The short term investing stock picks blog

I read last Friday that Transocean Inc. (NYSE: RIG), one of my favorite oil services companies, had signed a record deal in the Gulf of Mexico with a dayrate of $581k for its Development Driller II.  The contract, with BP (NYSE: BP), has the potential to be worth $1.06 billion.  According the Credit Suisse, the previous Gulf of Mexico record dayrate was held by Pride International (NYSE: PDE), who got $540k just on May 1.  This represents a 7.6% increase in about 7 weeks.  Dayrates are higher elsewhere in the world, particularly in West Africa.  This announcement should help put some teeth behind a move of Oil Services companies.  The Oil Services ETF AMEX: OIH) has lagged the general Oil Contract ETF (NYSE: OIL), up only 13.15% (15.4% after dividends) compared to 43.88% YTD. 

As for RIG, it has trailed its own Oil Services peers, up only 3.95% YTD.  The company certainly seems to contain a lot of value relative to its peers.  The PEG ratio sits below 0.5 with its forward P/E at around 9.  The company’s backlog is impressive with around $35 billion in booked projects.  The company also is a leader in its industry in cash flow generation.

I believe that RIG deserves to trade at a premium, not a discount, to its peers.  Nevertheless, giving it a industry valuation average of 10.4 and assuming slightly aggressive earnings estimate of $19.25, I see RIG at $200 by the end of the year, or around a 34% upside.

Today, I’ wanted to share the launch eTick, a free mobile stock quotes service.  eTick is an extremely simple website to get stock quotes on your mobile device.  I created the site for my own purposes really, as I got sick of Yahoo’s mobile quotes service and wanted stock quotes I could get to in one page request.

The premise is simple.  You can visit http://etick.mobi and enter in the stock symbol and get a detailed quote.  You can also you your keypad at the homepage to get quotes for one of 9 popular stocks.  For example, if I go to the page and want a stock quote of Caterpillar (NYSE: CAT), I can just hit 5 on my mobile device and it will complete the task. 

The part I like the best, especially because I hate having to wait for individual pages to load is the ability to simply put in any stock symbol as a subdomain to go directly to the detailed stock quote (as shown in the image).  For example, typing aapl.etick.mobi into the address bar will take you immediately to the stock quote for Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL).

In any event, I hope this is of use to other investors who are addicted enough to constantly be checking their phones for stock quotes.  Let me know if you have any questions/comments.

I have been very bullish on Natural Gas since the beginning of 2008.  The commodity has rallied through the $10 mark.  This morning, Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) noted that it now sees summer nat gas to come in over $11 and may be as high as $13 in 2009.  The reason?  International demand is on the rise (sound familiar).  LNG imports are increasing dramatically ex-US, especially in Europe.  GS noted that prices will have to increase in the US to match prices abroad in order to get shipments of the commodity into Henry Hub.  This has lead amny E&P players to begin signing leases like crazy in the less conventional formations, most notably the Marcellus and Utica shale in the Northeast and Canada.
You can play the commodity as a an ETF with AMEX: UNG.  My favorite three E&P plays include Range Resources Company (NYSE: RCC), Cabot Oil & Gas (NYSE: COG), and Chesapeake Energy (NYSE: CHK).

Disclosure: I own shares of CHK in my buy and hold portfolio.