Odds And Ends -- April 23, 2015

I'm driving from Texas to North Dakota; left about 10:00 p.m. last night -- wanted to experience the thunderstorms and earthquakes at night in Oklahoma. The thunderstorms were not particularly spectacular but would have put cattle into a stampede in the old days. I missed a 4.0 earthquake near Medford, Oklahoma by about 12 hours. I think, at 4.0, that is one of the stronger quakes; people felt it but "no" damage. We'll see.

I'm in North Platte, Nebraska, right now.  Will be here about an hour; then press on. I will sleep along the road somewhere -- Chadron, Black Hills, Belfield, Bowman, and on to Williston. 

WTI settled at $57.56 -- this is the highest since December, 2014.

NASDAQ closed at an all-time high. Dow closed higher.

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

*****************************

Link here. 


The Hillary story:

• her foundation took millions of dollars in donations from a Russian company
• her foundation never declared those donations
• her foundation is now re-filing those tax returns to return those donations
• the Russian company now owns 20% of all known uranium in the US
• Putin: his goal -- to control the uranium market (Kazakhstan was the real target; got US rights as part of the deal)

NPR interviewed one of The NYT reporters who verified the story. NPR's initial take on the story:

• there's nothing to see here, folks; move on
• not even interested in "failure to report; refiling"

**************************

Amazon Stuns Wall Street With Profits

Yahoo!Finance is reporting:

Jeff Bezos decided after nine years it was finally time to disclose the financial results of his pioneering cloud business, Amazon Web Services.

And so, along with its first quarter results, Amazon disclosed that the AWS unit had revenue of $1.6 billion, up 50% from last year, and operating income of $265 million, up a more modest 8% amid growing competition from Microsoft, Google and others. 

*************************

After Hour Reports

Amazon, Microsoft, Google. Google surges after hours. 

Southwestern Energy meets.

Good report for Starbucks; strong in after-hours trade.

Comcast will drop Time Warner deal. Once Congress got involved, it was predictable.

*********************

Apple Page

Apple watch orders, shipments, apps going wild. There may not be big lines at the stores for the Apple Watch but the media is going wild with reports.  Australian customers to get first watches delivered to homes.

************************************* Trip Notes My note to Don:

I'm in North Platte; will be here about an hour. Then press on.

Great ride so far. Beautiful weather; beautiful country, but very, very dry in western Nebraska. Much worse the DFW area. Cattle and horses were in knee-high grass in DFW area. Almost no grass in western Nebraska in many places where cattle are seen.

Lots of hawks above the freeway.

If cougars are found along the North Platte river, I saw a cougar. It was a huge cat, not a dog. In the vicinity of a small herd of deer. Yes, google search -- cougars in the area.