James Bowery <[email protected]> wrote:
> On the other hand the market cap of oil company shares take into account > the value of resources in the ground and those quite possibly could be > affected significantly within 3 to 4 years of such an announcement. > A close friend of mine is an economist. He says that the valuation of any company extends into the future for decades. In this case, he said that if it becomes generally known that a form of cold fusion is commercially useful, and if nearly everyone agrees that is true, that would mean oil companies have no long-term future. The present value of oil companies would plummet. The price of oil would also drop sharply, because the oil companies would want to sell off their inventory quickly. That has been my gut feeling for a long time. He confirmed it. In other words, it is not just the commodity value in 4 years that matters. In this situation the oil companies would be like companies manufacturing vacuum tubes in 1952, after transistors were announced. Even though not a single transistor had been sold. savvy people knew they would soon erode sales of vacuum tubes. - Jed
