Notes From All Over, Part 1 -- October 2, 2019

Commission-free trades: it is surprising how fast things changed. This, in fact, was telegraphed at least a year ago (?) -- Schwab mentioned they might, in fact, go to commission-free trades quite some time ago. Schwab needs to encourage more "margin trading." LOL. I wonder if that's legal/ethical -- to encourage "margin trading"?

US shale decline in production: the link is to a Yahoo!Finance site but is in fact a "Nick Cunningham”/oilprice story. It begins:

U.S. oil production fell in July, another worrying sign for the shale industry.

The latest EIA data shows that oil output fell sharply in July, dipping by 276,000 barrels per day. The decrease can be chalked up to outages related to a hurricane that forced oil companies to temporarily idle operations in the Gulf of Mexico. Offshore Gulf of Mexico production plunged by 332,000 bpd in July.

As a result, the dip in output might easily be dismissed as a one-off aberration. However, U.S. output has stagnated in 2019, ending several years of explosive shale growth. Compared to December 2018, total U.S. production was only up 44,000 in June 2019, which essentially means that despite heady forecasts and lots of hype, U.S. shale has plateaued this year.

The premise may be correct, that (US) shale production faces a steep decline, but even in the lede it was noted that the drop in US oil production in July, 2019, had nothing to do with shale, and everything to do with weather in the Gulf of Mexico. What a doofus. 

North Dakota shale oil production: second consecutive month to set an all-time production record, July, 2019. 

Production vs "rate of growth" of production: need ot keep that in mind when reading these stories. We discussed this after the WSJ story on same subject just a couple days ago.

Anyway, enough of this.

Market: looks like another huge "down day" for the market.

Automotive sales: Investor's Business Daily yesterday, October 1, 2019. Asian carmakers' sales "plunge" -- American automakers data due out today (?).  The link will take you to an article behind a paywall. The lede: the Asian carmakers saw sales "plummet" in September, reporting double-digit declines in "higher-priced" SUVs and trucks. Doesn't surprise me. The only thing that surprised me is how long this took. I don't know about you, but I find prices of vehicles these days exorbitant.

Tesla on tap.

Ford: apparently will report just before the market opens. American car makers GM and Ford (others?) report on a quarterly basis, now instead of annual. If things go really badly, will htey start reporting annually? Ford scheduled to report 3Q19 earnings October 23, 2019. At link, note this: ACM = after market close. 

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Notes For The Granddaughters

Two articles to which I might come back. Came across these articles while reading a book on insects. 

Human anatomy: anatomy of the anterolateral ligament (ALL) of the knee. First discovered / reported in 1879, but article "lost" and the ALL unknown to physicians, et al, until "re-discovered in 2013. Researchers still do not agree on what the ALL does. Wiki entry here. Segond fracture here. 

Antibiotics: the second article is based on a medieval concoction that kills 90% of methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) -- from a 2015 "throw-away article in New Scientist. Researchers still don't know why the concoction works. MRSA is associated with the group of "flesh-eating bacteria." Yuch!

Global warming? The science is settled. And expert du jour? St Greta from Sweden.

Perfect timing. From a reader, link here.

St Greta: one card short of a full deck.