Notes From All Over, Part 1 -- November 1, 2019

First things first: it's cold across the US. I don't know if folks are paying attention but it's very cold for this time of year. I was caught off-guard; couldn't find my ice-scraper for the windshield this morning; I needed to use my Neptune Society plastic membership card.

First things first: the market was down yesterday so I did not check in -- at all, except to see if my cash account had grown (dividends) so that I could buy -- I assumed everything was on sale. After hours last night I started watching futures, and I watched futures go up all through the night. Right now the Dow is up 50 some points.

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The market. So this morning, I checked a few companies. I was blown away -- I never expected this. I assumed they were going to all be in the "red." From yesterday:

• AAPL: this one surprised me the most; up $5.50 yesterday; who wudda guessed?
• SRE: with the bad news coming out of California, I thought SRE was toast, literally and figuratively; it was up almost $3.00; up over 2%; completely unexpected
• UNP: continues to trend down

I'm not interested in anything else this morning.

Politics: fascinating to follow the polls. Of course, meaningless at this point in time except for qualifications for debates and donors. With both Harris and Castro running out of money, one can only assume the same for most of the rest. Buttigieg will get a huge bump -- a headline -- out of Iowa but then will fade in New Hampshire. Remember, one must get 15% of the popular vote to be awarded any delegates. Buttigieg is polling at10% in New Hampshire. He's hardly even on the radar scope in any state outside of Iowa. But that bump would change things.

New York taxes: I think folks talking about Trump officially moving from NYC (and state) to Florida are missing a huge, huge story. This is the bigger story, actually two stories: a) Trump simply represents one of thousands moving from high tax states to low/no-tax states; and, b) the headline story will encourage those to move who have, for some reason or other, felt they couldn't leave. From the chief economist of the Heritage Foundation:

There are four so-called "states of the apocalypse” – New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Illinois – from where residents are fleeing in droves due to high taxes and state budget issues.

The states benefitting the most from this population movement are Florida, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and North Carolina.

Tennessee is always on those lists.