Quicksilver Resources, Inc. (KWK)

I hate downrating this stock because its KWK ticker symbol is so easy to memorize! But Quicksilver appears to be an almost-vertically-integrated hydrocarbon producer: it explores for and extracts natural gas and crude oil, but only the former is piplined by them.

A couple of things caught my eye. KWK is headquartered in Ft. Worth, not Houston with its beehive of Big Oil, exploration, shipment, refining, ancillary services, marine, power generation etc. etc. etc. [Warning: Once you start researching Energy, you'll be led all over the place, corporately speaking.]

The firm's location Ft. Worth may be a boon because it's harder to get caught up in the Houston hothouse of hydrocarbon. And practically speaking, the firm is much closer to some key nat'l gas fields (such as Anandarko and Ark-La-Tex).

On the other hand, there exists, on paper at least, the possibility of nepotism. The Chairman, CEO are the two Darden bros. And until recently their sister, Anne Darden Self, was CFO.

I'm not saying that KWK doesn't do good work, because it does. But it's easy to troll around the internet and find similar firms that have done a lot better over the past couple of years: exploration firms Anandarko and Apache come to find, and of course Big Oil, and medium-big oil (Marathon, Valero) and gas-oriented companies (CHK for extraction, SE for distribution and sale.) What I would do is put KWK on my watch list with other similar companies and see how the hoss race goes!