RE:RE:RE:RE:SnowballerCountryBoy69, If you're talking about masfortuna I ignored him, along with 6 others, so I don't know what he wrote. Unlike you, I do ignore people but I never report abuse. When I ignore, I am deciding, for myself, on what is relevant to me and affects only me. When the board censors they are effectively saying that they'll decide for everybody what is relevant or not. I don't want anybody else deciding for me what is relevant or not.
I'm in my late 60s. I have a younger friend who just turned 40. Chinese by ethnicity, Canadian by birth, already a millionaire. He started investing in his early 20s just out of college when he landed his first tech job. He says "ignore the noise", "the trend is your friend", "play the long game", "learn some linear algebra". The idea is to try to quantify all variables or inputs and map them into an output. In effect, try to quantify causes and effects.
For example, with bte's current margin mix, what would have the greatest effect on their net income? Wti or Iran or Saudi heavy oil price? Let's look at gdp. Which has a greater effect on oil price? China's gdp or the collective rising gdp of emerging markets. If China's gdp falls 2% but emerging markets increase 1% then that more than offsets China's decrease. Why? Because GDP is not a reliable measure of economic performance. Yes it measures spending but it measures private and public sector spending and we all know how governments like to waste capital.
A better measure of economic performance is capex spending by the private sector. China is building new plants in Mexico, not China. China's wholesale price index is falling. Their private sector is in deflation. They have spent trillions, which really boosted their GDP numbers, in building infrastructure and huge cities now sitting idle and empty. Capex spending in China is decreasing. Meanwhile capex spending in many emerging markets is booming. Wholesale prices are increasing. Oil demand is going up.
So when you graph capex spending, by country or areas of the world against oil price you look for correlations, trends. Anyway my friend is what some people call a "contrarian investor. When everybody is running for the hills, he's buying. When everybody is buying, he's selling. But not blindly. Not haphazardly. His decisions are informed by the spreadsheets and graphs that he creates, not what the media is saying. But he has a few "keepers" that he holds on to for a very long time. Bte is one of them. Companies related to food and food production like fertilizer, potssh etc are others.
He sees a looming scarcity of food and energy going forward. Canada has plenty of both. He's long on Canada. Best place to invest in the world he says. So maybe also track capex spending in the Canadian oil patch as well. My friend does. But for those who don't agree with my posts then feel free to attack my arguments please. I welcome constructive criticism. Only way to learn.