1) The 141 year old Chevron Corp. has built a $170 billion dollar fossil fuels empire that has made it synonymous with the oil and gas industry. Chevron, and many other petrochemical companies, may not be ‘oil-first’ companies in 2040. The climate crisis is forcing oil companies, large and small, to rethink their once reliable business models. Facing political and shareholder pressure, BP (British Petroleum), Shell and other European oil majors see the writing on the wall, announcing plans to gradually retreat from fossil fuels. Recently BP released a report forecasting that recoverable oil reserves will be as little as one fifth of today’s levels by 2050. Oil companies are embracing clean energy including electric vehicle charging and renewable energy. But Chevron is not banking on solar and wind energy.
2) The era of gasoline powered automobiles is coming to an end faster than anyone expected. One of the questions that has long plagued automobile executives was whether motorists would be willing to switch to electric vehicles that typically require hours to charge. Automakers are forging ahead with plans to convert the majority of new car and light truck sales to electric by the 2030s. Batteries for power are so much more efficient, and there’s so many less moving parts, that there is less maintenance and repairs of cars. The only thing that holds it back is people are afraid they can’t take long road trips. But once they’ve shorten the charge to minutes and not hours, that’s a game changer. The production costs of electric vehicles are close to those of gasoline powered vehicles, and could go even lower. However, the fast chargers can cost $100,000 each. In addition, upgrading the power grid to handle the increased demand from electric vehicles is likely to be costly.
3) Technological investments has propelled Mexico in another direction giving the country a boost to being a most promising tech scene in Latin America. In turn, the US technology industry is taking advantage of this landscape to solve its shortage of qualified technological labor. Mexico has built a ‘tech hub’ of three cities- Guadalajara, Monterrey, and Mexico City, each having its own specialties and advantages that makes them unique. Mexico has several top tech universities, which is the keystone to being a tech hub. There are a lot of advantages to hiring remote workers in Mexico in addition to the savings U.S. companies will see.
4) Stock market closings for – 8 FEB 21:
Dow 31,385.76 up by 237.52
Nasdaq 13,987.64 up by 131.35
S&P 500 3,915.59 up by 28.76
10 Year Yield: down at 1.16% up by
Oil: up at $58.05