Im david schoumacher. We like to think of our economy as one that runs on competition. For instance, we can choose the brand ofasoline we buy. If one station sets its prices too high, thene can simply go across the stet if one station for a lower price. O high, if enough drivers pass the highprice station by, sooner or later it goes out of business. Of course, if in order to attract business a station sets its prices too low and cant cover costs, sooner or later itll go out of business, too. But what happens to prices if one company, or one person, controls all the gas stations . That was what the country faced in 1890. The company was standard oil the man was john d. Rockefeller. This was the infant oil industry john d. Rockefeller saw after the civil war. Drilling equipment was hand and footoperated in those days and available cheap. Anybody could join the oil rh, and anybody di with thousands of smallscale prospectors, drillers, and refiners competing, the supply of oil was plentifu
York stock exchange. Were going to start with the markets, ty. The nasdaq has had a great performance so far. We put that at the top of the board right now up 0. 6 of a . The dow is negative by about five points. The s p is up a quarter of a , the transports up about 50 points, and the russell to 00 up two thirds of a percent as well not a bad start for the week. There wasnt a lot of positive catalyst. Sometimes just we didnt have any negative catalyst. Thats enough just to move the market. I think we had some selling out of europe. We deli see that spike up . That was the european close. As europe closed, the market spiked up. Whats important here is the small cap, the russell 200, put up the board, the russell 2000 is leading. Look here, over the s p 500, that hasnt been story for a long time, and more importantly, sue, the right things are leading, internet content names, for example, so your zillows, pandoras, yelps, linkedin. Those are leading. Biotech, not only is biotech up. Its