Financial Review

The Parade Passing By

Sinclair Noe — October 26, 2017

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DOW + 71 = 23,400
SPX + 3 = 2560
NAS – 7 = 6556
RUT + 3 = 1497
10 Y + .01 = 2.45%
OIL + .63 = 52.81
GOLD – 11.00 = 1267.20

Cryptocurrency 

• Number of Currencies: 879
• Total Market Cap: $172,874,344,662
• 24H Volume: $3,346,529,813

Top Cryptocurrencies

	Name	Symbol	Price USD	Market Cap	Vol.	Total Vol. %	Price BTC	Chg. % 1D	Chg. % 7D
	Bitcoin	BTC	5,991.9	$99.63B	$1.94B	57.98%	1	+1.73%	+5.04%
	Ethereum	ETH	298.18	$28.44B	$265.63M	7.94%	0.0500608	+1.04%	-3.22%
	Ripple	XRP	0.20235	$7.88B	$37.75M	1.13%	0.0000341	+0.17%	-5.97%
	Bitcoin Cash	BCH	339.20	$5.69B	$238.21M	7.12%	0.0571329	+0.96%	+2.97%
	Litecoin	LTC	55.840	$3.00B	$79.47M	2.37%	0.00935417	+0.59%	-6.11%
	Dash	DASH	285.57	$2.20B	$49.83M	1.49%	0.0483665	+0.47%	-2.46%
	NEM	XEM	0.20044	$1.80B	$4.71M	0.14%	0.00003352	+0.74%	-10.18%
	BitConnect	BCC	219.37	$1.60B	$15.80M	0.47%	0.0368101	+5.91%	+9.88%
	NEO	NEO	28.500	$1.42B	$35.29M	1.05%	0.00475357	+0.28%	-1.88%
	Monero	XMR	88.80	$1.36B	$22.90M	0.68%	0.0148741	0.00%	-0.39%

Up 100, down 100, up 100 then drifting lower. The Dow and the S&P moved higher today. The Nasdaq closed in the red as biotech took a beating. Welcome to earnings reporting season. After the closing bell, we watched a parade of the biggest tech companies report better than expected earnings. Tomorrow, Apple launches iPhone X.

Also, tomorrow the Commerce Department releases its first look at gross domestic product for the third quarter. The consensus is that the economy likely expanded at a 2.6 percent annualized rate in the three months ended Sept. 30, which is in-line with recent history.

Republicans pushed a $4 trillion budget through the House today by a thin margin. For now, Republicans sidestepped divisions within the party by voting 216-212 to permit them to begin work on a $1.5 trillion tax cut without fear of a filibuster by Democrats.

This is just a first step, GOP tax-writers pick winners and losers among interest groups, business sectors and rank-and-file voters. The goal is a full rewrite of the inefficient, loophole-laden tax code in hopes of lower rates for corporations and other businesses and a burst of economic growth.

But evidence is growing that some of their steps — such as eliminating the deduction for state and local taxes or eliminating 401K retirement plans – will face opposition from both sides of the aisle. For the most part, plans for ending various tax breaks — which are key to helping to offset the deep tax-rate cuts that Trump and congressional leaders want to achieve — have been kept under wraps.

Now that the budget blueprint has been adopted, a hard reality will set in as the business community and others realize how much of the tax bill will involve closing loopholes and changing their credits and deductions. In the absence of details on how to pay for those rate reductions, the fight over the SALT deduction is instructive. Repealing the tax break would generate an estimated $1.3 trillion over 10 years. If it’s not fully repealed, lawmakers will have another revenue hole to fill.

Republican Sen. Bob Corker said today that some of the items in the GOP tax reform discussion are just “buying off” special interests and serve no other purpose. Corker said: “Some of the things we’re doing, I’m sorry, are ridiculous,” though he did not mention any specifics.

Corker, a member on the Senate Budget and Banking committees said those things are “not going to drive 1 ounce of economic growth. But it’s what you have to do to pass a tax bill. It’s buying off of people to pass tax reform. … We could take a lot of this off in the trash can and make it easier and actually do something that grows our economy and increases our wages.”

Meanwhile, Democrats united against the plan, arguing its tax cuts will pad the bank accounts of the wealthy and the balance sheets of corporations, while delivering modest relief — or none — to middle-income taxpayers.

Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady, R-Texas, said immediately after the vote that he’ll release the tax measure on Nov. 1 and that a panel vote is expected the week of Nov. 6. House and Senate leaders want to pass companion measures before Thanksgiving with a final compromise coming before year’s end. But there are lots of details between now and then.

This afternoon, Trump declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency, stopping short of a national emergency declaration he promised months ago that would have freed up more federal money. The declaration will redirect federal resources and loosen regulations to combat opioid abuse, but it does not mean there will be more money to combat the crisis.

Apparently, it is tough to find money for the opioid crisis and cut corporate taxes at the same time. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report more than 54,000 deaths last year attributed to opioid abuse.

European Central Bank President Mario Draghi managed to avoid roiling markets when he detailed the central bank’s plan to cut its monthly bond purchases in half. In fact, bonds and stocks soared while the euro weakened – a perfect outcome for the ECB. Draghi added a bit of a surprise to the plan to pull back from the markets.

Yes, the ECB will cut in half its monthly bond purchases to 30 billion euros from 60 billion euros starting in January, but the bank’s president also indicated that zero percent interest rates could remain at current levels until “well past” whenever it finally decides to end its quantitative easing measures. Maybe 2019, maybe 2020.

Markets seemed to focus on the idea of “lower for longer”. Bonds across Europe rallied hard, with yields on 10-year German bunds tumbling almost 7 basis points to 0.42 percent. The STOXX Europe 600 Index promptly rose the most since August.

Pending home sales showed a decline to a 2½ year low in September, missing consensus estimates for a rise of 0.4%, as the housing market is buffeted by lean supply and strong demand. Meanwhile, the advanced U.S. trade deficit widened by 1.3% in September.

Amazon reported net income of $256 million, or 52 cents per share, for the three months ending Sept. 30. That easily beat the 2 cents per share analysts had expected. Amazon has long been known for investing the money it makes back into its businesses, such as opening new warehouses to fulfill orders.

Many seemed to expect that again. And Amazon did reinvest in the business. It paid nearly $14 billion this summer for organic grocer Whole Foods; announced a series of new voice-activated Echo devices; and kicked off a public hunt for a place to build its second headquarters.

