Australian (ASX) Stock Market Forum

Economic implications of a SARS/Coronavirus outbreak

Longer post, short version is at the bottom if you want the cliff notes version.

Oil news: Brent crude just cracked $50 a barrel.

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Reason: China's just started buying up a shitload whilst it's still cheap/the american demand hasn't yet rebounded. In short, it's their last shot to get both some cheap oil and cheap tankers to store it in (and just leave it anchored offshore), so they've just ordered everything they can.

"The bulk of offshore crude inventory remains concentrated in Asia, accounting for more than 80% of total volumes, or 13.5 mn mt".

Here's the data:

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You'll also note that the cargo exports (in the top left) I've spoken about in previous posts are almost as high as ever because hey, we're still buying all that chinese shite and importing it over to us.



Significance of the oil price? It makes a lot of previously offline oil rigs profitable to run again.

"U.S. benchmark oil prices will need to trade in a range of $35 to $45 a barrel next year just to keep production flat, according to a new report by BloombergNEF.

The report highlighted different estimates needed to keep output steady from the major oil plays. For the Permian and Eagle Ford, companies need oil at $35 to $40 a barrel. Meanwhile, the Bakken needs prices in the region of $40 to $45 while Denver-Julesburg probably requires about $45 a barrel.

Up until last week, West Texas Intermediate hadn’t settled above $45 a barrel"


Read the full report here: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/terminal/QKRR80T0G1LF


As a result, we've seen energy on an absolute tear today (NRGU, the triple levered big oil etf I mentioned I bought a few days ago, is up 12% as of the time of this post) even on a day where the market has gone defensive with the nasdaq, r2k, and even zoom (which, in my opinion, is THE barometer for how the market is feeling about the virus) back in the green but the dow & sp500 in the red.



So with this spike in chinese demand now holding the oil price comfortably above $45/barrel, we can expect to see a solid increase in operational rig count, which has been on a slow but steady increase for months:

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And therefore a solid rebound in profits for the oil companies as it's now, you know, profitable to pump (sell) oil again. As of the time of this post, NRGU is up 12% and climbing.

I also suspect the americans will start exporting oil to china from their currently full onshore storage tanks as there is no longer any concern for american short term oil supply on account of the price now being high enough for the rigs to start operating again. Depending on the contracts, any as yet still unloaded tankers still at anchor in the united states might also be diverted over to china instead too.

It'll be interesting to see what the tank levels and tanker numbers are over the coming few weeks and I'll obviously update once I've got the data.



The short version of all of this is that china's decided to order a shitload of oil and tankers in the last moments before the american demand rebounds (on account of the vaccine deployment beginning soon) whilst it/they are still cheap and so energy/oil demand has rebounded the oil price to profitable levels weeks (months) before we were otherwise expecting it to. Ergo, the oil companies can start pumping (selling) oil at a profit again now rather than in several months like we were expecting.


The only question now remaining is political risk, because china's well & truly on the entire world's (and especially america's) shitlist, so if they do something wild like ban oil exports to china, oooooh boy...
 
Many might have seen the headlines:https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-12-11/covid19-vaccine-csl-uq-hiv-element-what-went-wrong/12973952
So the csl UQ vaccine attempt is doomed, hiv note is interesting but not surprising for anyone who cared about my initial posts on the origin of covid: more confirmation of the wuhan lab hiv-sars experience gone rogue for anyone eho wants to have an open mind eyes
Anyway, i had the initial feeling that Australia would get an Australian fake vaccine and so bought a nice packet of csl..our only manufacturer of any size, $292 a pop..
Today i decided to sell at the open before the backlash..$295 so no loss but no real win.
We will buy an oversea fake vaccine instead..the submarine saga again...
 
Many might have seen the headlines:https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-12-11/covid19-vaccine-csl-uq-hiv-element-what-went-wrong/12973952
So the csl UQ vaccine attempt is doomed, hiv note is interesting but not surprising for anyone who cared about my initial posts on the origin of covid: more confirmation of the wuhan lab hiv-sars experience gone rogue for anyone eho wants to have an open mind eyes
Anyway, i had the initial feeling that Australia would get an Australian fake vaccine and so bought a nice packet of csl..our only manufacturer of any size, $292 a pop..
Today i decided to sell at the open before the backlash..$295 so no loss but no real win.
We will buy an oversea fake vaccine instead..the submarine saga again...
The main vaccine is the pommy Mundipharma version that CSL will be producing so be ready to buy back in . The Australian vaccine was only at phase 1 and was only going ahead if the others failed.
I won't engage in your other conspiracy theory.
 
