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Warm-Up
- Big - Run - Crypto Pops and Drops
- Stacking the Admin with $$$ Peeps
- Baseball Deal
- Equifax Class Action - Finally a payout?

Markets
- Employment Report
- This week's CPI and PPI Data
- Santa Rally - Could be just be a couple weeks away

- - Trump Limericks (AI)

ANNOUNCING the CTP Contestants for 2024 CTP Cup

Michael Bowling
Kirk Saathoff
Eric Harvey
Chad Laajala
Tim Dewey
Paul Kinder
Anson Brady (2023 CTP Cup Winner)
---Emails have gone out...

Regarding AMD
- BofA Securities downgraded Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) to Neutral from Buy, lower CY25/26 pf-EPS by 6%/8%ta $4.43/55.51, about -13%/-23% below consensus 55.09/57.11. Two factors:
1) Higher competitive risks in Al against best-of-breed NVDA's dominance, and growing cloud preference for custom chips from MRVL/AVGO. limiting AMD's market share gain potential, and
2) Potential for 1H'25E PC processor correction, after ~4O% HoH surge in AMD's 2H'24E client PC sales.  Shares are down 3%.

Oracle Earnings
- Oracle (ORCL -8%) is lower following its Q2 (Nov) earnings report last night.
- The company reported a slight EPS miss, its second miss in the past three quarters.
- Revenue rose 8.6% yr/yr to $14.06 bln, but that was also a bit light of analyst expectations.
- The Q3 (Feb) adjusted EPS guidance of $1.47-1.51 was also lower than expected.
- Oracle guided to Q3 revs of +7-9% (+9-11% CC), which we compute as $14.21-14.48 bln, which was also light, partly due to FX.

Google Chip
- Releases the Willow quantum computing chip
- Google has unveiled a new chip which it claims takes five minutes to solve a problem that would currently take the world's fastest super computers ten septillion – or 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years – to complete.
- However experts say Willow is, for now, a largely experimental device, meaning a quantum computer powerful enough to solve a wide range of real-world problems is still years - and billions of dollars - away.

MLB Deal
- The Mets on Sunday agreed to sign Juan Soto to a 15-year, $765 million contract, multiple sources said, by far the largest pact in Major League Baseball history.
- The deal, which the Mets have not confirmed because it’s pending a physical, contains a $75 million signing bonus, an opt-out after five seasons and no deferred money.
- The Mets will have the ability to void Soto’s opt-out clause after the 2029 season if they boost the average annual value of the final 10 years of his deal from $51 million to $55 million, according to a source.
- In that case, the overall deal would be for 15 years and $805 million
- Right and Left Fielder - with .288 Batting average
- In 2024, he hit 41 homers and had 129 walks. It was his fourth season with at least 25 home runs and 125 walks. That's fourth-most in MLB history, behind only Barry Bonds (10 such seasons), Babe Ruth (10) and Ted Williams (eight).

China - Back in the Spotlight
- Disinflation again and profits slowing - China's inflation drops
- China's producer price index declined for the 26th month. Producer inflation fell by 2.5% year on year in November...
- Sunday announcement - China's leaders on Monday pledged "more proactive" fiscal measures and "moderately" looser monetary policy next year to boost domestic consumption, according to an official readout of a key policy meeting that outlined upcoming economic priorities.
Hing Kong markets flying again and several stocks on the move
- PDD   11%   NIO  15%   FUTU 23%   NTES 11%   BABA 8.5%   BIDU  9.6%

Just in...(Started in 2017)
- The Equifax Data Breach Settlement Agreement says any remaining funds in the Consumer Restitution Fund will be distributed to Settlement Class Members with valid claims.
- You have a valid claim and are eligible for an additional payment. It will be sent to you by electronic pre-paid card. (Email just arrived....)

Employment Report
- The latest employment data likely cemented another interest-rate reduction by the Federal Reserve later this month but did little to clarify the monetary-policy outlook for 2025.
- 4.2% Unemployment Rate
- 4.5% wage growth
- Better than though additions to the payrolls
- Overall, it looks like it was a reasonably good report - HOWEVER - some cracks beneath the surface with minority jobs

Jobs Report

Fed Meeting Dec 18th
- 89% probability of a 0.25% rate cut
- Fed has its back to the wall - markets are dictating
- No reason to believe that they need a cut, although the would not want to worry markets or surprise them in any way
- All reporting shows that they will do the cut, back off a little as to the amount of potential cuts coming in recognition of the fact that the economy is still running well

Trump Cabinet $$$$
- 11 picks are billionaires
- $340 billion total net worth
--- Big chunk is Musk
- Wealthiest administration in US History - by a long shot
-- 3 more billionaires in the works
- "CORRUPT ELITE" of Biden admin was only worth a total $118 Billion

Trump News (Get used to it)
- Now Trump says that he will not try to replace Jerome Powell
- On Meet The Press he said: "No, I don't think so. I don't see it,"
- "I think if I told him to [go], he would. But if I asked him to, he probably wouldn't," Trump told Welker.

