Catching Up -- Part II -- March 9, 2015; Widening The Moat -- Apple; ObamaCare Premiums About To Surge -- Congressional Budget Office; The New MacBook Pro Is Thinner Than The Mac Air -- Incredible

Reporting tomorrow:
Emerald Oil, forecast 4 cents; after market close;

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Non-Bakken News
Apple 

I am now just catching up on the Apple presentation today -- AppleWatch, MacBook, and Mac Air -- and I am really, really impressed. Pundits often refer to Apple innovations as revolutionary or evolutionary. Without question, pundits will call today's announcements "evolutionary" but in the big scheme of things, they continue to be revolutionary (and few, if any, will agree with me). 

First the Apple Watch. Investors were not impressed with the Apple Watch (presentation). Two quick points (I missed the presentation; haven't seen television, heard radio, or done much internet surfing yet today because I was out and about with the granddaughters all day, so I don't "know" much about the presentation or the investors today). Yahoo!Finance is reporting:

• the investors already knew "everything" about the Apple Watch before the presentation today (the price, the Sports Model, etc); Apple share price had already "baked" the Apple Watch in; the fact that Apple's share price did not fall was the big news
• the Apple Watch adds a new layer to the Apple ecosystem; mangling metaphors, it widens the moat

Then the new MacBook. Note: this is a MacBook -- not an Air and not a MacBook Pro. Years ago I had the white "plastic" MacBook; I loved it, but it was showing its age when my family bought me a new MacBook Pro as a gift. Now the MacBook is back. The new MacBook is the lightest one yet—and is thinner than the Air. Consumer Reports is also reporting: 

Tim Cook announced a new, 12-inch MacBook that weighs just 2 pounds. That's half a pound lighter than the current 11.6-inch MacBook Air.

The new laptop is very thin at 13.1 mm, and unlike the Air, it has a Retina display with a resolution of 2304x1440. Prices start at $1,299 for a machine with a 1.1-Ghz Core M processor, 256GB of SSD storage, and 8GB of RAM. It launches April 10.

Apple's new laptop extends the company's tradition of jettisoning ports and drives that most people still use and like. The computer will have a single USB Type C port for both charging and handling wired connections. Many people will appreciate USB C because there's no wrong way to plug in the cable—the connector is symmetrical. More significant, perhaps, is that the connection allows for much faster data transfer.

Apple Watch could be Apple's first flop of the century. Fiscal Times is reporting:

By the way, all of these options [other Smart Watches] are significantly cheaper than the Apple Watch, which begins at a hefty $350. Snazzier versions will presumably cost more.

Sure, Apple has the brand, the audience, and the status, but is that enough to keep it off clearance shelves? Only time will tell.

Several comments:

• it may very well flop
• Apple is not expecting to sell very many; first production run is very thne; limited editions are limited
• money is no object for the Hollywood crowd
• the Apple Watch is not competing with watches; it's a fashion statement; as I said earlier, every mistress / kept woman in Hollywood will have a limited edition Apple Watch by Christmas

[Update, March 14, 2015: Holman Jenkins, Jr., who has been reporting most on Apple for the WSJ comes close to why Apple developed the Apple Watch -- he mistakenly calls it the iWatch.]

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Washington Times is reporting: ObamaCare premiums are about to spike. And this is before the Supreme Court ruling --

Obamacare exchange customers are about to see spikes in their premiums, the Congressional Budget Office predicted Monday, saying insurers that offer plans are facing twin pressures from the government and the marketplace that will mean hikes of more than 8 percent a year through 2018.

Now in the second year of full operation, the exchanges are critical to the success of the law. The government is using tax subsidies to attract more customers to help offset costs for the rest of the system.

Nearly 11.7 million Americans bought plans on the exchange in the second enrollment period, Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell announced Monday afternoon, hours after the CBO’s analysis was released.

The CBO said premiums for the key “benchmark” exchange plans will rise an average of 8.5 percent per year from 2016 to 2018, faster than the rest of the health care market.

The law was written in such a way that this was all but inevitable, and predictable.