The Energy And Market Page, Part II -- What's The Big Story For The Day?, T+186 -- July 25, 2017

Updates

Later, 8:31 a.m. Central Time: S&P 500 hits new record high. Wow.
 

Original Post

What's the big earnings story for today?

• GM earnings surprise; from Fortune
• McDonald's earnings and share action?
• CAT's shares up 5% in pre-market trading? Cramer says this is the biggest earnings report in this earnings season (2Q17).
• the Dow opening is forecast to open almost 200 points?

This is a rhetorical question; please do not reply/comment.

Futures: surging. Could the Dow hit a new high today? WTI up almost 2%. The Dow is forecast to open almost 200 points.

Cramer/CAT:

• CAT came back much stronger than Cramer thought
• no infrastructure bill
• oil was still well below $50 throughout the corner
• this takes me back to my story on the specialty truck company in Portland, OR; FAST (a July 15, 2017, post)

Disclaimer: I started watching CNBC at 5:00 a.m. but quickly switched to FBN. CNBC never changes. But as soon as Stu Varney came on, I immediately switched to Cramer over at CNBC. Varney's opening monologue (which will continue all day): US Senate vote on healthcare. 

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For The Archives

I've probably eaten at more McDonald's restaurants across the country than anyone reading this. McDonald's is really the only spot I stop when traveling cross-country because I know I will have reliable wi-fi. I sometimes stop at Starbucks but not nearly as often as I used to.

One can pretty much be assured that the food will be absolutely the same from one McDonald's to another McDonald's. The only thing that really changes from one Mickey D's to another is the ambience, and that ambience seems to be directly related to a) the region of the country; and, b) urban or rural.

One would think that "rural" would be generally better but that's not always the case. Some of the worst McDonald's have been in low density areas where one would expect they would be happy to see you. But I suppose in some "rural" locations it's hard to find workers and the ambience of a McDonald's is directly related to the "quality" of its employees.