William Shatner Lifts Off. Blue Origin. 9:50 A.M. CT -- October 13, 2021

Captain Kirk / William Shatner lifts off. Blue Origin. Four crew members. Second such flight. Watching live on CNBC. 

Two paying flight crew; one Blue Origin executive; William Shatner. 

Projected: an eleven-minute flight. Several minutes of weightlessness.

I strongly disagree with those who say this is simply an "ego trip" -- no pun intended -- for the rich and famous. Every launch provides:

• confidence in the process;
• experience, lessons learned;
• excitement for tens of thousands of elementary students;

These launches are not without significant risk, and yet these men and women take that risk. 

Has commercial / private flight to space moved more quickly that commercial air flight pioneered by the Wright Bros? I don't know but it seems so.

"Astronauts" will soon be allowed to lower their tray tables, unbuckle their seat belts, and move freely through the cabin. 

Booster rocket now beginning its controlled recovery.

The booster has just landed ... upright....it's fourth trip to space and back.

The booster remains upright. 

That was absolutely scary.  And no one board. But still scary.

Capsule now with parachutes deployed.

We'll soon see how the sudden stop on earth affects a 90-year old person.

Jeff Bezos needs to put the Amazon swoosh on the parachutes.

Capsule has just landed, 10:00 a.m. CT. It looks like about a ten-minute flight.

Live video by drone.

Truly incredible.  

It will take a few minutes for ground support vehicles to reach the landing site. Helicopter on scene. All four passengers / crew members have given thumbs up.

Waiting to see make / model of first SUV ground support vehicle. 

Could it be the CyberTruck? LOL.

Second vehicle in trail now arriving.

All crew members walk out on their own. William Shatner looked more stable / less shaky than I would have looked. LOL.

3Q21 Earnings

Note: this is, hands down, one of the most boring things I to do each quarter. I doubt anyone really looks at it but the day I quit doing this will be the day I miss posting something important. The word "important" is used loosely. Very loosely.

This is so boring that I actually didn't record a thing for 1Q20, but that over a year ago. Maybe things have changed. LOL.

This is linked at the top of the sidebar at the right during earnings season. After earnings -- pretty much after PXD and Apple posts their earnings -- this post will move back into obscurity.

Calendar. 

Whisper numbers.

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site.

Earnings -- 3Q21

 
July - August, 2021

This is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial, job, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or what you think you may have read here. If this is important to you, go to the source. There will be content and typographical errors on this page. If something looks wrong, it probably is.

A lot of anticipation and excitement over this quarter's earnings reports. We're continuing to come out of the global pandemic; the lockdowns began in March, 2020, about a year ago. The stock market has had an incredible run since the presidential election about nine months ago. 

The big problems now:

• supply chain disruption;
• record lack of workers;
• energy crisis in Europe, UK 

Week of October 18 - 22, 2021:

• Thursday: UNP

• UNP, 3Q21 earnings:

• profit topped analysts' expectations
• cost cuts and price increases bolstered the bottom line even as cargo growth lagged
• UNP cut its 2021 volume target
• volume growth, 5%, down from a target of 7%;
• EPS: $2.57 vs $2.51, and higher than than the $2.01 a year earlier;
• revenue rose 13% to $5.6 billion vs $5.4 billion forecast
• Wednesday: BKR, TSLA, 
• TSLA: huge quarter; beat across the board; making money even without credits;
  
• BKR: misses on profit; 16 cents vs forecast of 21 cents; 
  
• Tuesday: HAL, JNJ, KSU, BK,
• JNJ: huge beat; 
• HAL: mixed. Matched forecasts with quarterly profit of 28 cents per share. Revenue fell short. Upbeat for the rest of the year and going into next year.
• NFLX, BKR, CSX, LUV, TSCO, UNP, INTC, SLB to name a few.

October 15, 2021:

Alcoa: set another record for quarterly net income and EPS:

• Adjusted EPS: $2.05 vs $1.94 whisper, higher than posted expectations
• EPS: $1.76
• Revenue: $3.1 billion vs $2.91 billion
  

Goldman Sachs: crushes expectations

• EPS: $14.93 vs $10.18
• revenue: $13.61 billion vs $11.68 billion
• profit: surged 63% to $5.28 billion
• revenue: climbed 26% to $13.61 billion

October 13, 2021:
Blow-out earnings: JP Morgan, Blackrock,

Notes From All Over -- The Global Oil Inventory Edition -- October 13, 2021

Jim Cramer's chartist: crude oil has peaked this week. Currently, WTI trading at $79.70, about a dollar lower than yesterday. 

