Off And Running: Friday -- New Highs; Today, Japan With Huge Stimulus Package; Market Futures Up -- July 11, 2016

Top auto sales in June: the top three were pickups by Ford, Chevy, and GM. Six of the top seven selling non-pickup cars were Japanese. Nissan making huge inroads; then Honda; finally Toyota. Ford barely makes the top 10 with the Ford Escape, a crossover.

Top 3: Ford F-Series (#1) Chevrolet Silverado (#2) Ram Pickup (#3)
4: Toyota Camry: America's best-selling car despite a 13% sales slide in June
5: Honda Civic: Honda breathed new life into the Civic for 2016 and the results have been staggering; I love my 2012 Civic; will buy new Civic to replace this at 200,000 miles
6: Toyota Corolla: this, by the way, was my first non-America-made car and made me a believer in Japanese cars; my first Japanese car I bought was a Corolla back in 1980
7: Nissan Altima: absent for several months from the top 10, now a resurgence
8: Honda CR-V
9: Nissan Rogue: a huge upset -- rarely a contender in the top 10 -- worked with the Ford Escape to bump off the Honda Accord
10: Ford Escape

Prominent Wall Street dealmaker is one of Brexit's first big victims. Several story lines in this article over at Fortune.

Mall owners push out department stores. Link here at WSJ. We're noticing this trend in north Texas.

Canada's oil-sands industry girds for leaner times. Link here at WSJ. The Canadian oil sands were always the canary in the coal mine.

Panasonic remains bullish on Tesla. Link at WSJ.

Bonds. From the WSJ -- On Thursday, investment-grade-rated Walt Disney CO. locked in the lowest long-term borrowing costs of any US company in history when it issued a 10-year bond with a 1.85% coupon and a 30-year bond with a 3% interest rate. Wow.

Queues: with Brexit, President Obama may move Great Britain to the end of the queue (politically), but it's very possible the business ties between Great Britain and the US could become much more robust. US companies don't like dealing with bureaucracies and if one looks up "bureaucracy" in the dictionary, there is a symbol of the EU and a link to Brussels. British companies, especially banks, are going to be flocking to Wall Street to do deals.

Fallout. Due to the Brexit, most analysts suggest the Fed will not raise rates this year. That seems to be the consensus. I wouldn't be surprised by a surprise rate rise. Just saying. With the market starting at a new high today, and looking to set new records, should the Fed act now to cool things off? Despite the fact that unemployment among African-Americans also seems to be hitting new records.

Battery back-up for city of Los Angeles. From Scientific American.  Data points:

• Long Beach, CA
• replace a "peaker" natural gas plant with battery bank
• Southern California Edison Co picked battery designer AES Corp, Arlington, VA (against 1,800 other bids)
• AES: 9 years working with manufacturers of electric-car batteries
• 18,000 lithium battery modules, each the size of the power plant of a Nissan Leaf
• won't be up and running for five years (2021)
• 100 MW plant (one-tenth the power delivered by a modern nuclear power plant)
• pilot project began with 320 A123 electric vehicle batteries on Laurel Mountain, West Virginia, wind farm

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The Market At Md Afternoon
 NYSE

S&P 500 hits new intraday record. Link here. 

New highs: 394

• Chevron (big whoop -- who wudda thought? with oil trending down, near $45 again)
• Cliffs Natural Resources
• General Electric
• ONEOK Partners (OKS) 
• Wal-Mart (WMT)

New lows: 7

 
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Malls And Loyalty Cards

A couple of days ago, I took out-of-town guests over to one of the three best malls in this area, the Stonebriar in Frisco. As a rule, I don't like malls, but I do enjoy this one and I did enjoy that day. This mall has both a Microsoft store and an Apple store. My out--of-town guests who had little interest in computer stores on this particular day immediately noted the difference between the two stores.

The mall also has a See's Candy story. Yes, I have to admit it. I don't think there's any better chocolate than See's Candy.

The mall also has a Lego store, and it took a bit of will power not to buy Big Ben and/or the Porsche.

I can't afford the prices in Nordstrom's but I love the "openness" -- especially compared to JC Penney, et al.

But the big surprise: Dick's Sporting Goods. I can't recall ever being in a Dick's store before despite many of them in our area, including one about five minutes away by bike. I was pleasantly surprised. The bikes were all reasonably prices and probably very, very competitive with the boutique bike shops. But the highlight: finding a size 1 FC Dallas MLS soccer ball for Sophia. She kicked it all over the store and then brought it home with us.

We "opened" a Dick's "Scorecard" loyalty card/program on the spot and saved a bit of money with the first purchase. But this is what caught my attention. Maybe other loyalty programs do this now, but this was the first time I saw this. You know those plastic doo-dads you put on your key ring with the loyalty barcode? Dick's provides those, of course, but it also provides a label one can put on your credit card. They provide two labels, one for each of two credit cards, making it easy to have the Dick's cashier scan the loyalty bar code at the same time as your credit card is being scanned. I assume one can also put this directly on one's smart phone. Pretty clever.