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Lol the hedge funds aren't even beating the market now.

I'll be fair to them for november though, the election and THREE vaccines gave four near black swan events which sent everyone's heads spinning. You really, really, really should have had at least a nasdaq & r2k tracking etf held though.
 
The main vaccine is the pommy Mundipharma version that CSL will be producing so be ready to buy back in . The Australian vaccine was only at phase 1 and was only going ahead if the others failed.
I won't engage in your other conspiracy theory.
saying that there are HIV sequences in the virus is conspiracy theory yet the vaccines based on the virus triggers HIV detection test..sure sure...
Anyway, agree that csl could be a buy back but preferred to be out today and will remain in the coming few days.let's check again in january
 
saying that there are HIV sequences in the virus is conspiracy theory yet the vaccines based on the virus triggers HIV detection test..sure sure...
Anyway, agree that csl could be a buy back but preferred to be out today and will remain in the coming few days.let's check again in january
Calling someone a "conspiracy theorist" these days is just like calling somebody a racist, misogynist, or whatever now. It's become a cliché.

The biggest conspiracy theory of all, viz NWO, just came out from behind the curtain, all by itself.

I do think Klaus should get himself a fluffy white cat though... or maybe he does have one? :oops:
 
The window for vaccine alternatives is rapidly closing. We'll have already rolled out hundreds of millions of doses of moderna & pfizer's ones before any others hit the market, and even then, they're still only going to get a third or whatever of what remains.

That ship (buying opportunity) has all but sailed. The next play is a recovery one. So far, it's energy/oil that have the most to gain.
 
So far, it's energy/oil that have the most to gain.
One thing I haven't seen anyone try to properly work out (and I haven't tried myself either) is exactly what the capacity of the world's oil fields is right now?

That is, if all the taps are fully opened, all the pumps are on and deducting normal routine outages for maintenance etc then what's the daily flow rate globally?

Almost certainly it's lower now than it was a year ago but by how much I wonder?

Point being that so long as consumption remains below capacity, OPEC can control the market but once consumption exceeds capacity, there's nothing anyone can do to avoid a price shock and with that price going to whatever level it takes to get production and consumption back in balance.

An oil shock, a proper one, is at least possible in my view. "Proper" as in it becomes mainstream news, not just financial news. :2twocents
 
Good to see that somebody is doing well out of China screwing Australia, nice to see the media is giving us a heads up, as a bit of christmas cheer. ?


Ah you have to love the media, don't you.?
 
One thing I haven't seen anyone try to properly work out (and I haven't tried myself either) is exactly what the capacity of the world's oil fields is right now?

That is, if all the taps are fully opened, all the pumps are on and deducting normal routine outages for maintenance etc then what's the daily flow rate globally?

Almost certainly it's lower now than it was a year ago but by how much I wonder?

Point being that so long as consumption remains below capacity, OPEC can control the market but once consumption exceeds capacity, there's nothing anyone can do to avoid a price shock and with that price going to whatever level it takes to get production and consumption back in balance.

An oil shock, a proper one, is at least possible in my view. "Proper" as in it becomes mainstream news, not just financial news. :2twocents
That situation must be a serious possibility.
 
That situation must be a serious possibility.
I was hinting at that a week or so ago.once the flow is stopped or maintenance stopped, you can not restart at the previous production level so we know production capacity is below january 2020: worse, as stockpile get used, the actual production potential issues are hidden behind a fake aboundance and we might hit a hard whiplashe.
I have the feeling some people did the computation, not to mention the buying stockpiling frenzy of China currently....
One reason i kept some of my oil exposure.
 
One thing I haven't seen anyone try to properly work out (and I haven't tried myself either) is exactly what the capacity of the world's oil fields is right now?

That is, if all the taps are fully opened, all the pumps are on and deducting normal routine outages for maintenance etc then what's the daily flow rate globally?

Almost certainly it's lower now than it was a year ago but by how much I wonder?

Point being that so long as consumption remains below capacity, OPEC can control the market but once consumption exceeds capacity, there's nothing anyone can do to avoid a price shock and with that price going to whatever level it takes to get production and consumption back in balance.

An oil shock, a proper one, is at least possible in my view. "Proper" as in it becomes mainstream news, not just financial news. :2twocents
Production rate is way, way, way above what we actually need.

The next oil shock will be when the saudi's & iranians start shooting at each other again. Shale oil has made the yanks oil independent, so they're no longer going to play peacekeeper in the region. https://www.military.com/daily-news...s-mideast-raise-fears-of-iranian-attacks.html

It was just starting to kick off at the end of last year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Abqaiq–Khurais_attack

But coronavirus has obviously forestalled it (for now).

