Jobless Claims At 42-Year Low -- October 13, 2016

First time unemployment claims:

• four-decade low
• 246,000
• unchanged from the previous week's level, which was revised lower
• median forecast: 253,000
• four-week average fell to lowest since 1973: 249,250

Washington Post says 43-year low. 

Amazon will add 120,000 workers during holidays, 20 percent more than last year. Amazon has already begun seasonal hiring at two Delaware sites. Why? Halloween candy! I'm an Apple fanboy, but over the years I've really become impressed with Amazon. It's a toss-up which company I like better.

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Cramer: Amazon Should Buy Staples

In one sentence one learns why Cramer has no understanding of the Amazon Prime customer:

In fact, why not make shopping the discount stores only available to Prime members?

I am not aware of any Amazon Prime member who would want to drive to a hard-to-find Staples, find parking, walk into the store, window-shop, and then order on-line. I think Barnes and Noble should convert to a Costco-business model but not Amazon Prime/Staples. Wow, how absurd.

Foot traffic in a Amazon-Prime only Staples store? 0. And that would be on a busy day.

By the way, I think Bezos has moved on. There are a lot of bigger and better things to do than buy Staples.

Of course, if Amazon buys Staples, the initial cost would be trivial.

Amazon:

• market cap: $400 billion
• cash: $17 billion

Staples:

• market cap: $5 billion
• cash: less than $1 billion

But the prime reason folks subscribe to Amazon Prime is so they don't have to drive to Staples.