The Market And Energy Page, T+52 -- March 13, 2017

Opening

Dow: down 40 points.

WTI: flat at $48.45

Ford to build SUVs in China.

Huge, huge story: Trump will meet with Chinese President Xi Jinpin at Mar-a-Lago. Camelot rising. This is a huge story on so many levels. Planned meeting over April 6 - 7. If I did the calculations correctly this will be days 66 - 67 of Trump's presidency. Not only in the first 100 days but incredibly early in his administration. President Obama did not meet with Xi (in the US) until well into his second administration; in fact, by September, 2015, Obama was pretty much a lame Peking duck. (Yes, Obama was the first president to visit China during his first term but the event was considered "rocky," and things had not improved by the time of his second visit in his second term -- The Washington Post). Trump will probably become the first president to have met all major world leaders face-to-face in his first 100 days of office, and well before his own party has confirmed all his cabinet appointees.

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Futures

Oil touches three-month low. Pre-market trading around $48.25; down slightly.

Futures: Dow was down slightly overnight, but about an hour before opening, up 12 points.

Best convenience store: first-ever ranking by GasBuddy.com.  Ranking based on cleanest restrooms, best coffee, best customer services, and, best overall. Kwik Trip was #1 in all except #2 in best coffee. Wawa rated to have best coffee. AAFES (Army & Air Force Exchange Service) ranked in top 5 in only one category: cleanest restrooms. Not surprising, for any number of reasons. I never recall seeing coffee, much less buying coffee, at an AAFES gas station. I don't recall ever receiving ANY customer service at an AAFES gas station. Often quite the opposite. I seldom felt welcomed at an AAFES station. Weird. But that was mostly overseas. I have visited AAFES stations (recently) in only a few locations (northwest of Boston, and in Ft Worth). The link also has highlighting users' choices in each state.

Bakken moose: human interest story at The Williston Herald. Second story in as many days about moose in Boomtown, USA. It's interesting that with the boom in human activity in the Bakken, the moose have also been arriving. Counterintuitive, but years ago we saw the same thing with wildlife and the Alaskan pipeline.

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Not Smarter Than A Fifth Grader

This is Olivia's winning Bananagram board which "beat" her grandmother's board. Olivia is a fifth grader: