SPO Advisory cut its stake to 3,196,197 shares (4.9%), after selling 254,153 from Aug. 12 to Aug. 19 at $19.27 to $20.49 each.

Infrastructure needs

Now oil. Toughest. If the Chinese don't come back in -- and remember, I do think they will, but they have been a great mystery -- if they don't come back, then I think oil can trade down again. You are buying oil for the weak dollar, not the stronger economy. Some of the oils are up huge on a spike and without some demand will go down. I have been scaling out of Cabot Oil & Gas (CBT) to be ready to get into a major with good yield support, but I don't have one yet.

Buy - Price 28.11 on Sept. 9
by KeyBanc Capital Markets

Upgrading from Hold. Cabot Supermetals is the world's largest and most technologically advanced manufacturer of products used primarily in electronics for producing capacitors. We're increasing our 2009 estimate to $2.60 from $2.20....CBT should hit its 2011 EPS target of $3 before then....Our 40 [share-price] target is based on an [enterprise value/earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization] multiple of 7.6 times our [fiscal-year] '09 Ebitda estimate of $424 million (total debt estimate, $665 million). The average high over FY03-FY07...is 9.2 times. [Our multiple is] conservative due to current volatility in feedstock costs, upper-management [shifts] and cost savings.... Market cap: $1.8 billion.

What's so unnerving is that the prices of the stocks have so much more to do with the hedge funds that buy, sell and short them than they do with how the companies are doing. Ultra Pete, up more than 6, didn't just discover more oil. Cabot Oil (CBT) didn't discover a new shale.

But nat-gas stocks are growth stocks, and nat-gas fuel is a share take and is half the price of oil per equivalent. That's why outfits like Cabot (CBT) in Marcellus or Devon (DVN) in the Gulf or Chesapeake (CHK) in the Haynesville mean so much to me, They can grow, and the idea that they should be lumped in with ne'er-do-growers like BP (BP) and Exxon Mobil (XOM) is ridiculous.

2.3%

2.2%

1.02

yields 1.5%. The P/E is 23.5, the PEG is 1.37, and the P/S is 1.16.