Starting To Clear Out The In-Box -- March 28, 2023

There were a number of stories in the past 24 hours that caught my interest. I've already covered some of them and posted them, but may have put them back in draft to re-post later.

The stories that will make the blog today:

• Lana Del Rey's ninth album. I have a long post on that already. I can't recall if it's still posted or back in draft stage. Regardless, by midnight tonight the post will be completed and back up on the blog. Again, The WSJ entry.
  

• Russia's economy is coming undone. From The WSJ today. Haven't posted the blog or the links yet; again, will have that done by midnight tonight.

• Semiconductors are starting to report 2Q23 results. Micron reported a huge loss, coming in worse than expected, and the estimates were already set quite low. Micron's 2Q23 ended March 2, 2023. Don't ask. LOL. They must use a strange calendar in Boise. Link here. A word search suggests that "Micron MU" has been mentioned on the blog only one time. Link here.
  

• Crude oil prices doing great, up another one percent today and well above $73 at the close. I don't think anyone really knows why WTI is doing so well; lots of ideas being floated. In the big scheme of things: China's re-opening.

• US home prices, down for the seventh straight month. Was that jump in home prices transitory? Link here. A quick blurb:
  

All 20 cities reported lower prices in the year ending January 2023 versus the year ending December 2022, the report said.

Regionally, the cities that saw the largest price gains over last year in January were in Miami, Tampa, and Atlanta with year-over-year increases 13.8%, 10.5%, 8.4%, respectively.

On the other hand, once-popular markets such as San Francisco, San Diego, Portland, and Seattle all saw homes prices fall against the prior year, with drops of 7.6%, 1.4%, and 5.1%, respectively.

Russia's economy coming undone, see link above:

Russian foreign exchange reserves, link here:

Investing: laser focused on dividends.  This is quite fascinating. One can find any number of analysts coming up with "top-10" dividend lists. It's quite fascinating to see the overlap. Morningstar, for example, came out with a list this week, link here. Morningstar had a list of ten. Pfizer made the list. But take a close look at the blurbs for each of the ten. Example: here are #7 - #10, what do you notice?

• The very first criteria? Moat.

• On March 24, 2023, I also mentioned "moat." 
  

Wikipedia: it's interesting how fast Wikipedia can "react." This is the wiki entry for Lana Del Rey's newest album. The wikipedia entry was "dated" 2200 hours, March 27, 2023, for the original entry. By the way, does anyone have any idea how Wiki "chooses" what items "deserve" a wiki page? I think I know.

Lana Del Rey: one from her new album.