Notes From All Over -- "Are You Kidding Me" Edition -- July 10, 2020

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site.  Do not make any investment, financial, job, career, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here.

The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself. I wasn't going to look at the market today. Futures and headlines suggested a "bad" day on the market. Then, while closing windows left open from yesterday, I saw AMZN. Are you kidding me?

• AMZN: up another $10 for the day and that's only 0.3%; trading close to $3200; market cap just under $1.7 trillion; closes at $3,200, up another $2 after hours;
• AAPL: choppy; a bit of profit taking, but not much; trading down about 0.3%; down about $1.20; trading around $382; closes at $384
• IMUX: down 4%; trading at $12.20; closes at $12.27 but up 1.6% after hours;
• MSFT: down 0.4%; down about 86 cents; trading around $213; closes down a bit, at $214;
• TSLA: up a whopping 11%; up over $150/share; now trading near $1,545/share;

At the close:

• NASDAQ hits an all-time high; fourth record close this week;
• S&P 500: up 33 points
• Dow: up 370 points

Surge: said to be related to Gilead's news that they may have oral anti-viral


PGA: looks like Jordan Spieth will miss the cut line; needs a birdie at the final hole to get to one under which looks like the cut line; he did not do that; par at the 18th;

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Just For Fun

Timeless:

Blue Oyster Cult: "Hey guys, let's get a jump on writing the theme song for 2020."

June, 2020, Dashboards Posted

The link is here.

The EIA dashboard links:

• EIA pdf, Bakken: https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/drilling/pdf/bakken.pdf
• EIA, pdf, Permian: https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/drilling/pdf/permian.pdf
• EIA, pdf, Eagle Ford: https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/drilling/pdf/eagleford.pdf

I can't recall if these have been previously reported. Look closely at the numbers: the Eagle Ford is a monster.

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Coming Back On Line

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New Jacket 

Heat index in north Texas, 110°.

A/c is turned on so high at Tutor Time, Sophia needs to wear a light jacket during the day.

Old Navy -- without question --  has the nicest light jacket selection for this age group, and prices are stunningly low with huge discounts. Retailers need to move winter, spring, summer inventory -- affected by C-19 -- for fall arrivals.

One Well Coming Off Confidential List -- July 10, 2020

Top story: another unfortunate event reported. Major explosion rocks Iran -- third time in three weeks. Link here. Officials deny reports. Some suggest Israeli target practice.

Running out of dinero? Robert De Niro. Cuts estranged wife's monthly credit card limit from $100K to $50 (per month); she says she can't make it on that. Link here.

Schadenfreude: word of the day.

Manhattan rental market implodes: median rent plunges most ever as vacancies hit record high. Too bad Amazon didn't move to Long Island. 

Saudi US imports: looks like fourth-lowest month in history, April, 2020. Link here.

OPEC basket, link here: flat at $43.31. Saudi can't make it on that.

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Back to the Bakken

Active rigs:

$39.06	7/10/2020	07/10/2019	07/10/2018	07/10/2017	07/10/2016
Active Rigs	11	58	66	57	29

One well coming off confidential list -- Friday, July 10, 2020: 35 for the month; 35 for the quarter, 481 for the year:

• 29628, drl/NC, Hess, TI-Beauty Valley-158-95-1423H-1, no production data, look how old this permit is, a 29XXX series. The most recent permit: #37705.

RBN Energy: US LNG export demand unravels.

U.S. LNG exports in recent months have gone from providing a consistent and growing source of demand to balance the U.S. natural gas market to now being a drag on demand growth and the gas market balance. Rising storage surpluses and record low prices in Europe and Asia, along with relative strength in the U.S. national benchmark prices at Henry Hub, have turned the economics upside down for U.S. exports and led to widespread cancellations of contracted cargoes. Feedgas deliveries and cargo liftings at Lower-48 terminals both have plummeted to the lowest levels since early 2019, despite domestic liquefaction capacity climbing by more than 4 Bcf/d since then. Moreover, the dynamics that led to the current predicament are likely to persist at least through injection season and potentially even beyond that to a certain extent. Today, we provide an update on how cargo cancellations have affected U.S. gas demand for exports, overall and at individual terminals.

Huge News For Apple Sales, 2Q10 -- July 9, 2020

As middle schools, high schools, universities and graduate schools go to "all on-line" Apple will be the major beneficiary.

Apple and education are joined at the hip.

Google Chrome and elementary education is likewise joined at the hip, but no self-respecting student over the age of fourteen would be seen dead with Google Chrome.

Doubts? Watch product placement on television shows and movies (mostly now seen in the comfort of one's home or streaming).

Now this, being reported today: Apple's worldwide Mac shipments were up over 5% during 2Q20, amid overall PC market growth.

And just one year ago, "everyone" said the Mac was dead and PC market growth had plateaued and would not decrease over time. But, of course, that was BC (before corona).

