Sources of China’s Crude Oil, Coal, Liquefied Natural Gas and Pipeline Imports: Chart

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Global energy markets are in turmoil since the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Crude oil prices especially shot up dramatically only a few days ago but have declined some in the past few days. We can expect the current volatility to continue until the war is over. While the US imports very little from Russia, it is not the case with China. Russia is one of the major source of imports for China for many energy needs. For instance, Russia is the second largest import source country in crude oil imports for China. In 2021, Russia accounted for 21% of China’s oil import according to a research report published by The Oxford Institute for Energy Studies .

Sources of China’s oil imports:

Sources of China’s Coal imports:

About 15 percent of China’s imported gas comes from Russia. To put it another way, Russia is the third largest gas supplier to China.

Sources of China’s LNG imports:

Sources of China’s Pipeline imports:

 

Source: The Russian invasion of Ukraine and China’s energy markets, Michal Meidan, The Oxford Institute for Energy Studies

The Top 10 Crude Oil Importers and Exporters in 2020

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The Top 10 Crude Oil importing and exporting countries in 2020 are shown in the table below. As expected, China is the world’s largest importer and Saudi Arabia is the top exporter. Russia is the second largest exporter followed by Iraq and the US.

Of all the countries in this list, the US is the only one that is both and exporter and importer of crude oil.

In addition, most of the world’s top importers import oil from undemocratic countries (excluding Canada, Norway and the US) as shown in the table below.

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Source: worldstopexports.com via Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – repercussions by Scott Blair, CFA, CWB McLean & Partners Wealth Management Ltd.

DW Documentary: The End of a Superpower – The Collapse of the Soviet Union

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I came across this excellent 2021 documentary from DW on the foreign policy of Russia under Putin. For any one interested in the causes of the current Ukraine war this video offers some in-depth reporting and perspective from a wide variety of people and experts.



Source: DW via YouTube

The 10 Best Emerging Regional Banks in the US 2022

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The BankDirector magazine published its 2022 ranking of the best banks in the US under many categories. One of the categories we will look into this in this post is “The Best Emerging Regional Banks”. The banks in the category have assets in the range of $15 – $50 Billion. Since there are thousands of banks in the country and hundreds of them trade on the public markets, investors can use this list as a starting point for further research.

BankDirector selected the banks using various metrics. Below is an excerpt from the study:

To determine the top 10 in each category, we calculated a profitability score based on return on average assets (ROAA) and return on average equity (ROAE) as of year-end 2020. We also looked at year-over-year growth in pre-provision net revenue (PPNR) from 2019 to 2020, as well as absolute PPNR as of year-end 2020. Credit quality was also examined, based on net charge offs and nonperforming loans as a percentage of total loans for 2020. To award building shareholder value, we included five-year total shareholder return from 2015 to 2020. All of these factors were ranked and then averaged — with profitability receiving a double weight — to develop a score.

The Best Emerging Regional Banks:

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Source: RankingBanking, Bank Director

The top ranked Emerging Regional Bank is Arizona-based Western Alliance Bancorp (WAL). The second best bank is Glacier Bancorp (GBCI). Based in the Montana, the bank has operations in eight western states – Washington, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, Nevada, Utah, Arizona and Montana. Last year Glacier Bank moved from trading on the NASDAQ to the NYSE.

Disclosure: Long GBCI

S&P/TSX Composite Index Calendar Year Returns From 1924 To 2020: Chart

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Stocks tend to go up in the long term. Though in the short-term stocks can be volatile or earn negative returns, when considered over many years or even decades stocks usually generate a positive return. This is true in the case of Canadian market also. The following chart shows the calendar year returns of the S&P/TSX Composite Index from 1924 to 2020. In most years the return was positive. Or to put it another way, 73% of the time, Canadian stocks yielded calendar year returns above zero.

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Source: 3 Guidelines to keep in mind in volatile markets, Russell Investments