What do you call a company that was completely asleep at the switch, allowed one of if not the worst industrial disasters to happen, and has to spend billions to fix the damage all the while being vilified daily in the press and by political leaders?  You guessed it; I am talking about British Petroleum (BP) and the Gulf Oil Spill.  So, what would you call them?  Evil?  Incompetent? Maybe, but if you are not one of the herd who is jumping on the Bash BP Bandwagon and are looking for opportunities to get rich there is something else you might want to call them: A Screaming Bargain!

Every now and then some horrible thing happens to a private company that makes them look horrible but in fact has marginal impact on their long term prospects.  For example, when Tylenol was being spiked with cyanide a few years back, it was terrible for Johnson and Johnson, the makers of the drug. Their stock price tanked.  But, they did the right thing, recalled all the product even though it was not their fault that it was poisoned, repackaged their product in tamper proof bottles, and rebounded better than ever.

So, a well contracted to an outside company under contract to BP screws up big time, dumps millions if not billions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico causing huge damage both to the ecosystem and the economy.  BP steps up right away, starts trying everything under the sun to fix the leak, spends tons of money on clean up from the get go, and in the end will weather this storm in all likelihood.  In fact, though they can afford it, if they can't the British government will probably stand behind them as well. 

This begs the question, is now a good time to buy stock in BP?  YES!!!!  It is down 50% from its pre-disaster level, and it may go down more, but in the end the world will need oil, BP will continue to produce it worldwide, and the way to look at this is that the stock is on sale at clearance prices!  You don't buy stock in Apple as an example when the whole world loves it.  That is buying high.  You buy stock in a company that is great but the whole world hates it like BP.  Buy low, sell high.  This isn't rocket science gang.  It is taking advantage of short term but temporary bad news to make a profit. 

Now, some of you may have a moral aversion to buying BP stock.  Okay, I won't argue with that. But my job is to give you advice and this is a screaming, yelling, wow-ee, hot deal.  If you can scrape any cash together, this is a GREAT opportunity.  Of course, I could be wrong and there is always risk, but not too much unless you think we are going to stop using oil or that Great Britain would let its largest and most profitable company fail.  I think not.