Friday, December 18, 2020

Notes From All Over -- Late Evening Edition -- December 17, 2020

Quadruple witching hour: 3:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. ET, tomorrow, December 18, 2020. Link here

From Mark Perry today: chart of the day


A Merry Christmas 2020 card from the US frackers, who have accessed oceans of shale gas with advanced, made-in-the USA technologies and helped bring US CO2 emissions this year to the lowest level since 1988! Who needs the Paris Climate Accord? And speaking of fracking here’s the next exciting phase of the fracking revolution — the geothermal energy revolution. “The greens desperately need geothermal fracking, they just don’t know it yet.”

Notes From All Over, The Late Evening Edition -- December 18, 2020

First things first: wow, what a great Barbara Stanwyck movie on TCM. And, wow, what a cutie Ms Stanwyck was at that age. LOL. Absolutely amazing: one of her better roles, I do believe, and it's not even mentioned in her wiki entry. Later: wow, wow, wow. Now this, following the Barbara Stanwyck movie. Now The Apartment. TCM showed this movie just the other night and now they're showing it again, and I will enjoy it just as much the 21st time viewing it as the first time.

Apple in California: closing stores. Covid-19 out of control. Link here.  By the way, I was unaware of this, but apparently there is now a serious question whether "herd immunity" is a "thing" any more. Apparently for pathogenic viruses in the past, "herd immunity" was a "thing," but Covid-19 is now like global warming. Impossible to contain. Without "herd immunity" we're all doomed. 


California has a long way to go. California, at less than 5%, is a long way from North Dakota's penetration rate of 11.6%. Something tells me California's health system was ill-prepared for this pandemic. Let's see: how many years of focusing on that Bullet Train? Just saying. By the way, it looks like the Golden State is counting on the Biden administration to save this debacle. LOL. That's fine with me. I have no dog in this fight. I'm simply getting out the popcorn to watch this all play out. LOL.

Backwardation / natural gas: from social media today --


Compare the graph above with the graphic above at this link

And then this:

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Movie Night

The other night I mentioned that it was always tough for me this time of year when various media outlets air glossy, sleek videos of movie stars and personalities who passed away the previous year. It's not as difficult watching the following but it brings back lots of memories:

Notes From All Over, The Early Evening Edition -- December 18, 2020

Link here.

You don't often see this: admitting that your competitor's older chip outperforms your newer chip. Maybe I'm misreading this.

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We've Been Working On The Railroad ...

UNP / BRK-B: thinking out loud. Tesla has moved to Austin.

  • Q: to which state will those cars be shipped?
  • A: California
  • Q: how are cars shipped in the US?
  • A: rail
  • Q: which rail(s) have a regional monopoly between Texas and California?
  • A: UNP and Burlington Northern (BRK/Warren Buffet)

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site.  Do not make any investment, financial, job, career, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here. 

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Wow!

Darden Restaurants: indicated annual yield of 1.03% paying 30 cents/share per quarter, today announced a dividend increase to 39 cents/share.

7 / 30 = 23% increase in its dividend. Link here. Record date, 1/8/21; payable date, 2/1/21.

Olive Garden; LongHorn Steakhouse; The Capital Grille; Seasons 52; Bahama Breeze; Yard House; Cheddar's Scratch Kitchen; Eddie V's. 

Trading near it's 52-week high. 

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MLPs

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Let Them Eat Cake

Petroshale With Permits For Ten Tahu Wells In The Best (?) Field In The Bakken -- December 18, 2020

Active rigs:

$49.10
12/18/202012/18/201912/18/201812/18/201712/18/2016
Active Rigs1553695140

Seven permit renewals:

  • Equinor (6): five Pyramid permits and one Hawkeye permit in Williams County;
  • Bruin (3): two Fort Berthold permits in Billings County; one Storhaug permit in Williams County;

Ten new permits, #38030 - #38039, inclusive:

