Jussie Smollett Found Guilty FWIW; Daimler Truck Day One Tomorrow; CPI Tomorrow -- Will We Hit Seven Percent? December 9, 2021

Daimler Trucks splits off tomorrow. I've been looking forward to this day for a long, long time. This is really, really going to be interesting. I have some photos of the EV truck factory in the Daimler factory in Portland, OR, with the proto-type on which the mechanics are training. I'm not posting the photos. I don't know who took the photos but I don't want anyone to get fired. Something tells me those photos were not authorized. I would expect to see / hear an interview on CNBC tomorrow on this new EV truck company, but CNBC may not think it's that big a deal. I won't be watching CNBC. I haven't watched CNBC since the "flash crash" the day after Thanksgiving. It's unlikely I will start watching again until after January 1, 2022.  One of a gazillion links here.

 XLNX / AMD merger: shorts are building. Link here. The other day I suggested what these two equities could settle at prior to the merger. Again, we're assuming the merger closes before the end of the year.

• $228 / sh XLNX
• $132.75 / sh AMD

• XLNX fell 4%, fell almost $10/share, to close at $215 / share
• AMD fell 5%, fell over $7/share, to close at $138 / share. 
• Interesting, huh?

Starbucks: the employees at one of three Starbucks restaurants in Buffalo, NY, were the first to ever unionize a Starbucks restaurant. Link here. Starbucks, the company, may want to "get ahead" of this sooner than later. Later: this is such a crazy story. This is not a grass roots effort. This is being pushed by "Big Labor" and "Big Labor" lost. There are nineteen Starbuck restaurants in Buffalo; one of the nineteen, unionized. How many employees at that one Starbucks? Nineteen, I believe. Fact-check needed. And of the nineteen employees, not all voted to unionize. Wait until these employees start paying union dues. LOL.

CPI data for November, 2021, will be released Friday morning, 8:30 a.m. ET, December 10, 2021. The forecast is for 6%+. Anything below 6.7% will be "what we expected" but if it's 7% or greater it will be quite a story. I think I saw a headline today that Brandon is already preparing Americans to expect the worst, telling us the November data is already "old" and does not reflect the significant drop in prices we've already seen in December. For example, except today when I saw gasoline prices go up again in my neighborhood, gasoline had dropped two cents / gallon in the last couple of weeks. 

Supply chain shortage: likewise, with cargo ships anchoring beyond the horizon while waiting for berthing at the Los Angeles / Long Beach ports, the congestion at the ports has been greatly reduced. So, we're making headway. 

More on the economy here.

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North Texas

It is impossible to articulate how beautiful the weather is right now. I had to pick up something at Target tonight; pitch black after 8:00 p.m. CT; and it was nice enough to wear my short-sleeve Hawaiian shirt while riding my bike. 

Target was incredibly busy. If this is any indication of how the economy is doing, the economy is doing very, very well.