Just a reminder for my non-U.S. readers, but this is Labor Day weekend in the U.S., so U.S. markets will be closed Monday. I will resume posting on Tuesday.
As you can tell, I am posting everything early today. This is because I will be out of touch for the rest of the weekend. Today, my family and I are heading up to Atlanta for Dragoncon. I will be in geek heaven! It will also be the first time for my kids going to Dragoncon, so that will be fun too.
At the risk of name-dropping, here are a few of the people scheduled to be at Dragoncon this weekend: Ed Asner, Avery Brooks, John de Lancie, Michael Dorn, Eliza Dushku, Terry Farrell, Ernie Hudson, The Mythbusters (Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage), Lee Majors, Lindsey Wagner, Malcolm McDowell, George Takei, David Warner, and Billy Dee Williams. But the really BIG celebrity will be…William Shatner! That is worth the price of admission alone! It isn’t often you get to see Captain Kirk, the Priceline Negotiator, T.J. Hooker, and the Big Giant Head (remember Third Rock from the Sun?), all in one person!
Anyway, here is your early weekend open thread, where you can discuss anything you like. Today, I offer you a few scientific measurements from my daughter:
2,000 mockingbirds = 2 kilomockingbird
1,000,000 aches = 1 megahurtz
Time between slipping on a peel and hitting the pavement = 1 bananosecond
1,00 pounds of Chinese food = Won ton
Enjoy the long weekend folks!
With the low volume we have had this week, it is easy for the professional traders to “window-dress” their portfolios for month-end. Don’t be surprised if we go up today.
The S&P 500 levels to watch today:
UPSIDE: 1639 (August 21st’s low), 1641 (August 28th’s high), 1645-1646 (4 data points), 1652 (2 data points), 1654 (June’s high), 1656 (2 data points), 1658-1659 (4 data points and the 50 day moving average), 1663-1664 range (2 data points), 1670 (20 day moving average), 1679 (August 15th’s high), 1682-1684 (4 data points), 1686 (August 9th’s low), 1688-1693 (12 data points), 1695-1696 (3 data points), 1698-1700 (2 data points and July’s high), 1703 (August 5th’s low), 1705 (August 6th’s high), 1707 (August 1st’s high), 1709 (2 data points and the all-time high), and 1720 (top of the Bollinger Bands).
LAST CLOSE: 1638.
DOWNSIDE: 1629-1630 (2 data points), 1627 (August 28th’s low), 1619 (bottom of the Bollinger Bands), 1604 (July’s low), 1597 (April’s high), 1581 (May’s low), 1572 (March’s high), 1560 (June’s low), and 1560 (200 day moving average).
And I find, I’m sighing softly as I near
September, the warm September of my years
—September of My Years by Jimmy Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn
Another month-end approaches…
Wall Street Journal: U.K. Parliament Rejects Syria Action
Hail Britannia!
The U.K. vote against military strikes in Syria is a tough blow to Prime Minister David Cameron’s domestic political fortunes.
…The government lost a vote—by a tally of 285 to 272—that would have supported in principle military intervention in Syria, where Western governments have said President Bashar al-Assad’s regime carried out a deadly chemical-weapons attack on civilians last week. Members of all major parties—including Mr. Cameron’s Tories—opposed the measure.
Mr. Cameron said it is clear that the British Parliament, reflecting the view of the British people, doesn’t want to see the U.K. get involved in military action and “the government will act accordingly.”
The outcome marks a significant moment in British politics—it is highly unusual for a prime minister to be defeated on foreign policy and raises the prospect of whether the U.K.’s role on the world stage going forward.
I beg to differ. I think it shows the British Parliament, as representatives of the British people, have shown a great deal more common sense than their PM. I would hope the U.S. Congress would also show the will of the American people in such a way, who are also against military action in Syria.
On the bright side, the lack of British involvement means anything President Obama does will have to be scaled back. Good!
New York Times: ‘The Great Shift’: Americans Not Working
Looking at these two charts together is a quick way to become demoralized about the American economy:
Yes, the unemployment rate has fallen. But almost the entire reason it has fallen is the drop in the number of people in the labor force — either working or actively looking. As Binyamin Appelbaum has noted, the share of adult Americans with jobs is essentially unchanged over the last three years.
