You Can Store It A Long, Long Time -- Farmers Need To Buy Larger Propane Tanks, Along With Larger Tractors -- January 29, 2020

From the EIA's weekly petroleum report:

• propane/propylene inventories actually decreased by 3.6 million bbls last week but are still almost 30% above the five-year average for this time of year; farmers would be wise to buy larger propane tanks -- along with larger tractors -- said President Trump later today.

AAPL: after the giddiness  has died down (or has it?) what is AAPL doing today? Up over 2% -- now trading up over $7/share, trading at $325 (almost).

BRK: Buffett finally cuts his losses -- after twenty years -- cardinal mistake of investing -- falling in love with your portfolio. It is being reported that "Warren Buffett gives up on newspaper empire with $140 million sale to Lee Enterprises. Details:

• assets sold: BH Media Unit and its 30 daily newspapers
• Lee Enterprises: publishes 46 newspapers across 21 states
• 2018: newspaper circulation fell to its lowest level since 1940
• the deal gives Lee over one-half billion dollars in long-term financing at a 9% annual rate -- wow -- Buffett still knows how to make a deal, and he loves interest/dividends as long as he's not paying 
• a half-billion dollars at 9% annual rate -- wow

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Recent dividend announcements:

• MPC: increases dividend to 58 cents; pays 4.4%
• WMB: increases dividend to 40 cents; pays 7.39% (and it's not a foreign company; and it's not an MLP, as far as I know)
• Hess Midstream Partners: increases dividend to 43 cents; pays 7.13%
• Oasis Midstream Partners: increases dividend to 54 cents, up from 51.5 cents; pays 12.63%; shares at $15.54; one-year target at $20.33;
• Nextera Energy Partners: increases dividend to 54 cents; pays 3.7%
• Dominion Energy: increases dividend to 94 cents; pays 4.48%
• Yum! Brands: increases dividend to 47 cents; pays 1.79%
• Valero Energy: increased dividend to 98 cents; pays 4.38%
• Pfizer: increasing dividend by 5.6%; new dividend, 38 cents, up from 36 cents

Attention detail, know your customer:

You know those "push bars" across swinging glass doors in fast food restaurants. At McDonald's, the door for PlayPlace has two such "push bars": one for adults at the regular height, and then one about two feet up fro the floor for four-year olds. Very, very clever. I'm impressed.

From the iconoclast, John Hands, Cosmo Sapiens: Human Evolution from the Origin of the Universe, c. 2015, page 581:

We can reasonably infer from empirical evidence that we (Earth-bound humans) evolved from primordial energy into carbon-based, mobile, behaviourally sophisticated lifeforms possessing the most complex thing in the known universe: a human brain.

However, that evolution was only possible because the virtually limitless interactions of matter and energy were constrained by a series of physical and chemical laws plus the fine-tuning of six cosmological parameters, two dimensionless constants, and three parameters of nucleosynthesis.

Moreover, this evolution required a planet with a limited mass range that possessed necessary chemicals and was in a limited part of a galaxy and a limited part of a solar system where it received just enough of the right kind of energy for several billion years while being protected from fatal energy radiations and collisions from comets and other space debris.

Not to mention the twenty amino acids out of hundreds to choose from, and the inexplicable peptide bond.