Notes From All Over -- Mid-Day Report -- Trump On Mount Rushmore -- August 10, 2020

First things first: AAPL now up 1.5%, or up almost $7/share, again trading above $451.

Sempra: Cameron LNG starts full commercial operations. Link here.

• Sempra Energy says the Cameron LNG export facility in Louisiana has begun full commercial operations under Cameron LNG's tolling agreements.
• commercial operations of Train 3 mark the beginning of full run-rate earnings under the facility's tolling agreements.
• Cameron LNG achieved commercial operations of Train 1 and Train 2 in August 2019 and February 2020, respectively.
• Sempra, which indirectly owns 50.2% of Cameron LNG, expects the facility to generate nearly $12B of after-debt service cash flows for the company during the 20-year contract period.

Market:

• Dow holds; still up 260 points at noon
  SRE: up 1.2%; trading at $131.45; still well off its 52-week high
• PE's
• Alteryx: earlier this month, 1,400, now n/a
• TSLA: 734
• AMZN: 120
• BRK-A: 51
• FB: 32
• Microsoft: 36
• AAPL: 34
• GOOG: 32
• BAC: 13
• MDU: 13
• SRE: 9
• F: n/a
• GE: n/a

New record highs: FedEx and UPS.

Plastic bags: the other day it was reported that Walmart, Target and CVS have teamed up to spent $2 billion on researching a substitute for plastic bags. Hint: Americans have already found an alternative to plastic bags: Amazon cardboard boxes. 

ICYMI: Trump on Mount Rushmore -- 

Would he be willing to share a mountain with four other presidents? Probably not. He's probably just looking into the process. There are a lot of other granite "mountains" in the Black Hills. I hope they use orange agate for the hair.

Kash-&-Kari's Plan To Lock Down The US For Six Weeks -- August 10, 2020

I will be updating my thoughts on this as we go along. I will post the original and then provide updates, as we usually do.

I track the coronavirus story here but I don't update it very much any more. I lost interest in this story when:

• I realized they were tracking the wrong metric;
• I learned the CDC's "definition of a case" which may or may not be the same definition that all states are using;
• the issue moved from the science/medical arena to the political arena
• I realized the whole reporting / analysis was a bunch of nonsense
  

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Updates

Later, 6:05 p.m. CDT, lock downs? Folks cheat. See this link. It's pretty obvious what happened here. 

An Argentine fishing boat that had been at sea for 35 days returned to land when some of its 61 crew showed symptoms of the new coronavirus, Tierra del Fuego Province's Health Ministry reported on Monday. 

Reports later that evening from local outlets said that 57 of the crew members had tested positive for Covid-19. The Ushuaia 24 news portal said that all of them remain isolated on the ship, the Etchizen Maru, and that they would not be allowed to disembark. Only medical personnel would be allowed to board, it added. 

The incident has attracted attention since prior to setting sail the 60 crew members had completed 14 days of mandatory quarantine in a hotel in Ushuaia, and before that they had been swabbed with a negative result, according to a statement from the Tierra del Fuego health portfolio, in the southern tip.

Later, 12:18 p.m. CDT, first some questions, quick:

• first, how many people are there in the United States?
• second, how man cases of Covid-19 have been diagnose in the United States?
• third: when did Covid first appear in the US?
• fourth: the first "lock down" -- when did it begin and how long did it last? What were the statistics coming out of that lock down?
• are there any cases of Covid-19 outside of the US?

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Original Post

Posted August 10, 2020.

This story got a bit of attention on talk radio Sunday: Fed's Kashkari calls for 6-week economic shutdown to control coronavirus spread. Google key words.

Neel Kashkari, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, called for a nationwide economic shutdown for up to six weeks to get the coronavirus pandemic under control on Friday, warning that the rest of 2020 could be much worse than what America has experienced so far.

"The next six months could make what we have experienced so far seem like just a warm-up to a greater catastrophe. With many schools and colleges starting, stores and businesses reopening, and the beginning of the indoor heating season, new case numbers will grow quickly," Kashkari wrote in a New York Times op-ed with Dr. Michael T. Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.

Kashkari echoed comments he made a week ago on CBS's "Face the Nation," when he argued that "if we were to lock down hard for a month or six weeks, we could get the case count down so that our testing and our contact tracing was actually enough to control" the spread of coronavirus.

President Trump has insisted that states resist the urge to roll back reopening. He said earlier this week when asked about Kashkari’s comments that the country is “not going back to shutdowns.”

I will come back to this later, but for now:

• Kashkari obviously does not understand this virus nor viruses in general.
  

Random Update -- Saudi Arabia -- Saudi Aramco -- August 10, 2020

US crude oil imports from Saudi Arabia.  Link here.

• first, the graph:

• now, the spreadsheet: 

Saudi Arabia: 

• in deep trouble; Saudi Arabia sticks to dividend pledge despite plunge in earnings; paywall, Financial Times, CEO/Board of Directors have no say; the King of Saudi Arabia "directs" tht the dividend will continue to be paid; see this note (a must-read);
  
• Saudi Aramco's earning show why Apple is now the world's most valuable company; paywall, Barron's; 
• Saudi Aramco's first-half profits plummet 50%; CEO calls results "solid"; MarketWatch,  
• Saudi Arabia turns off America's oil taps again; Bloomberg;  
• quick: what US state depends most on Saudi Arabian oil?
• US oil imports from Saudi Arabia, tracked here, EIA;
• Saudi foreign exchange reserves drop again;

Total US oil imports: down 18% year-over-year (from all sources, not just Saudi Arabia), link here.

Notes From All Over -- Market Opening -- August 10, 2020

First things first: we should know today whether the "Power 5" will have a football season this year: Big 10; PAC 12; SEC; etc. My hunch: yes. Consensus: no.

