Futures down as we open the day. Shades are always close by just in case they are needed. Crude up a touch. Gold down at the start. Bitcoin dips below the $8,000 Mendoza Line and moves farther away from the all-important $10,000 mark. Team is looking for reasons for the drop in Bitcoin. Nothing at this point. Stay tuned. Elon Musk, who claims being financially illiquid, remains excommunicado. All services and privileges associated with The Continental are cut off. $TSLA, Tesla, Inc. / H1 Tesla has lowered the required deposit for its lineup of vehicles. A look at Tesla’s order page for the Model 3, Model S, and Model X, reveals that the company is only requiring a $100 non-refundable deposit from customers who wish to place an order for its electric cars. This new, non-refundable deposit comes with a catch. Unlike its previous setup, which required a fully-refundable deposit of $2,500, the recently updated $100 deposit is non-refundable. This means the buyer will only have to pay the $100 deposit, along with taxes and fees at the time of ordering, but they would have to waive their $100 if they choose to cancel their order. Always something cooking at Tesla. "Waive" their $100 sounds enticing. Wow. Charles Schwab will enable investors to buy and sell fractions of shares, in a move aimed at attracting millennials. The move by Schwab is the first for a major incumbent brokerage. Earlier this month, Schwab rocked the discount trading world by eliminating trading commissions. Looking for how many others will enable fractional share trading. $SCHW, Charles Schwab Corporation (The) / H1 Under Armour unveiled a new line of spacesuits and boots that it created as part of a long-term partnership with Virgin Galactic. The gear is for future space travelers on Virgin Galactic's spaceflights, which are expected to start next year. Go it. Team is looking for the partner SpaceX will choose. WD-40 down 5.3% premarket as FY2020 outlook lower than consensus. No idea how to gauge the outlook for WD-40 but I do know that I use the product and have several cans in my garage. $WDFC, WD-40 Company / H1 Oil traders weigh supply and demand factors. Sounds like something oil traders should be doing on a regular basis.Ed note: buy $BP, $XOM. In late 2020, Ford intends to introduce its long-awaited, next-generation all-electric model, which will be the Mustang-inspired performance SUV. Competition is a good thing. Long $F.Ed note: Buy Ford! “In the last 10 minutes of trading on Friday, Aug. 23, as the markets were roiling in the face of more bad trade news, someone bought 386,000 September e-minis. Three days later, Trump lied about getting a call from China to restart the trade talks, and the S&P 500 index SPX, +0.28% shot up nearly 80 points. The potential profit on the trade was more than $1.5 billion.” This from William Cohen of Vanity Fair. Talk about politics intersecting with the financial news of the day. Yikes.Notes via user dcv