It Just Doesn't Quit -- Tesla -- An Automobile Manufacturing Disruptor -- Now An Index Disruptor? -- November 29, 2020

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site.  Do not make any investment, financial, job, career, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here. 

Wow, there are so many interesting -- investing and otherwise -- stories right now -- here's another one. 

Think about this. A company with a market value greater than Berkshire Hathaway will soon be added to the S&P 500. 

From The WSJ:

Additions and subtractions to the S&P 500 are normally a ho-hum affair. 

The 509th biggest company in the U.S. might jump to 497th place, and thus into the index. 

Investors who track it buy the one stock and sell another. But no one has ever tried to add Tesla Inc. a $555 billion company prone to huge swings in price. 

That’s happening next month, and it’s causing headaches across Wall Street. 

To avoid missteps, S&P polled big investors on whether they would prefer adding Tesla’s weight all at once on Dec. 21 or split over two trading days in December—an unprecedented move for S&P.Asset managers and trading desks across Wall Street have held virtual summits to debate the matter. 

The vote from many appears to be for the two-day option, partly because of Tesla’s size, along with the potential for elevated volatility in the stock market. 

“If we begin to anticipate a worst-case scenario from what could happen from the Thanksgiving holiday, we could expect greater than usual volatility,” said David Mazza, a managing director and head of product at exchange-traded-fund manager Direxion, referring to a possible further surge in coronavirus cases. He endorses Tesla’s addition to the S&P 500 over two separate trading sessions. Tesla’s addition to the index is expected to be particularly challenging because the company will be the largest to ever join, and it is expected to make up at least 1% of the gauge. 

At its current value, it would be the sixth-largest company in the S&P 500, just bigger than Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and smaller than Facebook Inc. The stock, which has a cultlike investor base, has surged more than 40% to $585.76 since Nov. 16, when S&P announced its intended inclusion, extending its gains for the year to sevenfold. 

The S&P 500 itself is up 13% in 2020.

"Focus On Fracking" Has Posted -- November 29, 2020

Link here. Lede:

• Oil and natural gas rally on vaccine developments.

US oil supply:

US oil data from the US Energy Information Administration for the week ending November 20th indicated that because of a big increase in refinery use of crude oil this week, we had to withdraw oil from ou​r stored commercial supplies for the 12th time in the past eighteen weeks and for the 18th time in the past forty-five weeks....our imports of crude oil fell by an average of 26,000 barrels per day to an average of 5,228,000 barrels per day, after falling by an average of 245,000 barrels per day during the prior week, while our exports of crude oil rose by an average of 83,000 barrels per day to an average of 2,831,000 barrels per day during the week, which meant that our effective trade in oil worked out to a net import average of 2,397,000 barrels of per day during the week ending November 20th, 109,000 fewer barrels per day than the net of our imports minus our exports during the prior week... 

... over the same period, the production of crude oil from US wells was reportedly 100,000 barrels per day higher at 11,000,000 barrels per day, and hence our daily supply of oil from the net of our trade in oil and from well production totaled an average of 13,397,000 barrels per day during this reporting week...

Initial Production Data For Wells Coming Off The Confidential List This Next Week -- November 29, 2020

The wells:

• 37463, conf, Petro-Hunt, USA 153-95-13C-12-2H, Phelps Bay, 
• 37462, conf,  Petro-Hunt, USA 153-95-13C-12-1H, Phelps Bay, 
• 37425, conf, Slawson, Orca Federal 5-23-26TFH, Big Bend, 
• 36533, conf, Hess, EN-Sorenson B-155-94-3526H-11, Alkali Creek
  

Date	Oil Runs	MCF Sold
10-2020	9173	0
9-2020	14167	19690
8-2020	6457	12125
7-2020	88	0
6-2020	14712	15102

• 37536, conf, CLR, Kennedy 16-31HSL1, Dimmick Lake, 
• 37424, conf,  Slawson, Orca Federal 3-23-26H, Big Bend, 
• 36971, conf,  Hess, TI-Nelson-157-94-3031H-3, Tioga,
  

Date	Oil Runs	MCF Sold
10-2020	16292	0
9-2020	15954	20243
8-2020	18310	11675
7-2020	21321	21430
6-2020	24119	25139

• 32427, conf, BR, Phantom Ship 3B MBH, Elidah,
• 37535, conf,  CLR, Kennedy 15-31HSL, Dimmick Lake, 
• 37423, conf, Slawson, Tempest Federal 2-14H, Big Bend, 
• 29469, conf, Hess, TI-Beauty Valley-158-95-1423H-3, Tioga,
  

