Notes From All Over, Part 1 -- October 18, 2019

Debate: at school, our middle-school granddaughter will be participating in a debate on whether Big Tech needs to be broken up. She is on the "nay" side. I will remind her:

• there are two US automobile companies, Ford and GM
• maybe a third, if you include FiatChrysler 
• Big Tech competing for my eyeballs, cloud services, ad placement, content streaming: Amazon; Google; Facebook; Yahoo; Apple; Disney; Walmart; Target; Twitter; to name a few
• So, we have a dozen Big Tech companies all competing for eyeballs, cloud, ads, streaming, and folks think they need to be broken up; yet, unions control the only two US automobile companies. 
• Airlines? how many choices does one really have from any given destination? Hub-city model pretty much gives top airlines in the US regional monopolies
• Railroads? regional monopolies, especially west of the Mississippi; quick: name the three railroads operating west of the Mississippi

Re-posting: Houston  -- one game away from the World Series, defeating NY last night, 8 - 3 or something like that. I did not see the NFL football game last night, although it was streaming on Amazon Prime. I was watching Perry Mason.

Seque. My hunch: Amazon is off-the-radar scope for those following the cable television industry. If Amazon were to partner with one or two of the left-leaning news organizations, PBS and/or ABC -- real-time, 24-hour news, we would cut the cord. I don't watch television any more -- rare exceptions but my wife enjoys ABC and local news. I had planned to discontinue Spectrum television this month but my wife enjoys a couple of networks. Cable television is expensive and getting more expensive every month, but bang-for-buck, it out-competes most everything else. Another huge bargain: cell phones.

Amazon Prime: annual fee. I don't know what it is any more. It is really, really easy to discontinue if one so chooses, but my hunch is that the annual rate gradually increases without much notice. 

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

Dow futures (6:49 a.m. CT):

• AAPL: up very, very slightly; good China news, no doubt
• T: huge story -- T just went over $38; was under $28 last December (2018)
• AMZN: up slightly; around $1,800 in round numbers; AMZN needs an AMZN-B share

Commission-free trading:

• anyone griping about $4.95 for a single trade was absolutely crazy; I grew up at a time when there were no discount brokers; fees at Merrill Lynch were outlandish
• but I have to admit, no-commission trading at Schwab is the bees knees, as they say
• in the old days, if I had a hundred dollars, I would not invest -- at $4.95 a  trade, that was almost a 5% commission; but now -- a hundred dollars? Don't think twice about investing. 
• it's going to be very, very interesting to see how this plays out a year from now. My hunch, like all-day breakfast at McDonald's, folks are going to ask, "why didn't they do this years ago?"

What condition is my condition in?

Twitter account:

• last year: about 65 followers
• two weeks ago: 109 followers
• earlier this week: 112 followers
• today: 111 followers

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Portrait Of An Artist As A Young Child

Sophia is in her unicorn stage. She loves unicorns. Grammy made her a unicorn to wear while she paints.