STOCK NEWS

Sonic: preliminary sales and profits were lower than expected. According to the firm "The shortfall was largely driven by lower-than-expected traffic, reflecting lower consumer spending in restaurants and continued aggressive competitive activity." Same store sales fell 2%. Drive-in sales fell 3% and franchise unit sales fell 1.8%. Adjusted net income will be $0.43 to $0.45 which missed consensus for $0.48.

Apple: has increased its component orders for iPhone 7 phones. Order visibility in Q4 is 20% to 30% higher than expected. The sources for these claims are Tiawan based touch screen producers TPK Holding and General Interface Solution.

Tyson: is recalling 60 tons of fully cooked nuggets because they may be contaminate with hard plastic. Tyson made the following statement about the situation:  a small number of consumers said they found pieces of hard, white plastic in the nuggets, which may have come from a rod used in the manufacturing process; there are no confirmed reports of adverse reactions to the products.”

BlackBerry: Q2 EPS was $0 which beat estimates by 5 cents. Revenues of $352 million were down 28.3% year over year and missed expectations by $41.75 million. The big news from this quarter is Blackberry is ending its hardware production. All internal hardware development will be outsourced. It announced a device software licensing agreement with a telecom JV in Indonesia.

ECONOMIC NEWS

The chart below shows core durable goods orders. Core durable goods orders are down for the 20th straight month on a year over year basis. This is the longest decline outside of a recession ever. However, since I think we are in a recession, this record will be revoked.