Notes From All Over, Part 1 -- November 5, 2019

Retail wars: apparently Walmart is more than holding its own against Amazon. A bit of fluff, but this article is very interesting:

Amazon just raised the bar by lowering the price -- to zero -- Amazon is eliminating the $14.99 fee for grocery delivery fee to Prime members. That is truly huge. I suspect Prime membership costs will go up this next year, but Prime seems to be an incredibly good value. Eliminating that grocery-delivery fee will wreak havoc in some markets -- although it's offset by perceived "whole paycheck" moniker for Whole Foods. That $14.99 fee is a monthly fee. The #1 item ordered from Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods: bananas.

Walmart grocery delivery fees, the options (google search, November 5, 2019):

• $9.99 per delivery; or,
• annual fee: $98 (about the price of a Prime membership which gets you so much more)
• monthly fee: $12.95

Nacho president: link here. Look at the amount of money spent.

Chinese tariff war winding down? Stories, links everywhere. This, and much more, has already been baked into the market.

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Politics: more and more stories suggest Trump is stronger than ever in battleground states. The non-stop bickering in Washington has become background noise. Big test for Trump supporters in some states today. Biggest ballot issue in Texas: "bolting" shut the talk of any state income tax. Proposition 4 is badly titled. Vote "FOR" the proposition if against state income tax; vote "AGAINST" the proposition if you favor the idea of a state income tax.

Keystone (not the XL) pipeline remains closed. Crews continue clean-up in northeastern North Dakota. Source of leak not yet found.

Oil inventory report, Z4 Research estimates:

• US crude oil in storage: up 2.7 million bbls
• API data out later this afternoon
• EIA date out tomorrow, Wednedsday

Markets:

• after record-setting day yesterday, all major indices in the green in pre-market trading
• most interesting for me: OXY -- if share prices hold, it speaks volumes for this company
• says it will reduce CAPEX by 40% and yet production will increase slightly (2%) -- I've seen the same thing across the Bakken; producing more while cutting CAPEX; so we'll see

Oil: OPEC's world oil outlook -- OPEC's market share will shrink for years amid a flood of US shale supplies; link at Bloomberg; says decline for OPEC oil will slide about 7% over the next four years (through 2024).