Alchanati Campbell & Associates
Dear Reader,
If time was all I had. If you aren’t careful, your life can be determined by time. Hourly pay, age, work ethic, sex... Life will be turned into a Formula 1 race where you’re ranked by lap time or the countdown to your last breath. Bring me someone who places any value on their time, who reckons the worth of each day, who understands that they are dying daily, and I’ll give you whatever you desire. But you wouldn’t be able to; that special someone wouldn’t have time for you. Ask yourself: would you rather sacrifice time to have more money or money to have more time? What is more important to you? I believe in time-saving expenses (car washes, house cleaners, gardeners, drivers). Outsourcing work to free-up time for yourself. It helps determine how much you’re worth. Time is your friend; impulse, urges, and procrastination are your enemies. Putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes and denies us the present by promising the future. Lost money can be found, but lost time is lost forever. Everybody wants to know the secret: how do you do more with less of your time? You need to have a fighting mentality. You need to know what makes Sammy run. Time passes when you’re not looking. And lastly, NEVER say that you’re too busy. If you actually cared, you would make the time. The Market. Cultural norms and culturally shaped emotions have a substantial impact on the domain of morality and the process of judgment. Hedge fund managers perform better under pressure especially when there is a high management fee at risk. Empress Trees mature several times faster than your average Oak or Pine and absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre. If people were just to work hard, avoid drugs, alcohol and violence, and stop having children out of wedlock, poverty would be rare. The Feds expect one more rate cut in 2019 and two more in 2020. By devaluing a currency, the exchange rate is pushed down and borrowing costs are cut down. This is what China did. US assets are overvalued, hitting around 275% of nominal GDP. Cyclical stocks are decreasing while defensive stocks are increasing. The 10-year Treasury and 3-month Treasury rate spread is negative. (3-month: 2.05, while 10-year: 1.75). Russia wants to “d-dollarize” the Russian economy. Key risks to the global economy today include weakening of production growth and expansion of lower-quality debt. The Japanese government plans on people driving flying cars by the 2030s. The 12-month average of wage growth is 3.7%. The present cyclical economy. The International Monetary Fund and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development have lowered their global growth estimates. Global growth and momentum has weakened, and growth is set to continue to decline. With the current trade war between China and the US, consumers and businesses are exposed to disruptions in trade and business investments. Most of Europe’s economy is experiencing negative rates (25% of the global market trade at negative rates). Corporate debt of the lowest quality has been rising, totaling $1.3 trillion today. But, consumer confidence is still high and investors are still enthusiastic, shown in the surge of recent IPOs. Wage growth. Hourly earnings have stagnated since 1979. Why is there a dilemma in wage growth? Globalization, the decline in union membership, computerization, and low inflation are some of the causes of the wage decline. With cheap labor abroad, Americans are losing jobs to outsourcing and streamlined production processes. In 2016, only 6.4% of the workforce was unionized. The Phillips Curve states that when unemployment is low, inflation is high because if employers cannot find workers, they will need to offer higher wages (high demand for workers equals nigger increases in pay). Macroeconomic shocks increase wage inequality in countries where wages are flexible and unemployment in countries where wages are constrained by institutions. Higher minimum wages reduce wage inequality. So does stricter employment protection legislation, more generous benefit replacement ratios, longer benefit duration, and higher union density. Different firms also pay different wages according to sectors and occupations. Day Reconstruction Method. How people spend their time and how they experience the various activities and settings of their lives. How do people use their time? How do people enjoy their time? What affects people’s enjoyment? Time pressure is an important determinant of enjoyment at work. If people feel stressed for time, they will not enjoy their work. Sleep quality has an effect on your enjoyment at home. People who have slept 7 hours or more are less tired throughout a full day than those who slept for 6 hours or less. Importance of religion and household income have an effect on household activities. For your well-being, it is important to know what influences your enjoyment. Micro V Macro influences in business. Microeconomics boils down to household decisions and choices which individuals make in their day-to-day lives. These decisions have a direct effect on goods and resources through supply and demand. Macroeconomics involves larger-scale decisions, and economic factors such as interest rates, unemployment rate, phases of the business cycle, inflation, etc. In a business setting, microeconomics relates to everything which has a direct effect on the business. This includes customers, suppliers, resellers, the general public, competitors, and other interested parties. All of these factors influence the supply which a business may provide, the demand their product will garner, the price which they will offer the product for, the # of employees they need to hire, and other day-to-day operations. These could be considered unsystematic, or firm-specific factors. Macroeconomics is broader and encompasses components of the country's economy, and influences which affect entire industries/countries. The easiest example of this would be trade deals with China. These macroeconomic influences affect how most businesses in an industry operate and form strategies. These factors include economic, demographic, technological, natural/physical, political/legal, and cultural. These factors are considered systematic, or relating to the entire market. It's important to have a fundamental understanding of both of these influences when conducting a top-down analysis, running a business, or even just looking at the market. Moral luck. Our lives are substantially shaped by circumstances that lie beyond our control. And the way we blame ourselves, the way we blame others, and the sentiments we have play a crucial role in expressing our humanity. The moral judgments we actually make conflict with the judgments that we think we ought to make. And our commonsense either thinks luck exists or doesn’t exist. Agricultural emissions. The majority of agricultural emissions come from raising livestock (more than 70 billion raised annually). The biggest single source is from manure and cow burps.The countries that cause the most agricultural emissions, which account for 11% of global greenhouse gases, are China, India, Brazil, and the US. What are countries doing to reduce agricultural emissions? By reducing food loss and waste, shift to healthier and more sustainable diets, achieve replacement-level fertility rates, and increase livestock and pasture productivity. Keep Climbing, The Alchanati Campbell and Associates Team |
AuthorWHAT'S UP FRIDAY? is a weekly newsletter that will give you a summary of "What's up?" on Wall Street, in the US and around the World written by The Alchanati Campbell and Associates Team. What makes us unique is we focus on long-term knowledge; knowledge that will still be useful to you 10 years from now. Archives
July 2020
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