Today's Finance Headlines -- February 1, 2017

WTI: $53.19.

Gasoline demand: corner turned? We'll see the graph Thursday. Today John Kemp tweets:

US gasoline consumption averaged 9.243 million bopd in November, up 1.44% compared with prior year; equal to previous seasonal record set in 2006.

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial, travel, job, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here. This is also not a music site or a dance site. 

ONEOK: Oneok to buy the rest of Oneok Partners it doesn't own --

• $9.3 billion deal
• OKE: up almost 3%
• OKS: up almost 30%
• implied price for OKS: $54 vs $43 closing price
• Oneok expects to raise its quarterly dividend by 21% to 74.5 cents/share

MRO: moving sharply higher. Easily beats estimates; attributed to refining. Forecast, 26 cents; actual: 43 cents. 

The Apple, Inc, story continues:

• #1 camera maker in the world;
• services growing 18% year-over-year;
• app store growing 40% year-over-year; and,
• cash grows to $246 billion 
• AAPL will hit 52-week high today; still an "Abe Lincoln" short of an all-time high
• AAPL: pays about 2%

ADP: up 246,000! December payrolls revised downward, 2,000 to 151,000. Forecast: private sector to add 160,000 jobs. Remember the "magic numbers":

The Magic Numbers (change with Trump administration)

First time claims, unemployment benefits: 275,000 (> 250,000: economic stagnation)

New jobs: 150.000 (< 150,000 new jobs: economic stagnation)

Economists estimate the labor market needs to create about 125,000 jobs a month to keep the unemployment rate steady, though estimates vary -- Reuters.

Next big thing.  UPS is toast. Discussed yesterday. What the heck just happened? -- Barrons. Data points:

• EPS: forecast, $1.69; actual, $1.63
• revenue: forecast, $17 billion; actual $16.93 billion
• guidance: $5.80 too $6.10 for 2017; Street consensus for $6.15
• shares: dropped more than 6% on a down-day for the market; Amazon had dropped 1.2%
• comment: the most ubiquitous truck in our neighborhood (other than landscapers, waste management, and black-and-white police department SUVs) is the brown truck

Difficulty finding "guests"? MSNBC "Morning Joe" was on a roll, really, really good ... until .... they brought on the Reverend Al Sharpton. What were they thinking? I immediately switched stations; completely forgot about "Joe" -- when I remembered, I returned only to find NYC mayor De Blasio explaining why NYC is a sanctuary city. Back to CNBC.