Date	Oil Runs	MCF Sold
10-2020	15482	0
9-2020	14270	14666
8-2020	12477	10362
7-2020	23096	16940
6-2020	29230	28089

36970, drl/A, Hess, TI-Nelson-157-94-3031H-2, Tioga,

Pool	Date	Days	BBLS Oil	Runs	BBLS Water	MCF Prod	MCF Sold	Vent/Flare
BAKKEN	10-2020	31	16149	16128	18082	0	0	0
BAKKEN	9-2020	30	14220	14226	17598	18651	17923	728
BAKKEN	8-2020	31	17125	17120	18426	19292	13577	5715
BAKKEN	7-2020	25	17018	17181	32999	19538	16094	3444
BAKKEN	6-2020	30	24916	24846	55724	31012	26756	4256
BAKKEN	5-2020	3	3679	3480	3854	3229	3218	11

Wells Coming Off The Confidential List This Next Week -- November 29, 2020

Monday, December 7: 11 for the month; 67 for the quarter; 732 for the year
None.

Sunday, December 6: 11 for the month; 67 for the quarter; 732 for the year
37463, conf, Petro-Hunt, USA 153-95-13C-12-2H,

Saturday, December 5: 10 for the month; 66 for the quarter; 731 for the year
37462, conf,  Petro-Hunt, USA 153-95-13C-12-1H,
37425, conf, Slawson, Orca Federal 5-23-26TFH,
36533, conf, Hess, EN-Sorenson B-155-94-3526H-11,

Friday, December 4: 7 for the month; 63 for the quarter; 728 for the year
37536, conf, CLR, Kennedy 16-31HSL1,
37424, conf,  Slawson, Orca Federal 3-23-26H,
36971, conf,  Hess, TI-Nelson-157-94-3031H-3,
32427, conf, BR, Phantom Ship 3B MBH,

Thursday, December 3: 3 for the month; 59 for the quarter; 724 for the year
37535, conf,  CLR, Kennedy 15-31HSL,
37423, conf, Slawson, Tempest Federal 2-14H,

Wednesday, December 2: 1 for the month; 57 for the quarter; 722 for the year
None.

Tuesday, December 1: 1 for the month; 57 for the quarter; 722 for the year
29469, conf, Hess, TI-Beauty Valley-158-95-1423H-3,

Monday, November 30: 32 for the month; 56 for the quarter, 721 for the year
None.

Sunday, November 29: 32 for the month; 56 for the quarter, 721 for the year
36970, conf, Hess, TI-Nelson-157-94-3031H-2,

Saturday, November 28: 31 for the month; 55 for the quarter, 720 for the year
None.

Published Post #35000 -- Chinese Flu Update -- November 29, 2020

Updates

Later, 10:32 p.m. CT: 

Original Post

Wow, wow, wow.

About two hours ago I wrote this:

Chinese flu: I'm most excited about the Johns Hopkins data that will be released later today. Their update was delayed by almost a full eight hours yesterday. Johns Hopkins link here; it is updated daily; usually in the early morning. As of 9:22 a.m. CT it has not yet been updated today.

Johns Hopkins / The WSJ has updated the data.

Link here.  

Four data points for North Dakota:

• ND has highest penetration rate in the US, perhaps in the world for Chinese flu: at 10% trending toward 11% (for the archives: no vaccine yet)
• NoDaks reluctant to wear masks; value their independence; pioneering spirit
  
• a highly rural state with three or four urban centers
• Covid-19 with an R0 factor of less than 2, perhaps

With those data points and the graphic above, there is an obvious question. We may not know the answer for years.

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The Movie Page

High Sierra turned out to be a much better movie than I ever realized. 

Filmed on location: Kanab Canyon, Aspen Mirror Lake, Duck Creek, Cascade Falls, and Cedar Breaks in Utah. Specifically, Whitney Portal, halfway up Mount Whitney in the Sierra Nevada of California. 

Today, it's a five-hour drive from Hollywood, CA, to Whitney Portal. 

Black Friday, 2020 -- It's A Wrap -- And A Record -- November 29, 2020

I'm hoping there will be enough stories worth posting to capture "Black Friday, 2020." We'll see.

First story: Black Friday hits record $9 billion in US consumer spending! 

Second story: Dow, S&P 500 head for best November since 1928. Let me repeat that: best November since 1928. And with the headline from the first story, could the last day of November be a great day for the market?

Third story: energy stocks are on pace for a record month. Of course, they have been down for so long, it doesn't take much to make them look good.

Fourth story: busiest time of the year for Disney theme parks? Yup. The holidays. Not gonna happen this year. 

