Apparently, President Trump decided that last weekend was the time to try to end Iran’s nuclear “threat,” introducing bunker buster bombs to the mountains of Iran and the parlance of life in America. Whether they are trying to produce nuclear bombs or pursue other non-military uses, it appears that that time has come to an end and we can hope the repercussions of this decision are short-lived.
Oil shot up after the news hit, only to see it go down today. Apparently, traders are not convinced that this is a big deal (at least as far as oil supplies are concerned).
Then today, we get headlines that Iran has attacked (or “unsuccessfully tried to attack”) an important US military base in Qatar.
If that’s where it ends, I would say that is pretty inconsequential. But much of that remains to be seen.
Like we discussed before, the FED is behind other governments with interest rates and now at least a couple governors are getting the market ready for rate cuts.
Hopefully the economy holds together until then. It’s no secret that the economy has been getting weaker, but hasn’t broken down yet. We will have another full spate of economic numbers released before the July meeting.
In other news, Tesla’s robotaxi service has launched in Austin, Texas. There are still human “supervisors” in the taxis for now. Will that put Uber and Lyft out of business eventually? We will have to wait and see. But $4.20 per ride seems pretty cheap. And apparently in markets where Waymo is already offering driverless taxis, riders have consistently been willing to pay MORE for not having a driver (perhaps the world is more introverted than we thought!).
Wait, $4.20. Is that supposed to mean something else? Leave it to Elon to price it that way (and just read/listen to his biography and you’ll know that this price is no accident or anomaly)!
Moving from the roads to the skies, it’s been a tough few months, with the economy slowing, to be in the airline business. Delta among other carriers have mentioned their slowdowns. But JetBlue is in real trouble.
It hasn’t really recovered after COVID and has now shut down its routes to Miami.
Maybe they will get bought by someone, as happened to Hawaiian Airlines. We’ll have to wait and see.
That’s it for this week. Let’s keep an eye out on the continuing Middle East issues. As always, please let us know if you have any questions about this or any other topic. We will be happy to have a conversation.