Revenue rose 34 percent to $43.4 billion, beating the $41.5 billion analysts expected. Amazon reported after the bell and shares were up about 8% in after-hours trade. Rite Aid, Express Scripts Holding and Walgreens Boots Alliance all fell sharply after Amazon secured a wholesale pharmacy license.

UPS reported earnings per share of $1.45 for the third quarter. Revenue increased 7%. International profit was up 8.9%; currency neutral profit was up 20%. And they raised guidance for full year 2017. The upcoming holiday period is shaping up to be another record-breaking shipping season. Earlier in the week we told you that online purchases are expected to pass brick and mortar retail purchases this season.

In fact, United Parcel Service (UPS) forecasts 750 million packages will be delivered between Black Friday and New Year’s Eve, a 5% increase from last year. Despite the expected increase in volume, UPS expects to hire the same number of temporary seasonal workers as last year (95,000). The difference is UPS will be using more technology to streamline operations.

Alphabet beat projections for third-quarter sales and earnings after a surge in Google ad volume helped the web-search giant shrug off concerns about regulatory scrutiny and an expensive foray into hardware. Sales for the quarter rose 24% to $22.2 billion and profit was $9.57 a share, beating estimates of $8.34.

In September, the deadline arrived for Google to meet demands for the European Union antitrust case on shopping ads. Google agreed to tweak its paid search results for products in the continent, although it’s still appealing the charges. These product ads have helped drive sales and profit growth, but Google investors are more concerned about a probe into Google’s Android software on mobile devices, where Google’s ads are growing.

Also in September, Google agreed to pay $1.1 billion for about 2,000 engineers from HTC Corp, in effect an acquisition of skilled hands to expand Google’s line of Pixel smartphones. The new hardware business is a pillar of Google’s fight against Apple. Revenue from a segment labeled Other Revenue, which includes hardware, was up 39%. Alphabet share gained about 3% in after-hours trade.

Intel beat Wall Street estimates for the quarter and raised its outlook for the year. Intel reported third-quarter net income of $4.5 billion, or 94 cents a share, beating estimates of 80 cents per share. Revenue rose to $16.1 billion from $15.7 billion. Intel was up about 1.6% in after-hours.

Microsoft posted better-than-expected quarterly results. The company reported its fiscal first-quarter earnings rose to $6.5 billion, or 84 cents a share – topping estimates of 71 cents per share. Revenue grew 12% to $24.5 billion, beating estimates. Microsoft up about 4.5% in after-hours, trading at all-time highs.

Ford Motor rose 1.9% after the auto maker beat profit and revenue estimates.

Bristol-Myers Squibb shares fell 4.8% after the company missed on profit and revenue and changed its 2017 guidance.

Nutrisystem  continued to slide, falling 10.5%, despite turning in better-than-expected quarterly earnings.

Celgene plummeted 16.4% after the company reported a third-quarter profit beat and revenue miss and lowered its 2017 profit and revenue outlook. The stock pressured the overall biotech and health-care sectors.

The $9.5 billion iShares Nasdaq Biotechnology ETF tumbled as much as 2.9 percent. The biggest exchange-traded fund tracking the biotech industry is headed toward its longest losing streak since September 2015, falling for seven days in a row. Just a reminder, biotechs led a market selloff about 2 years ago.

Tenet Healthcare shares tanked 9.2% following a Reuters report that the hospital operator has ended its plan to sell itself after its chief executive abruptly left ahead of schedule.

The Wall Street Journal reports CVS Health has made a proposal to buy Aetna for more than $200 per share, a deal that could value the health insurer at upward of $66 billion.

Financial Review

Bounce Back

Sinclair Noe — June 28, 2017

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 13:15 — 7.6MB)

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DOW + 143 = 21,454
SPX + 21 = 2440
NAS + 87 = 6234
RUT + 21 = 1425
10 Y + .02 = 2.22%
OIL + .54 = 44.78
GOLD + 2.10 = 1249.80
BITCOIN + 0.05% = 2585.84 USD
ETHEREUM + 3.73% = 314.34

Well, isn’t this familiar. The markets have a down day only to bounce back. The S&P 500 posted its largest one-day gain in two months while Nasdaq Composite recorded its best day in eight months. The S&P 500 has been somewhat fickle this month with three of this year’s biggest gains and two of its worst losses having occurred in June.

For the first time in seven years, the Federal Reserve did not object to any of the capital plans of 34 banks it reviewed in the second part of the annual stress tests implemented in the wake of the financial crisis.  Only Capital One Financial needed to submit a new capital plan by Dec. 28 to address “weaknesses in its capital planning process.”

Last Thursday, all 34 banks passed the Dodd-Frank Act Stress Tests for the third time by topping the Fed’s requirements for being able to handle a severe recession. Wednesday’s results from the Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review, or CCAR, marked the first time since the test launched seven years ago that the Fed did not object to any of the banks’ capital plans.

The passing grade means banks can use extra capital for stock buybacks, dividends and other purposes beyond a cushion against possible catastrophe. And we are already hearing from big banks. Citigroup announced plans to repurchase up to $15.6 billion of common stock over the next 12 months and double its quarterly dividend to 32 cents per share, bringing total payouts to $18.9 billion.

Fewer buyers signed contracts to buy existing homes in May, likely because they can’t find or afford what they want. The pending home sales index from the National Association of Realtors dropped 0.8 percent month to month and is now 1.7 percent lower than May 2016.

The number of home sales that closed this spring was slightly higher than a year ago, but the lack of listings clearly held the market back. The supply of homes for sale at the end of May was down more than 8 percent from a year ago, and homes that were listed sold at the fastest rate on record. The tight supply is pushing home prices higher, considerably faster than income growth.

Low mortgage rates have not been much help in offsetting these big price gains, and in fact may be exacerbating the problem, especially if rates begin to rise as is widely expected. The inventory crisis is worst on the low end of the market, where demand is highest.

The number of starter and trade-up homes currently on the market is down 15.6 percent and 13 percent, respectively, compared with a year ago, according to Trulia. The inventory of premium homes has fallen 3.9 percent.

The supply situation has buyer confidence in the housing market dropping. Just over half of renters say they think now is a good time to buy. That is down from 62 percent one year ago. While about 80 percent of current homeowners think now is a good time to buy, they are not listing their homes for sale. This may have more to do with weakening affordability than anything else. They don’t want to sell if they can’t afford a move-up home.

