Business

Authored by Andy Kessler, op-ed via The Wall Street Journal,

It seems that "Big 3" auto sales for the month of June managed to hit a sweet spot whereby they were down just enough year-over-year to spark a massive equity buying binge on a shortened holiday trading session.  GM, Ford and Chrysler posted YoY sales declines of 6% on average, which was less negative than expected, so positive (negative x negative = positive...it's just math).

Authored by James Rickards via The Daily Reckoning,

After nine years of unconventional quantitative easing (QE) policy the Federal Reserve is now setting out on a new path for quantitative tightening (QT).

QE was a policy of money printing. The Fed did this by buying bonds from the big banks. The banks would then deliver bonds to the Fed, and the Fed would in turn pay them with money from thin air. QT takes a different approach.

Heading into today's car delivery estimate, Tesla had previewed that for the first half of 2017 it expects a substantial jump in vehicle deliveries. Recall that management guided for a 61% to 71% increase in Model S and Model X deliveries during H1 of 2017 compared with the first half of 2016. To achieve this goal, Tesla would need to deliver 47,000 to 50,000 vehicles in Q1 and Q2 combined. Moments ago Tesla announced its first half vehicle deliveries, and it made the low end of this guidance: just barely, with 47,100 autos delivered.

Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,

Every now and then, an oil supermajor comes up with what they tout as a breakthrough in scientific research of renewable energy sources.

This month, it was ExxonMobil’s turn to report a breakthrough in advanced biofuels. Exxon said that it had found a way to make algae ‘fatter’, and those algae could become part of the (distant) future energy mix, could cut carbon dioxide emissions, and would not compete with food crops like other biofuel sources.