November 30, 2017-- Morning Meanderings -- Nothing About The Bakken

Top top story today: Tillerson to be ousted from State -- NY Times.

Top story today: an explanation for the remarkable turn in Saudi Arabia's foreign reserves. One reader has already sent me the explanation. Now, I'm waiting for Financial Times for their story. My hunch is that Bloomberg will get to the story eventually.

Shell: didn't get the memo from BP. BP learned an expensive lesson "going green." BP is back to petroleum. Shell apparently didn't get the memo. From CNBC, Shell, one of the biggest oil companies plans to halve its carbon emissions: the company will achieve that goal by improving efficiency (sure) and doing what BP did some years ago: added more biofuels and renewable power to its business mix.

Top states for business: Texas has moved back up; sitting at #2 now, behind North Carolina. This is a huge story, if true, considering that Texas had dropped to #4 earlier this summer, and then hit by Hurricane Harvey.

North Carolina has built one of the country’s strongest business climates over the past two decades, fueled by low business costs, incentives and a young, educated workforce, many of whom have been trained at the strong universities in the state and Research Triangle Park.

Migration rates into the state are among the highest in the U.S. annually. The Tar Heel State is the only one to rank among the top five on FORBES’ Best States for Business for 12 straight years, but it never reached the top rung until now.

Top states for business, continuing, same link as above.

Texas moved up two spots to second this year, the state’s best showing since 2006 (also second).

The $1.6 trillion Texas economy is the second biggest in the U.S., behind only California. Texas ranks first for current economic climate thanks to strong employment and gross state product growth over the past five years.

The outlook is equally bright. In addition, 100 of the 1,000 largest public and private companies in the U.S. based in Texas, including giants like AT&T, ExxonMobil and Dell.

One of the only things holding Texas back from the top overall ranking is education. Only 83% of adults have a high school degree, which is second lowest among the states.

Top states for business, see this site. Others disagree. At that site, Georgia ranks #1 for the fourth year in a row; Texas #3. However, when considering "overall cost to do business," Texas ranks #1 in that list.


Pending home sales: forgot to post this story yesterday. Pending home sales index jumped a much sharper-than-expected 3.5 percent in October. Pending sales in the South jumped 7.4 percent after falling 3.0 percent during the hurricane-swept month of September. Link here. 

Weekly jobs report: link here --

• consensus: 240K
• prior: 239
• actual: 238

EIA gasoline demand graph: link here --

Google Finance: if you have this site bookmarked, you will find that Alphabet has released a huge re-design. I don't care for the re-design yet, but I will probably get used to it. Regardless, it's a gazillion times better than Yahoo!Finance. [On a side note, do you remember when Steve Jobs went to court to defend his decision to get rid of Adobe Flash some years ago?]

Stunning omission: in my cerebral filing system, tucked away back in the corner is a virtual folder labeled "Mainstream Media." Inside there is a folder labeled "Liberal." Inside that fold, "Government Supported" and inside that, "Soros - Steyer Funded." Finally, we get to the "NPR-PBS" folder. I assume these are two completely different entities but in my filing system, they are two sides of one coin: one a radio outlet, and one a television outlet.

NPR announced yet another senior executive was fired for sexual harassment.  Here are key paragraphs of that very well-scripted NPR announcement:

NPR Chief News Editor David Sweeney has left the company following allegations of sexual harassment filed against him by at least three female journalists.

This follows a formal internal review into his conduct, after three current and former NPR journalists made formal complaints against him.

And it also followed greater scrutiny of the issue after revelations about Bill O'Reilly and the late Roger Ailes, both of Fox News, and prominent Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein.

The most prominent name in the "NPR-PBS" folder was missing.

Very well-scripted, NPR.

NFL. Will $90 million in "donations" get the Kaipernicks to start standing again? LOL. Can the players be bought for a measly $90 million. I doubt it.

Cruising. This is an incredible story and should give Tesla investors a pause. It's behind the New York Times paywall, but if you google "For more than a year, General Motors has tantalized investors with plans to build its future around self-driving cars." you will get to it. Yesterday, I noted "Cruise" on the side of the driverless Chevy Bolt cruising San Francisco. Now I know why. The story begins: no, not here. It's too long. I will do this later in another stand-alone post.

Market: speaking of Tesla, yesterday the "tech sector" was the hardest hit sector in the market. And, in the tech sector, it was "the chips" -- computer chips, not potato chips -- that took the biggest hit. Tesla also took a huge hit, dropping $10/share. I've always said Tesla is a battery company disguised as an automobile company. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the "big boys" are looking at Tesla as a "chip" company.

Rare sighting: headline from teslarati -- Tesla showcases Model S in rare LA Auto Show appearance as exhibitor. Tesla had skipped some earlier car shows this past year for various reasons. 

Robots: look at this story from Bloomberg -- robots are coming for jobs of as many as 800 million worldwide. See if you can spot what I found most interesting. Hint: one word, near the bottom of the story. I will come back to this later if I remember.

Kroger. Huge surge in share price this morning, up 9%. Good for Freddy Kroger.

Baby, it's cold outside. Wow, look at this. Siberia, minus 60 degrees in November. Temperatures this extreme are par for the course in this area during the heart of winter, but it's significantly colder than the average November low of close to minus 40.