Let's start with a little history, shall we? On November 16, 1532, Francisco Pizarro, the Spanish explorer and conquistador, springs a trap on the Incan emperor, Atahualpa. With fewer than 200 men against several thousand, Pizarro lures Atahualpa to a feast in the emperor’s honor and then opens fire on the unarmed Incans. Pizarro’s men massacre the Incans and capture Atahualpa, forcing him to convert to Christianity before eventually killing him. Yikes.Also-On November 16, 1901, a spare, low-slung car called the “Torpedo Racer”—basically a square platform on bicycle wheels—breaks the world speed record for electric cars in Coney Island, New York. The car’s builder and pilot, an engineer named Andrew Riker, managed to coax his machine one mile down the straight dirt track in just 63 seconds (that’s about 57 mph; today, by contrast, the world speed record for an electric vehicle is about 245 mph). The battery-powered Torpedo Racer held onto its record for ten years.And-On this day in 1914 in Germany, a small group of intellectuals led by the physician Georg Nicolai launch Bund Neues Vaterland, the New Fatherland League. One of the league’s most active supporters was Nicolai’s friend, the great physicist Albert Einstein. Together, Einstein and Nicolai had written a pacifist answer to the famous pro-war manifesto of October 1914, which had been signed by 93 leading German intellectuals from various fields, including the physicist Max Planck, the painter Max Lieberman and the poet Gerhart Hauptmann. When their counter-manifesto failed to attract much support, Nicolai and Einstein concentrated their efforts into the New Fatherland League. It's Friday. It's snowing in my neck of the woods (13 inches), and Tesla is back in the news. Cutting the cost for home solar units. SpaceX rocket update. $TSLA FDA wants to ban a flavor? Am I reading this correctly? Menthol is a flavor, right? This is the day The Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.BlackBerry in the news. A mention of Toys 'R' Us also. The only thing missing is a RadioShack reference!$BB is buying Cylance for $1.4B. This deal is as good as the Good Tech deal...not meaningful. So Amazon will one day fail. Honest opinion from Mr. Bezos. Guess seeing companies like Kodak and Sears lead one to believe that a company can not go on forever. Speaking of Amazon and Sears, Amazon sent out a Christmas toy catalog this year! Our daughter was very excited to have a catalog to look through over and over. Well played. Where is Jon Corzine and can MF Global employees report 2 hours later than normal due to the weather? Where is Marissa Mayer and was she really a door-to-door salesperson for Tesla solar? Have a great day and wonderful weekend everyone. Stay safe, sage, and sane out there. Excelsior! via @deercreekvolsNvidia’s next quarter's revenue forecast: $2.7 bn versus current consensus of $3.4 bn.Below: this put trader will be very happy today: Stocks staged a come-back. Ignore it. This head-fake is built on hope and no real solid agreements between the U.S. and China. Tariffs are in place and companies adjusted for the worst. So why would either country, led by big egos, back down? The leader who backs down and concedes will lose face. As $NVDA and $AMD tank, $INTC is humming along nicely. It said it would buy back $15 billion in shares. That’s 10% of market cap. Massive buyback. $AMD fell to ~ $20 this am in sympathy, even though it paid the price for the crypto revenue loss in its ER a few weeks ago. Not shown: AMD @ $20.40 AH. $AMAT fell following a week guidance. Look for a chip bloodbath tomorrow. With options expiring tomorrow, too, it should prove an interesting day. Buy the dip. $LRCX and others.Earnings on tap for next week:Mon - JDTues - BBY, TGT, LOW, KSS, TJX, ROST,Wed - DEWill you gamble on $PCG PC&G? The stock is up ~48% because that's its value post-litigation.