While most analysts travel in the safety and comfort of wagontrains, the man in black prefers to travel solo, beating the bushes and basking in a maverick role as contrarian of the oilpatch.

Last Sept. 24, while the pack analysts were frantically churning out storm warnings for oil and gas, Peter Linder, the Calgary-based Research Capital oil and gas analyst, was forecasting blue skies and blazing the trail for a resurgence in commodity prices.

Linder pronounced himself bullish in a research report and promptly upgraded recommendations on all 11 stocks in his stable in a single day. Seven of them were strong buys.

Some on the street shrugged off Linder’s exuberance as foolhardy and waited for a lynch mob of investors to invite him to the Ranchman’s (the saloon with the gallows, not the Ranchmen’s elite club).

Almost immediately after Linder’s bullish call in September, the oil and gas stocks turned on a dime and took off.

A bullish Linder revelled in his good fortune, hamming it up in his lively research reports.

“A new party has just begun,” he wrote in October. “You snooze – you lose.”

Even when stocks tanked in November because of a standoff between Russia and OPEC over Russia’s reluctance to cut reserves, Linder, who has been especially bullish on natural gas-weighted companies, stuck to his guns.

“Humbled but still DEFINITELY bullish,” he noted in December.

In March, Linder previewed a robust rally by headlining a report: “Back up the truck and load up – and make sure it’s a big truck.”

With his stocks on fire this spring, Linder’s prose dripped with sarcasm: “We apologize for not being bullish enough.”

Since Linder turned bullish 81/2 months ago, the TSX energy index has spiked 28 per cent.

Linder’s bulls have fared even better, charging about 45 per cent.

At a time when the noose is tight-ening on many analysts in the game who rode the bull too long, the Brahma bull of energy analysts who bucked the trend is riding high.

Back in September, Linder slapped an outrageous $6 target on an unheralded junior, Gauntlet Energy, which was then trading at $3.05.

The stock has tripled to $9.30 and remains a strong buy with a 12-month target of $20. He has maintained strong buy or buy ratings on all his stocks.

The analyst, who has a wealth of experience as an oil and gas economist and natural gas researcher, admits that even his own firm was concerned over his bullish stance last fall.

“I took some flak,” he says. “People thought I was a permanent bull. So I started to lose a little bit of credibility. But all I was doing was calling it the way I see it. In the eight-and-a-half years I’ve been doing this, I’ve been bearish about three or four times.”

How does Linder explain his penchant for playing on the extremes of the market and virtually always being more bullish or more bearish than the street?

“People recognize me for flip-flopping and, yes, I do like to play the extremes. But what’s funny is that it’s not deliberate. What I want to stress is that I don’t make a concerted effort to be contrarian. I just happen to be a contrarian. It happens naturally.

“I believe it happens because I have such significant experience with commodities. I worked for 15 years (directly) in the oil and gas industry, including five years of nothing but natural gas research, and worked extensively as an oil and gas economist. Having that experience has put me in very good stead. I tend to be early with my calls, and, frankly, I’ve been more right than wrong.”

Linder knows only too well that in his job, one is only as good as his last call.

“We like to be recognized when we’re right and be able to live with it when we’re wrong. I enjoy making the calls. I live and die on this stuff. I’m consumed 24 hours a day by this business. I just love this business. What this work requires is, A, experience, and B, common sense. You’ve got to step outside the box and look at what makes sense. I find that most analysts are driven by numbers and the current situation, and they don’t look beyond the current situation and how the market might react to that. That’s what I did in September.”

Linder says his bullish stance in September was based on three main factors: that the merger and acquisition activity would stimulate the market; that share prices had dipped significantly, almost fully discounting the near-term outlook for natural gas prices; and speculation that lower commodity prices would result in drastically reduced natural gas drilling activity.

With the bull camp getting crowded these days, Linder admits he’s a bit uncomfortable uncharacteristically rubbing shoulders with his peers, and we wonder when he might headline a report, Back Up The Truck And Make Sure It’s a Dump Truck.

However, while his heart may be telling him the time may be near to blaze a new trail, his head tells him to remain bullish.

“In September, everybody was bearish, and now most of them are bullish and I’m in the pack,” says Linder. “Because of that, maybe now I have to turn bearish. No, I don’t think so. I’m very bullish right now. Three weeks ago, natural gas was $3.85 (US mcf). Now it’s $3.27. I don’t like that, but I’m not deterred by it at all. I think we’ll get back to $4 by the third quarter of this year.”

Linder’s official commodity targets for 2003 are $4.25 US mcf for natural gas and $23 US for oil.

“My only concern is El Nino,” says the man in black, living for cold snaps and hot stocks.

For Linder’s top picks, see adjacent Pro’s 3 Stars.

* SAGE ADVICE: “My advice is that you cannot afford a blemish on your reputation because the cost is simply too high. And, unfortunately, you may never know how even the slightest indiscretion may affect you in the future. Conversely, the potential benefit from a good reputation may be invaluable.”

– Oilman and philanthropist Dick Haskayne, June 4, 1997, speaking to the University of Calgary graduating class.



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