Global crude oil supplies, OECD:

• down by almost 20 million bbls month/month
• inventory at 2.88 billion bbls
• 363 million bbls lower than same time one year ago
• 183 million bbls lower than latest five-year average

EIA short-term energy outlook, link here:

• globally, 98.4 million bopd consumed in August, 2021
• = 4.0 million bopd less than August, 2019 (good comparison, finally)
• forecast:
• petroleum / liquid fuels will average 97.4 million bopd for all of 2021;
• = 5.0 million bopd increase from 2020
• and, by an additional 3.6 million bopd in 2022 to average 101.0 million bopd, almost even with 2019 levels

China coal, from a Chinese state planner --

• "We will compel closed coal mines in Shanxi, Shaanxi, and Inner Mongolia to repair and restart operations as quickly as possible.

Russian gas, from Putin --

• "We will deliver all the natural gas Europe needs."
• So far? Lowest since September, 2016.
  

AAPL: drops below $140-support level. 

********************************
Flathead Lake, Montana

No Wells Coming Off The Confidential List Today -- October 13, 2021

Active rigs, updated daily COB by NDIC:

$80.16	10/13/2021	10/13/2020	10/13/2019	10/13/2018	10/13/2017
Active Rigs	29	14	58	67	59

No wells coming off confidential list.

RBN Energy: railing Uinta Basin waxy crude to gulf coast refineries, part 2. Archived.

There are a number of reasons why certain U.S. refineries might want to include waxy crude oil from Utah’s Uinta Basin in their crude slates — the highly paraffinic oil has a lot of neat qualities. But waxy crude can be a hard sell, mostly because, like bacon fat, it needs to be kept warm to remain in a liquid, flowable state. 

As a result, the vast majority of the waxy crude produced is driven in insulated tanker trucks to refineries in nearby Salt Lake City. Uinta producers have been making progress of late, however, in sending regular shipments of waxy crude in coiled and insulated railcars to a couple of Gulf Coast refineries. Existing terminals would support incremental growth, and a proposed new railroad out of the basin would allow far larger volumes to be efficiently railed to market. In today’s RBN blog, we continue our look at the prospects for a most unusual type of crude oil.

Fast And Furious: Inflation Drops Month-Over-Month -- October 13, 2021

Updates

October 13, 2021: it's a bit early to tell for sure, but it appears the airlines are holding the line, requiring their employees to be vaccinated. most (?) airlines requiring vaccinations; Southwest Airlines still only "encouraging" vaccinations. Needs to be fact-checked, but that's what I think I saw on the news tonight.

Original Post

CPI: a very, very, very good report though Steve Liesman calls it a mixed bag

• 0.2 vs 0.3% estimated, ex-food and energy
• food: up 0.9%
• most sectors showing some relief

Snowfall:

• I-90 west of Rapid City closed due to snow; that was last night; not sure of status today; map here;
  
• Wyoming: blizzard conditions likely today -- Wednesday, October 14, 2021;
• seven-day forecast: 
• Baker, MT: 10 inches of snow possible;
• Glendive, MT: 5 inches
  

Not to worry: we may yet experience an "indigenous people's summer." Used to happen all the time in the 1950s and 1960s when I was growing up in Williston, though we called it something else then.

E&Ps, link here;

• bottomed one year ago;
• past year, market, price of shares:
  
• CLR: up 301%
• OXY: up 205%
• Ovintiv: up 304%
• Antero: up 421%
• PDC: up 295%
• Denbury: up 317%
• some did even better;

Most ridiculous soundbite this year?

• billionaires moving their money in $600 increments to defeat taxes -- Janet Yellen; can't make this stuff up; link here. It's on tape. 
• makes Joe Biden look like an Einstein on the economy
  

Joe Biden's press secretary, link here: let's go Brandon --

• premature shift to renewables is not causing energy crisis
• southwest employees did not sick out over vax mandates
• covid vax prevents spread
• brandon knew about the french spat over subs
• afghanistan withdrawal was a success

Jobs / JOLTS:

• record 4.3 million workers quit their jobs in August, led by food and retail industries;
• as bad as it was, not as bad as forecast;
• employment vacancies fell to 10.4 million in August, a drop of almost 700,000 from July's upwardly revised 11.1 million
• the decline was well short of market expectations for 10.96 million job postings
• the number of those quitting hit a new series high going back to December, 2002

AirBNB:

