Idle Rambling, Nothing About The Bakken -- February 11, 2021

This has nothing to do with investing. These are simply some of the "things" I'm most interested in right now:

• Sports talk: "the commercial." Simply brilliant. It still dominates sports talk television.
• Apple: is Apple re-considering "margins"? Moats? Does Tim Cook want to be a car company (moats non-existent) or a chip company (huge moats)?
• Trucking: is Daimler Truck becoming the Apple in the trucking world? on the blog!
  
• Shelby: starting her own trucking company?
  
• Investing: time to go back to watching CNBC? This one's easy; nope ... with exceptions:
• on mute during the day; occasionally tuning into mute screen during the noon hour
• Melissa's "Fast Money" segment; occasionally; not on Fridays

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.  

Markets today: 

• NASDAQ closes at a record high.
• Dow hit intraday high but then fell back to close at a slight loss. 

Disney reported after hours:

• closed up 0.75% just ahead of earnings release:
• after hours: up over 2%
• beats estimates
• subscribers soar to 95 million; well ahead of the 90 million forecast;
• unexpected profit; a loss was expected!
• earned 32 cents / share vs a loss of 38 cents expected;

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NYC Rentals

Apparently landlords are offering rent-free deals -- absolute panic in NYC -- CNBC -- crawler -- February 11, 2021. Panic, as in pandemic. Link here.  

There are so many vacant apartments in New York City now that some landlords are offering three months free rent—a more generous concession than the usual one- or two-months of free rent that you can usually find—and a sign of how badly owners are struggling to fill vacant apartments during the pandemic.

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Texas

When we first moved to the Dallas-Ft Worth (DFW) area eight years ago, it was my observation that 80% -- if not 90% -- of federal dollars for interstate construction / maintenance was being spent in Texas. I probably was not too far off based on this next statistic.

It's being reported that Texas has four of the top five cities for new apartment construction: Dallas, Austin, Houston, and San Antonio. 

The big question, which is the fifth? My guesses:

• tri-city area, North Carolina
• DC - northern Virginia
• Tampa - Miama, FL
• Phoenix, AZ