Notes From All Over -- Market Opening -- August 10, 2020

First things first: we should know today whether the "Power 5" will have a football season this year: Big 10; PAC 12; SEC; etc. My hunch: yes. Consensus: no.

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At market open:

• Dow surges: up 229 points; "stocks rise as investors eye earnings, Trump's virus orders:
• remember when "they" said 2Q20 earnings would be ghastly;
• Trump threaded the needle; more on this later;
• Dow on longest win streak since September, 2019;
  
• NASDAQ: flat; down 12 points, after hitting all-time records last week;
• S&P: flat; up slightly
• AAPL: up $6/share
• IMUX: about about 0.95; up 25 cents;
• Kodak shares plunge; 
• Tencent shares lose $66 billion in 2-day rout on WeChat ban; link here;
• Duke Energy: tops EPS; $1.08 vs $1.04; 
• Holy mackerel -- completely missed this -- UNP up $2.67; up 1.46%; trading at $185; 52--week high was $189; wow;
  
• McDonald's: sues ousted CEO;

McDonald’s says it's suing Stephen Easterbrook, the CEO it ousted last year over an inappropriate relationship with an employee, alleging Monday that he covered up relationships with other employees and destroyed evidence.

Easterbrook, according to a lawsuit, approved a special grant of restricted stock, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to one of those employees.

The company now wants to reclaim hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation paid to Easterbrook on his departure.

McDonald’s fired Easterbrook last November after he acknowledged exchanging videos and text messages in a non-physical, consensual relationship with an employee. Easterbrook told the company that there were no other similar instances.

Other:

• Tesla paid nearly $100 million to acquire Texas gigafactory land; link here; 
  

The former owner of the property, TXI Operations LP, a unit of Martin Marietta Inc, revealed in an earnings call on July 28 that it sold a “depleted standing gravel location” for $97 million, as earlier reported by local Austin media. TXI IOperations didn't give further details on the property it sold, or the name of the buyer, but according to Electrek, the reference is to none other than Tesla's under-construction manufacturing facility near Austin, Texas. And without anything to put that into perspective, it means nothing to me.

Mauled: Number one US mall operator faces a huge battle as tenants fight for their lives; Bloomberg, August 10, 2020;

Ebonics: years ago I studied the language some folks call Ebonics. I've long lost the bubble on that. I don't know if it's politically correct to say that or not. Let's check wiki. I assume African-American vernacular English is now the preferred term. Whatever. A lot of non-woke folks are under the impression that AAVE is "incorrect" English. In fact, it's very "correct." But be that as it may -- a discussion for another day. The reason I brought it up: today on sports talk radio one individual asked another how long he had had his Apple computer. His response in AAVE:

I've been having my Mac computer for five years now.

At one time this might have offended me, but this was from a well-educated radio host. It was so interesting to see him speak AAVE. I had not heard it in a long time.