Monday Homestretch/I HATE NY

Markets off to a fine start this summer Monday.  Technology only real sector lagging with chip names again the culprit.

Stock specific- Tesla down for 5th day in a row… Last sale $300’ish.  Earlier today, JPM cut its price target dramatically to $195 from $308 saying the privatization process  is “much less developed than we had earlier presumed.”

Political- Bloomberg reported today that Trump was recently complaining to donors about Fed Chair Powell raising rates.  Don’s remarks coming just days before Powell’s speech at the Fed’s Jackson Hole Conference on Friday.

Weekly Finance Calendar

Tuesday — JM Smucker, Toll Brothers, Kohl’s and TJX earnings

Wednesday — Large co-hosts Barstool Breakfast, Target, Lowe’s and L Brands earnings, FOMC minutes released

Thursday — Alibaba, HP Inc., Ross Stores and Gap earnings, US tariffs on 279 Chinese products take effect

Friday — Large co-hosts Barstool Breakfast, Foot Locker earnings, Powell speaks at Fed conference in Jackson Hole

Random Aretha Franklin Trivia

In wake of the kinda-tragic-but-not-surprising death of Aretha Franklin (she was never the picture of health, and she did have pancreatic cancer), readers have begged me for exactly 7 details of her life that most people may or may not know.

I am more than happy to oblige…

1.)  She was married twice.  Her first marriage ended after 8 years and countless beatings by her abusive husband.

2.)  Her dad was a Baptist minister who often sang to his congregation, and was know as The Man With The Million Dollar Voice.  He was shot twice at point blank range in 1979 during a botched home invasion.  It was his home that was invaded… He wasn’t the thief, you fucking racist.  He slipped into a coma, and the five years of subsequent life support reportedly cost Aretha $500,000, before he finally passed in 1984.

3.)  Aretha had 4 kids.  She gave birth to the first when she was just 12 years old, and apparently didn’t learn her lesson because she gave birth the second just 2 years later, when she was 14.  I wrote a piece last week about Charles Bronson losing his virginity when he was only 5 years old, and now I am telling you that someone made Aretha feel like a natural woman when she was only 11… Oof.

4.)  She has an asteroid named after her (Asteroid 249516 Aretha)… The asteroid was said to resemble what the discovering astronomers thought the legendary singer looked like in the nude when she was at her heaviest.

5.)  She was the first woman to be inducted into The Rock And Roll Hall of Fame.

6.)  Franklin dropped out of grammar school (probably because she had 2 kids), but was awarded honorary degrees from Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and Brown.

7.)  I made up the nude asteroid resemblance part of bullet point number 4.

So now you’re up to date on The Queen of Soul, just in case her name comes up at a BBQ and you want to chat about something more interesting than her 18 Grammy Awards… You’re welcome.

Take A Review (a stupid name for a movie review I just made up)

I saw a ridiculous movie called The Meg this weekend.  Was an almost shot-for-shot remake of a slightly less terrible movie called Deep Blue Sea that was released in 1999.

— I guess I should throw out a SPOILER ALERT here… But really, just skip this movie altogether and read on.  —

It’s the story of a group of deep water scientists who break through what we once thought was the ocean floor, only to find much greater depths filled with prehistoric sea monsters.

The biggest of those monsters was a 75 foot long shark called the Megaladon, which escapes the murky depths and attempts to eat a beach community somewhere in Asia with only Jason Statham’s ab muscles standing in the way.

As is so often the case, I found myself rooting for the giant shark in this one, mainly because of the annoying Asian characters that the producer and director inexplicably cast as potential victims.

All in all, there really wasn’t a single character that elicited an ounce of sympathy from the audience, and that is saying something for a movie where a giant shark was eating people like I eat the tiny veal meatballs that Ellio’s on the Upper East Side puts out every Wednesday night.

The only sympathy I have after this is for any sensitive girls with the name “Meg.”  You probably had a tough run when Family Guy was at its apex, and now you have to go a month putting up with giant shark comparisons… Be strong… This too shall pass.

Only Meg I could think of was Megan Fox…

And finally, speaking of sharks… I HATE NY

Because of this:

Take a report.

-Large