Sleepless in Switzerland

Sleepless in Switzerland

One tough part about traveling for me is that I can have trouble sleeping at times... it is difficult for me to go through 6 time zones.

I think this evening I had an aha! moment that I will share with my 20 regular readers.

1. I am sure most people saw the news where Leon Panetta (Panetta believes Israel may strike Iran this spring) essentially gave the green light to Israel to attack Iran. I think that will happen before summer.
2. I was fortunate enough a couple years ago to hear a think-tank guy Marvin Zonis talk. Some one asked him about Iran and he commented that if Iran was attacked that they would and could close the Strait of Hormuz where 20% of the world's oil flows.
3. Assuming this all occurs, what would happen? My first gut reaction is that oil prices go up. The beneficiaries would be oil companies that do not ship through the Strait of Hormuz. A loser might be the American consumer as gasoline prices would spike up.
4. Now the US does have the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which they would likely tap.
5. If you read about that reserve, it is a crude petroleum reserve that would last about 34 days, assuming no other oil/gas and we didn't change consumption habits.
6. The key part (to me) is "crude". It is not refined. So if this event happens, price of oil spikes and I think US refineries start up 24/7.

Here are the 28 stocks that I calculate MFI rankings for that are in Oil & Gas Refining:

Ticker	Rank	Date	Stock Price	Market Cap	Earnings Yield	ROIC	Yahoo Yield	Country
HFC	1	2/21	34.38	7,240	20%	75%	1.0%	USA
LPH	2	2/21	1.71	174	55%	53%	0.0%	China
CVI	3	2/21	29.43	2,582	24%	46%	0.0%	USA
DK	4	2/21	13.80	808	34%	41%	2.5%	USA
MPC	5	2/21	43.81	15,596	24%	31%	1.6%	USA
VLO	6	2/21	25.53	14,297	17%	25%	1.6%	USA
WNR	7	2/21	18.76	2,062	21%	23%	0.2%	USA
TSO	8	2/21	28.39	3,938	30%	21%	0.0%	USA
YPF	9	2/21	33.48	13,168	14%	26%	10.3%	Argentina
HES	10	2/21	65.50	22,106	17%	16%	0.6%	USA
MRO	11	2/21	34.56	24,434	20%	13%	63.4%	USA
INT	12	2/21	48.08	3,442	7%	46%	0.3%	USA
ALJ	13	2/21	11.15	688	22%	11%	1.4%	USA
MUR	14	2/21	62.79	12,212	14%	15%	1.8%	USA
XTXI	15	2/21	13.76	649	12%	6%	2.9%	USA
CLMT	16	2/21	23.59	1,216	10%	10%	8.6%	USA
FGP	17	2/21	17.79	1,351	8%	14%	11.4%	USA
IMO	18	2/21	48.48	41,392	7%	17%	0.9%	Canada
UGP	19	2/21	21.73	11,649	6%	20%	2.6%	Brazil
ARSD	20	2/21	7.94	195	5%	18%	0.0%	USA
CHKM	21	2/21	28.64	3,965	6%	10%	5.2%	USA
EROC	22	2/21	11.28	1,445	5%	7%	6.5%	USA
NGL	23	2/21	21.67	533	2%	11%	3.9%	USA
SUN	24	2/21	39.66	4,236	4%	2%	1.6%	USA
IOC	25	2/21	65.32	3,135	0%	1%	0.0%	Australia
KIOR	26	2/21	10.11	1,028	-5%	-148%	0.0%	USA
SYNM	27	2/21	1.32	121	-3%	-3890%	0.0%	USA
BPT	28	2/21	122.45	2,620	8%	--	7.9%	USA

Now everyone should do their own due diligence, but I gotta say a couple of these names look VERY appealing to me. An interesting Geek note, this work caused me to dig into my spreadsheet a bit as several refiners were erring out. I think a lot of them had reported earnings recently and Fidelity's database wasn't totally populated. But I created a bit of a work-around to pull in balance sheet figures from the annual sheet rather than quarterly.

DELL Earnings

I saw where Dell reported so-so earnings after the bell in the good old USA (Dell's 4Q earnings disappoint; stock falls 5 pct). I am really on the fence on what to do about HPQ in my dividend portfolio. I am up a nice 14% since buying them. I expect I am too gun-shy and should just sit and watch. Thoughts? They report tomorrow (after the bell I think).