Coldest January Temperatures In 25 Years — January 5, 2024

Locator: 46462GLOBALWARMING. 

We’re toasty warm in Texas so I was completely unaware how cold it is this winter in Gretaland. From Bloomberg:

The deep freeze gripping Europe’s northernmost region is edging south, paralyzing transport systems and pushing power prices to records. The icy conditions, producing the coldest January temperatures for 25 years in parts of Sweden, will spread to Nordic capitals over the weekend. The cold snap will also sweep across other parts of western Europe over the coming week, with Berlin sinking to as low as -8C (17.6F) by Tuesday, while Paris will be -4C on Wednesday, according to forecaster Maxar Technologies Inc.

Zero Hedge And The Bakken — January 4, 2024

Locator: 46461B.

Link here.

A sampling:

Right now, an able-bodied unskilled laborer willing to learn and capable of working long and hard can still land a $115,000 entry-level job with room and board and nearly five months off on an oil rig site or with a growing number of independent contractors and start-up oilfield service companies in western North Dakota.

Right now, the Bakken is where stories like Mr. McConnell’s aren’t stories but invitations. It’s where an Arizona cosmetologist can monitor a rig gate while looking to buy her first home, where a New Jersey geologist can build a company that employs 300 to revive a community where she’s hailed as a hometown hero, where a “disgruntled” airman from Cincinnati can carve a niche and expand it into a broadening entrepreneurial enterprise.

“The rush is over, and now we’re seeing a maturing of the play,” said Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.), a 1998 graduate of Dickinson High School who recalls having to—and being able to—stand in the middle of highways to get cellphone reception before the oil boom.

As is typical with a “maturing of the play,” most corporate players have moved on. In their wake, new players have emerged: first-time independent contractors and serial entrepreneurs, many under 40, most building local businesses, buying homes, starting families, and growing communities.

For them, fast money is fine, but sustainable “systemic growth” is preferable, with perfected-in-North-Dakota advances in fracking spurring pioneering innovations in lateral drilling.

Western Canadian Oil Wells And A Musical Interlude -- November, 2023

Locator: 46459CANADA.

Link here.

The pdf link above came from this post.

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The Music Page

Kate Bush. Wuthering Heights.

From wiki:

"Wuthering Heights" is a song by English singer Kate Bush, released as her debut single on 20 January 1978 through EMI Records.

Inspired by the 1847 Emily Brontë novel of the same name, the song was released as the lead single from Bush's debut studio album, The Kick Inside (1978). It peaked at number one on the UK Singles Chart for four weeks, making Bush the first female artist to achieve a number-one single with an entirely self-penned song.

It also reached the top of the charts in Australia, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, and Portugal.

"Wuthering Heights" received widespread critical acclaim and continues to be highly regarded; in 2016, Pitchfork named it the fifth-greatest song of the 1970s, and in 2020, The Guardian ranked it as the 14th-best UK number-one single.The song has been certified Platinum by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), for sales and streams of over 600,000 units in the United Kingdom.

Bush wrote the song aged 18, within a few hours late at night on 5 March 1977. She was inspired after seeing the 1967 BBC adaptation of the 1847 novel Wuthering Heights.

She then read the book and also discovered that she shared her birthday with author Emily Brontë.

Bush recorded her vocal in a single take.

Kate Bush bio at this wiki page.

EVs -- Finishing Up The Day -- Part 2 -- January 4, 2024

Locator: 46458EVS.

Ford loses EV bragging rights to GM: link here. Best summary to date.

Tax credit ... fading away. Link to The Verge.  

Tax credit ... fading away. Link to Barron's. Really an excellent update.

EVs: destined to fail.

From the linked article:

Sure, sales of EVs keep going up — a record 300,000 cars sold in the US in the third quarter of 2023 were electric — but the pace of adoption has markedly slowed, and analysts have suggested the country is no longer on track to hit the government's sales targets.

The trickle-down effects of this decreased demand are everywhere.

EVs accumulated at dealerships this fall, even as automakers cut prices to try to entice customers.

Automakers have backtracked on their promised investments: Ford delayed $12 billion of its planned $15 billion investment in EV manufacturing capacity, while General Motors delayed production of key EV models and scrapped a $5 billion partnership with Honda to make cheaper EVs. Even Tesla — once the superstar of EVs — announced it would delay a planned factory in Mexico. Auto execs who were once trumpeting the potential of electric cars are even publicly acknowledging that EVs aren't working.

On the hand, from Barron's:

From the linked article:

U.S. sales. Overall sales were flat year over year at just over 625,000 units. Battery-EV sales came in at 19,469 units, up 20% year over year.

Total GM sales came in at just under 2.6 million units, up about 14% year over year. For the full year, BEV sales came in at 75,585 units, up about 90% year over year. Not too shabby. GM has sold more than 100,000 BEVs over the past six quarters; it has six such models, and more, like the lower-cost electric Chevy Equinox, are coming soon.

