Our Q2 2023 Letter & Look Ahead

July 19, 2023

It’s quiet, it usually is.  Calm precedes fear and fear precedes panic.  The klaxon’s already sounding, but traveling sound takes time right?  Or so we think.  Maybe it’s a silent alarm, like a system that warns of thieves in the night.  Interestingly, no one seems to care.  No one seems to have noticed anything’s amiss.  Maybe no one really noticed.  The thieves seem to know exactly what they’re doing.  Silently and with few clues they’ve taken what’s left.  They’ve raided and stolen the reserves.  They’ve taken the ones in plain sight and the ones supposedly hidden.  They’ve even taken things everyone’s agreed were untouchable.  It’s all fair game now.  Sure, we suppose the reasons proffered made sense.  Perhaps even justifiable.  Russian aggression, energy security, economic stability, and/or inflationary pressures, regardless of the rationale or morality provided, the actions were the same.  Strategic Petroleum Reserves (“SPR”)?  Drained.  Sanctioned stocks?  Siphoned.  Floating storage?  Drawn.  Wherever and whenever there were excess stores . . . we plundered it and we asked for more.