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site.  Do not make any investment, financial, job, career, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here.

Note that Google Chrome is not in the table above: unless things have changed, Acer and Samsung make the Google Chrome. Samsung is not listed, and Acer is just below Apple.

Note that "Others" showed a 22% decrease in growth but overall shipments increased by 2.8%.

At the linked article:

According to Gartner, PC shipment growth during the quarter was driven by purchases necessary for working from home and online education. The upward tick in shipments is not expected to continue.

Cognitive dissonance.

By the way, it's all about "margins" when it comes to earnings. A reader noted and I agree wholeheartedly:

If you compare the price of a Mac with the price from Lenovo, HP, and Dell, Apple has a great market share.

You can buy easily an HP laptop at $249 for example.

Yup. I’d love to know what Apple’s share of premium (over say $750 or $1,000) desktops and/or laptops are. Lumping $300 disposable laptops in with Macs makes as much sense as grouping $10 fitness bands in with Apple Watch. Or HomePod in with those $19 Google home or Amazon Echo online hot mics. Or $30 tablets with iPad.

It does kind of make me wonder what the market share of golf carts and riding mowers are compared to Honda Civics and BMW M8s

It is interesting to note that our older daughter bought a brand new Mac table-top this past quarter solely for telemedicine.

I'm sure the comments at the linked article will be as snarky as ever. LOL.

What do Trump and Apple have in common? No one loves either and they are both being sued by everyone, but they keep on truckin'.

But look at this:

IDC also released its own PC shipment estimates this afternoon, and its estimations are wildly different.

IDC's data suggests Apple shipped 5.6 million Macs during Q2 2020, up 36 percent from the 4.1 million estimated to have shipped in Q2 2019.

IDC believes that the overall worldwide PC market saw 11.2 percent growth with 72.3 million total PCs shipped, while Gartner believes there were 64.8 million total PCs shipped during the quarter.

I can hardly wait for Tim Cook's next earnings presentation.

By the way, this story was being reported elsewhere. From Fox Business News --

Personal-computer sales rebounded in the June quarter, driven by higher demand from workers and students forced to study and work from home amid the coronavirus, according to preliminary data from two industry-research firms.

Global PC shipments rose 11% to 72.3 million in the quarter, with the U.S. posting its highest quarterly-shipment volume in more than a decade, according to preliminary data from International Data Corp.

2Q20

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

Calendar.

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site.

Earnings -- 2Q20

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.

NOG: posted here;

MDU: link here. Beats.

SRE: link here. Huge beat.

MSFT: beats

TSLA: blows past estimates; fourth consecutive quarter showing a profit;


BRK: contributor over at SeekingAlpha. Monthly update of dividend-paying stocks held by Berkshire Hathaway. I have not read of the article, mostly the summary, and even not much of that.

AAPL: Morgan Stanley-- Apple to outperform 2Q20 estimates; forecast revenue and EPS of $55.1 billion and $2.18 EPS;  posted July 26, 2020; Apple to report after market closes on July 31; on July 24, CNN reported earnings and sales forecast for AAPL: EPS, $2.03; sales, $51.9 billion; outstanding shares, 4.33 billion [4.33 x 2.03 = 8.7899].

AAPL: earnings here; record for the June quarter;

VZ: beats estimates; EPS, $1.13 per share, vs 40.95 per share a year earlier.

Tech:

• MFST: $10.6 billion, reports July 30, 2020
• AAPL: $8.8 billion; AAPL topped MSFT by 5% in 1Q20
• so, EPS numbers to watch -- MSFT, 10; AAPL: 9. 

SRE to use Bloom Energy fuel cells.

BlackRock profit beats Street estimates. Profit jumps 21% on fixed-income boost.

Market finally notices: retail sales jump 7.5% in June, 2020. Excluding gasoline, US retail sales have come all the way back ot pre-pandemic trendline growth.

Analyst: Amazon will beat 2Q20 earnings estimate. Calls for revenue of $81.3 billion, a 28% year-over-year increase and above the high end of Amazon's guidance of between $75 billion and $81 billion. The estimate is 0.8% above consensus.

Tesla: Tesla vehicle registrations in California dropped by half in 2Q20. Link here.

Fast and furious. I've just scanned the financial headlines, and the earnings reports are surprisingly good. Headlines without links are from Yahoo!Finance:

• Morgan Stanley earnings crushes views, link here;
• Morgan Stanley joins Wall Street's gold rush with record profit;
• Bank of America, link here;
• AstraZeneca stock jumps on report of positive data on Covid-19 vaccine trial;
• Domino's US sales surge on pizza demand during pandemic;
• Johnson & Johnson earnings top; Dow Jones giant raises full-year guidance; 
• Abbot Labs' stock gains after profit, revenue and full-year outlook top expectations;