"The universal evaluator for stocks is price/earnings."

Couldn't agree with you more.

"PTSC will go up in price when earnings go up. Earnings come from MMP. Not from "how the market views" the company. Show me the money."

It sounds so good when you write it, and intuitively it makes sense, however, where we seem to part ways is you seem to want to ignore that the MMP has generated significant revenues over the years, but it has NOT translated into any consistently significant earnings or been transformed into any sustainable earnings by PTSC and it's Management and BOD, because of their poor stewardship. Either because they:

• let TPL get less for the MMP than they should have (discounted MMP to charge more for other portfolios?)
• let TPL get a bigger portion of the MMP pie than they should have (increased payments to TPL for lobbying and other expenses, possibly overcharging for MMP efforts, possible "living it up" expenses - private jets, etc.)
• or made poor decisions with the money they did get from the MMP (failed M&A, divy's to warrant holders, overpaid managers & directors, etc)
• etc. etc.

And unfortunately, the market DOES view PTSC through that prism and shows no confidence that even with positive developments, that PTSC will improve their performance.

.

You say "show me the money", but yet think after all the money PTSC has shown the door (ie. "wasted), that they're NOW trustworthy to have "learned" from their mistakes. Again, you're complain that people criticize that they "should have known", yet you argue against posters like me who in essence have argued for the last 4 years that we "certainly should NOW know" and should have been doing something about it.

Again, I post on the message board on occassion, but as I've stated, I've taken all of my complaints directly to the company as well. I've supported efforts to organize shareholders as well.

You on the other hand simply say buyer should have beenware, quit complaining, and don't do anything about it!

And then you complain about posters, yet come to message boards and post about it. Your stated positions are pretty hypocritical and inconsistent.