  • Operator: Petroshale
  • Field: Antelope (McKenzie)
  • Comments:
    • Petroshale has permits for ten Tahu wells in Antelope oil field, 
    • there are formation targets: middle Bakken; first and second bench of the Three Forks;
    • SENE 29-152-94; there appear to be two "rows," one group about 1940 FNL and between 477 and 727 FEL; the second "row" about ten feet to the north at 1890 FNL and between 451 and 631 FEL;
      • 38030, Petroshale, Tahu 1MBH, Antelope, SENE 29-152-94, 1939 FNL 727 FEL;
      • 38031, Petroshale, Tahu 1TFH, Antelope, SENE 29-152-94, 1939 FNL 677 FEL;
      • 38032, Petroshale, Tahu 2TFH, Antelope, SENE 29-152-94, 1940 FNL 627 FEL;
      • 38033, Petroshale, Tahu 2MBH, Antelope, SENE 29-152-94, 1940 FNL 577 FEL;
      • 38034, Petroshale, Tahu 3TFH, Antelope, SENE 29-152-94, 1940 FNL 527 FEL;
      • 38035, Petroshale, Tahu 3MBH, Antelope, SENE 29-152-94, 1941 FNL 477 FEL;
      • 38036, Petroshale, Tahu 1TF2H, Antelope, SENE 29-152-94, 1890 FNL 631 FEL;
      • 38037, Petroshale, Tahu 2TF2H, Antelope, SENE 29-152-94, 1890 FNL 571 FEL;
      • 38038, Petroshale, Tahu 3TF2H, Antelope, SENE 29-152-94, 1890 FNL 511 FEL;
      • 38039, Petroshale, Tahu 4TF2H, Antelope, SENE 29-152-94, 1891 FNL 451 FEL;

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The Petroshale Tahu Permits

Updates

April 27, 2021:

Original Post

This is really very interesting. The wells are already confidential so we don't know the spacing unit, but the location certainly suggests they are running north - south. The question is whether five horizontals will run to the north and five horizontals will run to the south.

The graphics:




Based on wells in the general area, it seems most likely these horizontals will run to the north. If so, then here are the wells to the north, running south:

 
The producing wells in the graphic above:
  • 33005, 1,560, Petroshale, Petroshale US 3H, Antelope-Sanish, t3/18; cum 488K 10/20;
  • 33004, A, Petroshale, Petroshale US 4H, Antelope-Sanish, t3/18; cum 384K 10/20;
  • 32767, 2,759, Petroshale, Petroshale US 8H, Antelope-Sanish, t1/17; cum 577K 10/20;
  • 33010, 1,391, Petroshale, Petroshale US 12H, Antelope-Sanish, t3/18; cum 201K 10/20;
  • 33204, 1,934, Petroshale, Petroshale US 13H, Antelope-Sanish, t5/19; cum 488K 10/30;

Comments: these are incredible wells, and now Petroshale plans to put in ten more wells in the same area targeting three different formations. This takes me back to the early days of the Bakken boom. There are many, many comments I could make regarding these wells, but I lose interest anticipating the push back I will get from from inappropriate exuberance. Suffice to say these wells are telling a story about the Bakken that a lot of folks foretold back in 2010.

One observation: #33010 -- 201K cumulative bbls crude oil in less than eighteen months.

Notes From All Over, Part 6 -- Mid-Afternoon Edition -- December 18, 2020

Colleyville Heritage High School: holy mackerel. Our apartment complex is located practically on the grounds of the aforementioned high school. Police sirens are blaring and just now four huge -- and I mean, huge -- brand-new buses have just driven by -- destination unknown. I know it's the last day of school before the Christmas break, or to be more politically correct, the "winter break," but that would not explain the four huge buses and entourage of POVs. It's not the girls state volleyball tournament; that was last month in which our high school team, Grapevine High School, made the quarter-finals but did not advance to the semi-finals. Later: link here. Wow, the game's not over -- still in the fourth quarter, but it's a blowout --

Aha! Here it is! The 2020 high school football championships! Wow. In Class 5A Division 1 the Colleyville Heritage team will play in the semi-finals, 6:00 p.m. tonight at Wichita Falls' Memorial Stadium, against Amarillo. The trip will take about three hours to get there. Wow, wow, wow. 

Later: it's not over yet -- it's only the fourth quarter but it's a blowout, link here (the final was 44 - 25):

Covid-19 vaccine: the press seems to delight in the roll-out of the vaccine, but based on news reports coming out of North Dakota, if the initial batch of vaccine is administered to a very well-thought-out targeted audience, even a "minimum" number of vaccinations could have quite a multiplier effect, breaking the chain of transmission. This will be fascinating to watch. 

Note: Johns Hopkins updated their daily graphics just moments ago, at 1:58 p.m. ET, December 18, 2020.

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Weekly CDC Flu Update

Link here. This issue was released at the usual time. The next two issues will be released on the Monday following the regularly scheduled Friday.

