For Investors Only -- Phoenix Continues To Benefit

Updates

Later, 1:03 p.m. CT: both SLB and HP traded at new 52-week highs today. 

Later, 9:53 a.m. CT: consumer confidence hits 6-year high. 

Later, 9:02 a.m. CT: the economic tea leaves -- based on CNBC, WSJ, Yahoo!Finance, NPR stories today these actions would do awesome things for the US economy:

• forgive all student debt
• open the borders to all undocumented workers
• increase the earned income tax credit
• extend unemployment benefits out to four years to correspond to the presidential election cycle
• increase the minimum wage to $15/hour (one exception: to $20/hour for McDonald's workers and Wal-Mart greeters)

Later, 8:34 a.m. CT: Market opening surges; up 123 points. Investors must be happy that Obama is out of the country, or perhaps it has something to do with home prices dropping for third straight month. It sort of puts tapering on the back burner --- unless Ms Yellin wants to push US into another recession.

SLB trading at a new 52-week high.  BRK-B close to a new high.
 

Original Post

Tapering? US house prices dip for third straight month. 

Oil futures up half a percent in pre-market trading.

Dow futures up 76 points. Got equity? Why? I have no idea. Maybe it's because the G-7 is going to "shun" Russia. The G-7 will save a lot of money not importing Russian natural gas. Fortunately the EU has all that wind energy to fill the gap.

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment decisions based on anything you read at this site or anything you might think you may have possibly read at this site a long time ago. Or even yesterday.

What better music than a fugue to accompany the indefinite closure of the Houston ship channel and NO Canadian sands oil to fall back on? Thank goodness for Keystone 2.0 South bringing a gazillion bbls of oil from Cushing. Funny how things work out.

Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, Bach
AAPL continues to move up. Investors like the CMCSA tie-in but regulators will never allow it. Apple hires former Senate staffer to get this through. Still won't happen.

In June, 2008, SLB was trading for $107; in February, 2009, one could buy SLB for $34. SLB could hit $100 before this year is over. And paying a dividend all these years, I believe. Back in the late '80s, the dividend was around 7 cents; now around 40 cents.

US Airways - American Airlines good for US service jobs. AZCentral is reporting:

US Airways is hiring 150 customer service agents at its Phoenix call center as part of a deal with its union to bring customer service jobs back to the United States from overseas.

Altogether, the Tempe airline will be hiring 400 customer service agents in Phoenix, Reno, Nev., and Winston-Salem, N.C. under contract agreements with the Airline Customer Service Employee Association , CWA and IBT.

The jobs will be moving from a Philippines call center in Manila under an agreement by the airline to handle all service calls originating in the United States from U.S. call centers.