In a brief new report from Express Employment Professionals, a staffing firm, the company’s chief executive, Bob Funk, refers to the problem as “the great shift.” This shift long predates the recent financial crisis, too. The labor force participation rate peaked more than a decade ago.
…If the decline stemmed largely from an aging work force, it would be much less worrisome. But the initial wave of baby-boomer retirements plays only a small role in the drop; the labor force participation rate has fallen almost as sharply for people aged 25 to 54 as it has for the overall adult population.
As the report notes, economists are not entirely sure what has caused the shift.
Keep this in mind when we get the U.S. Employment Report next Friday. As the article above concludes:
…the decline in labor force participation almost certainly receives too little attention. Each month, small changes in the unemployment rate receive great scrutiny. We often overlook just how flawed a measure of the job market that rate has become over the last 13 years.
AP News: Fast-food workers stage largest protests yet
Fast-food workers and their supporters beat drums, blew whistles and chanted slogans Thursday on picket lines in dozens of U.S. cities, marking the largest protests yet in their quest for higher wages.
The nationwide day of demonstrations came after similar actions organized by unions and community groups over the past several months. Workers are calling for the right to unionize without interference from employers and for pay of $15 an hour. That’s more than double the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, or $15,000 a year for full-time employees.
Thursday’s walkouts and protests reached about 60 cities, including New York, Chicago and Detroit, organizers said. But the turnout varied significantly. Some targeted restaurants were temporarily unable to do business because they had too few employees, and others seemingly operated normally.
One thing which was conspicuously absent in the above story is the turnover rate at fast-food businesses:
Washington Post: Fast food workers are staying longer on the job–and wanting more
Workers in the fast food industry are walking off their jobs Thursday in what is being called the industry’s largest ever strike. The protestors, expected to strike in more than 50 cities, are trying to drum up public attention and raise the minimum wage from $7.25 to $15.
What’s unusual about their efforts is that they aren’t protesting the actions of a single company or necessarily trying to organize themselves as part of a labor union, even if they’re being supported by labor groups. Rather, they’re trying to enact change at the national level, altering federal law.
That’s at least in part because most fast food workers are employed by individual franchisees, and the high turnover rates in the industry have historically generated little interest in workplace change. If you’re only staying in a job for six months, after all, you’re unlikely to care much about making it better. For years, the fast food industry was one of the “100 percent turnover” industries: Businesses that started the year with one workforce but would entirely replace it–at least once, if not more–by year’s end.
But that ratio has been creeping steadily downward. A report in QSR, the “quick-service restaurant” industry’s major trade publication, shows that turnover was as high as 120 percent in early 2009, but dropped to around 90 percent in 2011. A spokesperson for the National Restaurant Association says its 2010 Operations Report puts employee turnover at “limited-service” restaurants at just 60 percent. Meanwhile, figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that turnover in the “accommodations and food services” industry was 84 percent in 2001 but dropped to 61 percent by 2012, slightly higher than the nadir in 2010 of 57 percent. Those numbers include restaurants and businesses that pay more than the fast-food industry–so they’re likely lower than for those who truly hold “McJobs”–but they also show a general decline.
There’s an obvious reason for the drop: Unemployment. When it’s low, it’s harder to get people to stay in jobs, particularly low-wage ones. When it’s high, it’s easier, and turnover drops. The older ages of fast food workers are also surely having an impact on turnover, too: With roughly 80 percent of the industry’s workforce now older than 20, they’re more likely to be in need of steady employment and less likely to be seeking jobs for temporary periods of time.
In most industries, high turnover prompts company leaders to invest more in their workforce so they don’t have to spend money to retrain workers or lose the institutional knowledge of long-term staffers. Those economics may not apply as well to the fast food industry, says Nelson Lichtenstein, director of the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “They want a certain amount of turnover,” he says. Employees that stick around longer get higher wages, he says, and it’s become increasingly less costly to replace workers: The advent of computer-based training programs over the past 20 years has significantly lowered the cost of getting new workers up to speed.
So do the longer tenures mean fast food workers will start forming unions? Labor experts appear doubtful: Even with longer stays on the job, turnover is still high, and the franchise ownership structure of the industry makes that unlikely. That said, longer tenures help to explain why these protests are getting bigger and more prevalent now. Says Lichtenstein: “a more permanent workforce leads to people having a more permanent stake in the job.”