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. 

At market open:

• Dow surges: up 229 points; "stocks rise as investors eye earnings, Trump's virus orders:
• remember when "they" said 2Q20 earnings would be ghastly;
• Trump threaded the needle; more on this later;
• Dow on longest win streak since September, 2019;
  
• NASDAQ: flat; down 12 points, after hitting all-time records last week;
• S&P: flat; up slightly
• AAPL: up $6/share
• IMUX: about about 0.95; up 25 cents;
• Kodak shares plunge; 
• Tencent shares lose $66 billion in 2-day rout on WeChat ban; link here;
• Duke Energy: tops EPS; $1.08 vs $1.04; 
• Holy mackerel -- completely missed this -- UNP up $2.67; up 1.46%; trading at $185; 52--week high was $189; wow;
  
• McDonald's: sues ousted CEO;

McDonald’s says it's suing Stephen Easterbrook, the CEO it ousted last year over an inappropriate relationship with an employee, alleging Monday that he covered up relationships with other employees and destroyed evidence.

Easterbrook, according to a lawsuit, approved a special grant of restricted stock, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to one of those employees.

The company now wants to reclaim hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation paid to Easterbrook on his departure.

McDonald’s fired Easterbrook last November after he acknowledged exchanging videos and text messages in a non-physical, consensual relationship with an employee. Easterbrook told the company that there were no other similar instances.

Other:

• Tesla paid nearly $100 million to acquire Texas gigafactory land; link here; 
  

The former owner of the property, TXI Operations LP, a unit of Martin Marietta Inc, revealed in an earnings call on July 28 that it sold a “depleted standing gravel location” for $97 million, as earlier reported by local Austin media. TXI IOperations didn't give further details on the property it sold, or the name of the buyer, but according to Electrek, the reference is to none other than Tesla's under-construction manufacturing facility near Austin, Texas. And without anything to put that into perspective, it means nothing to me.

Mauled: Number one US mall operator faces a huge battle as tenants fight for their lives; Bloomberg, August 10, 2020;

Ebonics: years ago I studied the language some folks call Ebonics. I've long lost the bubble on that. I don't know if it's politically correct to say that or not. Let's check wiki. I assume African-American vernacular English is now the preferred term. Whatever. A lot of non-woke folks are under the impression that AAVE is "incorrect" English. In fact, it's very "correct." But be that as it may -- a discussion for another day. The reason I brought it up: today on sports talk radio one individual asked another how long he had had his Apple computer. His response in AAVE:

I've been having my Mac computer for five years now.

At one time this might have offended me, but this was from a well-educated radio host. It was so interesting to see him speak AAVE. I had not heard it in a long time. 

 

Notes From All Over -- Monday Pre-Market Edition -- August 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. 

Fudging numbers: the EIA reported 1.4 million more bbls of oil production per day in May than was actually produced -- Focus on Fracking -- weekly edition posted; link here. 

Riots: in Chicago; over victim wounded by police; police response unprepared; 

Standing Rock: stops bikers from using highways to get to Sturgis; a non-story until the bikers in Sturgis get bored

The perfect equity portfolio:

• grossly overweighted in AAPL
• portfolio "goes up" even on days AAPL "falls"
• note: today, AAPL is up $5/share in pre-market trading
  

Rig counts, from Westwood unconventionals:

• Permian Basin -1.6% to 122 rigs compared to last week's 124 rigs 
• Eagle Ford -8.3% to 11 rigs compared to last week's 12 rigs 
• Williston stayed flat at 11 rigs 
• Haynesville stayed flat at 32 rigs 
• Marcellus stayed flat at 25 rigs 
• Cana Woodford stayed flat at 6 rigs 
• DJ-Niobrara stayed flat at 4 rigs 
• Powder River stayed flat at 0 rigs 
• Utica stayed stayed flat at 6 rigs

Permits

• A Bakken permit costs how much?
• A permit to drill a natural gas well in Pennsylvania costs how much?

Fast and furious:

• ICYMI: EIA reports that crude oil production in May has a record monthly decrease; link here; see Focus on Fracking link above, or click here to go direclty to FOF; 
  
• Meng's mysterious exit; 
• Dow Jones futures: surge; Trump extends unemployment benefits; Investor's Business Daily;
• Tracking the wrong metric -- Bloomberg;
• Exxon tears up debt-fueled plan -- Rigzone;
• Warren Buffett signals big shift in investing stance, Berkshire reports, paywall; Investor's Business Daily; record buybacks of his own stock;
  

Apple:

• AAPL rallies after one analyst raises target to "street-high" $515; supply chain info suggests higher iPHone 12 forecast --MarcketWatch;  
• Apple goes to war with gaming industry, TechCrunch via Yahoo!Finance;
• Smelling blood in the water, Facebook and Microsoft clash with Apple amid antitrust probes -- Yahoo!Finance;
• The largest fund in New Jersey's embattled pension sold Apple, Microsoft, and GE stock in the second quarter; paywall; Barron's;
• Even as AAPL nears $2 trillion market cap, the stock may still be a buy; paywall, Barron's;
  
• 
  

Saudi Arabia: 

• in deep trouble; sticks to dividend pledge despite plunge in earnings; paywall, Financial Times, 
• Saudi Aramco's earning show why Apple is now the world's most valuable company; paywall, Barron's; 
  
• Saudi Aramco's first-half profits plummet 50%; CEO calls results "solid"; MarketWatch,  
• Saudi Arabia turns off America's oil taps again; Bloomberg;  
• quick: what US state depends most on Saudi Arabian oil?
• US oil imports from Saudi Arabia, tracked here, EIA;