Clearing Out The In-Box -- February 16,2021

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.  

Not much in the in-box. The focus has been on the winter storm. If ERCOT had not crashed (think one or two coal plants) this would have been a non-story. By the end of the week, the worst will be over; in a month, all will be forgotten, and the Californians that have moved to Texas will be back to building wind farms. And so it goes.

Clearing out the in-box:

Apple: Apple's legacy 50 years from now? Health and wellness, led by the Apple Watch. Link here to Inc. Tim Cook doesn't mention the autonomous vehicle. At least not in the article.

XOM: one of the best performers so far in 2021.

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. 

Resigned in disgrace: David Ismay resigns after telling folks in Massachusetts it's time to "break the will" of the seniors in that state. Link here. He will surface somewhere else.

Japan: will start vaccinating tomorrow with Pfizer's vaccine. Link here.  But, Japan is short syringes.

Unreliable: renewables. But we already knew that. Just a visual reminder.

SD attorney general: no news. But the little that trickles out pretty much tells the likely story. 

LTL: new trucking term for me. Some truckers are thriving as companies reset supply chains. It's all possible due to technology. From the linked article at The WSJ:

Companies including Old Dominion Freight Line Inc., ArcBest Corp. and Saia Inc. are expanding as businesses try to make their supply chains more nimble to catch up to rapidly shifting consumer demands. That is driving more freight into less-than-truckload operations, where trucking companies carry shipments from multiple customers on a single trailer, boosting revenues and pricing leverage for the carriers.

Old Dominion, the second-largest operator in the sector after FedEx Corp.’s FedEx Freight unit, this month said it has added nine service centers to its U.S. network since the start of 2020 and plans several additions this year. That puts the Thomasville, N.C.-based operator among the businesses that are growing even as the coronavirus pandemic batters big parts of the U.S. economy.

Operators in the highly competitive sector are benefiting as businesses scramble to meet surging e-commerce demand from shoppers who are ordering everything from paper towels to furniture online.

Companies that used to ship truckloads of merchandise to big, remote distribution centers are opening compact warehouses in cities and suburbs, where space constraints require smaller and more frequent shipments to keep goods in stock.