$199

Price at WalMart for a 40-inch Element LED TV, in a new "Cyber Monday" campaign to drive interest and online activity heading into the holiday shopping season. $199 for a 40in flat-screen TV??! I feel like buying 15 of them and selling them on the sidewalk.

In other Halloween news, so-called "Halloween strategies" could have investors re-entering the market after October 31 as consumer spending picks up in 4Q and institutional investors reevaluate weights and investments in 1Q 2015. "Halloween strategists" will typically exit positions by springtime.

8.1%

Earnings growth in 3Q 2014 at 500 of America's largest companies. The growth is based largely on domestic demand in the US for "everything from beers cans to trucks to heating and cooling systems," as well as "pockets abroad such as knee replacements in Europe, car parts and helicopters in China." (WSJ)

$224 billion vs $221 billion

Market capitalization of Facebook vs market cap of JP Morgan, following FB earnings report earlier this week. As mentioned in WSJ's Heard On The Street, "no wonder recent college graduates are flocking to Silicon Valley over Wall Street."

21.4%

Average amount US households making less than $50,000 a year spent on energy in 2012. It is thought that a $0.01 decline in energy prices puts $1 billion into the pockets of US consumers. Economists are now saying that the current US boom in shale oil and gas may taper if oil prices sink below $75 a barrel; at current levels of $80, investment is still profitable at 96% of US wells (International Energy Agency).

The oil and gas industry now accounts for 1.7% of US GDP (17T total GDP*1.7%) amounting to almost $300 billion dollars a year.

Ken Langone's 3 Tips

1. Some kind words, every day.
2. A thoughtful gesture, every day.
3. Work with energy and passion--it's infectious.

Also, in a customer-facing business--treat your employees well first. Treat employees well, they treat customers well, and from there everything else follows.

$90 billion

The expected size of the mobile payments industry by 2017, up from $12.8 billion in 2012. (Yahoo Finance)

Southpaw

• Southpaws are so-called because ballparks, in being designed to have the sun out of the batter's eye in the afternoon, are arranged with left-handed pitchers' throwing arms always facing south. It has nothing to do with lefties propensity for being submarine pitchers, or lefty pitchers coming from the southern states.
• Chinese ESL speakers sometimes confuse "he" and "she," referring to women as "he" and vice versa. The difficulty stems from the Chinese word for he and she being exactly the same (ta). In discussion today, someone repeatedly kept calling the lady sitting beside her "he" this, "he" that. No one said anything as we understood what the speaker meant; the sense of lack of regard for gender was actually kind of cool.
• Canada can have terrorist problems, too. It will be interesting to see how shootings at the state house in Ottawa changes Canada's participation in the war on terror inside their country and abroad.