Senate leadership has reportedly set a Friday deadline for a new draft of the Better Care Reconciliation Act. The Congressional Budget Office could score it next week, setting up a mid-July vote. The vote has been delayed, but the Senate’s repeal and replace efforts are far from over.

When it comes to public support, there’s room for improvement. Just 17 Percent of Americans approve of the Republican Senate Health Care Bill – that’s almost as low as the approval rating for Congress. Fifty-five percent say they disapprove, while about a quarter said they hadn’t heard enough about the proposal to have an opinion on it.

Yesterday, we told you about the new Petya cyber virus that started in Ukraine and was infecting computers around the globe. The malicious code locked machines and demanded victims post a ransom worth $300 in bitcoins or lose their data entirely, like the extortion tactic used in the global WannaCry ransomware attack in May.

Day 2 of the ransomware attack and the situation is getting worse. Danish shipping giant A.P. Moller-Maersk said it was struggling to process orders and shift cargoes, congesting some of the 76 ports around the world run by its APM Terminals subsidiary.

FedEx shares temporarily halted trading before the package delivery giant disclosed that an information system virus significantly affected the global operations of its TNT Express subsidiary. In a statement, FedEx said that while TNT’s operations and communications systems were disrupted, “no data breach is known to have occurred.” The company noted that operations of all other FedEx companies were unaffected. FedEx shares finished the day up 1.3%.

United Parcel Service will freeze a pension plan for about 70,000 nonunion U.S. employees because of escalating costs and volatility in determining future payments, replacing it with a different retirement benefit. UPS’s pension plans in the U.S. had a $9.85 billion shortfall at the end of last year, meaning they were about 76 percent funded. The shift won’t occur until Jan. 1, 2023, giving affected workers more than five years to prepare.

The US announced today it’s rolling out a set of new, largely undisclosed security measures targeting some 2,000 international flights arriving at American airports every day.  The new rules will apply to 180 airlines flying out of 280 airports in 105 countries, and could prompt additional screening time for the 325,000 airline passengers arriving in the United States daily.

The move aims to end a limited in-cabin ban on laptops and other large electronic devices and prevent its expansion to additional airports. Officials said that travelers can expect intensified screening at airports, in the form of sniffing dogs, or more screening equipment. Details are still sketchy, including when the new confidential rules will be put in place. Sometime in the short and medium term.

Blue Apron Holdings cut the expected price range for its initial public offering to $10 to $11 per share from its previous estimate of $15 to $17 per share after potential investors expressed concerns about Amazon’s Whole Foods deal as well as Blue Apron’s marketing costs and lack of profitability.

Blue Apron’s new pricing guidance gives the company a valuation of up to $2.08 billion, below both the $3.2 billion implied by its previous estimate and the $2.2 billion by its latest private fundraising round two years ago. Blue Apron is the biggest U.S. meal-kit company and the first set to go public.

Amazon already has a small meal-kit business, delivering ingredients and recipes to customers in a handful of cities, and the Whole Foods deal announced could provide a ready-made distribution system for food delivery in the form of brick-and-mortar grocery stores.

Dutch healthcare company Philips has agreed to buy U.S.-based Spectranetics for $2.1 billion including debt. Spectranetics uses techniques including lasers and tiny drug-covered balloons to clean the insides of veins and arteries that have become clogged due to heart disease.

Beef Products Inc has settled its defamation lawsuit against the ABC television network over news reports on its processed beef product known as “pink slime.” The settlement came 3-1/2 weeks after the trial in the case got under way. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed. ABC used the term “pink slime” more than 350 times across six different media platforms including TV and online. ABC said it is not retracting or apologizing for anything. Bon Appetit.

Facebook tops 2 billion users. CEO Mark Zuckerberg made the announcement on his personal Facebook page. Facebook now becomes the unofficial least exclusive club in the world.

Brazil’s federal police have halted issuing new passports on the eve of school vacations, citing insufficient funds. The federal police exhausted its budget for immigration control and travel documents and won’t be able to restore the service until additional funds are approved.

For the third year in a row, the state of Illinois is poised to begin its fiscal year on July 1 with no state budget and billions of dollars in the red. If that happens, S&P Global Ratings says Illinois will probably lose its ­investment-grade status and become the first U.S. state on record to have its general obligation debt rated as junk.

Illinois is already the worst-rated state at BBB-, S&P’s lowest investment-grade rating. The state owes at least $800 million in interest and late fees on its unpaid bills. Any further downgrade will make it more expensive the next time the state needs to sell bonds.

Two years ago, Illinois’s budget impasse meant that the state’s lottery winners had to wait for months to get their winnings. Now, with $15 billion in unpaid bills, Illinois is on the brink of being unable to even sell Powerball tickets. And winning the Powerball was probably their best chance of breaking the budget impasse.

KB Homes  announced earnings of $0.33 a share on revenue of $1 billion, both better than expected. KB Home climbed 5 percent.

General Mills rose 1.9 percent after the maker of Cheerios cereal, Yoplait yogurt and other packaged foods served up fourth-quarter earnings and revenue that beat expectations.

Staples will be acquired by Sycamore Partners for about $6.9 billion in one of the largest retail deals of the year. Sycamore is paying $10.25 a share for the retailer; that represents a 12 percent premium to its share price on Tuesday, before reports surfaced that the transaction was close to be being completed.

Financial Review

A Deluge and an Eclipse

Sinclair Noe — April 27, 2017

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 13:15 — 7.6MB)

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DOW + 6 = 20,981
SPX + 1 = 2388
NAS + 23 = 6048 (record high close)
RUT – 2 = 1417
10 Y – .02 = 2.29%
OIL – 1.01 = 48.61
GOLD – 5.50 = 1264.50

Today brought a deluge of earnings.

Google parent Alphabet posted a 29 percent rise in quarterly profit, driven by a surge in advertising on mobiles and its popular YouTube video service. Alphabet’s net income rose to $5.43 billion. The company’s consolidated revenue rose 22 percent to $24.75 billion.

Google’s ad revenue, which accounts for a lion’s share of its business, rose 18 percent to $21.4 billion in the first quarter. Revenue from its Google Other unit, which includes Pixel smartphone, Play Store and cloud business, rose 49 percent to $3.10 billion.