Trump EV Action
- Donald Trump's transition team is considering canceling the U.S. Postal Service's contracts to electrify its delivery fleet, as part of a broader suite of executive orders targeting electric vehicles, according to three sources familiar with the plans.
--- WHY????
- Osh Kosh and Ford are the main providers of the EV trucks for the Postal Service.
---Multi Billion $$ contracts

Last One
- Trump aides contact Google, Meta, Snap over online drug sales
- President-elect Donald Trump's transition team has invited five major tech companies, including Google , Microsoft  and Meta Platforms to a meeting in mid-December about dealing with online sales of drugs
- This looks like non-prescription/illegal drug sales

Retail Sales - Roundup
- Final Tally - Record-breaking sales reported
- Amazon saw the strongest growth on Black Friday
- Americans spent roughly $10.8 billion online on Black Friday
- Shein, Temu also post strong results

UNH
- Interesting how this is all becoming a thing
--- Erupted into a real awakening about the health insurance industry
- NYPD at press conference says person of interest named Luigi Mangione is in custody for murder of UNH executive Brian Thompson
- Murder charges filed

TikTok
- Court upholds requirement for the divestment
- A federal appeals court upheld a law requiring China-based ByteDance to sell the popular social media app TikTok or face an effective ban in the United States
- The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., rejected TikTok’s argument that the ban is unconstitutional and violates the First Amendment rights of the 170 million Americans who use the app.
- Unanimous Ruling

Bribery!
- A subsidiary of top global consulting firm McKinsey & Company agreed to pay nearly $123 million to settle claims that it bribed government officials in South Africa, the U.S. Department of Justice said Thursday.
- Federal prosecutors also unsealed a 2022 guilty plea by Vikas Sagar, a former senior partner at McKinsey who worked in the subsidiary's South Africa office.
- The subsidiary, McKinsey Africa, paid bribes to officials at two state-controlled utility companies in South Africa between 2012 and 2016 in order to secure lucrative consulting contracts, the DOJ said in a press release.
- Reminds of the Adani situation

Bad Sandwich?
- A new lawsuit accuses Subway of "grossly misleading" customers by advertising sandwiches that contain at least three times more meat than it delivers.
- According to a proposed class action filed on Monday in federal court in Brooklyn, Subway ads for its Steak & Cheese sandwich show layers of meat piled high, reaching about as high as the surrounding hero bread.
- In reality, according to several photos in the complaint, the fast-food chain's sandwiches are far more bread than filling.
- Similar lawsuits filed in the same court by the plaintiff's law firm against McDonald's, Wendy's and Taco Bell were dismissed last year.
- Subway previously defended for more than four years against a lawsuit claiming its "footlong" sandwiches were too short.
--------------That lawsuit was dismissed in 2017.
No Sleep
- A new stock exchange launching next year is on track to offer nearly round-the-clock trading on business days, pending final regulatory approvals
- The 24X National Exchange will debut in the second half of 2025, with trading from 4:00 a.m. ET to 7:00 p.m. ET on weekdays, the Stamford, Connecticut-based platform said. That can be expanded to 8:00 p.m. ET on Sunday through 7:00 p.m. ET on Friday, with a one-hour pause each day, once the exchange clears some final hurdles with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

 

- - More Musk
- Elon Musk lost his bid to have his $56 billion 2018 pay package reinstated
- A Delaware judge upheld her January ruling in a case brought by shareholders that said the process leading to approval of the pay package was “deeply flawed.”

End Of Year - What to do with OLD stock picks?

 

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FED AND CRYPTO LIMERICKS

TRUMP (AI) Limerick

There once was a man named Trump,
Who governed with flair and a stump.
With tweets quite unfiltered,
And policies tilted,
He sure made the headlines all jump!

 

There once was a man named Trump,
Whose ego was known to be plump.
With bluster and flare,
He'd claim he was fair,
But left many folks in a slump!