This isn't something that's going to happen - it's already happened. It's been in motion for years. The saudi's made that $35 billion odd weapons purchase for a reason. U.S troop deployments are at record lows and only falling. The yanks are just packing their bags and going home and letting the world burn for all they care as america is now self-sufficient in almost everything.

The moment coronvirus is over is the moment the bullets start flying.



This link here explains it all (and how acutely aware the yanks actually are of this situation) perfectly: https://capitalistexploits.at/these-changes-promise-to-completely-change-global-markets/ and it is well worth a read.
 
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Yep. Big oil et al is the buy of a generation at the moment. First there was the tech companies with the invention of the internet, then there was the banks in the GFC, then there was the tv/movie streaming business, then the electric car companies, now there's american oil companies et al.

They were as high as they were before coronavirus for a reason. In hindsight, I should have just put a bit of cash on it and just let it sit there until the vaccines were announced and then buy up big but I wasn't expecting three vaccines in a bloody row right as winter hit so meh.

Take a look at the numbers:

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You can obviously imagine what's going to happen once double-digit percentages of the world's oil supply is taken out for months in a single afternoon of airstrikes. You can also imagine how long such a shooting match would go on for before there was even a ceasefire long enough to rebuild the facilities, let alone an actual truce.

Like I said - there was a reason why the companies were valued as highly as they were pre-virus. There's also a reason why china's bought up every drop of oil they can get their hands on now as I showed in the previous post with the vortexa screencap.


You don't just fill the entirety of your oil reserves and lease every tanker available on top of it if you aren't very, very, very worried about something.
 
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We should lift all the lockdowns and just do what sweden did, right?
Yeap unchanged..a couple of years ago,icu beds were missing in France during the normal flu season, did you see headline on this at the time?
Or do you remember the 70000 people killed by a heatwave in 2003?
Sweden was not that affected it is true:)
Nasty yes but no justification for lockdownsthen you look at number of icu beds per 100000.even before covid
Sweden:5.8 per 100000
Germany 29.1..no typo
Uk 6.6 and France 11
That might explain the fact you do not see much headlines about german deathtolls don't you think?
With such a pathetic low number of emergency beds, Sweden is doing amazingly well and yet they had no initial lockdown
lockdown or not in my immediate relatives in France: 13
5 have had confirmed covid,2 suspected earlier this year.
No major issues..just anecdotal figures i know but lockdowns do not work once virus is widespread, except in indéed destroying the economy.and this is our focus.
We are so screwed with our eradication strategy and China jumping on the opportunity to give the fatal blow....
 
Yeap unchanged..a couple of years ago,icu beds were missing in France during the normal flu season, did you see headline on this at the time?
Or do you remember the 70000 people killed by a heatwave in 2003?
Sweden was not that affected it is true:)
Nasty yes but no justification for lockdownsthen you look at number of icu beds per 100000.even before covid
Sweden:5.8 per 100000
Germany 29.1..no typo
Uk 6.6 and France 11
That might explain the fact you do not see much headlines about german deathtolls don't you think?
With such a pathetic low number of emergency beds, Sweden is doing amazingly well and yet they had no initial lockdown
lockdown or not in my immediate relatives in France: 13
5 have had confirmed covid,2 suspected earlier this year.
No major issues..just anecdotal figures i know but lockdowns do not work once virus is widespread, except in indéed destroying the economy.and this is our focus.
We are so screwed with our eradication strategy and China jumping on the opportunity to give the fatal blow....
I think you're kind of making my argument here frog: Horses for courses.

AU has eradicated the virus. It's life as normal but without tourists & foreign students. Same with NZ.
 
I think you're kind of making my argument here frog: Horses for courses.

AU has eradicated the virus. It's life as normal but without tourists & foreign students. Same with NZ.
What is interesting is that our country has been spared: seasonal weather, sea isolation , etc yet the scare tactic has been relentless so what now? Vaccine or not, sooner or later, we will have to open and see old people dying.just factual...so either we die economically and all starve, or pretend the vaccine works, reopen and see our first wave.
My fear is that the government, as in NZ, has locked itself in a position where it can not admit its error and so will either hide the deathtoll post vaccine or worse, carry on the North Korea solution, with aussies pretending that we can live in isolation.north Korea does so I am sure we can but that means a lot economically and the asx plays might not be the best option financially..
I know the usd is doomed mid term but not sure aud is better.Gold?
 
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