Alphabet sales from its moonshots projects like Fiber and Nest also grew to $244 million in the quarter, up from $165 million a year earlier. However, Google’s loss for these ambitious projects ticked up slightly to $855 million. Up 5% in after-hours trade.

Also, after the closing bell, Amazon reported revenue of $35.7 billion, versus Wall Street estimates of $35.3 billion. A nice beat. This compares to $29.1 billion a year ago. EPS of $1.48, versus estimates of $1.13 per share. A big beat.

Analysts were also closely watching the performance of Amazon’s cloud computing unit, Amazon Web Services. AWS reported $3.66 billion in sales, and 43% percent growth, which is not quite as strong as the growth seen in the past 3 quarters but it is still a big beat. Amazon up almost 5% in after-hours trade.

Microsoft net income rose to $4.8 billion, or 61 cents per share, from $3.7 billion, or 47 cents per share, a year earlier. That was an earnings miss. Revenue climbed 6 percent to $23.5 billion, missing estimates.

Microsoft said LinkedIn, which it bought for about $26 billion, contributed $975 million in revenue in the quarter. Revenue from Microsoft’s personal computing unit, its largest by revenue, fell 7.4 percent. Demand for its cloud computing services failed to offset weak growth in its personal computing division. Microsoft down about 2% in after-hours.

Intel reported lower-than-expected revenue for the first quarter. Intel still gets most of its revenue from selling PC chips, a business that returned to growth in 2016 due to stabilizing demand in the second half of the year.

Revenue from Intel’s higher-margin data center business rose 6 percent to $4.2 billion in the quarter, missing analysts’ expectations. Revenue from client computing rose 6 percent to $8 billion. Intel’s net income rose to $2.96 billion, or 61 cents per share, from $2.05 billion, or 42 cents per share, a year earlier. That was a miss of 4 cents per share. Intel dropped about 3.5% after-hours.

Starbucks reported fiscal second-quarter profit of $652 million, or 45 cents per share – in line with estimates. Revenue of $5.29 billion was a slight miss. Comparable-store sales rose 3%, below analysts’ forecast for 3.6%.

United Parcel Service reported a higher-than-expected quarterly net profit as revenue grew across its domestic and international package delivery segments and as well as freight and supply chain operations.

Often seen as a bellwether of US economic activity, UPS said revenue increased to $15.3 billion in the first quarter from $14.4 billion in the year-ago period. Revenue beat estimates. Net income rose 2.4% to $1.15, also beating estimates.  During the quarter, UPS invested to expand its new Saturday deliveries, with $35 million in increased costs.

Ford Motor’s first-quarter profit fell 35% from a year earlier to $1.6 billion, down from $2.5 billion in 2016’s first period, when strong demand for a newly redesigned F-150 pickup truck helped Ford post its best quarterly operating profit in history.

Earnings per share were 39 cents in the latest quarter, beating analysts’ consensus of 36 cents. Revenue for the first quarter rose 4% to $39.1 billion, driven by a favorable mix of pickup trucks and sport-utility vehicles. Ford plans to cut $3 billion in costs this year and expects profit to rebound in 2018, driven by continued strength in the pickup-truck market.

American Airlines Group has a healthy track record with respect to earnings. The company has delivered positive earnings surprises in three of the last four quarters, with an average beat of 20%. The first quarter down 60% from the year ago quarter but it was another beat. Adjusted earnings per share came in at 61 cents per share, beating estimates of 57 cents. American shares dropped about 5% today.

American Airlines announced it was increasing pilot and flight attendant salaries an average of 6.5 percent, or by a total of $930 million through 2019. A JPMorgan analyst described it as a “wealth transfer” to labor groups. American CEO Doug Parker described the higher wages as a correction to years of “incredibly difficult times” for airline employees. American employees had been underpaid compared to other airline employees. Parker called the pay hikes an “investment” in better service.

Southwest Airlines dropped about 2%, after the air carrier reported first-quarter profit and revenue that missed expectations. CEO Gary Kelly announced that Southwest will no longer overbook its flights, ending a practice that sometimes leaves paying passengers without a seat.

It’s impossible for an airline to guarantee it will never have to bump a passenger. Carriers still must transport other pilots and crew members to work, and an air marshal could also need a seat. But ending overbooking does make it less likely.

Comcast beat expectations ahead of the bell and jumped 3%, while Abbvie performed similarly. Those companies were joined by railroad company Union UNP, which also gained 3% in early trade, and another pharmaceutical giant, Bristol-Myers Squibb + 3.5%. Other post-earnings gainers included KKR +5% and Domino’s Pizza, up 2.5%.

European markets closed slightly lower Thursday. The European Central Bank kept interest rates unchanged. ECB President Mario Draghi surprised some investors by explicitly recognizing the bloc’s economic recovery.

The euro initially reached the day’s peak of $1.0930 as Draghi struck an optimistic tone when answering questions from reporters. The ECB maintained a deposit rate of -0.4% for banks, a base interest rate of 0.0%, and a quantitative easing (QE) program of up to €60 billion per month.

President Trump said he’ll give the re-negotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement a “good, strong shot” but reiterated he would “terminate” U.S. participation if he doesn’t get what he called a fair deal. He said he decided to have talks since pulling out would be a “shock to the system.”

House Speaker Paul Ryan said he’s confident Congress will pass a “short-term extension” of current government funding that would keep operations going past Friday. Ryan did not give a time for a vote.

A gauge of pending home sales declined in March as inventory continued to tighten. The National Association of Realtors’ index fell 0.8% to a reading of 111.4. The index forecasts future sales by tracking real estate transactions in which a contract has been signed, but the deal has not yet closed.

Thanks to a strong first quarter, the Realtors forecast sales in 2017 to rise 3.5% compared to 2016. But supply isn’t keeping up with demand. There were 3.8 months of supply in March, and properties stayed on the market an average of only 34 days. A balanced market is usually thought to have 6 months of supply.

West Virginia is coal country. Chris Beam, president of Appalachian Power, the state’s largest utility, is not a coal guy. Beam told the West Virginia Gazette-Mail he had a recent conversation with the governor of West Virginia, who asked him to burn more coal.  Beam responded, “That’s not going to happen.” And the reason is customers don’t want it.

Beam says the debate over climate change, and the role of coal in it, is essentially over. Appalachian Power’s parent company AES believes the regulation of carbon dioxide is inevitable. In the coming decades, renewable energy and natural gas are poised to dominate the fuel mix. Appalachian Power’s residential and industrial customers are now asking about switching to 100% renewables.

