Not a good week for our (largely) tech stocks.
But fine if you pitch it against year to date (YTD).
Every guru has an explanation.
+ from the New York Times:
What Wall Street’s results tell you about America’s economy
The panic has been calmed, and the economic pain deferred. But uncertainty still abounds.
+ from CNBC:
The Labor Department said 1.4 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits for the week ending July 18, topping a Dow Jones estimate of 1.3 million claims.
This is “no doubt sobering and a clear reminder that the pandemic is far from finished exacting its toll on our economy,” said Mike Loewengart, managing director of investment strategy at E-Trade. “While we’re hanging on to hopes of a stimulus bill, Americans are feeling the pain of stalled reopenings and renewed shutdowns across the country.”
In short, the virus is a mess. Without a nationwide, coordinated response, we may never bring it under control. And the economy will sputter along. I’m thinking stocks will hover around this level — until we see another stimulus out of of Washington. Sadly, Mitch McConnell is hesitating. I’m sure he has a reason.
Intel is difficult
I’ve followed Intel or 50 years. I have bought zillions of laptops and PCs all with Intel chips. Yet I’ve never owned a single Intel share. As an editor of many technology magazines I’ve watched Intel launch/buy (and then close/sell) many businesses in which it hoped to find nirvana — from videoconferencing to computer telephony, to a zillion others.
Nothing has ever worked for Intel — except making X86 microprocessors — a steadily profitable and growing business — the processors in all my laptops. But Intel never made it in such obvious areas as cell phones and computer accessories. I ascribe their constant failures to lousy management, which they never seemed capable of fixing.
Their latest earnings report is strong on earnings and sales, but talks about delays on their latest thinner, microprocessor. They had delays before and that’s what’s driving the stock down a gigantic 16% today.
The 7-nanometer scale Intel is aiming for (but can’t make) is about 1/20th the width of a human hair. So it’s pretty amazing stuff. But not good enough.
Apple’s new A13 Bionic processor in the iPhone 11 (which I own), is made at 7-nanometer scale by Taiwan Semiconductor. The A13 has 8.5 billion transistors on a chip smaller than a dime. I do own stock in TSM.
Here’s ten years of Intel stock versus Apple and TSM. Intel is the blue line on the bottom. Pretty miserable.
This is Eleanor, 6
Anne, her mother and my brilliant daughter-in-law cut Eleanor’s hair following a YouTube “How to” video. Turned out great.
The YouTube video is called “Cut Your Daughters Hair At Home | Trim Your Daughters Hair”. This is it:
You can learn how to do anything on YouTube — except how to change a Toto toilet seat.
My favorite spam mail.
Just in.
“Do advise if you are available to handle closing and escrow service for a used excavator.”
Just my style.
Staying at home addles the brain
Brain addling is why I’m plan a daily tennis game. Gotta have a goal. Otherwise?
Yesterday I talked about Comet Neowise.
You can still see it in the NW sky. Here’s Wired magazine’s take:
IN LATE MARCH, a team of astronomers working on a space telescope mission called Neowise discovered a comet booking it past the sun, 160 million miles away from Earth. The comet, officially known as C/2020 F3 but usually just referred to as Neowise, is a 3-mile-wide chunk of ice and dust on a 6,000-year loop around the solar system. It’s just one of thousands of space rocks discovered with the Neowise telescope, but its trajectory means that for a few weeks this summer it will give observers in the northern hemisphere a rare cosmic light show.
“This is the most impressive-looking comet that I have seen since the 1990s with Hale-Bopp,” says George Hripcsak, an amateur astronomer in New York City. Hale-Bopp was a comet on a 2,500-year orbit around the sun that made its closest pass by Earth in 1997. It was visible to the naked eye for a year and a half.
What to Look For
Like all comets, Neowise consists of a dense nucleus made of ice, dust, and ionized gas that form a brilliant double tail as they blow off the comet. The Neowise tail is huge; it covers as much sky as if you were to place 12 full moons side by side. “Seeing a tail that long doesn’t happen very often,” says Hripcsak.
When to See Comet Neowise
If you want to spot the comet, the best time is about an hour after sunset. Depending on where you live, this will probably be around 10 pm. The comet will be visible for about an hour or so before it drops below the horizon. “It needs to be dark enough for you to be able to pick out the entire Big Dipper, not just the handle,” says Katherine Troche, an amateur astronomer in New York City. “If you can get away from the streetlights, your visibility will improve, but you may still need binoculars as the comet will become less bright over the next few weeks.”
Don’t get too carried away. The Atlantic reported the last time a comet appeared in the sky:
Members of Heaven’s Gate, a religious cult, believed that as the Hale-Bopp comet passed by Earth in 1997, a spaceship would be traveling in its wake-ready to take true believers aboard. Several members of the group bought an expensive, high-powered telescope so that they might get a clearer view of the comet. They quickly brought it back and asked for a refund. When the manager asked why, they complained that the telescope was defective, that it didn’t show the spaceship following the comet. A short time later, believing that they would be rescued once they had shed their “earthly containers” (their bodies), all 39 members killed themselves.
Frankly I prefer playing tennis. Today was our 132th game this quarantine. Today, I notice, with pleasure, our TSM, AMZN, NVDA, MELI, SHOP. SPOT, NFLX, and HD are up.
I don’t believe this product has achieved FDA approval, yet. It could help.
See you Monday. your private “guru”, Harry Newton
