Georgia, USA, Early Voting -- May 23, 2022

Georgia, US: voting. If you are not following this story, you are missing a huge story. Early voting is surpassing all past turnouts -- by a large, large margin. In Georgia, a red state, folks are turning out en masse for one of two reasons:

• to show their support for Joe Biden and $6-gasoline; or,
• to register their disgust with where things are headed: inflation, $10-gasoline, and $9-bacon.
• so, we'll see.

Then this news story which suggests that the Biden administration is watching the Georgia turnout and is getting desperate:

• mainstream media is reporting that the White House is considering waiving smog rules on gasoline to lower pump prices. No link. I have the link but I want folks to look for this story for themselves, to fact-check my reporting. I got the story from a reader, thank you very much.

Energy transition is dead when you start waiving smog rules for gasoline. Even Trump did not do that.

Greta: "WTF?"

Off The Net -- Watching The NASCAR Race From Last Night -- May 23, 2022

The full race being aired again on FS1 -- Fox Sports One -- what a treat. 

The All-Star Race, Texas Motor Speeedway.

Speaking of sports -- that PGA Championship yesterday was perhaps one of the best PGA finishes ever. It was like two pugilists going the distance. Justin Thomas looked whipped, but the adrenaline rush from the crowd re-invigorated him to the point he could lift the Wanamaker Trophy.

The Wanamaker Trophy, named after businessman and golfer Rodman Wanamaker, stands nearly 2.5 feet tall and weighs 27 pounds. 

The trophy was lost, briefly, for a few years until it showed up in 1930 in the cellar of L.A. Young and Company. 

Ironically, this cellar was in the factory which made the clubs for the man responsible for losing it, Walter Hagen. Hagen claimed to have trusted a taxi driver with the precious cargo, but it never returned to his hotel. There is a smaller replica trophy that the champion gets to keep permanently, but the original must be returned for the following years tournament.

Hagen's version: akin to "the dog ate it." 

I only posted this so I could type "Wanamaker" -- since the analysts must have mentioned this trophy 8,347 times yesterday if they mentioned it once. 

I guess the Wanamaker is to the PGA what the Stanley Cup is to the NHL, except the Wanamaker was lost for a time. LOL.  

And how many moms name their kids Rodman? Before "Dennis Rodman" was a thing?

Wow, I think it's time to go back to reading some good literature. I'll start with Djuna Barnes Nightwood.

A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words -- May 23, 2022

Link here.

Comments on the Legacy Fund later. 

The daily activity report. 

NDIC has made major strides in getting their website back up. There are still some glitches and thus no new data to post for today. The daily activity report was not posted today.

WTI: fell to $109.80.

And that's about it.  

Apparently there's some news story out there about President Biden being happy with high gasoline prices because it suggests the transition to renewable energy is going well, especially for those who enjoy can afford $6-gasoline. 

I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall listening to some staffer "explain" this to the president who has probably never driven a car in his life -- except for that 18-wheeler he used to drive "back in the day" -- which wasn't a car -- but you know what I'm trying to say.

Business News While I Was Out -- May 23, 2022

Carmax: for the first three months of this year --

• CarMax: made $465 on each car sold
• Carvana: lost $3,255 on each car sold
• link here.

Arby's: will now sell hamburgers. Link here.

Starbucks: will follow McDonald's out of Russia. 130 stores. Link here. 

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Something To Watch

Detroit Diesel on strike watch. 

Interesting bit of trivia here. 

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.

All my posts are done quickly: there will be content and typographical errors. If anything on any of my posts is important to you, go to the source. If/when I find typographical / content errors, I will correct them.

Video Conferencing -- May 23, 2022

A reader asked why I would not invest in Zoom. See comments at this link.

First, some "background." 

This site compares three: Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams. That linked site, I believe, is a "google" site. 

That site does not include: Apple's FaceTime, Cisco's Webex, or Amazon's Chime. I assume there are others.

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.

All my posts are done quickly: there will be content and typographical errors. If anything on any of my posts is important to you, go to the source. If/when I find typographical / content errors, I will correct them.

The reader asked whether I thought Zoom would be around in 30 years, at least in some iteration.

Yes, and that's the problem, in some iteration. No moat. Too many video conferencing platforms. Six of them mentioned above.

As a trading stock, Zoom should be considered. But I am not a trader; I'm an investor. For a trader:

• volatility is great; and,
• possibility of company being acquired (even better).

The biggest problem I have with Zoom -- unless I'm missing something -- it's a one-trick pony with no moats. The other platforms are all "divisions" in much larger companies: Google,  Amazon, Apple, Cisco, and Microsoft. These much bigger companies have much deeper pockets; important when it comes to R&D during flush times, and financial support during lean times.

For all the money Zoom has made its founder(s) and owners, Zoom pays no dividend.

And that's why this is not an investment site. We all have different criteria for investing. One of my criteria is dividends. Not absolute but a huge discriminator. 

The video teleconferencing platforms surged during Covid; it's unlikely we'll ever see anything like that again, and if we do, the platforms are already in place. The type of growth we saw in 2020 - 2021 video teleconferencing won't be repeated.  

My wife uses Zoom regularly for one of her virtual meetings. The local school district uses Webex, which I love. The family uses FaceTime for family chats. My hunch: many / most Fortune 500 companies use Microsoft Teams which complements their desktop operating system. 

And finally, when it comes to tech, so many -- thousands -- of investing options out there. Zoom doesn't rise to a level to compete for my investment money. 

By the way, speaking of tech and acquisitions and traders, news today: apparently Broadcom looks to acquire VMWare (Michael Dell).