Riding The Wave? Or Making A Wave? -- January 18, 2017

This is not our Sophia, but it certainly could be. Sophia knows my laptop keyboard well enough to watch Princess Sophia videos on YouTube -- volume, selecting new episodes, pausing, playing, dimming, brighten; etc:

"11" is not eleven, it's "pause."

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

The other day I asked whether PEOTUS Trump was riding the wave, or if he was making a wave.

Today, NBC News is suggesting that PEOTUS is simply riding the wave: GM's $1 billion investment was not driven by Trump and likely dated back to 2014.

But several GM officials stressed that the latest moves were in the works for months and, in some cases several years, and were not a reaction to criticism by president-elect Donald Trump who, earlier this month, had threatened to impose "a big border tax" on GM for importing the hatchback version of its compact Chevrolet Cruze model from Mexico.

During an appearance at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit last week, GM Chairman and CEO Mary Barra said the automaker would not alter its global manufacturing strategy to comply with political pressure, and GM General Counsel Craig Glidden this week echoed the position in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.

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

The Market

In all the "noise" yesterday, everybody heard the Permian/XOM headline: $6.6 billion Permian deal. The third leg of that footstool was widely reported but I think a lot of folks missed the most important part of the story: this doubled XOM's footprint in the Permian. No, that was not the most important point. The most important point: this was XOM doubling down in the Permian. 

Quick notes that popped up across the screen while looking at the news today. Shares in:

• TGT: pummeled
• GS: surged
• Netflix: surging 

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial, relationship, job, or travel decisions based on what you read here or what you think you may have read here. TGT caught my eye because I was in and out of that stock over a six-month period (very happy); I have never owned any shares in GS (and no plans to do so) but it gets a lot of attention. Likewise, I have never owned any shares in Netflix (and no plans to do so) but it was one of the first (if not the first) company I mentioned years ago when talking about the "next big thing."