Is It A Slow News Day? June 8, 2021

Job openings: highest ever -- the number is so huge, no one can get their hands around it -- there are now 9.3 million jobs available in the US. This number is a record high, going back to when this number started being reported back in 2000. Analysts forecast about 8 million job openings. It will be interesting to see the breakdown of this number. 

10-yr: 1.53%.You know, if this "inflationary period is transitory," there could be a lot of problems for recent home buyers. Just thinking out loud. 

Let them eat cake: speaking of inflation. I only eat white bread priced $1.29 or less per loaf. And preferably at least a week old. My wife brought me this loaf today, 85 cents/loaf. She said she refused to splurge and would not buy the $1.29 loaf. 

Amazon logistics: yesterday morning, about 10:00 a.m. my wife and I got to talking about her 14,500 photos on her iPhone (that is not inaccurate) and the amount of memory left on her MacBook Air (she is using about 45 GB of the 121 GB it has). I suggested she move her photos to an external hard drive and one thing led to another and by 10:30 a.m. I ordered her a 1TB Seagate external hard drive. That was yesterday morning, sometime between 10:20 a.m. and 10:30 a.m.

The hard drive arrived at our door at about 2:35 p.m. -- I forgot to check the exact time -- but think about that -- the order went in at 10:30 a.m or thereabouts, the robot located it, dropped it in basket, moved it the end of the conveyor belt; meanwhile, a mailing label and package material was being prepared. The oil-based synthetic plastic-like packaging envelope with mailing label and product met somewhere along the line; the hard drive was placed in the envelope and sealed. 

Then, and this is the really, really amazing part, the package was put on the conveyor belt that took it to the exact van that was going to be in my neighborhood later that day. Think about that. Think about how many neighborhoods Amazon touches in the north Texas region which includes Dallas and Ft Worth. That's the piece that boggles my mind. 

For me, it's not a big deal, relatively speaking, for a robot to find the product and getting it placed in an addressed envelope. What amazes me is this: how does the package get on the correct "little" neighborhood van? I'm sure every reader has a perfectly logical explanation how Amazon does this, but I still think it is phenomenal. I would use the words "magic" or "miraculous" but I tend not to believe in either (at least among mortals). 

Wendy's: up 21% today. Like rig counts in the unconventional oil patch, fundamentals in the stock market no longer matter. 

The market:

• One of my favorite companies is selling off today; for me, a buying opportunity. 
  
• NASDAQ having another good day.
• AAPL: a great WWDC keynote speech yesterday. This was not for the retail sector or the stock market; this was simply for developers. This is a big, big deal for developers. It was interesting to see the icons for streaming companies that were prominently displayed: Hulu really stood out; I did not see Roku.

API: in the tech world, stands for something other than the American Petroleum Institute. 

Target: hitting on all cylinders. I am not invested in Target but I love the shopping experience there. Their meat selection is lousy compared to local supermarkets, and their floral department is incredibly poor, but overall, a great shopping experience. 

Siri: this is funny. Jim Cramer has an Apple watch. He says he told "Alexa, set my alarm for 3:00 a.m." Just then, he realized he said "Alexa" when he meant Siri and he actually said, "Siri, I apologize. I meant Siri, not Alexa." He says, "Siri responded, 'saying that happens a lot.'" Don't you just love it? Sort of like the oil and gas industry trolling North Face in Denver.