To get out in front of this growing demand, the utility, which serves more than a million customers across the US mid-Atlantic region, has begun preparing power plans that would allow customers to stop using fossil fuels. Appalachian Power estimates it will reduce its coal capacity from 60% of its energy mix to about 50% by 2020.

At the same time, wind and solar will rise from about 4% of capacity to 20% by 2031. And yes, West Virginia trails most of the rest of the country in its switch to renewables.

And we finish with a special note for the philatelists among us. The Postal Service will debut a new shape-shifting Forever stamp in June ahead of a rare solar eclipse set for Aug. 21. The new issue will transform from an image of a total solar eclipse into an image of the moon when you press it with your finger. The back will feature a U.S. map tracking when the eclipse will appear across the country.

It’s the first time a stamp will make use of thermochromic ink, which is sensitive to body heat (and changing temperatures — which means stamps should be kept away from direct sunlight). The stamp’s photo of the eclipse was taken in Libya in 2006 by an Arizona-based astrophysicist, Fred Espenak, aka Mr. Eclipse, of Portal, AZ.

Financial Review

No Small Feat

Sinclair Noe — March 27, 2017

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 13:16 — 7.6MB)

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DOW – 45 = 20,550
SPX – 2 = 2341
NAS + 11 = 5840
RUT + 2 = 1357
10 Y – .03 = 2.37%
OIL – .12 = 47.85
GOLD + 10.90 = 1254.80

Stocks pared losses, and recovered from session lows; enough to push the Nasdaq into positive territory; enough to turn a 184-point loss on the Dow into just a 45-point loss at the close.

The Dow Jones industrial average is now down for 8 straight sessions – the longest losing streak since August 2011; you may recall that the instigation for that loss was concern about the credit worthiness of some of the largest economies in Europe.

Additionally, the only other times since 1990 that we have seen 8 down days for the Dow were in October 2008 and September 2001. Prior to 1990, it happened three times in the 1980s and much more frequently in the 1960s and 1970s. Still, the current losing streak only saw the Dow drop 400 points or 1.9%.

The overall trend is still up and the recent weakness doesn’t look like anything more than the markets taking a pause after a sharp and fast run-up, but it bears watching.

After a week that began with the FBI disclosing that it’s investigating President Donald Trump’s campaign team for possibly colluding with Russia to tilt the 2016 election, and ended with a failure to rustle up enough votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act, the president is moving on. The administration plans to take a lead role in crafting major legislation to cut taxes with an eye toward meeting an August target date.

Getting a broad tax bill passed by Congress and on Trump’s desk for signature into law looks to be no easy feat, especially after intra-party differences last week torpedoed the healthcare legislation he had backed. And before tax reform, there is the issue of passing a budget, and dealing with the pending national debt ceiling. Analysts at Bank of America Merrill Lynch said in a research note that a tax bill, “if passed at all, could be a very watered-down version of current proposals.”

It’s tough all over. US states are reducing their tax revenue forecasts due to concerns over a projected slump in economic growth, low oil prices, possible federal tax cuts and other factors. The Rockefeller Institute of Government, the public policy research arm of the State University of New York, said while the revised forecasts varied, states generally anticipate continued sluggish growth for their two biggest revenue sources: income and sales taxes. That will squeeze already-tight state budgets.

For fiscal 2017, which in most states began on July 1, the median income tax growth rate slipped to 3.6 percent from 4 percent, while the rate for sales taxes fell to 3.1 percent from 4.2 percent. In fiscal 2018, states forecasted slight increases over fiscal 2017 with the median growth rate for income taxes at 4.1 percent and sales taxes at 3.5 percent.

Jared Kushner, Trump’s 36-year-old son-in-law, will oversee a new “SWAT team”. Its goal is to reinvent the federal government. The entire federal government. Trump has already tasked Kushner with bringing peace to the Middle East, plus several other significant domestic and foreign policy assignments.

Kushner’s new Office of American Innovation will reportedly showcase several corporate titans, including Apple’s Tim Cook and Microsoft’s Bill Gates, to “modernize the technology and data infrastructure of every federal department and agency.” So, good luck with all that.

And in his spare time, Kushner has been called to testify before a Senate committee investigating whether Russia tried to interfere in the election. Earlier today, a Russian bank under US economic sanctions over Russia’s incursion into Ukraine disclosed that its executives had met Jared Kushner during the 2016 election campaign.

The Trump administration is attempting to crack down on sanctuary cities, announcing that local governments will have to certify they aren’t impeding communication between their police and federal immigration authorities in order to continue receiving Justice Department grants. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said that in one week, about 200 states and localities refused to honor federal requests to turn over undocumented immigrants. He didn’t specify the time period.

Sessions reiterated a policy announced in an executive order Trump signed in his first week in office. That document authorized the Attorney General and Secretary of Homeland Security to withhold federal grants from sanctuary cities that don’t help the US government deport immigrants. Sessions said the federal government could also “claw back” grants to jurisdictions refusing to work with the federal government, in addition to refusing to approve new grants.

Chicago Federal Reserve President Charles Evans says inflation looks “well on its way” to reaching US economic objectives. Yet many uncertainties remain, particularly with the latest failure of the GOP’s proposal to repeal and replace Obamacare. At a speech in Madrid, Spain, Evans said he still worries long-term inflation expectations are running below the Fed’s 2 percent inflation objective.

Evans said he doesn’t have confidence there will be four rate increases in 2017, and three increases are “plausible,” but two rate hikes are “also possible.” This week, eleven speeches are scheduled to take place from nine of the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee’s twelve members. Fed Chair Janet Yellen will hold her keynote speech to a conference in D.C. on Thursday morning.

It’s a busy week for competition authorities in Brussels. The $140 billion merger between Dow Chemical and Dupont is expected to win Euro Union approval, while a veto is anticipated for the €29 billion-euro tie-up of LSE and Deutsche Boerse. Antitrust officials are also expected to bless a second agrichemical megamerger – ChemChina’s purchase of Syngenta – next week.

A joint committee of ministers from OPEC and non-OPEC oil producers meeting over the weekend has agreed to review whether a global pact to limit supplies should be extended by six months. Nothing concrete just yet; but they will look revisit production cuts in April.

