Harold, one could answer your question from a technical or fundamental perspective. I think both approaches will affirm the superiority of the land drillers for at least the medium term.
First off, you can see it in the numbers. The land rigs are coming back online at an ever accelerating pace. The offshore continues to languish, relatively speaking. The land drillers take advantage of rapidly growing domestic natural gas needs as well as OPEC generated oil prices. They have the most liquid contracts and therefore can respond faster than their offshore cousins. Many international firms may be hamstrung by OPEC quotas. The others will eventually do well, but stocks like PTEN catch the hot spots *RIGHT NOW*. On a percentage basis, PTEN still has a lot of leg left to run.
Secondly, the chartists don't especially like laggards. Heck, I invested in the Oil patch when it was a laggard, and it was a painful year until we had some wind in our sails. There will be a time to switch over to other subsectors, but it will be difficult to time.
Check the Yahoo boards for more information specific to the companies (like messages.yahoo.com for PTEN). (I would follow SI's more, but there's not the activity like Yahoo's) The locals in the area are impressed with the activity in Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Louisiana.
All IMHO. Been wrong before, but I have put my money where my mouth is!
Regards,
Richard |
