Jackson Hole ECO Confab (this week)

Live Nation is in trouble

Icahn get a slap on the wrist

Gold - ripping - where to next?

PLUS we are now on Spotify and Amazon Music/Podcasts!





Click HERE for Show Notes and Links
DHUnplugged is now streaming live - with listener chat. Click on link on the right sidebar.




Love the Show? Then how about a Donation?




Follow John C. Dvorak on Twitter
Follow Andrew Horowitz on Twitter
DONATIONS ?

Warm Up
- Jackson Hole ECO Confab (this week)
- Live Nation is in trouble
- Icahn get a slap on the wrist
- Gold - ripping - where to next?
- Price Controls - 3rd Rail?

Market Update
- Nearing all-time highs again - Buy the Dips!
- Yields under 4% on 10-Year - Yen still in control
- Back to Overbought again - still thinking not out of the woods
- Lowe's and Home Depot Outlook - POOR (But stocks are up)

Jackson Hole
- Aristocrats line up to speak
- Big doings as often a platform for Fed and other central bankers to make policy adjustments
- Powell scheduled to speak at 10am Friday
--- With all of the latest data and market push - what will he do??
- Before that - Wednesday we will see the July FOMC minutes

GOLDDDDDDDD
- Gold hit all-time high last Friday ($2,509.65) !!!!NOW $2,563!!!!!
- WHY? Discussion ranges from Fed Reserve, Election, Middle East, India Buying....
- Gold has been a better GOLD then Bitcoin - just saying...

Monopoly - Finally!
- Ten Additional States Join Justice Department’s Suit Against Live Nation-Ticketmaster for Monopolizing Markets Across the Live Concert Industry
- Today, the Attorneys General of Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Mexico, South Dakota, Utah and Vermont joined a civil antitrust lawsuit filed by the Justice Department, 29 other states and the District of Columbia against Live Nation-Ticketmaster for monopolization and other unlawful conduct in violation of Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act.
- Stock does not seem to care - or believe anything adverse will happen

AMD buys ZT Systems
- $4.9 Billion
- What is ZT Systems? The company engages in full rack deployment -- a block filled with servers, storage, switches, etc. -- for hyperscale data centers. ZT also commands a data center infrastructure manufacturing business, for which AMD announced it would seek out a strategic partner to offload this part of the company.
- Clearly the company does not have a CHIP or infrastructure  ready for a major AI play at this time.

Carl Ichan - Hand Slap
- Carl Icahn and his publicly traded company Icahn Enterprises settled with the SEC over allegedly failing to disclose billions worth in stock-backed borrowing.
- Icahn and IELP will pay a combined $2 million in fines, without admitting or denying wrongdoing, over the failure to disclose as much as $5 billion in margin loans that were backed by Icahn’s stake in the company.
- Icahn, a well-known activist investor, had been facing pressure from another activist short seller in 2023. (Hindenburg which is still short the shares)

Circle K 11?
- Canada's Alimentation Couche-Tard (Circle K) has sounded out Japan's Seven & i (7-Eleven) about a potential takeover, the two companies said on Monday, making the 7-Eleven owner the largest-ever Japanese target of a foreign buyout.
- While the value of the offer has not been disclosed, the bid is the latest example of the growing interest in Japanese companies by Western investors, who have been drawn by the country's push for better governance.
- News of the deal sent shares of Seven & i surging by almost 23% in Tokyo

Chicken and the Egg
- Chicken prices are going up
- Perdue Foods is recalling more than 167,000 pounds of frozen chicken nuggets and tenders after some customers reported finding metal wire embedded in the products.
- According to Perdue and the U.S. Agriculture Department’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, the recall covers select lots of three product...