Still, Tesla sells way more BEVs in the U.S. than GM. The EV giant sold a record 485,000 units in the fourth quarter, perhaps one-third of those were in the U.S. Tesla doesn’t break down sales by region, and industry data providers haven’t aggregated all the BEV sales yet.

Ford, link here:

Ticker, F:

Finishing For The Day -- News, Links -- January 4, 2024

Locator: 46457ECON.

US economy: from Barron's --

From the linked article: 

2023 was a record-breaking holiday season for e-commerce, Adobe says, as price-sensitive consumers flocked to online stores in search of the best deals of the season.

Online spending rose 4.9% year-over-year to $222.1 billion from November 1, 2023, to December 31 this year (2023), according to the latest data from Adobe Analytics.

Ahead of the holiday season, Adobe had predicted sales would tick up 4.8%.

Last week, Mastercard released its own preliminary data, which found that overall holiday sales—which include both online and bricks-and-mortar sales—rose by 3.1% this year compared with the previous one.

Online sales gained 6.3%, Mastercard said, while spending in stores increased by 2.2%. Electronics, apparel, furniture, groceries, and toys were some of the hottest categories, Adobe said, echoing the results of November’s official retail sales report, released in mid-December.

Jobs, from CNBC:  

EVs: destined to fail.

From the linked article:

Sure, sales of EVs keep going up — a record 300,000 cars sold in the US in the third quarter of 2023 were electric — but the pace of adoption has markedly slowed, and analysts have suggested the country is no longer on track to hit the government's sales targets.

The trickle-down effects of this decreased demand are everywhere.

EVs accumulated at dealerships this fall, even as automakers cut prices to try to entice customers.

Automakers have backtracked on their promised investments: Ford delayed $12 billion of its planned $15 billion investment in EV manufacturing capacity, while General Motors delayed production of key EV models and scrapped a $5 billion partnership with Honda to make cheaper EVs. Even Tesla — once the superstar of EVs — announced it would delay a planned factory in Mexico. Auto execs who were once trumpeting the potential of electric cars are even publicly acknowledging that EVs aren't working.

Rivian downgraded: previously reported. This is the Barron's article.

Rivian Automotive stock was downgraded on Thursday. The company needs new models to maintain growth and new models are years away.

Wolfe Research analyst Rod Lache downgraded Rivian stock to Hold from Buy. Lache doesn’t have price targets for Hold-rated stocks. A Hold rating, for him, essentially means that Rivian shares should keep up with the market.

Shares were down 0.4% to $23.23 in premarket trading, while S&P 500 futures both traded flat. It’s a small move for a downgrade, but Rivian stock has had a rough start to the year.

Shares dropped 10.1% after the company reported better-than-expected production figures on January 3, 2024.

The move left Canaccord analyst George Gianarikas confused, calling the results fine in a research report. But Rivian stock was up about 40% in December. Profit-taking was part of the decline. Share dropped another 3.7% on Wednesday.

Intel, link here from Barron's:

Mobileye said it expects first-quarter revenue to be “significantly below” the $458 million in revenue it generated in the first quarter of 2023.

The company said the forecast was based on an excess inventory of its EyeQ computer chips that was being held by some of its customers. Analysts were forecasting first-quarter revenue to rise to $557.1 million, according to FactSet, a gap of some $320 million in sales.

Mobileye’s problem boils down to overproduction and channel inventories.

It doesn’t mean that auto makers are slowing the adoption of driver assistance technologies.

“The update is clearly disappointing but doesn’t appear long-term thesis changing,” wrote Citi analyst Itay Michaeli in a Thursday report, who rates shares Buy and has a $72 price target on shares. He still sees growth for Mobileye down the road.

Wall Street sees annual sales hitting $5 billion by 2026, up from about $1.9 billion expected for 2024. Baird analyst Luke Junk rates shares Buy and has a $50 price target for the stock.

Mobileye’s cut reflects 6 or 7 million units of excess inventory, he wrote in a Thursday report. That bubble can be worked through in one quarter, but it’s clearly “incrementally negative.”

And from CNBC: 

Intel and Mobileye relationship here.

Costco: link here.

Costco Wholesale ended 2023 with a bang as holiday shoppers gave the retailer a boost.

Costco’s revenue jumped 9.9% from a year earlier to $26.2 billion in December, 2023.

It marks an acceleration from November’s 5.1% increase.

Same-store sales, which measure sales growth in stores open for more than a year, also rose more quickly, up 8.5% compared with the same period a year ago. In November, same-store sales were up 3.5%. Excluding fluctuations in gasoline prices and foreign-exchange rates, same-store sales rose 8.1%.

Xerox: link here.