Fifth story: based on google search, Google is going to have a blowout quarter. I've never seen so many ads. Normally one or two ads at the top of any given page, but a google search for "Black Friday 2020" and it's almost 100% ads. Some are "marked as ads"; most are not, simply links to web pages of on-line retailers offering Black Friday deals. And, oh, by the way, hundreds and hundreds of non-Amazon on-line retail sites. Exhibit A when folks say Amazon has a monopoly. LOL. I"m on page 5 of about 4.06 billion results and have seen very few Amazon ads. I haven't been paying attention; there may be more than I realize.

Sunday, November 29, 2020 -- Part 3

Sports: wow, NFL today looks bleak until maybe the Sunday night football game. Breaking: NFL says Broncos' quarterback can't play today .... because ... he broke protocol. LOL. Shooting self in foot. Oh, I misread that. Not the Broncos' quarterback but all of the Broncos' quarterbacks. Somehow there must be more to the story. I must be missing something. If accurate, it should be a fun game to watch. LOL. NFL today. Broncos were to play the Saints later this afternoon. And apparently this game will be on Fox. My hunch? This will be the most-watched NFL game this year. LOL.

From Yahoo!Sports:

On Sunday afternoon, in Week 12 of the weirdest NFL season ever, the Denver Broncos will take to their home field without a quarterback. 

So they’ll reportedly turn to a practice squad wide receiver who has never played an NFL snap. 

And who, one month ago, was working a normal-person job. And who, when he last did anything resembling quarterbacking in 2018, completed two of eight passes for 2 yards – and one interception. 

With Denver’s entire QBs room ineligible due to COVID-19 contact tracing, the team will likely use Kendall Hinton, a former quarterback at Wake Forest and Southern Durham (N.C.) High School whom the Broncos signed to their practice squad earlier this month.

Egg on face: ESPN's Steven A. Smith said he was genuinely afraid for Roy Jones, Jr's life. Steven A. Smith was genuinely afraid Roy Jones would be severely injured if not killed by Mike Tyson.That was Friday, November 27, 2020. In fact: a draw.

Dividends: from Investopedia: Garmin (really?), Starbucks (okay, possibly), Target (okay, but share appreciation seems to be the bigger opportunity for Target), AbbVie (this one pops up often on many lists), and, BlackRock (I seldom see this on dividend lists). 

Perhaps for dividend growth but none of these returns impress me -- it must have been a slow day for Investopedia or someone was talking their book, as they say. Why start with a company with low dividend and wait for growth? Start with a great company with potential for growth that is already paying a nice dividend. Of the five mentioned above, none have a remarkable dividend except for AbbVie.

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site.  Do not make any investment, financial, job, career, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here.

Global warming, reality sucks: British coal plants are being fired up to meet "temporary" electricity shortfall. Remaining UK coal plants supply only 6% of the grid's electricity to cover power supply drop and cold weather. Link here. Sent by a reader; huge thanks.

Britain has fired up some of its last remaining coal power plants to help keep the lights on as the country’s wind turbines slow over a few days and the demand for electricity rises.

Three of the UK’s last coal power plants, operating at Drax, West Burton, and Ratcliffe, were called on to supply 6% of electricity on Thursday morning.

Coal’s share of the electricity mix was roughly double the share of wind and solar power in the electricity mix, and six times the average contribution made by coal plants in the final months of last year.

The coal plants are likely to keep running over the next few days, alongside a fleet of gas-fired power plants, before breezy weather returns to help meet the rising demand for electricity from renewable energy sources.

Sunday, November 29, 2020 -- Part 2

South Dakota attorney general / "hit a deer" maybe / story: update. After eleven weeks, the investigation continues. If we wait long enough, maybe this story will simply go away.

We know quite a bit about that, but we still don’t know the whole story. The investigation continues almost 11 weeks after Joe Boever died. Authorities have concluded that Joe Boever was walking on the shoulder and carrying a light when he was struck by Ravnsborg’s vehicle, and that Ravnsborg was distracted at the time of the crash. They haven’t reported the reason for the distraction.

Over on twitter right now, there's a lot of noise about the OPEC meeting this week. Lots of excitement that with the end of Covid-19 lockdowns, "re-balancing" of oil, and OPEC members willing to maintain quotas, the price of oil may actually get back to $50 sooner than later. 

Chinese flu: I'm most excited about the Johns Hopkins data that will be released later today. Their update was delayed by almost a full eight hours yesterday. Johns Hopkins link here; it is updated daily; usually in the early morning. As of 9:22 a.m. CT it has not yet been updated today. [Later: update here.]

