It’s not quite “Blue Horseshoe loves Anacott Steel,” but cartoonist Scott Adams says it may be time to buy BP.
Adams, the guy who brought you the long-running Dilbert strip, says he’s buying BP stock because the oil spill has temporarily sidelined feckless management types. He said the purchase makes sense even accepting the fact that “you’d vomit in your own mouth when you executed the trade.”
Adams writes Wednesday on his blog that he is buying the shares of the oil producer on the assumption that problem-solving engineers have taken control of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill from conflicted, conniving mangers. The change of control will lead to a quicker than expected cleanup of the Deepwater Horizon disaster and lower than expected costs for the company, he speculates.
Adams notes with some disdain that “financial wonks” will be saying the costs are “baked in” to the stock, and indeed there has been speculation to that effect. A Bloomberg piece last week noted that BP shares have fallen much further than Exxon’s stock did 21 years ago in the wake of the much larger Valdez spill. Three weeks after the spills, BP shares are down three times as much as Exxon’s were.
But to Adams, who has made a living skewering the mindless antics of managers, that’s beside the point.
“My first argument in favor of buying BP stock is that managers caused this problem, whereas engineers are solving it,” he writes. “I assume everyone at BP agrees what their highest priority is, for a change. In other words, there won’t be as much manager interference as normal.”
Accordingly, Adams said he bought “a small amount of BP stock with my gambling money.” He pledges to sell the shares “on the day I hear that engineers capped the leak and the new technology for cleaning oil spills is working better than most people expected.”
(Hat tip: Deep Blue)