• hmmm? Investor's Business Daily;
• more later, if I remember
• quote here
• disclaimer: I have never invested in ABNB; no plans; posted for other reasons
  

Inflation:

• apparently just transitory; not to worry;
• likely to drop to 5.35 annual rate when numbers come out for last month -- WSJ;
• was 5.4% in June;
• economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal estimate the Labor Department will report the consumer-price index—which measures what consumers pay for goods and services—rose a seasonally adjusted 0.3% in September from August. That is the same pace as in August and down markedly from June’s 0.9% pace

Ports:

• Teamsters looking to work 24/7; to work around the clock -- WSJ;
• CNBC says White House will help key West Coast ports stay open 24/7;
  

Southwest Airlines:

• fifth day of bad weather; and, here; the point-to-point model works for decades and all of a sudden it doesn't?
• pilots warn of fatigue;

Kaiser Permanente:

• staff tired; overwhelmingly call for strike -- during worst pandemic in US history; okay;

Social security:

• could see 6% boost in COLA; would be most in forty years -- WSJ;
• later: it's official, a 5.9% COLA increase January 1, 2022 -- whoo-hoo.
  

Southern Surge:

• time for the blog to update "southern surge" home page;
  
• middle class migrants fly to Mexico and then cross border illegally, WSJ;
• the new surge? Brazilians;
  

Time to go:

• Walgreens closes five more stores in San Francisco: cites organized retail theft;

Market:

• Delta: great quarter; first profitable post-pandemic; first among US airlines; beats
  
• EPS: 30 cents vs 17 cents
• $9.15 billion vs $8.4 billion
  
• guidance: modest 4Q21 loss due to fuel costs;
• time to add a fuel surcharge
  
• Blackrock: beats -- a blowout quarter
  
• EPS: $5.05 vs. $4.94; not a big difference but goes from a "4-handle" to a "5-handle"
  
• revenue: $10.95 billion vs 9.35 billion; rose despite waiver of some fees
  
• outstanding quarter in almost all segments
• card spending up significantly
• sees "long transition" out of Covid -- will take much longer than expected
• working hard to transition to "green" revolution; led the way on banks deserting fossil fuel investment;
  
• JP Morgan 3Q21 results -- beats
  
• EPS: $3.74 vs $3.00
• $30.44 billion vs $29.76 billion
• credit card spend: up 25%
• first state to have branches in all lower 48 states: growing branches rather than trend to shrink branch numbers;

UN tires of Greta?

• UN refuses to advance Greta's lawsuit; back to square one.

Jon:

• how the NFL learned months ago they had a problem;

Fossil fuel investment, coal is dead! Long live coal:

• everyone's getting out of shale except smaller players -- WSJ;
• coal is untouchable;
• China backpedals on climate commitments; link to Irina Slav;
• coal: US utilities are burning more of this fossil fuel this year; making a run at 2018 levels in the next one to two years; sharp upturn in use of coal: US EIA;

Energy crisis:

• Russia's Gazprom now dipping into storage to meet Europe's demand for natural gas; link to Tsvetana Paraskova; 

Emissions:

• Germany: spending $36 billion / year on renewables yet their emissions haven't gone down since 2009;
• USA emissions have fallen; mainly due to fracking; link here;

UK grid on the brink, link to ZeroHedge via Oilprice:

• new UK law to mandate home EV chargers to switch off during peak hours;
• soon: all hours will be peak hours;

And, finally, how could we not mention Covid?

• rising Covid-19 numbers returning to pre-vaccine levels in Minnesota; hospitalizations reach a high for this year year; link here;
• are they playing professional and college football in Minnesota? Asking for a friend.
• Minnesota has a test positivity rate of 8.3% -- highest in the vaccine era
• a level of hospitalizations not seen since first jabs administered in mid-December, 2020
• more than 75% of eligible Minnesotans age 12 and over have received the vaccine
• nine of ten newly reported deaths: seniors -- despite a vaccination rate above 93% in that age group
• Minnesota: 7th worst among US states
• hard-hit states, like Florida, Louisiana: rates have dropped to among the lowest in the nation
• all this data consistent with my thoughts on the matter;
• but no one seems to be asking the right question(s) though the Minnesota, Florida, Louisiana experience probably answering some of those unanswered questions 
• unbiased data here;
• link for graph below:
  

Anyway, enough of this: time to make some French toast and bacon. Yes, bacon. I think bacon is 60% higher this year than last year but I'm eating 60% less so it's a wash.  

*******************************
The Wave

Olivia, October, 2021

$10,000 fine for entering this area without a permit. Enforced.