From today's update:

  • except for Oklahoma, which is now yellow, the entire country is green / light green (minimal flu activity);
  • no new influenza-associated pediatric deaths were reported to the CDC this past week; the total for the 2020-2021 season stands at one;
  • specimens tested in the past week by clinical laboratories: 29,578
    • number positive: 75 (or 0.3%)
  • specimens tested by public health laboratories: 15,298
    • number positive: 7 (0.05%)
  • this year's "percentage of visits for influenza-like illnesses is well below the national baseline and well below the historic levels; for example:
    • 2017 - 2018: 7.5%
    • 2019 - 2020: 6.8%
    • 2018 - 2019: 5%
    • this season, 2020 - 2021: 1.5%, flat-lined/unchanged for the past six weeks;
  • bottom line: "seasonal flu" so far this year is either non-existent or being mixed in with Covid-19;

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The Art Page

I never understood Rothko. 

But, now, the epiphany!

The book: On Color, David Scott Kastan, c. 2018. 

I'm reading the second chapter on the color "orange." I now understand Rothko and Rothko has not yet been mentioned. I'm on page 54 and Rothko, according to the index, won't be seen until p. 155. 

But here it is, my epiphany: Yves Klein, in the footsteps of Van Gogh ... from the text, page 54:

In 1955, Klein submitted a large, orange monochrome painting for the annual exhibition at the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles in Paris. the matte orange panel, titled Expression de l'univers de la couleur mine orange (mine orange is the French term for the pigment known in English as "orange lead," the same pigment Van Gogh had used in his still life), was, however, rejected by the organizing committee, unwilling, at least in Kleins' hardly disinterested account, to accept a painting that was just one solid color (une seule couleur unie). 
"You know," as Klein reported (or, better, parodied) what he was told about the jury's reasoning, "it's just really not sufficient; if Yves would agree to add at least a little line, or a dot, or simply a spot of another color, then we could show it, but a single color, no, no, really, that's not enough; it's impossible!"

Notes From All Over, Part 5 -- Mid-Day Edition -- December 18, 2020

First things first: perhaps the most difficult thing for me to "get through" this time of the year is the list of actors, film directors, associated with the movie industry who have passed away during the past year. TCM is now running a short vignette several times every day with very short clips of those "Hollywood" names who died in 2020. It's really tough, mostly because the personalities bring back bittersweet memories over the years. I have lived at no less than eighteen addresses; four different countries; eight different US states.

EOG: from a press release -- The Board of Directors of EOG Resources, Inc. has declared a dividend of $0.375 per share on EOG's Common Stock, payable January 29, 2021, to stockholders of record as of January 15, 2021. The indicated annual rate is $1.50. 

With current price of $51/share, a $1.50 annual dividend represents a 2.9% yield, which is not too shabby. Not great, but not bad. I think it speaks more to the Board's outlook regarding EOG rather than the yield itself. EOG:

  • market cap: $30 billion
  • P/E: N/A
  • one year target: $62

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site.  Do not make any investment, financial, job, career, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here. 

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End-Use Electricity, 2019

Note: in a long note like this there will be typographical and content errors. If this is important to you, go to the source.

If I had one metric with which to measure a state's economic vibrancy it would be this data per capita.

Link here.  

Trillion Btu, total (residential, commercial, industrial, transportation):

  • Texas: 1,465
  • California: 854
  • Florida: 820
  • Ohio: 507
  • Pennsylvania: 497
  • New York: 497

Population:

  • Texas: 30 million
  • California: 40 million
  • Florida: 20 million
  • Ohio: 12 million
  • Pennsylvania: 13 million
  • New York: 20 million

"Btu" per capita:

  • Texas: 50
  • California: 20
  • Florida: 41
  • Ohio: 42
  • Pennsylvania: 38
  • New York: 25

Yes, I know in many cases we are comparing apples to oranges, but it gets me started with the "analysis," as superficial as it might be.

Let's look at just residential use.

Trillion Btu, total:

  • Texas: 530
  • California: 300
  • Florida: 430
  • Ohio: 178
  • Pennsylvania: 186
  • New York: 171 

"Btu" per capita, residential only:

  • Texas: 18
  • California: 7.5
  • Florida: 21
  • Ohio: 15
  • Pennsylvania: 14
  • New York: 9 

To a great extent, of course, residential use is directly correlated to environment (heating, cooling) but one might also suggest it is related to size of homes/apartments, and cost of electricity. 

