The Market, Energy, And Political Page, Part 2, T+64 -- May 3, 2018

Updates

Later, 3:06 p.m. CDT: Posted earlier:

Jobs: first time unemployment claims --

• prior: 209,000
• forecast: 224,000 --- which would be jump of almost 15,000 (seriously?)
• actual: 211,000 -- so, initial claims actually rose by 2,000
• comment: wow, that's a huge, huge discrepancy. It tells me the analysts did not "believe" the number last week when unemployment claims plunged by 24,000
• comment: making American great again

From the Drudge Report:

The mainstream media had two headlines to choose from:

• unemployment claims tick higher
• Americans receiving unemployment aid lowest since 1973

So, guess which headline CNBC / Reuters chose? Yup, from CNBC:

Oh, yes, did you hear the good news coming out of North Korea?

Original Post

 

Jobs: first time unemployment claims --

• prior: 209,000
• forecast: 224,000 --- which would be jump of almost 15,000 (seriously?)
• actual: 211,000 -- so, initial claims actually rose by 2,000
• comment: wow, that's a huge, huge discrepancy. It tells me the analysts did not "believe" the number last week when unemployment claims plunged by 24,000
• comment: making American great again
• this explains why the market, which was "positive" in early pre-market trading, all of a sudden plunged over a hundred points in pre-market trading -- this jobless claims number all but guarantees a Fed increase next month. Just saying. Dow futures have recovered a bit. 

TSLA; in free fall. Now down about 8%; down over $23. I feel sorry for "the kid" that has hit total net worth invested in TSLA -- all 54 shares ($15,000).

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial, job, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or what you think you may have read here. If this is important to you, go to the source.

Disclaimer: I make a lot of simple arithmetic errors. I often see things that do not exist; I read quickly and miss important points. Sometimes it takes me days (maybe even weeks) to see where I was wrong.

TSLA, fast and furious. I was wondering who Adam Jonas was -- a frequent "feature" in the twitter world regarding Tesla, but here's the answer, from ZeroHedge:

Yes, Musk’s loans are now limited to 25% of the value of the pledged stock, a policy that seemingly did not exist when last year’s proxy was issued.

So how much money are we talking about here?

The most recent figure we have for the value of Musk’s margin loans comes from the registration statement for Tesla’s March 2017 stock sale, in which on p. S-9 it notes that he (at that time) owed a total of $624.3 million to various financial institutions, with the largest amount ($344.4 million) owed to Morgan Stanley whose Tesla analyst Adam Jonas has—coincidently or not—lately been desperately conceiving of increasingly fantastical reasons to maintain a TSLA price target of $376 despite steadily slashing his estimates as one “justification” after another for that target evaporates into the realities of Tesla’s massive cash burn and technological backsliding.

Comment: so Morgan Stanley is on the hook for almost $350 million?

Comment: talk about a conflict of interest. Wow.

Tesla's 2025 uncallable 5.3% bonds linked here. At time of conference call (yesterday), $89.29.