XOM was kicked out of Dow Jones 30 and was replaced with something like Salesforce.com. It was a near-sighted move by Dow Jones to exclude a 335B US largest energy company out of DJ 30. Maybe DJ should consider inviting XOM back to DJ-30 again.
Heh, I am currently reading "Sun Rise", the book on Suncor. A lot of even Canadians fail to realize they used to be the 2nd largest company in the country (just lost to a hair's race against the Royal Bank). There is so much hate against anything to do with oil/gas here the last few years. Millennials act as though they are worse than cigaret sin-stocks. Amazing, that here we were blessed to have one of the largest natural resources (oil sands), and hippies just want the government to ban it all. None of them of course remember what it was like in the early 70s when OPEC tried to fuck the west over. Ok, I'm straying too far on a rant here. It's good, more negativity views just gives me more conviction to load up more on discounted oil stonks.
Amen to that. Actually back when this all started (~140-150 years ago), JD Rockefeller was already reviled hardly before he even started People love to prance around "I'm saving whales", but Rockefeller is actually the guy who really did it. He figured out how to refine kerosine from crude oil (which was already oozing out of the ground), and help people see in the dark. Not only in the U.S. but Europe and Asia as well. And he "Quality-Controlled" the distillation process to avoid unexpected explosions. That's why it was called "Standard Oil" .. the standard. Prior to Rockefeller, if you wanted to light the inside of a business or a house, you had to go harpoon a whale, or buy the stuff from somebody who did harpoon a whale. The details are all in Moby Dick. And back then, gasoline was just a waste product from distilling crude. Until J.D. Rockefeller had another idea ... Jack Welch was a pretty sharp guy back in his day. He used to have a really good phrase: "That guy could see around corners ..." That was J.D. Rockefeller, many others too, especially in that era. Without oil, we would all be shivering in mud huts, firing muskets at wild turkeys.
Oh, some fun fact regarding Canada's government at times. In the early 80s, Ontario's conservative government paid $650 million (pus annual interest charges of %15-- back when a million was worth something still) for 25 percent of Suncor. The kicker? Just a decade later the NDP government led by our most hated Bob Rae sold the same shares during a recession and wrote off over $400 million. Typical classic case of "buy high, sell low" by stupid investors/government. Lesson learned, don't trust your government to have a clue about investments. And these are the people operating your money-printing... god help us. We're fucked.
Most of the stuff in the U.S. never gets into the papers. But back in 2008, one local government guy in Birmingham Alabama stood up and said "Hold my beer, I can do this". And he was talking about trading derivative contracts on Municipal Bonds. When the dust settled, I think he lost $500Million. The city (or maybe the county) had to file for bankruptcy. Some of the story is probably cleaned up/re-written now, so it doesn't look so insanely stupid. Larry Langford
%% DOW did get it right kicking out C +GE. IBD founder questioned the ability editors of WSJ picking stocks/LOL I haven't done a study on XOM trends lately \even though i do business with XOM. Russel3000, 1000+ S&P 100+ S&P 500 likes XOM, so i respect the market And that's fine with me when my neighbor + IBKR founder rides a horse........