Stock market: the market keeps rising but millennials aren't reaping the benefits. The WSJ.

Many millennials, having suffered through two nasty bear markets in the first years of their working lives, are missing out on some of the gains from the rally that brought the Dow Jones Industrial Average to 30,000. 

The stock market’s surge in the midst of the pandemic has given investors confidence and helped businesses raise capital. It has also come with big swings, including one of the worst selloffs in history followed by one of the fastest recoveries, with triple-digit point moves in the Dow commonplace. 

This has made many young investors wary of putting too much of their assets in stocks. 

About half of millennials—generally defined as people born from about 1981 until 1996, sometimes called Generation Y—are invested in the stock market, roughly the same ratio as members of Generation X were at the same age, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. 

The difference is that the value of their holdings is nearly a third lower than their counterparts at the same age, according to the St. Louis Fed.

Public transit agencies; in deep doo-doo. Waiting for Biden bailout. From The WSJ:

Public transit agencies across the U.S. are cutting service and reducing their workforces as they face a cash crunch that is worsening along with the coronavirus pandemic. Ridership is stuck at historically low levels and the current Covid-19 surge has further dimmed odds that large numbers of riders will return to buses, subways and commuter railroads soon, officials say. Federal funding that agencies received from the spring’s relief package is starting to run out, and local tax revenues that support many transit systems have shriveled. In San Francisco, the Muni transit system faces the biggest crisis of its 110-year history, said Jeffrey Tumlin, transportation director of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency. Bus boardings are down 70%, and transit revenue has plunged 93%.

Tesla truck: update. From The WSJ.

The Semi, to be built at Tesla’s Austin, Texas, factory, and due to customers starting next year, will be a new challenge for the Silicon Valley electric-car maker. It will test how far Tesla has come with battery improvements it teased in September, how far it can push its manufacturing capabilities and whether the company can break into a new industry where Mr. Musk’s star power has less pull among buyers primarily concerned about price and practicality. 

The Semi features around five times more battery cells than Tesla’s passenger cars, which Mr. Musk has said constrained his progress on the trucks. Some observers say such delays are evidence of Mr. Musk’s tendency to overpromise and under deliver. 

Truck demand is up amid a surge in e-commerce orders amid the coronavirus pandemic. 

To satisfy their immediate needs, companies have been buying up diesel-powered trucks, with North American sales in October up 83% over last year. 

The purchases mean some fleet owners will put off truck renewals another five to 10 years, so Tesla may have to wait for a shot at winning that business. 

Truckers also are driving their cabs farther, logging on average about 20% more miles weekly in November than in April. 

Tesla has yet to prove the Semi can handle 500-mile hauling with rough weather or steep terrain. Diesel trucks typically can go about 1,600 miles before refueling and can top-up at stations at every major freeway exit. 

Battery charging stations are still sparse. 

Tesla says its trucks will sell for $150,000 to $200,000, a price that analysts say looks more realistic since the company in September unveiled advancements that would bring the cost of batteries down by 56% and boost energy capacity to increase driving range by 54%. 

Yet at $150,000, a Tesla Semi costs around 25% more than the average diesel truck. The difference could be at least partly offset by government credits. Tesla says the trucks will provide more than $200,000 in gas savings over a truck’s lifetime and fleets will recoup their investment in two years.

Sunday, November 29, 2020

First things first: a reader noted that the Christmas tree in Williston is thirteen feet taller and one ton heavier than the one in NYC. Just saying.

• From rockefellercenter:
• 75 feet tall and eleven tons
• from roundupweb:
• Williston's Colorado Blue Spruce was donated by Tiffany and Jason Brevik
• was cut down at 9th Street E and 3rd Avenue E
• they had been trying to donate the tree for three years; it's an old tree; risk of falling on their house
• the tree is 88 feet tall and weighs twelve tons
• it was downsized by about 20 feet to ensure stability in its holder
• it is located on the corner of 26th Street E and 2nd Avenue West
• that would be where the "bypass" intersects US Highway 2 north of "old Williston"
• you know, where Applebee's and a branch of First State Bank are located
• see photo here; 

Texas hawk: maybe someone knows for sure, but my first guess -- this is a red-shouldered hawk outside our apartment. 

 I'm comparing it to this group of photos of hawks in the DFW area. 

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Another "Bird"

I was alerted to this story by "Outrun Change," a blog that is linked at the sidebar at the right. 

Here is a direct link to an update regarding the B-52.

I still maintain that blogs are one of the best ways to "scrapbook" for future generations.