The Market And Energy Page, T+349 -- January 5, 2018

Updates

January 25, 2018: many, many stories on trucker shortage on the blog; here's an update from Arizona (trucks, trucking, truckers)

Later, 12:49 p.m. CT: wow, shares in Barnes & Noble plunge more than 14%. The company must have missed the holiday memo.

Later, 12:46 p.m. CT: headline/story over at Yahoo!Finance -- APPL shares are up today after news report that Apple chips have major flaws. I can't make this stuff up.

Later, 10:50 a.m. CT look at first comment regarding ELD (electronic logging device). At the very same time I received that anonymous comment, I also received an e-mail from another reader:

I sent the url to this WSJ article to a truck driver who drove semi cross country years ago, and has been a load dispatcher for maybe 25 years. Here were his comments:

The article and it's pretty much spot on. ELD’s are playing a bigger roll than anticipated, I think. 

Old timers are saying piss on it, "I’m not doing that." 

The economy seems to be rolling and we lost trucks instead of gaining trucks. I have been saying this for years. 

We have trained out children to run a computer, not to work with their hands in a trade and I consider being a truck driver a trade. Anytime you sit in a seat of a commercial vehicle you have every branch of the law enforcement trying to find something wrong with you or the truck and dig into your pocket book.

Original Post

Market: it looks like we may have four consecutive days of new records among the equity markets. Dow futures up 72 points; other major indices also up.

African-American unemployment at record lows; lowest since BLS began keeping records in 1972. It begs the question: what was President Obama doing for eight years?

Trucking: The WSJ is reporting -- Tight Trucking Market Has Retailers, Manufacturers Paying Steep Prices, Some companies are delaying nonessential shipments rather than scramble to find a truck.

Retailers and manufacturers grappling with an unusually tight trucking market are paying the steepest prices in years to keep their goods moving.

Freight demand had been ticking up for months, closely tracking the strengthening U.S. economy. The market got a boost from retailers needing to restock store shelves and distribution centers amid the biggest jump in holiday sales since 2011. That wave of demand hit the trucking market just as a new federal safety rule kicked in, leading some drivers to idle their big rigs.

By the end of last week, just one truck was available for every 12 loads needing to be shipped, according to online freight marketplace DAT Solutions LLC. That is the most unbalanced market since October 2005, after Hurricane Katrina, and is up from a roughly 4-to-1 ratio at the end of 2016.

Saudi Aramco IPO, link here: 

There had been some speculation that the IPO could be shelved, as the Saudi government's self-imposed end-2017 deadline for picking an international stock exchange lapsed without so much as a murmur about its location. The Saudi government changed the status of Aramco to a joint stock company, in a signal that the float of the company will go ahead.

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