OPEC and 11 other leading producers including Russia agreed in December to cut their combined output by almost 1.8 million barrels per day in the first half of the year. The original deal was to last six months, with the possibility of a six-month extension. The meeting of energy ministers found generally good compliance with the production cuts so far, although there is little to indicate that it has eased the global oil glut.

Last week, Credit Suisse downgraded the retail sector, saying the outlook had become bleaker than it had anticipated in large part because of events in Washington and through discussion of “whether we think the risks of the border adjustment provision in the House corporate tax reform proposal are fully reflected in apparel and retailing stocks”. Other analysts have shown similar pessimism.

In the past several months, Macy’s has announced it will close 63 stores; Sears, 150; The Limited, 250; Guess, 60; American Apparel, 104; Abercrombie & Fitch, 60; JCPenney, up to 140. The cost in jobs is stark, with Macy’s saying it expects to see 10,000 workers laid off, including 6,200 managers, or 17% of executives.

A recent Synchrony Financial report entitled The Future of Retail predicted that instant gratification coupled with a higher degree of tech-driven personalization would drive consumer behavior and retail industry through to 2030. The report said that the future of bricks-and-mortar will center on authentic brand experiences: more than half of consumers polled said they looked forward to an amalgam of in-store and entertainment experiences.

If you were looking for top performing stocks of the past decade, you would expect to hear about the FANG stocks, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google. Don’t forget Domino’s; the pizza company is up some 2,200% in the past decade. Not as good as Netflix, but better than the others.

Bill Gross, who was fired from Pimco four decades after he co-founded the investment firm, has settled his lawsuit against the company for just over $81 million. Gross sued Pimco in 2015, claiming his dismissal from the company was a breach of contract, and a breach of covenant of good faith and fair dealing. Gross said at the time that he suffered damages in excess of $200 million.

A lawyer representing the Pimco co-founder filed a request in California state court to dismiss the fund manager’s suit over his 2014 departure from the company. All proceeds from the settlement will go to charity — to the Sue and Bill Gross foundation.

UPS’s legal fight with New York has gone up in smoke. A federal judge said United Parcel Service ignored “red flags” that its brown trucks were being used to transport millions of untaxed cigarettes from Indian reservations. A similar suit is also pending against UPS rival FedEx.

The US district judge ruled that UPS failed to comply with a 2005 deal it struck with the state to fix the problem without going to court. She said she’d decide on damages later. The state seeks more than $800 million in damages for lost tax revenue.

Following a high-impact crash in Tempe, Arizona, Friday night, Uber suspended its self-driving car program. The accident occurred when the driver of a second vehicle “failed to yield” to the Uber car while making a turn. After checking things out, Uber said it is putting self-driving cars back on the road for passengers to hail in Tempe

NFL owners approved the Oakland Raiders’ move to Las Vegas at the league meetings. Raiders were not satisfied with Oakland’s proposals for a new stadium, and Las Vegas stepped up with $750 million in public money. Bank of America also is giving Raiders owner Mark Davis a $650 million loan. The Raiders likely will play two or three more years in the Bay Area before their $1.7 billion stadium near the Las Vegas strip is ready.

Financial Review

91 Days

Sinclair Noe — February 22, 2017

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 13:15 — 7.6MB)

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DOW + 32 = 20,775
SPX – 2 = 2362
NAS – 5 = 5860
RUT – 6 = 1403
10 Y – .01 = 2.42%
OIL – .76 = 53.57
GOLD + 2.50 = 1238.90

Another record high for the Dow. S&P and Nasdaq, not so much.

91 straight trading days — that is how long the S&P has gone without closing lower by 1% or more. The S&P 500 ended 1.2% down on Oct. 11 — more than four months ago — and hasn’t clocked out on such a negative note since then.

The result has been a slow, steady slog to record highs. Hardly the stuff of investor euphoria or irrational exuberance; more like climbing a wall of worry. Stocks are expensive by almost any measure, and Mom and Pop investors seem skeptical, but the reality is that they have few good options but to stand on the edge of the cliff.

In mid-December, Bloomberg polled Wall Street analysts for their full-year predictions.  The average forecast for 2017 was calling for growth of 5.2 percent. The S&P 500 is already up 5.5 percent year-to-date. The average estimate was 2,364. The index touched 2,366 yesterday.

The Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee held a meeting January 31 – February 1. The Fed stood pat at that meeting, and today they released the minutes from that meeting. Policymakers seemed confident that the labor market was strong, and even though there were signs of inflation, that didn’t seem to worry them.

Fed officials wrestled with uncertainty on issues ranging from the Trump administration’s fiscal stimulus plans to the headwinds a rising dollar may pose. A few participants “noted that continuing to remove policy accommodation in a timely manner, potentially at an upcoming meeting, would allow the committee greater flexibility in responding to subsequent changes in economic conditions.”

The minutes included several references to “downside risks” to the economy. However, the meeting was held before data releases on jobs and inflation early in February that crushed estimates. The takeaway is that they seem ready to raise rates “fairly soon”.

The next policy meeting is March 14-15, and the more likely chance for a rate hike is the policy meeting in June. Still, the Fed is holding to the idea of 3 rate hikes for 2017, so March is on the table.

The National Association of Realtors reports existing home sales jumped 3.3% in January to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.69 million.  January’s sales pace is 3.8 percent higher than a year ago. The median existing-home price for all housing types in January was $228,900, up 7.1 percent from January 2016 and marks the 59^th consecutive month of year-over-year gains.

Total housing inventory at the end of January rose 2.4 percent to 1.69 million existing homes available for sale, but is still 7.1 percent lower than a year ago, and has fallen year-over-year for 20 straight months. And of course, tight inventory combined with higher mortgage rates, means less affordable housing.

Not surprising that lower-price, or starter homes were a sweet spot for buyers. First time buyers rose slightly to 33% of sales in January. For Phoenix, the median listing price was $307,000. And the average time on market was 66 days. Compared to an average of 50 days nationally.

The US has approximately 200,000 unfilled construction jobs, which represents an 81% increase over the last two years, according to estimates from the National Association of Homebuilders. Home-builders like Lennar and Toll Brothers have cited a shortage in construction workers as a major reason they’ve had to slow down home construction.

Toll Brothers reported quarterly profit of 42 cents per share, 7 cents above estimates, while the luxury homebuilder’s revenue beat forecasts by a wide margin. However, overall profit was down 3.8 percent from a year ago, impacted by lower average selling prices.

