Dayton 500 Postponed -- Double-Header Monday -- To Be Run February 19, 2024

Locator: 46839NASCAR. 

The "junior" series race will start at 11:00 a.m. ET. The "senior" series race will start at 4:00 p.m.

My Favorite Chart Updated -- February 18, 2024

Locator: 46838MMF. 

Link here. Starting to look like the global atmospheric CO2 chart.

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A Bit More Detail

From February 1, 2024: 

Locator: 46710INV.

Investors are happy about all this cash on the sideline. They shouldn't be; we've discussed this before (December 19, 2023):

More than $6 trillion "on the sidelines." Some talking heads on CNBC and some tweeters opine that a lot of that money could flow back into the equity market in 2024 if the Fed cuts rates. Not gonna happen. Most of that money was moved from checking and savings accounts at banks. Huge problem for regional banks. Some of that MMF money will flow back into the equity market but most of it will stay in MMFs. Compared to MMFs, equities are riskier and even at 2%, MMF compare favorably with equities in many cases. 

People that put money into MMFss are not going to put that money into the stock market. At least not $6 trillion. My mother exemplified the typical "investor" in MMFs, as does my wife. 

Link here.

Not Much Blogging Today -- On The Road again -- IN PROGRESS -- February 18, 2024

Locator: 46837ARCHIVES.  

Tomorrow we will post the wells coming off confidential list this next week and talk a bit about re-fracking. There was an article this past week updating the subject. 

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In San Antonio

We came to San Antonio for two reasons. My wife needed a ton of Mexican objects d'art for our granddaughter's Spanish club extravaganza in March. I dreaded the El Mercado but was pleasantly surprised. I'm ready to go back.

The second reason we came to San Antonio was to see the seventh wonder of the world: the completed interstate system (I-10 through and over downtown) and the completed US Highway 281 - Texas Highway 1604 interchange. My hunch is that these two projects, apparently completed during the same time period -- 1980 - 2020 --  were the costliest, when combined) highway projects in the US at that time. If not the costliest, they were certainly the most daring and most innovative, and could only be accomplished where there is no ice in the winter, and, to some extent, no tectonic activity, and thus no fracking. That's farther west. But that's just my idle rambling. I'm sure the truth is much different, but certainly, the result is the seventh wonder of the world.

Link here for the double-deck freeways. 

 

We had not planned on this but stumbled into a Lego store on the northwest side of the city, at La Cantera. If the completed San Antonio transportation system is the seventh wonder of the world, La Cantera is either the eighth or the ninth. The Bakken Energy Project certainly has to fit in there somewhere.

It turns out that the Lego store at La Cantera is Lego's newest store, the most recent Lego store opened worldwide. It is Lego's 1,000th store. It was opened last September (2023). I might provide a Lego story later this week. The Apple computer company could learn a lot from Lego.

Dinner last night: sushi. Incredible. Also in the La Cantera area but technically not part of La Cantera as far as I can tell. You know how restaurants are identified by reviewers when it comes to price: one $, or two $$, or three $$$, or four $$$$. This was billed as two $$ -- my price range. When we drove up we noted: no street parking available; Merrill Lynch on one corner and KPMG on another corner; a blue Lamborghini parked in a no-parking spot reserved for those who can afford parking tickets to park in such spots. Ruth's Chris Steak House, which seems to be to San Antonio high-end restaurants what HEB is to south Texas and What-A-Burger is to Corpus Christi seemed almost out of place, like a McDonald's, was on the third corner. And then us, two yokels walking into a sushi restaurant with a price rating of two $$.

Perhaps two $$ on this corner, but four, maybe five $$$$$ in DFW. I would not be able to walk in the door of a three $$$ or a four $$$$ Japanese restaurant if that two $$ was accurate. Having said that, the Sake was priced about what I pay at "cheap" sushi restaurants back home. Only about ten tables and with no reservations, it might have been bleak. Asked if we would sit at the sushi bar -- no brainer -- wow -- three chairs at the bar. That's how small, how intimate that restaurant was. My hunch, to get a reservation for a table on a Friday / Saturday night between 6:30 and 9:30 would be a three- to six-week wait. And that's if your second car is a Lamborghini.

The owner of the blue Lamborghini was at the table behind us. Probably slightly younger than  I. He was wearing his rakish newsboy wool cap. In the screenshot below, he's the one on the far right.

OKAY -- more later -- we're headed ....  to the River Walk. San Antonio Zoo, who knows.

[Later: we ended up in Fredericksburg, about an hour north of San Antonio.]

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Books For Day

From Half-Price Book Store yesterday.

• The Guide to Jewish Books, Barry W. Holtz, c. 1992.
• An annotated copy of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice.

So, much more but it will have to wait.