Add in the fact that fast-food businesses are already low-margin operations, and the likelihood of getting increased wages here is small. Adding a dollar or two to the cost of a burger will eventually send customers away, which will end up closing many fast-food businesses. In the end, a higher wage will leave even fewer low-end jobs for workers. This is not exactly what we need in an already weak economy.
Bloomberg: Scandinavia’s Weakest Nation Finds Welfare Habits Too Costly
Scandinavia’s weakest economy can no longer afford the kinds of entitlements its citizens were raised on, according to Danish Finance Minister Bjarne Corydon.
“We live in a world of global competition for jobs,” the 40-year-old minister said in an interview in Copenhagen. “For any finance minister wanting to be taken seriously, it’s something to deal with. That requires a modernization of the welfare state.”
Denmark this week cut its economic forecast and predicted a widening budget deficit. The AAA rated nation, whose economy contracted 0.2 percent in the first half, needs to contain welfare spending or risk losing the respect of investors, Corydon said. Danes, who like Swedes and Norwegians, are used to generous jobless pay as well as state-financed education and health care, need to learn that those privileges come at a cost, he said.
…From 2000 to 2012, average hours worked in Denmark fell 8 percent, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Danes spent 1,431 hours working last year, 24 percent less than the OECD average, the Paris-based group estimates.
The development has left the country’s workforce less productive. Since 2000, Denmark’s unit labor costs have risen 30 percent, compared with an 11 percent increase among its trade competitors, according to a 2012 OECD study.
Denmark’s $320 billion economy, which shrank 0.5 percent in 2012, is trying to adjust to the fallout of a property boom that started early last decade. While house prices have slumped about 20 percent since a 2007 peak, wages haven’t dropped enough to restore competitiveness, the OECD says.
Though Danes with jobs earn more and work less, on average, than their rich-world peers, out-of-work Danes in some cases earn even more than those in low-skilled jobs.
An Aug. 27 report by the Economy Ministry showed that about 250,000 Danes have no economic incentive to give up their unemployment benefits and take a job. That compares with 2.64 million people in full- and part-time jobs, according to Statistics Danmark.
I guess Margaret Thatcher would say this about Denmark:
They’ve got the usual Socialist disease — they’ve run out of other people’s money.
Bloomberg: Gold Mine CEOs Hoard Cash as Strikes Loom in South Africa
If you need another reason to own gold, here you go:
South Africa’s four biggest gold producers are hoarding cash and lining up access to more as the companies prepare for what would be the first industrywide strike since 2011.
Sibanye Gold Ltd. (SGL) boosted its cash balance sevenfold to 2.09 billion rand ($200 million) by June from December, AngloGold Ashanti Ltd. (ANG) has arranged to borrow more from banks if needed, filings show. Like their peers, Gold Fields Ltd. (GFI) and Harmony Gold Mining Co. (HAR) have scrapped dividends this month as unions prepare to ballot members over work stoppages.
“If we are, let’s say, bullied into a situation that we don’t like, we can ride out the storm for a very long period of time,” Sibanye CEO Neal Froneman said. “That was the reason behind putting cash in the bank.”
The 142,000 miners at South Africa’s seven-largest gold producers are preparing to bring the country’s biggest mineral-export industry to a standstill, which the Chamber of Mines says would result in 349 million rand of revenue losses daily. The four largest producers say bullion’s 16 percent slump this year means a decade of above-inflation pay raises must be halted as they seek to reverse losses and avert a repeat of violence that has marred operations since last year.
“This is a tipping point of the industry,” David Davis, a Johannesburg-based analyst at SBG Securities Ltd., said by phone on Aug. 23. “The gold mines are taking action to put their operations into positive cash flow at this gold price. Hunkering down on wages is part of that strategic plan. They can’t afford it.”
