Notes From All Over -- Part 1, July 15, 2019

Permian update: From The Washington Post via The Grand Forks Herald  today -- things are slowing down in the Bakken. Lots could be said but I think regular readers of the blog and those who have some familiarity with the shale revolution probably have their own thoughts on this.

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US equity futures: right now, it looks like we could have another record-setting day:

• WTI: up very slightly
• S &P 500 futures: up about 6 points, about 21 points above 3,000
• Dow: up almost 60 points, about 368 points above 27,000
• NASDAQ: up 17 points; within 23 points of hitting 8,000 

In early-market trading (I'm surprised by all the pre-open trading)

• NOG (surprising; usually these little guys don't trade this early): up 1%
• CVX: green but flat
• COP: ditto
• OXY: climbing the wall of worry; up 1/4%
• XLNX: almost a percent
• TSLA: up over 1%
• F: down about 1/3%

Look at this, DE: trading near its 52-week high, is up over 1% in early morning trading

Which reminds me, the China-US tariff tiff --

• when did you last see an article on how expensive stuff is getting because of the China-US tariff war; you haven't; because it hasn't happened; 
• generally speaking Deere's prospects can be directly correlated with how farmers are doing, or how analysts think farmers will do 
• April 15, 2019:  170
• May 13 2019: 135
• July 15, 2019: 167
• behind the scenes, my hunch is that Trump-Xi are making a lot of US agricultural deals
• corn prices are going to come in really high later this year
• if I recall correctly, Trump administration blinked on biofuel quotas (but don't quote me on that)
• and, headline over at Yahoo!Finance: China's economy grows at slowest pace since 1990s (this could spur China to get serious about negotiating with Trump

So, where were we?

• T: up a bit

Oh, look at this: over the weekend, we were told to watch "the banks" today; they are reporting and the whisper numbers suggested some good news and here's the first bit of good news -- "Citi kicks off earnings season with better-than-expected results

There was a headline, by the way, that earnings were really going to suck this quarter, but, it was the time to buy --

Yes, the market looks about six months out on slow news days.