The following is what happens when you don't grow your distribution in a bull market for master limited partnerships.

Now let me address Atlas Pipeline Partners (APL) which not only had no distribution increase but had to deal with a Citigroup downgrade from buy to hold. Let me just say the drop to 48 this morning...nearly 4 points was ridiculous and the market has now brought the stock back to 50.75...far more reasonable loss of 1.25. At 4.8 this stock was priced to yield 7.1% which is absurd. Considering how yields have compressed in the entire group this one has been yielding far higher. And rightfully so since this is the second quarter of no growth. My guess is holders of Atlas saw what happened to Hiland in the last 2 days and figured..sell first and do the math later. Well the math says even for a non distribution grower of 2 quarters...50 should be the floor.

And of course guess who owns all three stocks?

Oneok(OKS) is up 2 on good earnings and a solid outlook and so is Genesis LP (GEL) as todays big winners.Genesis was up 5 yesterday and was up another 3 at one point as it buys assets and doubles its size. The market obviously likes this.

The MLP index is down a small fraction..ex-distributions taking a smaller toll on the index today than yesterday.