Along with placing appropriate blame for the large drop (which I will deal with momentarily), the company looked ahead. HAL forecast that natural gas prices in North America will likely stay weak through the end of the year. Natural gas prices have fallen to less than half of where they were a year ago - and HAL believes that high inventories will keep the spending low, as new wells will not be needed. HAL's CEO Dave Lesar stated that the company believes that drilling activity will be low as it is unlikely there will be a meaningful recovery in natural gas prices. HAL's exposure to natural gas led Goldman Sachs to downgrade the firm a month ago.

Now, let's look at that large drop in profit. It is not indicative of a weak company, and I know that many of you are already thinking what I am about to say. Please, don't get me wrong; HAL faces quite an uphill struggle if it is going to return to its pre-crash highs. However, don't be fooled by the company's monthly chart. There is a lot of ugly in HAL's long-term picture, but the intermediate term suggests that the stock is stabilizing a bit. That said, is it time to invest in oil? I don't think we have seen the bottom of the oil market - perhaps it is just me. What concerns me a bit is that the price of black gold is rising because investors are excited that the private sector had to rescue CIT Group (CIT). This bothers me, because I worry about the psyche of the investor, which swings violently on a second-by-second basis in this economy. One bit of bad news, and we could be falling again.

What really worries me is stories like this one. Perhaps you don't lend much credence to speculation of this sort, but what if this is true? What if this speculation about the budget is true? We could see a tremendously bad reaction to such news. This would hurt prices on all kinds of products, especially oil. Let's not forget what the per-barrel price was earlier this year. If the rosy pictures start to wilt, so could oil prices and oil companies.