Quote:
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
― George Orwell, 1984
Predictions:
Amazon Stock: Look for gigantic sales numbers. With Prime Day coming this week and Coronavirus stopping many from physical store shopping during the Holiday season, Amazon will have record revenue. This will drive an even more ridiculous Price/Earnings ratio on their stock ( as I write this, the P/E is 103, making it one of the most expensive stocks you can buy.)
You could buy the stock now, even at it’s expensive pricing, and still reap rewards when Amazon posts it’s earnings in early 2021. But get out then, before the Biden Administration pushes them to break up their business units( the groundwork for this was laid this past week; Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee’s antitrust panel calling them anti-competitive).
( Note: I’m not an investment professional and I bought Amazon stock some time ago, so I stand to benefit from the increase. I’m letting you know, as believe it important to inform of a potential moral hazard).
While I’m talking about companies…
Under Armour Stock: This stock is going to tank further. They’re being investigated by the SEC. They’ve had trouble with contracts for star athletes that rep their brand, and UCLA is suing them for over $200M. If you’ve looked in their stores and at their clothing you can see they have not maintained their design lead when compared with other athletic and athleisure brands. Their sales stalled out in 2016.
Their largest Brand Ambassador, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, is probably trying to find a way out of his contract as we speak. He’ll start his own brand of clothing, like he’s doing with his production and tequila companies. When that happens it’s “game-over” for Under Armour.
One more prediction. The amount of ransomware attacks that have occurred over the last few months look like a test for a larger one that will target the US Government’s systems close to the Election. Google’s services went down not long ago. Microsoft’s had systemwide issues with their Enterprise services on multiple occasions. Insurance giant Gallagher had their systems held up for days with a ransomware attack. Numerous health systems have been held hostage lately. Cyber attacks are always a problem, gut there seems to be a coordinated effort on larger networks in the recent past. It could be tests for a much larger target in the US Government to sow even more chaos.
Music Rec:
Early James: Singing For My Supper
Thinking About:
There are no easy decisions at the top. All of the easy ones are ( or should be) handled by others downstream already. It’s the difficult problems where there’s no easy answer that creep all the way up the hierarchy. This is why it’s so important that the top brass should be someone of integrity.
As I write this, there are 214,742 deaths in the United States due to COVID-19. People still continue to pretend that deaths that amount to 72 September 11ths, 4.5 Vietnams, is insignificant. Reality doesn’t care about feelings.
Andrew L Hamilton 