The S&P 500 levels to watch today:
UPSIDE: 1639 (August 21st’s low), 1641 (August 28th’s high), 1645-1646 (3 data points), 1652 (2 data points), 1654 (June’s high), 1656 (2 data points), 1658-1659 (4 data points and the 50 day moving average), 1663-1664 range (2 data points), 1673 (20 day moving average), 1679 (August 15th’s high), 1682-1684 (4 data points), 1686 (August 9th’s low), 1688-1693 (12 data points), 1695-1696 (3 data points), 1698-1700 (2 data points and July’s high), 1703 (August 5th’s low), 1705 (August 6th’s high), 1707 (August 1st’s high), 1709 (2 data points and the all-time high), and 1724 (top of the Bollinger Bands).
LAST CLOSE: 1634.
DOWNSIDE: 1629 (August 27th’s low), 1627 (August 28th’s low), 1623 (bottom of the Bollinger Bands), 1604 (July’s low), 1597 (April’s high), 1581 (May’s low), 1572 (March’s high), 1560 (June’s low), and 1559 (200 day moving average).
We get the second revision to the 2nd quarter U.S. GDP today at 8:30 am EST. The first guess at it was a 0.7% increase.
Bloomberg: Vodafone in Talks With Verizon Over U.S. Wireless Stake Sale
Vodafone Group Plc is in talks to sell its 45 percent stake in Verizon Wireless to U.S. partner Verizon Communications Inc. in what would be the biggest deal in more than a decade.
The carriers are in advanced discussions about a sale of the holding for about $130 billion, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Verizon is working with several banks to raise $10 billion from each, or enough to finance about $60 billion of the buyout, said two of the people, asking not to be identified because the talks are private.
From Verizon’s perspective, what concerns me is they might be taking on too much debt to get this deal done. Their dividend payout ratio is already 379%. Double or more their debt/equity (which is already 57%), and that dividend is in danger.
For anyone who is holding Verizon (VZ) for the long-term, you can probably maintain your position, but expect a bumpy road for the next year. For anyone looking to buy it, I would wait a quarter at least, and maybe 2 or 3 quarters. You will get a much better price later.
GNW: 0.09 to $11.71 ( 0.77% , 24.97% overall)– bought at $9.37
IAU: 0.00 to $13.75 ( 0.00% , 5.04% overall)– bought at $13.09
NNVC: -0.03 to $1.15 ( -2.54% , 144.68% overall)– bought at $0.47
SCO: 0.23 to $27.11 ( 0.86% , 0.86% overall)– bought at $26.88 today
YHOO: 0.11 to $27.11 ( 0.41% , 12.26% overall)– bought at $24.15
OVERALL: +0.06%
Futures are flat this morning, allegedly in anticipation of the Pending Home Sales report coming out at 10 am EST. I’m not sold. I think it is because investors are tentative following yesterday’s large drop.
However, I think the play of the day might be in shorting oil after yesterday’s big run-up. As the U.S. military plan for Syria is becoming obvious, it looks more and more like much ado about nothing. That means oil should be dropping soon.
The S&P 500 levels to watch today:
UPSIDE: 1639 (August 21st’s low), 1645-1646 (3 data points), 1652 (2 data points), 1654 (June’s high), 1656 (2 data points), 1658-1659 (4 data points and the 50 day moving average), 1663-1664 range (2 data points), 1676 (20 day moving average), 1679 (August 15th’s high), 1682-1684 (4 data points), 1686 (August 9th’s low), 1688-1693 (12 data points), 1695-1696 (3 data points), 1698-1700 (2 data points and July’s high), 1703 (August 5th’s low), 1705 (August 6th’s high), 1707 (August 1st’s high), 1709 (2 data points and the all-time high), and 1723 (top of the Bollinger Bands).
LAST CLOSE: 1630.
DOWNSIDE: 1629 (August 27th’s low), 1628 (bottom of the Bollinger Bands), 1604 (July’s low), 1597 (April’s high), 1581 (May’s low), 1572 (March’s high), 1560 (June’s low), and 1558 (200 day moving average).
Fox News: Any U.S. strike against Syria likely to last ‘hours not days’
Yesterday, all the market chatter was about Syria. The market was wrong:
Any U.S. strike against Syria is “likely to last hours not days” and probably would not come before the British Parliament votes on military action Thursday, a senior U.S. defense official told Fox News.
Sources tell Fox that a strike would be led by the U.S. Navy and its assets positioned in the Eastern Mediterranean and that it would be limited in scope.
