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Thursday, December 31, 2020

Notes From All Over -- The Restaurant Review Edition -- December 31, 2020

Top 250 restaurants. At the link, one can quickly scroll through the top 250 restaurants in the US. Looks like a nice link / source that I had not seen before. Main site here.

Restaurant closures: A nice overview, albeit superficial, of the number of restaurant sites that are being closed among the top chains.

The pandemic simply expedited the closure of a lot of marginal restaurant locations. Worse than most years but in the big scheme of things, not that big of a deal. 
Twenty-eight restaurant chains listed. Number 28 on the list was Benihana. In 2019 and 2020, it announced only one Benihana that was closing, the one in Sacramento, CA, but then this: "the company this year announced plans to expand in the U.S. and develop franchises in the Caribbean, Central America and South America.

Los Angeles skid row, no comment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TwW9tnkhQg&feature=youtu.be. Original link here. Okay, one comment: after watching that, I'm glad I spent my time watching three classic Hitchcock movies on TCMl last night rather than watching this crap stuff.

AAPL / Apple, Inc: several links; some stories (different sources) previously posted:

  • why AAPL could be a growth stock in 2021; no mention of the car; Motley Fool;
  • Apple's big iOS14 update could wound these two tech giants (Facebook and Alphabet); Motley Fool;
  • Apple phones take 9 of top 10 spots in activations on Christmas Day, The Street;

Penultimate: link here

FTSE 100 [The London Exchange] ends 2020 with annual loss of 14%. Worst since 2008. Compare with multiple records among US indices: Dow, NASDAQ, S&P 500, Russell 2000.

JCP CEO: broke through the glass ceiling only to fall through the sky light. CEO out after two years of failure. Harsh. 

Amazon gets bigger: swallows up podcast startup Wondery. Link at The Wall Street Journal. Paywall but I'm sure the story is everywhere.

  • purchase price not disclosed, but rumor has it, about $300 million (isn't that what Jeff Bezos makes about every five minutes?)
  • founded in 2016, one of several podcast startups
  • known for its gritty, narrative-driven podcasts that supply cinematic sound design to nonfiction stories;
  • will greatly improve accessibility / broaden it's audience  now that it's part of Amazon
  • Amazon is tracked here; as an Amazon Prime member, I'm thrilled

Minot AFBB-52s flying over Mideast are from Minot AFB, ND. A nice way to spend the winter, in sunny Saudi Arabia or from wherever they are based. Probably not landing / taking off from aircraft carriers, but nothing surprises me any more when it comes to the B-52. LOL.  Just kidding. Can you imagine the size of the a/c carrier to support a B-52 or two? 

Bitcoin: market value surpasses Berkshire Hathaway overnight. 

Energy: from a few days ago -- the largest energy bill in a decade was just passed. You can guess what's in it. Savvy investors will take note. I'm thinking distribution transformers. 

Batteries: QuantumScape releases performance data for its solid-state battery technology. For the archives. I'm really not interested today.

Colleges: finally cutting tuition. And along with severe revenue cuts from athletic programs, one can imagine a number of universities / colleges in financial panic. Again, for the archives; I'm not interested.

Just asking for a friend:

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