Auto Sales For May Starting To Come In; OPEC Oil Output Falls From Near-Record In May On Nigeria Outages -- Reuters -- June 1, 2016; Huge, Huge Story: Swiss Complete Alps Tunnel -- And Did It On Time

Automobile sales data for May, 2016, starting to come in. From Detroit Free Press, some data points:

• last year (2015) automakers set an all-time record when they sold 17.47 million new cars and trucks
• this year, on track to beat that record
• Fiat Chrysler: eked out a small sales increase in the US in May; sales rose 1.1%
• Fiat Chrysler: 74 consecutive months of YOY sales gains, but almost exclusively due to Jeep; Jeep rose 14% for the SUV brand
• Ram brand sales flat
• Dodge: sales fell 5%
• new 2017 Chrysler Pacific minivan not yet hitting its stride
• Ford sales fell 5.9%
• Ford F-Series pickups: a 9% increase, but increase not enough to offset a steep 25% drop in Ford's auto sales; Honda Civic outsold F-Series in April, 2016 -- one wonders the incentives Ford used to move Ford pickups in May
• Ford F-Series pickups: 67,412 pickups sold

Reuters reports:

OPEC's oil output fell in May from near a record high as attacks on Nigeria's oil industry and other outages outweighed increases in Iran and Gulf members. A rise in supply from Saudi Arabia plus Iran suggests the group's top producers remain focused on market share, following the failure of an initiative in April between OPEC and non-OPEC producers to support prices by freezing output.

From Rigzone:

Crude oil exports from the Arab Gulf rose by 9 million barrels week-on-week, to reach 121 million barrels, in the seven days ending May 28.

Iran, Iraq and Qatar increased exports during the time period, while others “saw loadings soften”.

Iranian crude exports increased by 20 percent week-on-week to 16.29 million barrels. On average, the country has exported more than 2 million barrels per day in May.

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Let's Make America Great Again

The US can't complete a new pipeline through Iowa or Nebraska, or a bullet train in California, but the Swiss celebrate a $12 billion rail tunnel, the world's longest, through the Alps. The AP is reporting:

Just like Hannibal in ancient times, Swiss engineers have conquered the Alps.

More than 2,200 years after the commander from the ancient North African civilization of Carthage led his army of elephants and troops over Europe's highest mountain chain, Swiss leaders have completed another gargantuan task — and on time: Burrowing the world's longest railway tunnel under the Swiss Alps to ease trade and congestion in European trade and travel.

Switzerland on Wednesday was inaugurating the 57-kilometer (35.4 mile) Gotthard Railway Tunnel, a major engineering achievement deep under snow-capped peaks carried out over 17 years at a cost of 12.2 billion Swiss francs ($12 billion). [The much simpler California bullet train is probably already over budget at more than $65 billion.]

Many tunnels crisscross the Swiss Alps, and Gotthard Pass already has two — the first, also for trains, was built in 1882. But the Gotthard Base Tunnel is a record-setter: It eclipses Japan's 53.8-kilometer Seikan Tunnel as the world's longest and bores deeper than any other tunnel, running about 2.3 kilometers (1.4 miles) underground at its maximum depth.

The thoroughfare aims to cut travel times, ease roadway traffic and draw cargo from pollution-spewing lorries trucking between Europe's north and south. Once it opens for commercial service in December, the two-way tunnel will take up to 260 freight trains and 65 passenger trains per day.

Swiss planners have dreamt of such a tunnel for decades. And it should have an impact far beyond Switzerland for decades to come.

We've driven Swiss Alps tunnels numerous times; they were incredible. There is a sense of claustrophobia. A 35-mile tunnel will take about 30 minutes of underground driving -- and if there's a stau, it's not going to be any fun.

But wow, what an achievement -- 17 years, on time, $12 billion; more than a mile underground.

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For Retail Investors, Perhaps Our Biggest Loss Was Louis Rukeyser

He Kept "Us" Balanced

From Yahoo!Finance:

Once again, the stock market is within arm's reach of its all-time high.

This is a real shame for investors who've been sitting on the sidelines, crippled by fear of the ever-present uncertainties that threaten to trigger the next sell-off. On Friday we learned that equity funds experienced $9.2 billion worth of outflows, which was the seventh straight week of outflows. 

Meanwhile, investor sentiment remains historically low.

From the linked article:

Over the span of his legendary career in investing, Warren Buffett has said a lot of brilliant things. But during the darkest, most hopeless moments of the financial crisis, Buffett wrote an op-ed for The New York Times that was particularly timely.

“The financial world is a mess, both in the United States and abroad,” Buffett said in the piece dated October 16, 2008. “Its problems, moreover, have been leaking into the general economy, and the leaks are now turning into a gusher. In the near term, unemployment will rise, business activity will falter and headlines will continue to be scary. So ... I’ve been buying American stocks.”

Just the day before, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell a breathtaking 733 points or 7.9%.

This was only a month after Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, Merrill Lynch was saved by Bank of America, and AIG secured an $85 billion bailout package.

To be clear, Buffett never suggested the stock market had hit rock-bottom. He only argued the market would be higher in years to come.

Louis Rukeyser would have said the same thing.

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

By the way, with all the money now being made on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley (Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Alphabet, and Microsoft) and all the talk about the widening gap between the middle class and the top 1%, I'm beginning to wonder if the 2020's might not be a replay of the 1920's here in the US.

I'm starting to lay in champagne and Scotch.