Shares of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac plunged by more than 30 percent on Tuesday following a ruling by a US appeals court dismissing hedge funds’ claims that the government seized Fannie’s and Freddie’s profits after their taxpayer bailout.

Fannie and Freddie went into conservator-ship during the 2008 financial crisis, receiving a nearly $188 billion bailout from the federal government. In return, Fannie and Freddie were required to pay a 10 percent dividend to the government. In 2012, the terms of the bailout were amended — the Third Amendment — forcing Fannie and Freddie to forward all their profits to the U.S. Treasury.

On Friday, Fannie and Freddie announced they were sending a combined $10 million in dividends to the U.S. Treasury. Fannie reported a $5 billion profit for the fourth quarter, while Freddie reported a $4.8 billion fourth-quarter profit. Because Fannie and Freddie’s profits have been going to the government, there was nothing left for the investors, who cried foul.

OPEC and Russia will need to prolong their production-cut deal in order to trim the global inventory that is keeping a lid on prices. ABN Amro Bank warned that crude prices could plunge towards $30 a barrel if the cuts are not extended beyond the first half of this year.

Saudi Aramco names 3 underwriters for its IPO. JPMorgan Chase & Co, Morgan Stanley, and HSBC have been selected as the lead underwriters for what is expected to be the world’s largest initial public offering of all time.

Facebook is in discussions with Major League Baseball to air one game a week. Social networks believe their platforms are a “second screen” that sports fans rely on while watching games, and are eager to test the popularity of combining the viewing of video and the commentary that takes place on social networks into a single feed.

Lloyds reported its highest annual profit in a decade, helped by a reduction in payment protection insurance provisions. Pre-tax profits increased by 158%, a level last seen in 2006 before the financial crisis. The UK government’s stake in Lloyds has also fallen below 5% and it wants to return the bank to full private ownership sometime in May.

First Solar  beat fourth-quarter estimates by 27 cents with adjusted quarterly profit of $1.24 per share, and the solar company’s revenue also beat estimates; even as sales fell to $480 million in the quarter from $942 million a year ago. Tempe-based First Solar also tweaked higher its expectations for 2017 sales to between $2.8 billion and $2.9 billion.

First Solar said the more than 300-megawatt Tribal Solar project, which was planned for the Fort Mojave Indian Reservation in Arizona, would not be built. The company’s contract to sell the power to California utility Southern California Edison was canceled. Executives described the cancellation as a one-time event due to the unique concerns of the Fort Mojave Indian Tribe and said the company had several opportunities to offset the impact of the cancellation, including new business in Japan.

Verizon Communications says it will offer its high-speed wireless 5G network to certain customers in 11 U.S. cities in the first half of 2017. Verizon will begin pilot testing 5G “pre-commercial services” in cities, including Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Miami, Seattle and Washington, D.C. – Phoenix is not on that list.

New 5G networks are expected to provide speeds at least 10 times and up to maybe 100 times faster than today’s 4G networks, with the potential to connect at least 100 billion devices with download speeds that can reach 10 gigabits per second.

That got me thinking about how the US compares with other countries for internet speed on mobile devices, and the results are not good. South Korea has the fastest mobile internet speeds, followed by Norway and Hungary. The US ranked 36^th on the list, just a bit slower than Romania and Slovenia.

In a big win for rural delivery, UPS just tested a delivery drone on a farm outside of Tampa, Florida, with the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, or UAV, returning to the roof of the truck. The big feat? The vehicle already moved 2,000 feet down the road. UPS says the “Drones won’t replace our uniformed service providers,” just provide extra assistance. The company also announced it would roll out Saturday ground delivery starting in April.

If you were planning to make a purchase from Amazon.com, today might be good. For today only, Amazon is offering $8.62 off orders of $50 or more. To take advantage of the discount, just enter the promo code “BIGTHANKS” when you check out.

A discount of $8.62 might seem super random, but Amazon has a good reason for that seemingly arbitrary figure. The company ranked No. 1 in the annual Harris Corporate Reputation Poll, earning a score of 86.27 percent, so it’s offering the discount as a thank you to customers.

Watch your mailbox, early-bird filers: Your tax refund should be arriving soon.  So far, the IRS has distributed more than 14 million refunds as of the week ending Feb. 10. The average amount has been $2,058. Both figures are expected to rise as the agency processes more returns.

However, if you will owe tax this year, well…, the current Powerball jackpot is worth $403 million. If you choose the lump sum option, the cash payout is $243.9 million, minus taxes of course.

Financial Review

8 Straight

Sinclair Noe — November 3, 2016

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 13:16 — 6.1MB)

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DOW – 28 = 17,930
SPX – 9 = 2088
NAS – 47 = 5058
10 Y + .01 = 1.81%
OIL – 66 = 44.68
GOLD + 6.30 = 1303.80

Yesterday, the S&P 500 index posted its 7^th consecutive loss; that has only happened 4 times in the last 20 years. Today the market made it 8 in a row, matching the longest losing streak – last seen in 2008 following the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

Still, this isn’t something we see often. Before 2008, we go back to 1980 for an 8-day string of losses. The current streak has been fairly tame; the index is down about 3% on low volume; and while the selloff has been persistent it has also been orderly. The next level of support is the 200-day moving average at 2082.

Crude oil has fallen about 14% from the most recent peak reached two weeks ago.

Today the Bank of England kept interest rates on hold and signaled there would be no further easing in 2016, citing stronger-than-expected economic data. The central bank’s policy makers voted unanimously to maintain the benchmark rate at a record low of 0.25% and keep its quantitative easing program at around $550 billion. No surprise.

Here’s the surprise – Dealing a blow to Prime Minister Theresa May’s plans, the U.K. High Court has ruled that the government cannot start negotiations to leave the EU without a vote from Parliament. The government could now be forced to get parliamentary approval to trigger Article 50, the formal mechanism that begins a two-year window for exit negotiations. At the very least, this casts uncertainty over the Brexit process. The government has said it will appeal the verdict. The pound jumped to a one month high against the dollar.

American firms and employees boosted their productivity at an annual 3.1% pace in the third quarter. That’s the first gain since the fall of 2015 and largest advance in two years. The improvement was triggered by a big jump in the number of goods and services produced even though the amount of time workers put in on the job barely rose. Output of goods and services — the stuff workers make or provide — shot up 3.4% in the third quarter.

