Clearing The Desk After Hours -- April 29, 2026

Locator: 50668ARCHIVES.

Ticker: Samsung -- when Buffett was buying all those Japanese companies, why wasn't he buying Samsung? Obviously he and Munger not reading the "right" books. 

Samsung: link here -- 48-fold jump in profit. 

Jay Powell: legacy lost. Link here. As irrelevant as ever.

Amazon: discussing a re-boot of The Apprentice with Donald Trump as the host. 

PSX: demand destruction? We haven't seen (much) demand destruction; maybe 1%. That's not demand destruction; that business activity.

 NASDAQ 100 QQQ: at all-time highs after hours. 

$25 billion spent in Iran? How to make up some of that cash? Reduce troop presence in Germany. Could probably pull out most of the US Army; leave air bases. Trump considering. 

The dots are starting to connect. Trump just got off the phone with Putin discussing ceasefire. Quid pro quo.

Storage: again. Amazon says storage cost is exploding. Wanna see how bad it is. Go down to Walmart or visit Amazon on line and see how much it costs for 1 terabyte of memory. This is not rocket science. As an investor you have three choice: Micron, Samsung, and SK hynix.

Daily Activity Report Had Not Posted By 8:00 P.M. CT -- April 29, 2026

Locator: 50667B.

Never stop reading: 

• AI reading program -- current and past six months (pulled forward from summer reading program, with additions):

• Alan Turing: The Enigma, Andrew Hodges, c. 1983.
• The Innovators: How A Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution, Walter Isaacson, c. 2015.  
• The Story of Semiconductors, John Orton, c. 2004. Incredible resource.  Link here.
• The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created The Modern World, Simon Winchester, c. 2018. 
• Chip War: The Fight For the World's Most Critical Technology, Chris Miller, c. 2022.
• Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Math Behind Modern AI, Anil Ananthaswamy, c. July 16, 2024, purchased March 18, 2026. Bought at Powell's Book at the Portland, OR, airport.
• Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and The World, Malcolm Harris, c. 2023.

Right now I'm reading Palo Alto by Malcolm Harris. One might be able to read chapters in any order one wants. I'm not sure it's the first book I would read on the subject of semiconductors, but once you get a good feeling of what semiconductors are; how they were "discovered" and developed; the history; then maybe it would be okay to start. This had to have been a labor of love for Harris. 

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US Weekly Oil Stats

This is going to get more interesting as we go forward. 

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Back to the Bakken

WTI: $106.90. Up $7.00 today. 

Active rigs: 23.

Four new permits,  #42881 - #42884

• 42881, loc, Devon Energy, Albert North 27-28-29 1H, Foreman Butte, 
• 42882, loc, Devon Energy, Albert North 34-33-32 3H, Foreman Butte, 
• 42883, loc, Devon Energy, Albert South 27-28-29 4H, Foreman Butte, 
• 42884, loc, Devon Energy, Albert South 34-33-32 4H, Foreman Butte, 

Politics -- NY Times -- April 29, 2026

Locator: 50666MARKET.

Why does one get the feeling "no one" is listening? 

Later

Beth: 

Shay:

Early Notes 

AI: going forward, it's --

• CPUs: AMD, INTC, NVDA
• accelerators
• GPUs: NVDA
• TPUs / NPUs / others: AVGO, QCOM, 
• Storage: MU, Samsung, SK Hynix

Ford: 

• EPS: beats
• after hours up 5%; up 64 cents

Big tech after hours: looks like all the attention is on AMZN.

• META is having the worse day, MSFT the best
• META is still burning cash on AR/VR 

• Alphabet:
• looks like it will finish about 1.5% up in extend hours
• increases dividend by 5% 

• Amazon:
• +/- one percent in the after hours; looks like it will finish 4% down extended hours
• EPS: $2.78 vs $1.64 
• operating income guidance in line 

• META:
• looks like it will finish 6% down in extended hours

• Microsoft:
• up 3% after results are out.
• up $7.54 

BRKB: down half a percent today;

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Politics 

The New York Times is aghast with today's US Supreme Court ruling.

But it wasn't even close: 6 - 3.  

A similar case out of Alabama is still pending. 

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The Movie Page

On days like this, I wonder what became of you. Wow.  

I graduated from high school, 1969.

Link here. 

WTI Surges Seven Percent Overnight / Midday -- April 29, 2026

Locator: 50665WTI.

An aside: most dissents in his tenure today (need to fact check) but no way was Jay Powell going to give Trump a rate cut. We'll get rate cuts "in spades" as my dad used to say, before the end of the year. If not, a recession.  

The blockade / price of oil: at some point Trump might get the European attention he wants / would have appreciated six weeks ago.

We would never have gotten to this point had it been an allied effort from the beginning.  Iran may never have backed away from nuclear, but they would have thought twice about blockading the strait. 

It didn't / doesn't help the "support" the Iranians feel they are getting from Americans on social media. The Iranian mantra: "if we can only hold out for a few more weeks." 

Every day the strait remains closed, the more irrelevant Qatar (LNG) and Saudi Arabia (oil) become.

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The Music Page

I still can't believe The New York Times included Lana Del Rey among the top 30 living songwriters. Wouldn't it have been a hoot had they included Joan Baez?

Wow, what incredible voices. From 2019.  

 Link here.

Flashback -- Rhein-Main Air Base, Germay -- Czech Air Force -- USAF, 1994 -- Posted April 29, 2026

Locator: 50664USAF.

Our unit out of Rhein-Main Air Base, Germany, hosted a sister unit from the Czech Republic Air Force back in 1994 (need to confirm). 

Patches and labels from the visit.

So, what it all means.

The liqueur, the "Beton" cocktail from Karlovy Vary: most famous spa town in Czech. 

 The beer:

The patch: Czech Republic Air Force.

The First Mixed Transport Regiment.

• smisena: mixed
• dropavni: transport
• letecki: air -- certainly makes me think of "Ledecky" -- one wonders -- 
• pluk: regiment

Link here. 

This is what I think of when I think of Karlovy Vary: link here.

It was an incredible thirty years!

• In those thirty years in "Europe":
• as far east as Moscow
• as far west as Lajes, Azores, 1,000 miles off Portugal, in the Atlantic
• as far south as Senegal / The Gambia, Africa
• as far southeast as Iraq, Israel, Tarsus (Turkey) 
• throughout the Mediterranean
• as far north as Edinburgh, Scotland, and Bodo, Norway
• so many times to Paris our kids finally said no mas
• Outside of Europe:
• Hokkaido, Japan; Okinawa
• Brazil, Ecuador, Venezuela, the Galapagos 
• Stateside
• it's possible the only state I have not seen is Vermont (honestly can't remember) 
• Australia: 
• the USAF asked me to go, but I had no desire by that time, so never saw Australia
• it was personal, very, very personal