by John Walters
A Medium Happy 34th to Mrs. Timberlake. Ely, Minn., native. Great town.
STARTING FIVE
McClendon was not wearing a seat belt
Wreck on the Highway
On Tuesday the U.S. Justice Dept. indicted Chesapeake Energy co-founder and Oklahoma City Thunder part-owner Aubrey McClendon. On Wednesday morning McClendon drove his vehicle into this support wall at full speed. There were no skid marks.
McClendon was 56. He was due to turn himself in at 11 a.m yesterday morning. He was sort of the godfather of fracking. Here’s The New York Times story...
2. Chesapeake Bay-watch
The company, based in Oklahoma City, was founded in 1989.
The equity analyst department here at Medium Happy has been foolishly avidly watching the stock at McClendon’s company, Chesapeake Energy (CHK) for months now. While the stock has plummeted from a high in the past year of $16.98 to a low last month of $1.50, the wild part that our MH analysts have noted is the consistency of its 10% or more swings in price over the past couple of months. To wit…
Dec. 4-8: $4.85 to $4.05, a 16% drop in just three trading days.
Dec 8-10: $4.05 to $4.67, a 15% jump.
Dec. 10-15: $4.67 to $3.75, a 20% dip.
Dec. 15 to Jan 5: $3.75 to $5.09, a 36% jump.
Jan 5 to Jan. 19: $5.09 to $2.95, a 42% dip.
Jan 19 to Jan. 22: $2.95 to $4.16, a 41% jump.
Jan. 22 to Jan. 25: $4.15 to $2.95, a 29% dip.
Jan. 25 to Feb. 3: $2.95 to $3.65, a 24% jump.
Feb. 3 to Feb. 12: $3.65 to $1.56, a 57% decline.
Feb. 12 to yesterday: $1.56 to $3.75, a 140% jump.
In the best of all possible worlds—and it never is in trading—if you had invested $10,000 in CHK on December 8, buying at the dips and selling at the peaks, that $10K would now be worth….$65,625. That is, again in the best of all possible worlds, more than a 600% return in less than three months.
So the question becomes, is the yo-yo party over at CHK? Or should you keep watching for peaks and valleys (note: due to shortage of time, I omitted at least as many more times when the stock had fluctuated just over 10% over the course of a day or two)?
UPDATE: CHK is up 15% at the open today from yesterday’s close.
3. Gimme Mitt!?!
You kind of get the feeling that Mitt was sitting in a bathtub next to his wife, who was sitting in her own bathtub, and they were both watching a sunset, when he got the itch to do something about the Drumpfication of the GOP race.
Does anyone remember Gilda Radner as punk rocker Candy Slice in the very early years of Saturday Night Live performing her punk anthem “Gimme Mick?” “Gimme Mick, Gimme Mick, baby’s hair, bulging eyes, lips so thick/Are you woman, are you man, I’m your biggest funked-up fan/So rock me, and roll me, ’til I’m sick…”
Mitt Romney, it was thought, might announced today that he’s throwing his gel into the presidential race, but it now appears that he’s going to come out with harsh criticisms of Donald, who has decided to preemptively counterattack. This is a serious WASP battle, kids.
4. Remember the Celtics
The San Antonio Spurs have a 29-0 record at home.
The Golden State Warriors are 25-0 at home.
No NBA team has ever gone 41-0 at home for a season. The closest to do so were the 1985-85 Boston Celtics (a gleam just appeared in Bill Simmons’ eye: the Celtics won their last NBA championship of the Bird-McHale-Parish era and Larry Legend was the league MVP), who went 40-1 in the Boston Garden that season.
Peak Celtics
The only team to defeat them? The Portland Trail Blazers, who won 121-103 on Friday, December 6. Seven Blazers scored in double figures, including 13 points from Mychal Thompson, the father of current Golden State starter Klay Thompson.
Related: I love basketball-reference.com
5. “I Shouted Out, ‘Who Killed the Kennedys?’, When After All, It Was You and Me”
We may deserve even worse than Trump, to be honest.
Very, very few people in the media or in public life with a voice seem in favor of Donald Trump. Almost daily, someone comes out publicly to warn us that we are headed toward Trumpmageddon. And yet he is leading by a large margin in the GOP polls. What’s happening?
Here’s Drew Magary of GQ to discuss.
To take it a step further, I don’t believe that Trump is the disease (if in fact, you are against him) but rather the symptom. This is an American culture that ravenously consumes The Kardashians and The Bachelor and is posting selfies or vines of bros getting sucker-punched. We have become, incrementally and increasingly, a crass and coarse and isolated society. Trump’s “Make America Hate Again” campaign is only working because it actually does appeal to a large cross-section of Americans whose mantra in life is “I want it all, I want it all, I want it all, and I want it now.”
You can’t eat three donuts a day and claim to be in top shape. You can’t ingest what we do every day in terms of culture and society and claim to be enlightened. Donald Trump is what we deserve (and to be clear, I don’t much like anyone else in this race, either). It’s just a very short walk from a tramp stamp to a Trump stump (speech).
Music 101
Winning
The band is Santana and the lead guitarist is the legendary Carlos Santana, but the vocalist on this 1981 hit was Alex Ligertwood, a Scot. The tune reached No. 17 on the Billboard charts and was a favorite for network sports producers who had to do into packages for games or the Olympics.
Remote Patrol
GOP Debate
9 p.m. FOX News Channel
Mitt won’t be on stage….or will he?
Is it too late for Mitt Romney to take Ben Carson’s place? Oprah? Bloomberg? I doubt we’ll drumpf the hysterics and histrionics of last week’s “I Know You Are, But What Am I?” fest, but we may just have to tune in to find out.