The amount of time employees worked, however, only edged up 0.3%. Unit-labor costs, meanwhile, grew much more slowly in the third quarter: 0.3% vs. a revised 3.9% advance in the spring.

Last week’s first look at third-quarter GDP indicated an uptick in private fixed investment, bucking a long-running trend of declines in this measure. And so, on this basis it looks like the economic necessity of squeezing more productivity out of the existing pools of workers is playing out.

The increase in productivity is a positive development for corporate profits and as we work our way through earnings reports it looks like earnings for the S&P 500 turned positive year-over-year, the first time in five quarters America’s biggest companies had seen bottom-line growth.

Looking beyond the third quarter jump, productivity is still flat compared to last year. And with wages rising, unit labor costs could again shoot higher and cut off the prospects for a marked improvement in corporate profitability. One good quarter for productivity does not change the trend but it is a step in the right direction.

The Institute for Supply Management said its non-manufacturing index fell to 54.8% last month from 57.1% in September, which marked an 11-month high. Any reading over 50% signals that more businesses are expanding instead of contracting. Companies that offer services, such as health care and entertainment grew less rapidly in October and scaled back hiring plans, but executives described business as steady in a sign that the economy is still expanding at a moderate pace.

Factory orders rose by a seasonally adjusted 0.3%, and August’s orders were revised to show 0.4% growth instead of a previously reported 0.2% gain

The number of people who applied for unemployment benefits at the end of October rose by 7,000 to a three-month high of 265,000.  Initial claims have been below the key 300,000 threshold for 87 straight weeks, a steak last accomplished in 1970.

Of course, tomorrow is the monthly jobs report from the Labor Department. Here’s what to expect: about 175,000 net new jobs in October, unemployment rate dropping from 5% to 4.9%, average hourly earnings up 0.3% month-on-month, average hourly earnings up 2.6% year-on-year, and average weekly hours worked at 34.4. Keep in mind that the jobs report could be influenced by Hurricane Matthew. But if the numbers come in solid, it may strengthen the case for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates in December.

After the closing bell, Facebook reported profits soared in the third quarter and monthly active users topped 1.8 billion, but a warning about slowing ad-revenue growth pulled the stock down more than 5% today. Ad load will taper off in the second half of 2017 as Facebook gets close to maxing out the number of ads it can cram into news feeds without damaging its user experience.

Fitbit crashed 30% after missing on sales and slashing guidance. The company reported revenue of $504 million ($509 million expected), and guided both fourth quarter earnings per share and full-year revenue below Wall Street estimates.

Casino operator Wynn Resorts reported third quarter earnings that missed expectations, posting earnings per share of 75 cents on revenue of $1.1 billion. Wall Street was expecting earnings per share of 78 cents on revenue of $1.12 billion.

Whole Foods reported an EPS beat in its fiscal fourth quarter and raised its dividend. Whole Foods also announced John Mackey as the single CEO of the company. Walter Robb will remain on the board.

3D Systems reported mixed third quarter earnings, posting revenue of $156.36 million and earnings per share of 14 cents.

Prosecutors are bearing down on generic pharmaceutical companies in a sweeping criminal investigation into suspected price collusion. Bloomberg reports the antitrust investigation by the Justice Department, begun about two years ago, now spans more than a dozen companies and about two dozen drugs, according to people familiar with the matter. The grand jury probe is examining whether some executives agreed with one another to raise prices, and the first charges could emerge by the end of the year.

Though individual companies have made various disclosures about the inquiry, they have identified only a handful of drugs under scrutiny, including a heart treatment and an antibiotic. Among the drug makers to have received subpoenas are industry giants Mylan and Teva Pharmaceutical. Other companies include Actavis, which Teva bought from Allergan in August, Lannett, Impax Laboratories, Covis Pharma, Sun Pharmaceutical, Mayne Pharma, Endo International’s subsidiary Par Pharmaceutical Holdings and Taro Pharmaceutical.

All these drug makers were slammed in trading today; between 4% and 23%. Although it isn’t illegal for companies to raise prices at the same time, it’s against the law for competitors to agree to set prices or coordinate on discounts, production quotas or fees that affect prices.

The federal government can prosecute companies for collusion and seek penalties and potentially send executives to jail. Charges could extend to high-level executives. Time will tell. Generic drugs account for 88 percent of prescriptions dispensed in the US, according to the Generic Pharmaceutical Association. Generics makers brought in about $70 billion in US sales in 2015, after discounts and rebates to payers.

Closing arguments were heard late Wednesday in a trial on whether UPS should be fined $872 million by New York state for allegedly delivering untaxed cigarettes from smoke shops on Native-American reservations. And it looks like UPS knew they were skirting tax laws. Tobacco retailers located on upstate reservations were given price discounts for shipping in volume. Delivery drivers could accept iPads and other gifts from shippers. Account executives, whose compensation was tied to keeping big accounts, ignored signs that some customers signing delivery contracts dealt in cigarettes.

The U.S. Energy Department announced 28 states, working with utilities and vehicle manufactures, including GM, BMW and Nissan, and EV charging firms have agreed to work together to build 48 national electric-vehicle charging networks on nearly 25,000 miles of highways in 35 U.S. states. One hurdle to the mass adoption of EVs has been the difficulty in finding places to recharge vehicles.

We all know about the election Tuesday but beyond presidential politics, 35 states and Washington, D.C., are considering 163 ballot measures this year, with 71 of those initiated by voters rather than legislators—the most since 2006. Voters in Arizona, California, Nevada, Maine, and Massachusetts will decide if they’ll join four states and Washington, D.C., in legalizing recreational marijuana use. If measures in all five states are approved, 75 million people would live in a state where recreational marijuana use is allowed.

Most states have a higher hourly minimum wage than the federal minimum of $7.25, and four states will vote whether to raise theirs again this year. Maine, Arizona, Colorado, and Washington could phase in a minimum hourly wage of $12 or more by 2020. South Dakotans will decide whether to create a second, lower minimum for teenage workers—purportedly to protect starter jobs for young people.

While federal law requires background checks on gun purchases from licensed dealers, eight states and Washington, D.C., require them for all purchases. According to polls, four states voting this year seem to strongly favor further restrictions on firearms. Ballot measures often have impact beyond the borders of the state that approves them—any could be fodder for federal activity or Supreme Court consideration.