The Market, Energy, And Political Page, Part 2, T+81 -- November 2, 2018 -- Apple -- Thinking Different. Brilliant.

Hess: from Reuters -- 3Q18 --

• first profit for Hess since 2014; first profit in about four years
• slashed costs by 62%
• its average realized selling price, including hedging, was $66.08 per bbl in the third quarter
• very similar to that realized by CLR which does not hedge
• one year ago: $46.97
• production dropped 7% yoy
• net income:
• $52 million or 14 cents/share, 3Q18
• a loss of $624 million, or a loss of $2.02, one year earlier -- wow
• easily beat forecasts
• forecast: breaking even; an EPS of $0.00
• actual: 38 cents/share

Politics: I generally won't engage in politics when I'm out and about, but I got a kick out of the comments made this morning. One gentleman was concerned about the deficit and the debt, commenting that the US has added another $1.2 trillion in debt this past fiscal year. I said the deficit and the debt no longer mattered. We'll see if I'm correct. I'm not saying that huge deficit spending and a huge US debt doesn't matter from a rational point of view. What I'm saying is that the majority of Americans don't care how bad the deficit gets or how deeply the US goes into debt. We'll know if I'm right following the midterm elections next week.

Hubbert curve revisited. Sent to me by a reader:

Apple. Thinking differently. The biggest non-energy, market story today, is without a doubt, the announcement by Apple that it will no longer report sales numbers for computers, tablets, or phones. Brilliant move. Much could be written about that and normally I would but "it is what it is." I think it's a brilliant move. Steve Jobs would have done this; he might have done it a lot sooner. We may see a day in which Apple will simply post earnings and revenue without comment on a quarterly basis, with the annual report providing a more complete story. The tea leaves suggest we are seeing a tectonic change in quarterly earnings reporting.

Quarterly earnings reports. As just noted, the tea leaves suggest we are seeing a tectonic change in quarterly earnings reporting. Warren Buffett has been a wizard at this. He seems to talk non-stop about his holdings and has a huge annual report event, but when you really get into the weeds, how much do you really know about is newspaper holdings? His real estate operations? His automobile sales? See's Candy? Not much, but you would hardly know that unless you are follow BRK for whatever reason. Likewise, other than ad dollars and daily active users, how much do we really know about Facebook or Google. But, wow, do analysts and investors get upset with Apple when they don't report sales of each device. That might have been important at one time but it's now much less important. Those numbers are not irrelevant but they are certainly less important. Same with the number of oil rigs actively for oil when comparing activity in the 1950's with activity in the 21st century. Elon Musk got a lot of push back the way he handled a recent earnings conference call but I bet a lot of CEOs felt his pain. The Q&A at an earnings conference call reminds me of the Q&A after an NFL game. I would love to see Apple provide only earnings and revenue results on a quarterly basis (the minimum required by the SEC) but then host quarterly Apple events.