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Strategies & Market Trends : Strictly: Drilling II -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Roebear who wrote (658)	8/27/2001 12:21:50 AM
From: rails99	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 36161

Hi Roebear: HUI/and some OT. Whats up with you? Had a great weekend with the family, beef on the barbie. Looks like a big question as to what the funds will do this week. With billions leaving the market lately, may have a big sell-off sometime this week. I am primed and ready for some great trades in the PMs. All we need is a little catalyst. Have you seen very many charts like the way the current HUI appears to just stay floating up in the stochs. Really has not turned in stochs, just a little in the RSI. Would agree the stochs look like topped out, but my GG and some others held or gained on Friday. Do you think we have some short term support based on the chart; or feel that we head down a while from here? Can not recall if you trade any other than the patch and PMs, but ..... OT: Utilities: UCU and OKE- I understand, if you are not interested, but know I have been looking close at a few utility companies for the last year or so. Lost a lot of storage during late winter and face some lawsuits due to the causation of the loss. Had some underground storage in salt caverns near Hutchinson, KS. One of the storage units started leaking and damn near blew up the entire city. I believe after the turn of the year all that will be discounted in the stock price. May be a great long-term hold, but still need to figure out if they issued common, or if some preferred is floating around ready for the picking. May be a long shot, but would appreciate it, if you ask me about it, just once in a while. Another utility I am watching is a likely gainer, only when Thanksgiving finally rolls around. All the utilities I keep an eye on usually turn up in stock price after the summer, after the 2nd quarter is done and before the 3rd quarter earnings come out. Check it out on some yearly historical charts; and you may find this holds true, for most of the utilities. I would add this last year has been quite a bit different due to the high gas prices. It may be that the best time to buy any utilities would be after the premium prices for gas have run their course (I.E., Some may be stuck with high gas price hedging contracts for even a few years. It may be that the stock prices will reflect poor hedging decisions for quite a long time. That is the big thing I will check out before I would commit to buy this 3rd quarter or next. Seems to hold true also for the gas drillers like KEG. Right now they have some nice contracts, may be the best driller out there. All that can change in an instant if we truly do not have the production coming into storage, but the AGA numbers will let us know about that. The two utilities I am interested in are UCU and OKE. UCU is the corp that lost so much low cost gas that they had in storage, right at the time they had paid very little for it. I am pretty sure they had to pay thru the nose to replace it, just to make it thru last few months of the winter. UCU surely had to buy some really high gas and it should hurt the profit margins for a while. Not sure of it as they may have had some decent cross hedging with the Aquila set-up. Think Nice Witch was looking at Aquila lately. UCU may be the better deal. Once they turn their costs around it should really do much better. Re.: OKE- I believe OKE may show a better return because I think Western Resources will have to sell their shares. They have about 45% of the company and if they have to unload one of two things will happen: 1. They sell slow on the open market; or 2. They sell to a buyer that will go ahead and try for the whole kitty. WR has been hurting since they bot Protection One, etc. OKE really performed well, as far as share price, in the last two years. If the company can get away from the controls of W.Resources, I think it can do better. May be a question of how much dividend they continue to pay, but the good value is in the profit per customer, once the costs of their fuel level out a little. All I wish to indicate is that they have done pretty good in holding expenses down in the past. All this rambling JMHO. Best Wishes; Rails