Just out of curiosity: North Carolina (very, very similar to Texas)

  • Btus, total:  466
  • Btu, residential only: 204
  • population: 10 million
  • Btu, total, per capita: 47
  • Btus, residential, per capita: 20

Notes From All Over, Part 4 -- Late Morning Edition -- December 18, 2020

Over at the sidebar at the right, I have a feature called "The Next Big Thing." I haven't added to it in a long time. 

That "feature" was started years ago when my son-in-law and I argued "Netflix vs Roku." He be on Roku; I bet on Netflix. I'll leave it up to readers to decide who won that argument. 

Be that as it may, it may take a long time but Roku is finally on a roll. A huge roll. 

Headline: ROKU forges deal with AT&T's WarnerMedia Stream HBO Max. From Zack's:

The two companies had hit a deadlock since HBO Max was launched in May over the financial terms for Roku to carry the streaming app. 
Markedly, in exchange for hosting an app with advertising, Roku typically takes 30% of the ad inventory to sell on its own. 
Markedly, Comcast CMCSA owned NBC Universal and Roku had been previously locked in negotiations for months over Peacock streaming app before they struck a deal in September. 
These standoffs have been a sign of how Roku, which has about 46 million active users, is flexing its muscles as the largest platform in the United States for aggregating streaming services.

Chinese flu watch: "percent positivity rate." This was new to me. I happened to catch it during a live television interview with a public official from Iowa. Here's the link from The [Cedar Rapids] Gazette. There is a graphic at that link. The caption to that graphic reads:

Chart updated December 17, 2020. Most of the state's June 2, 2020, data was late for The Gazette's 11 a.m. June 3, 2020, review of the numbers. 
There was another backlog resolved by the July 19, 2020, review. 
Positive antigen tests were added on August 27, 2020 [despite Johns Hopkins saying this is really, really inappropriate -- see below].

Meanwhile, with regard to "percent positivity rate," Johns Hopkins writes this

When states report testing numbers for COVID-19 infection, they should not include serology or antibody tests. Antibody tests are not used to diagnose active COVID-19 infection and they do not provide insights into the number of cases of COVID-19 diagnosed or whether viral testing is sufficient to find infections that are occurring within each state
States that include serology tests within their overall COVID-19 testing numbers are misrepresenting their testing capacity and the extent to which they are working to identify COVID-19 infections within their communities. States that wish to track the number of serology tests being performed should report those numbers separately from viral tests performed to diagnose COVID-19.

On another note, I absolutely do not understand the whole issue of "percent positivity rate." Oh, I know what it means, but it seems reporters are misinterpreting the results. At the Johns Hopkins link, the analysts also raise other issues with Iowa's reporting. 

Bottom line: the data collection and county health reporting across the US is still a mess; reporters don't know how to report the data; and politicians are making decisions on bad data. 

By the way, this is currently the most common "shape" of "new cases reported" looking at the charts from the 50 individual states:

This screenshot was taken of a single state (fairly consistent across all US states with a few exceptions). This was data released prior to the Covid-19 vaccine rollout in the US. This is not an uncommon curve seen in pathogenic viruses about to "burn themselves out." It was also seen, although perhaps not as dramatic, prior to the introduction of the smallpox vaccine.

Notes From All Over -- Late Morning Edition -- December 18, 2020

MLPs: from SeekingAlpha, Goldman Sachs, November, 2020:

TSLA: on a down day for the market, TSLA is up 1%;

  • volume:
  • current: 39 million
  • average: 46 million

Winter Storm Gail, electricity rates

  • ISO-NE:
    • current: $118
    • surge: $150
    • mix:
      • hydro: 8%
      • renewables: 7%
      • oil: 6%
      • coal: 3%
      • natural gas maxed out
  • ISO-NY:
    • Long Island: $101
    • NYC: $87
    • west-state (along Pennsylvania state line: $33

Winter Storm Gail: link here, from The WSJ:

A massive storm system dropped record-breaking snow across parts of the Northeast, producing dangerous traffic conditions that snarled highways and resulted in multiple fatalities.

Residents from Virginia to Maine dug out of significant snowfall from the two-day storm. It dumped more than 2 feet across central Pennsylvania and New York.

In Binghamton, N.Y., 42 inches of snow fell, breaking the area’s record for the highest one-day and two-day storm totals in December.

