Out Fox The $treet

The news came out last Friday that activists had raised their stake in Williams Companies ( NYSE: WMB     ) . The activist firms of Corvex Management and Soroban Capital Partners had previously claimed a 5% position back in Dec. in hopes of pushing the large pipeline operator into consolidating the industry to spur growth. The firms are so adamant that Williams has more potential that combined they've spent an astronomical $2.5 billion to build a near 10% position. The firms spent the previous week amassing around 1.2 million shares per day with limited impact to the stock. From a potential investor's standpoint, what strikes an interesting cord is that Williams doesn't appear to offer much value from the outside. Read the full article here . Disclosure: No position mentioned. Please review the full disclaimer page for more details. 

Williams Companies ( WMB ) has consistently missed earnings estimates over the last year, but the company has a ton of growth opportunities in the decade ahead. The company has been hit with lower natural gas liquids (NGL) margins and Ethane rejections along with higher natural gas prices. Williams has one of the leading energy infrastructures in North America. It owns interests in, or operates, 15,000 miles of interstate gas pipelines, 1,000 miles of NGL transportation pipelines, and more than 10,000 miles of oil and gas gathering pipelines. It owns more than 70% of Williams Partners L.P. ( WPZ ) , one of the largest diversified energy master limited partnerships. Read the full article at Seeking Alpha. Disclosure: No positions mentioned. Please review the disclaimer page for more details.

MLPs or Master Limited Partnerships make for interesting investing dilemmas right now. On one hand, the dividend yields on popular MLPs such as Magellan Midstream Partners, L.P. (MMP) at 4.5% are a lot more lucrative than Treasury yields. The rate on the 10 year at 1.44% is paltry in comparison to this MLP. On the other hand, the yields for most MLPs are at multi year lows from surging stock prices. Magellan Midstream Partners is a publicly traded partnership that primarily transports, stores and distributes petroleum products. The partnership owns the longest petroleum products pipeline system in the country, with access to more than 40% of the nation's refining capacity, and can store 80 million barrels of petroleum products such as gasoline, diesel fuel and crude oil. Read the full article at Seeking Alpha. Disclosure: No positions mentioned. Please review the disclaimer page for more details.