1) With the government support ending the first of October, American and United airlines are cutting 32,000 jobs. The airlines received $50 billion dollars under the CARES Act to boost liquidity and support payroll in exchange for not laying off employees through the 30th of September. Their revenue down by more than 80% and a full recovery still years off, the industry needs to shrink, so American airlines furloughed 19,000 workers with United airlines to furlough 13,000 people. However, both airlines said they are ready to reverse their course if a new support bill is passed.
2) Red China has announce its program to go to the moon. Its new launch vehicle was unveiled on September 18th, which is designed to send a 27.6 ton spacecraft into trans-lunar injections. At liftoff, it will weight about 4.85 million pounds, which is about three times China’s present largest rocket, the ‘Long March 6′. Made up of three 16.4 foot diameter cores or stages, it is similar to America’s ‘Delta IV Heavy’ and ‘Falcon Heavy’. The new three stage rocket will be 285 feet long, but China has not announced a time frame to start testing.
3) Boeing Aircraft has built some 460 of their 737 MAX jets, whose delivery has been frozen since March of 2019. This is a $16 billion dollar inventory, that with the 737 MAX’s certification to fly approaching, needs to be sold for Boeing to stay viable. Many of these aircraft were built for clients that have since canceled their orders, or worst yet have gone out of business, and are now called ‘White Tails’ from a lack of an airline livery painting. Boeing is now looking for new customers to buy these aircraft, in particular Delta airline which is the only major U.S. carrier without any 737 MAX aircraft in their inventory. But Delta’s relations with Boeing has been poor in recent years, while they have also parked many of their jets because of the slowdown from the pandemic, so with Delta intent on not spending cash on aircraft, this makes for a hard sale.
4) Stock market closings for – 1 OCT 20:
Dow 27,816.90 up 35.20
Nasdaq 11,326.51 up 159.00
S&P 500 3,380.80 up 17.80
10 Year Yield: unchanged at 0.68%
Oil: down at $38.58