PRE MARKET

A few thoughts on North Korea:

We are amazed and continue to be amazed (not in a good way) how the national media continues to bring on pundits to put down anything and everything Trump has done with his dealings with North Korea. Who are these pundits? Mostly people from past administrations that failed to do anything about it. Trump inherited this problem because prior presidents enabled North Korea to obtain nuclear…yet failure doesn’t matter. Just bring them on tv. Our favorite is when they say it’s not as if other presidents couldn’t have done this, it’s that they didn’t want to” so as not to give North Korea a level of prestige. Gee…maybe it is that thought that let North Korea get nuclear while we here were hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.

We have no idea how this plays out and frankly, think this could have been handled much better by extracting a few things beforehand…but at least there is now an opportunity. Also not thrilled that the prez made statements without telling the appropriate agencies…but that seems to be the norm.

U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon ruled in favor of AT&T (T), allowing its acquisition of Time Warner (TWX) to proceed. Media stocks are up nicely in sympathy as we will probably get a free-for-all of buying going forward.

Futures up a wee bit. Pay no attention to the Dow being flat yesterday. Growth again was strong.

Today the fed…blah blah blah…raise 1/4 point…blah blah blah. The last time we were 3.8% unemployment, fed funds was 6%. We are 1.7% now…so easy money continues…not only here but easier around the globe.