The Market And Energy Page, T+311 -- November 28, 2017

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Wow, wow, wow: ENB stated that it has struck an accord with the State of Michigan to replace the aging Line 5 pipelines. The pipeline traverses along the bottom of a channel between Lakes Huron and Michigan. Track pipelines of interest here (though infrequently updated). 

The decision process at the Fed, putting the cart before the horse: a) flip a coin -- heads, raise; tails, raise; edge, lower; falls off table, hold steady; b) "make a case" for the decision. Don't you just love this headline? The decision has been made for a rate hike in December; all that's left to do is write the press release and memo for Congress:

Mr Market must be happy: the Dow is up over 150 points.

The markets: at open, all three major indices hit new highs.

RDS-A/B: up 3% today. Whoo-hoo. From Yahoo!Finance --

Looking at Royal Dutch Shell plc’s earnings update in September 2017, analysts seem extremely confident, with profits predicted to ramp up by an impressive 53.09% next year, relative to the previous 5-year average growth rate of -26.41%. Currently with earnings of $4,575M, we can expect this to reach $7,004M by 2018. 

Also this:

Shell boosted its outlook for free cashflow by $5 billion and axed a plan to pay dividends in new shares are the company's balance sheet continues to improve with global crude markets.

Pioneer Natural Resources: surging earnings estimates. Whoo-hoo.

TransCanada: regardless of the Keystone XL - will raise dividend. Whoo-hoo.

TransCanada Corp. reaffirmed forecasts for profit and dividend growth a week after a Nebraska regulatory decision left the fate of the company’s $8 billion Keystone XL pipeline megaproject clouded. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization will grow at an average annual rate of about 10 percent between 2015 and 2020.

TransCanada also held firm to plans to lift its dividend at the upper end of its projected 8 percent to 10 percent range, and extended that outlook by an additional year through 2021.

Who wudda thought? Wendy's owns 18.5% of Arby's and Buffalo Wild Wings will now become part of Arby's. Wendy's will make nearly $450  million on the transaction. Whoo-hoo.

North Dakota -- Bobcat: from The Dickinson Press --

Even a year ago, while Bobcat was making small implements in its Bismarck manufacturing facility, there was a lot of open space, said plant manager Dean Kuhn.

But since firing up a new production line for compact excavators earlier this year, a larger portion of the manufacturing floor is back in business, with the capacity to grow even further should demand warrant it.

Earlier this year, the excavators were brought back as a result of increased demand for the company's "next generation" line and a subsequent need for more production space to meet that demand.

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The Procter and Gamble Page

From a biography of Alan Turing,

Perhaps of all the elite American universities, Princeton was the most self-contained, insulated from the squalor of the depression. One could look out and never know that America had a problem. In fact, it hardly looked like America at all, for with its mock Gothic architecture, its restriction to male students, its rowing on the artificial Carnegie Lake, Princeton tried to outdo the detachment of Oxford and Cambridge. It was the Emerald City in the Land of Oz.

And as if the isolation from ordinary America were not enough, the Graduate College was separated off from the undergraduate life, to stand upon its gentle prominence, overlooking a clean sweep of fields and woods.

The tower of the Graduate College was an exact replica of that of Magdalen College Oxford, and it was popularly called the Ivory Tower, because of the benefactor of Princeton, the Procter who manufactured Ivory Soap.

Princeton was insulated from the rest of the world, and at Princeton, the Graduate College was separated off from the undergraduate life. But that was not even enough for the Princeton elite: they had built a tower that was separated even from the Graduate College, and thus the Ivory Tower WAS the ivory tower.

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The Literature Page

I will check out the biography of Siegfried Sassoon now that I've completed the basic oultine.

Will start to read these next:

• The Making of Middle Earth: A New Look Inside the World of J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Snyder, c. 2013
• Sissinghurst: Vita Sackville-West and the Creation of a Garden, Vita Sackville-West & Sarah Raven, c. 2014