“It’s shattering a lot of records over here,” said Lily Chapman, a meteorologist with the weather service in Binghamton.

In New York City, 10.5 inches of snow fell on Central Park by Thursday afternoon, surpassing last winter’s cumulative snowfall there.

Japan: record snowfall hits Japanese islands

Chinese flu watch:

  • wow, the brown map is at light as ever except for San Bernardino County, CA
  • even "four corners" looking better:
  • except for a couple of outliers, ND is practically back to "normal"
  • top-5 graphic:
  • Tennessee remains at #1 but new cases/100,000 coming down
  • Rhode Island remains at #2, followed by California (#3), Arizona (#4), and Indiana (#5)
  • California's rate of climb? By Monday, if not over the weekend, California should clearly be in first place;

Notes From All Over, Part 2 -- The Miami Vice Edition -- December 18, 2020

PSA: my greatest luxury is no need for a clock between 7:00 p.m. and 10:00 a.m. Monday through Friday now that I'm retired. I have a busy, busy schedule between 10:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. with Sophia and her remote learning schedule. But after 7:00 p.m. when she goes home, I am free, free, free. I stay up until well after midnight, but often wake up well before 5:00 a.m. eager to see what the market is doing, what the TCM lineup will be for the day, and the news headlines. I then go back to sleep when my cortisone level is at its nadir, 5:30 a.m. to 6:30 a.m. and reluctantly get out of bed at 9:00 a.m., mostly out of "guilt."

But I hate getting out of bed. And the wonderful thing is that I don't have to any more. If you have a cable television wi-fi and a smart tablet, wow. What a luxury. 

It's only been in the past two months or so that I've become hooked on watching television on my smart tablet in bed. 

Spectrum cable is expensive but if one takes advantage of all it has to offer, it is absolutely amazing. Watching television on an Apple iPad is more satisfying than watching it on television. So I can lay in bed, open the iPad, and screen through over 400 stations -- only four of which I actually spend much time on -- I really don't know how many stations there are -- I see numbers in the 400 range but not all "numbers are available" and I've never checked to see if there are stations higher than 4XX.

If you have cable and good wi-fi, you need a smart tablet. 

PSA: for those following the shale revolution, the best blog out there is RBN Energy. There is a new post every day. If you aren't reading RBN Energy, to paraphrase our president-elect, you aren't oily. I don't always read it -- my bad, and a real loss -- but the best part of the RBN Energy blogs are often the music notes at the end of each RBN Energy blog.

 This is so good on so many levels. Wow. I wonder if Elon Musk watched this growing up as a kid? It would explain a lot, assuming one is looking for an explanation in the first place.

Crockett's Theme, (Miami Vice), Jan Hammer

In the video above, look at the choreography that begins at 3:45. I get it took a hundred takes to get it that perfect. And that's just three seconds (at most) of a six-minute video.

Genius. 

Best episodes of Miami Vice. Link here

And for me, from the opening of season 4, episode 20 -- the "halliburton" reference.

Three Wells Come Off The Confidential List Today; WPX Will Report A Huge Topaz Well -- December 18, 2020

Active rigs:

$48.30
12/18/202012/18/201912/18/201812/18/201712/18/2016
Active Rigs1453695140

Three wells come off the confidential list today --  Friday, December 18, 2020:

  • 37318, loc/A, WPX, Topaz 24-13HT, Mandaree, t--; cum 25K over ten days;
  • 37212, drl/A,  Hess, TI-Nelson-157-94-3031H-5, Tioga, t--; cum 94K 10/20;
  • 31003, loc/NC, BR, Cleetwood 31-27TFH-A, Elidah, no production data,

RBN Energy: can a low-cost offshore crude export terminal hook shippers?  Archived.

U.S. crude oil exports are off from the record highs they reached earlier this year, leaving the Gulf Coast even more flush with surplus export capacity than it had been going into 2020. And yet … Energy Transfer is developing an crude export terminal off the coast of Beaumont, TX, that would be capable of fully loading a 2-MMbbl VLCC every day or so. 
Is the company’s Blue Marlin project based simply on a hunch that U.S. oil production and exports will rebound over time and eventually leave PADD 3 short of dock and ship-loading capacity? Or is Energy Transfer’s proposed offshore terminal, with its extensive re-use of existing infrastructure, a cost-efficient way of giving oil-sands, Bakken and other producers more direct access to deep water and the supertankers that long-distance shippers prefer? Today, we discuss what may be behind the seemingly long-shot effort to develop new export capacity in a region that’s already got way too much.

