Cure Worse Than the Disease – Earnings: IPL, FTS, AI, ARX

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The extended period of low interest rates since the Global Financial Crisis has no precedent in modern history; neither does the level of technology. There is a lot of information noise today when the average person has as much communication power in the palm of their hand as newspaper baron William Hearst did with his fleet of printing presses in the early 1900's. Hearst could make or break political fortunes and influence economic trends. Power coming from the control of information was evident again from the attempted insurrection in the US. This was just a modern version of opinions driven by digital technology. Some bad comes with the good; the real lessons aren't necessarily understood as events happen. Clearing away the hyperbole to focus on the science based realities is often where opportunities lie.

Mother Nature recently provided a demonstration of this with the surprise cold weather in Texas. This once in 100 year event, is a window into just how important reliable energy infrastructure is. No amount of misinformation can change mechanics of power production. The resulting impact from the Texas power grid problems on public opinion and investment trends will be interesting. Like the COVID situation the cure can easily be worse than the disease. There is more detail in this week's commentary.

Earnings updates includes Fortis Inc.(FTS), Arc Resources Ltd(ARX), Atrium Mortgage Corp.(AI) and Inter Pipeline Inc. (IPL). Atrium is impacted by the outlook for interest rates; Fortis, Arc and Inter Pipeline are in the energy space.

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