The details about how a strike could unfold come as the administration builds its case for possible intervention in Syria, in response to an alleged chemical attack against civilians there last week.
Of course, this strike will most likely be pointless, nothing more than “punishment” for using chemical weapons:
According to U.S. military officials, there are no plans in the initial mission to strike or secure President Bashar Assad’s chemical weapons, which are spread among 50 different sites, some of which are underground.
In fact it is not even possible, experts say, to use air strikes to carry out surgical strikes on chemical weapons storage facilities, despite suggestions from some U.S. legislators in weekend interviews that that be the preferred action. Air strikes would release those toxic chemicals into the air, potentially causing more mass casualties.
Assad is estimated to have more than 1,000 tons of chemical weapons. Any plans to secure them would require Special Operations and boots on the ground – and neither is on the table right now, according to Pentagon officials.
The main takeaway for investors: Several weeks from now, this will be forgotten. Russia and China will raise their usual diplomatic objections, but they will do nothing. Russia would be the main concern, because they have a closer relationship to Syria. However, Russia’s biggest customer is Europe, and Europe is angry with Syria over this.
Of more importance:
Fox News: Debt ceiling, government shutdown battles simmer in summer recess
The Washington dance of flirting with fiscal catastrophe intensified this week, as the Obama administration warned House Republicans that a deal on increasing the federal debt limit may have to come sooner than expected.
The warning came in a letter from Treasury Secretary Jack Lew to House Speaker John Boehner, who along with other members of Congress is still on summer recess and not expected to return until early September. That leaves little time to deal with two looming deadlines that have not yet been addressed.
In order to first prevent a partial government shutdown, Congress and the Obama administration must agree on at least a temporary spending deal.
Such a bill is typically reached without too much partisan wrangling. But this year’s effort is being complicated by Republicans saying any measure should include the steep cuts known as sequester that started this spring, and by some Democrats insisting they be removed. Plus a small-but-vocal group of Tea Party-backed Republicans is stirring the pot by trying to insist that funding for the president’s health care law, whose official signup date also is Oct. 1, be stripped from any budget bill.
Lew, in his letter on Monday, said the debt-ceiling deadline will follow close behind. According to Lew, the Treasury Department will run out of so-called “extraordinary measures” — tactics to avoid bumping up against the debt ceiling — in the middle of October, risking a default unless Congress raises the cap.
The key phrase there is “risking a default”. Obviously, if the U.S. defaulted on it’s debt, it would send the world markets into turmoil. However, the only way the U.S. would default is if President Obama were to decide to place payment on the U.S. debt behind other priorities. Even he isn’t that stupid, since a default would mean an end to Obamacare, since the U.S. would no longer be able to spend more than it makes.
As for the other chatter about taking a hard line from both parties, it is just politicians playing to their bases. Ultimately, both parties’ radicals will get pushed aside and some kind of compromise will be reached. But we won’t have any idea of what that compromise will be until well into September. On the other hand, here is a Business Week article which argues that this time is different.
Even IF this gets settled in September, we still have the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee meeting on September 17th. Add a QE taper into the usual political nonsense from Washington, and the markets could turn VERY ugly.
The Independent: Yahoo or Google? Web supremacy depends on how you measure it
Recent figures released by web analytics firm ComScore were quite the shot in the arm for Yahoo, showing that for the first time since 2011 the company had knocked Google off the top spot for monthly web traffic in the US.
ComScore’s figures, which are often used by advertisers to gauge how much screen real-estate is worth on different sites, put Yahoo’s collective web properties just slightly ahead of Google’s. With the former taking in 196.6 million visitors compared to Google’s 192.3 million.
However, it seems that when it comes to measuring your website’s popularity, not all metrics are equal and similar analysis from other firms paints a different picture of web popularity.
Tel Aviv-based SimilarGroup and their web measurement tool SimilarWeb have released their own comparison of the two internet companies, showing that globally and within the US and the UK Google’s properties are still far ahead of Yahoo.
The differences between ComScore and SimilarWeb’s numbers stems from how hits are counted: ComScore counts unique visitors rather than unique views, meaning that return visits by web users to Google properties were not counted.
