Are We Done Here, Today? February 4, 2022

I have to leave shortly to study Spanish and do a bit of reading, John Dvorak's How The Mountaints Grew.

Some parting shots.

FB: it will take years for FB to recover. I'm not talking about share price, but that may also be true, but talking about its headwinds: Apple security policies; TikTok videos; and, metaverse, which may have been Zuckerman's biggest mistep ever. The rest of the market, excluding SPACs and specks (the meme stocks) will recover within weeks, if not days. Looking for a really, really strong week next week.

My favorite graph:

White House: looking in rear view mirror when talking about Covid. Excited to talk about availability of masks and vaccine mandates. Meanwhile, Alberta and Saskatchewan have said "enough is enough." 

White House: won't deny that lock downs were the worse thing that could have been done. In today's press conference. 

White House: great news. The White House continues to explore ways to bring down the price of crude oil.

WTI: at $93 was not on my bingo card today.

Amazon: shares soar 15% after earning; will hike membership fee, and 99.999% of current subscribers will re-subscribe. Unlike FB, Amazon is nowhere near maxing out subscriber growth.

Texas freeze: most-hyped Texas story in weeks, months? The grid never came close to failing. The "cold" lasted maybe 24 hours. Today, bright sunshine and 32°F will melt all ice. If by 8:00 p.m. tonight all that melted ice dries out, even sub-freezing temperatures overnight won't result in black ice. More importantly, the "ice-on-trees" resulted in very few downed power lines. And downed power lines are the fault of cities and/or homeowner associations who refuse to trim back trees before winter. Anti-Abbott heads are exploding. They wanted worse/worst. Everybody knows.

Saudi Arabia: inshallah. Read the social media responses from Saudi Arabia in the thread the link. Baghdad Bob is reporting.