most important, clout with the rig builders — can’t get enough rigs for 2011 to equal the demand. The big issue on the RIG call was whether the rigs will be available at the beginning of 2011 and not the end! And when they come, the bidding for them already is so furious that they won’t mean anything to the possibility of more oil and gas in the world…
Nigeria? How about the U.S., our own worst enemy? Or, don’t forget the globe itself, which is running out of oil quickly, despite many pundits’ best attempts to tell us it’s all about the dollar.
Maybe he’s right, but we can’t help recalling a Wall Street TV pundit saying, sometime after March 2000, “if Yahoo! gets down to $80, back up the truck.”