Using SimilarWeb’s figures Google soared ahead of Yahoo, with just the search-giant’s US data (9.4 billion views) beating Yahoo’s global traffic (6.8bn). And on global terms, Google is undoubtedly still the champion with 41.2 billion views accumulated across multiple properties: Google Search, YouTube, Gmail and many others.
Whether the figures from ComScore or SimilarWeb are more reliable is not really the right question to ask, as the different measurements reflect different types of engagement. Whilst Yahoo and Google’s reach is similar (as shown by ComScore), SimilarWeb’s figures capture the sheer ubiquity of Google online – we return to it again and again for our most basic tasks online.
The key thing I see in these numbers is that it won’t take much for Yahoo to surpass Google. Yahoo already gets the unique visitors. Now, they just need to get those visitors to re-visit, which is easier said than done. To me, the Yahoo vs. Google battle may end up being more epic in proportion than the current battle being waged between Samsung and Apple. I see the management teams at Yahoo and Google, and they are arguably every bit as capable and innovative as Samsung and Apple within their respective industries.
Unfortunately for me, this means I will have to choose sides, since I own both stocks. At this point, I would say this is too early to call.
Bloomberg: Currency Spikes at 4 P.M. in London Provide Rigging Clues
In the space of 20 minutes on the last Friday in June, the value of the U.S. dollar jumped 0.57 percent against its Canadian counterpart, the biggest move in a month. Within an hour, two-thirds of that gain had melted away.
The same pattern — a sudden surge minutes before 4 p.m. in London on the last trading day of the month, followed by a quick reversal — occurred 31 percent of the time across 14 currency pairs over two years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. For the most frequently traded pairs, such as euro-dollar, it happened about half the time, the data show.
The recurring spikes take place at the same time financial benchmarks known as the WM/Reuters (TRI) rates are set based on those trades. Now fund managers and scholars say the patterns look like an attempt by currency dealers to manipulate the rates, distorting the value of trillions of dollars of investments in funds that track global indexes. Bloomberg News reported in June that dealers shared information and used client orders to move the rates to boost trading profit. The U.K. Financial Conduct Authority is reviewing the allegations, a spokesman said.
“We see enormous spikes,” said Michael DuCharme, head of foreign exchange at Seattle-based Russell Investments, which traded $420 billion of foreign currency last year for its own funds and institutional investors. “Then, shortly after 4 p.m., it just reverts back to what seems to have been the market rate. It adds to the suspicion that things aren’t right.”
Authorities around the world are investigating the abuse of financial benchmarks by large banks that play a central role in setting them.
If you think the TBTF banks are rigging the markets, it certainly looks like you’re right. But if you think the TBTF banks are getting rich off this, think again:
Bloomberg: U.S. Bank Legal Bills Exceed $100 Billion
It may be good to be the king, but it’s even better to be the king’s lawyer:
The six biggest U.S. banks, led by JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) and Bank of America Corp., have piled up $103 billion in legal costs since the financial crisis, more than all dividends paid to shareholders in the past five years.
That’s the amount allotted to lawyers and litigation, as well as for settling claims about shoddy mortgages and foreclosures, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The sum tops the banks’ combined profit last year.
The mounting bills have vexed bankers who are counting on expense cuts to make up for slow revenue growth and make room for higher payouts. About 40 percent of the legal and litigation outlays arose since January 2012, and banks are warning the tally may surge as regulators, prosecutors and investors press new claims. The prospect is clouding outlooks for stock prices, and by some estimates the damage could last another decade.
…JPMorgan and Bank of America bore about 75 percent of the total costs, according to the figures compiled from company reports. JPMorgan devoted $21.3 billion to legal fees and litigation since the start of 2008, more than any other lender, and added $8.1 billion to reserves for mortgage buybacks, filings show.
It couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of crooks!
I easily trounced the indexes today, mostly thanks to gold, although NNVC put up a good fight:
GNW: -0.52 to $11.62 ( -4.28% , 24.01% overall)– bought at $9.37
IAU: 0.13 to $13.75 ( 0.95% , 5.04% overall)– bought at $13.09
NNVC: 0.02 to $1.18 ( 1.72% , 151.06% overall)– bought at $0.47
YHOO: -0.70 to $27.00 ( -2.53% , 11.80% overall)– bought at $24.15
OVERALL: -0.01%
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Ed's Talking Stock 