Wall Street. Traders must have slept in this morning. SRE reported incredibly good results and yet SRE was in the "red" at the opening. In very, very early trading, SRE was up a penny. Wow. Finally, 9:42 a.m. Central Time, and SRE pops, up $1.77 or about 1.5%. SRE smashed estimates and announced a hefty dividend increase a couple of days ago. Pays about 3%. What's not to like.
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Trump: gets all kinds of grief from the mainstream media for his "hastily" arranged trip to Hanoi to meet "rocket man." What? They would prefer the noise of "war drums"? For a disorganized, chaotic White House, Trump certainly seems to keep pressing. These are hard things to put together. Multi-tasking.
Surprises? Trump's fixer/lawyer begins three days of testimony today. Those who testify to Congress must provide a transcript/document to Congress prior to testifying. From early reports, nothing new. And, if there were truly any bombshells, one assumes such bombshells would have been leaked by now. So, same old story, just waiting for the mainstream spin. Maybe that's why Trump is in Vietnam right now -- folks can watch Congressional testimony on television or they can watch pageantry coming out of Hanoi. Trump: after several seasons of The Apprentice, he learned all about ratings and "must-see TV."
Cable: wow, cable is getting expensive. Let's say you are spending $50/month on cable; you negotiate with the company and you might be able to get it to $40/month for a year or so. If you are paying $150, maybe you can get $120. If you are paying $300/month, maybe you can get $250. The question becomes, if one is going to keep cable television is it worth all that much to negotiate with the provider on the monthly subscription? I don't know. For every price point, my hunch is that a similar amount passes through one's fingers for Starbucks; toll roads; beer; McDonald's, massage parlors.
Cable: I was thinking about that -- the monthly cost -- this past weekend. We complain every month about the high cost of cable. I don't bring it up with my wife any more. I've accepted it. Either we have it or we cut the cord completely. Cutting the cord completely: some cost savings but then we go à la carte with Netflix, Roku, Amazon, Apple, etc., and my hunch is that the total monthly savings would be nominal, the aggravation for an old geezer like me significant, and the only satisfaction: telling folks we don't get cable any more.
Cable: But this weekend is a great example. With Spectrum Cable, we get all the major networks (none of which I watch any more) but my wife lives for ABC Nightly News. That alone, for her, is worth the price of cable. Then she got to watch her "Super Bowl/World Series" Sunday night -- the Oscars. She really, really looks forward to and enjoys the Oscars. Me? I had four days of PGA tournament from Mexico. I had NASCAR in Atlanta, GA. I don't watch much basketball until the championships but all the college / pro basketball I could possibly want. And hen our British comedies on PBS Sunday night, and my wife loves the British mysteries earlier on Sundays. And I'm just getting started. TCM: classic movies, 24/7 with no commercial interruption. Big Bang Theory, The Simpsons, Seinfeld. So, I don't know . Yes, cable is expensive (relative to what?) but it's truly incredible what's out there.
Cable: the problem is not the cost. The problem is too much to watch.
Cable: folks will suggest that I'm rationalizing paying an exorbitant price for cable. That's fine. I'm just looking at a cup half full as opposed to a cup half empty, and when it comes to cable, the cup is overflowing. I even watched the Super Bowl for free.
Cable: four Sunday afternoons at Applebee's watching NASCAR and enjoying lunch costs about as much as the monthly cable subscription.
NASCAR: not sure where I'm going with NASCAR. I can't give it up, but I'm not getting much excitement out of it any more. I assume much of this is transition: from the "big names" of the past to the new generation of drivers. We'll see. I still try to catch it.
The problem for cable is that there isn't a good cheap option for sports in my opinion. The ATT package that came with espn/FS1 bumps the price up bigtime. Youtube TV has been working out great for me.
ReplyDeleteI've heard that from a lot of folks -- through social media.
DeleteHaving said that, taking cost out of the equation, it is absolutely amazing to me how much content is out there -- across all media outlets.