A closer look at that WPX Topax well reporting today:

  • 37318, loc/A, WPX, Topaz 24-13HT, Mandaree, t--; cum 25K over ten days; fracked 9/19/20 - 9/25/20; a small frack at 5.2 million gallons of water; 83% water by mass; 25,102 bbls over 10 days extrapolates to 75,306 bbls over 30 days; the Topaz wells are tracked here.

Notes From All Over -- The Early Morning Edition -- December 18, 2020

Politics and C-130s: this article has been sitting on my desktop for several days now, apparently since December 1, 2020, when it was first posted. The article: "Air Force picks next C-130J Super Hercules locations." I didn't really pay much attention to it but with a government shutdown appearing more and more likely and with Senator Mitch McConnell in the center of the storm, all of a sudden, a re-reading of the article was, shall we say, illuminating? 

So, the C-130, the workhorse transport for the USAF, is modified once again, this time the "J" model. It must be really, really expensive because the first models will be released in small numbers to just a handful of bases. And wow, what interesting bases that were chosen.

Number one on the list: Senator Mitch McConnell's home state, Kentucky. The Louisville Air National Guard base will be among the first three sites to get the new "J" model.

Number two on the list: the poster child state for federal pork, West Virginia. I kid you not, the militarily important state of West Virginia is number two on the list, specifically the famous McLaughlin Air National Guard Base. No, I have never heard of it.

Third: Savannah Air National Guard Base in Georgia -- let's see, quick, name the most famous senator from Georgia who was a huge Department of Defense supporter. Democrat. Last name, one consonant, one vowel, four letters altogether.

And finally, if there are any "J" models left after the initial authorization, the Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base, Ft Worth, Texas, will get a few. Number four on the short list. 

By the way, the link up above won't work. Here's the link: https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/air-force-picks-next-c-130j-super-hercules-locations. 

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Today's Stories That Interest Me

Just three. I had two but an early-morning reader reminded me of a third, the most interesting story of the day.

1. TSLA. Last day of trading before TSLA is added to the S&P 500. After the market closes tonight, TSLA will be added to the S&P 500. We might see record volume of TSLA trades today.

2. The market. Quadruple witching hour. Occurs in the last hour of trading four times a year on the third Friday following the first full moon after the first Sunday in the months of lunar significance: March, June, September, and December. Something like that. 

Interestingly, and I haven't seen anyone comment on it yet, but there is no quadruple witching hour in the month of October. One would think, of all the months October, with Halloween, would deserve it owns quadruple withing hour. There are market futures, and market options; and, mirror-like, there are stock futures and stock options. The yin and yang of trading. The alpha and omega. the Ben and Jerry, futures and options. Traders take positions in options and futures to minimize risk. But at some pint it's time to pay the piper: the traders need to 'unwind" their futures and their options positions before they expire. They need to sell stuff and then in the next breath buy them back. In that split second between selling and buying them back there exists an opportunity for Joe Schmoe to sneak in and buy a contract before the original seller can buy back his original position. But to get it, Joe may have to pay a premium, or not. And, so, in the hectic last hour of trading on that third Friday in that lunar-important month there's a lot of volatility. Volatility is the mother's milk for profit for traders. Anyway, that's how I understand it. My hunch is that I'm not exactly correct on all the details. 

3. The other story? The cost of electricity in New England and New York in the aftermath of winter storm Gail. 

By the way, I was disappointed that I didn't see any reference to one of my favorite actresses back in the 1950s -- the eponymously-named Gale Storm. I've always wanted to use that word on the blog (eponymous) even though it's probably incorrectly used here. 

But that's about the only news that I'm interesting in today. 

Congressional -- or more specially, Senatorial -- shenanigans will continue through the weekend and we won't see white smoke emanating from Mitch McConnell's office in the US Capitol Building until Monday morning, 5:14 a.m. ET. 

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The Book Page

My book this week: On Color, David Scott Kastan, c. 2018. I don't remember how I acquired this strange little book. Somehow it escaped the purging of my library of the past few months. 

Fascinating book on "color," exploring the questions about color that have always intrigued me. For example, is the "red" I see the same "red" you see. 

The book sits on the window sill next to the table where Sophia paints. She has been working with primary colors and secondary colors and so it seemed appropriate to place the book there until I got around to reading it.