The AudioBook Guide

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The run-off elections for two seats in the US Senate look to end in victory for Democratic candidates with Raphael Warnock beating Kelly Loeffler and Jon Ossoff likely to take the seat of David Perdue.

The result implies a de-facto Democratic majority in both congressional chambers — a big win for President-Elect Joe Biden. Democrat majority in both congressional chambers means Biden can get to work.

But what does the election result mean for markets? The following covers five broad themes and their implications for equities, bond yields, and liquidity demand.

If there’s a thing investors dislike, it’s uncertainty. At least if it isn’t followed by a return premium.

Uncertainty has been on the rise recently. In large due to the covid-19 pandemic and the uncoordinated and laissez-faire response of the US government.

Another driving factor is the November elections. President Donald Trump, who went tough on China, abolished trade deals, and declared war on American stalwarts such as pharmaceutical companies and big tech over the course of his presidency, has done his part to keep uncertainty high.

Elevated risk perception has kept precautionary institutional investors liquid. The amount of assets held as cash-equivalents is at record-highs

Do you need an AudioBook Narration, or do you want someone to Narrate your YouTube/podcast script, then please do check out: https://www.linktr.ee/unitynarrator

I was scrolling the ‘gram’ and stumbled across a photo Tim Ferriss posted. His posts stick out more these days since he dropped the tech-lover, work-four-hours-a-week persona.

Now he’s completely entangled in the complexity of humans.

The transformation started when he shared his story of childhood sexual abuse. Now that story has sprouted into many different Tims. One of those Tims is becoming more vocal about money.

Tim posted a picture of his 100-trillion-dollar Zimbabwean bill with this quote below. You can buy one for yourself on eBay for less than $100 US dollars.

The wake-up call he wants us to remember is hyperinflation can occur. Hyperinflation affects you because the cost of goods and services spirals out of control. It’s caused by a government creating too much currency out of thin air to fund an event like a World War.

Hyper-inflation isn’t unique to countries like Zimbabwe. Hyperinflation has already occurred in China, Germany, Russia, Hungary, and Argentina.

It is often thought that a global reserve currency is safe from hyperinflation. Right now, the US dollar is the world’s global reserve currency. All this means is the bulk of the world’s trade is done in US dollars. Investopedia says “A reserve currency reduces exchange rate risk since there’s no need for a country to exchange its currency for the reserve currency to do trade.”

Being the global reserve currency is a privilege. Countries around the world are forced to hold US dollars. The advantage is subtle: more US dollars can be created out of thin air and the effects will take longer to be felt.

Do you need an AudioBook Narration, or do you want someone to Narrate your YouTube/podcast script, then please do check out: https://www.linktr.ee/unitynarrator

When Andy started working at an online bookstore in 1997, no one could have predicted he would one day be running a $1.7 trillion empire.

Those first few years were far from glamorous. Amongst other things, he was Jess Bezos’s personal technical assistant and floated around other roles. A more stereotypically ambitious person might have left to start their own company but Andy stuck around and as result will go down in tech history.

Away from all the media attention and headlines, he created a small division called Amazon Web Services (AWS) in 2006. Without getting too nerdy, it provides a service to other massive companies like Netflix to host all of their content in the cloud. It is in these relative shadows where Andy operated for over a decade as he built something spectacular.

You probably think Amazon’s online retail division where you buy batteries is massive and you wouldn’t be wrong. Yet AWS brings in over half the profits of the entire company on just 12% of the total revenue. Amazon is a cloud computing company with a side hustle of dominating global online retail.

Everyone has heard of Jeff Bezos; both his flaws and gifts. It’s almost reassuring to understand the mindset behind someone with such immense power in the world. Yet many of us know nothing about who Andy Jassy is and I think it’s time that changed.

Do you need an AudioBook Narration, or do you want someone to Narrate your YouTube/podcast script, then please do check out: https://www.linktr.ee/unitynarrator

Many consider Alexander Pope to be one of the greatest poets of all time. But he also happened to grow up in the early 1700s during the earliest period of financial speculation. The Dutch had floated the first stock market, and brokers — known in those days as “stockjobbers” — handled transactions of many popular historical figures such as Richard Cantillon and Isaac Newton.

It was exactly a century after the Tulip Bubble that Pope got to experience and document the South Sea Bubble, the first speculative mania in the history of stock markets. How it inflated was eerily similar to the modern-day manias we have become accustomed to. A new technology, a new innovation, or a pie-in-the-sky vision, never fails to inflate a new bubble.

In 1719, the desire to profit from the South Sea Company’s government-sponsored trade monopoly with Spanish and South American colonies produced a mania. In exchange for these trading powers, the company agreed to privatize the British government’s national debt, converting it into company shares, along with a 6% annual interest payment.

The South Sea Company’s real motive, however, was to boost the price of its shares. Founder John Blunt and various co-conspirators devised a scheme resembling the modern-day “pump and dump”. Through various accounting tricks and excellent perception management, the company’s share price rose from £125 in early 1719 peaking at £1050 in late-June 1720, earning huge profits for Blunt and his friends.

Do you need an AudioBook Narration, or do you want someone to Narrate your YouTube/podcast script, then please do check out: https://www.linktr.ee/unitynarrator

Ilive a simple life with a few steadfast rules. They include: 1) Be kind 2) Call loved ones at least once a week 3) Don’t expect too much from Twitter. Alas, after a hasty hot take and then some serious thought about Twitter’s new Clubhouse clone — called Twitter Spaces — I’m relaxing rule number three for just a moment. Lord help me.

Twitter and Clubhouse are locked in a battle to dominate a new form of audio social networking that feels equal parts podcast, industry convention, and conference call. For the uninitiated, the format has people gather in virtual “rooms” where a convening moderator sets a topic and invites people to speak. No new form of social media has been as promising since Snapchat debuted Stories in 2013. And like Stories, there’s a case to be made that the primary beneficiary will not be the originator.

Clubhouse, which pioneered this format, has built something special, no doubt. The discussions in its rooms feel timely, entertaining, and sometimes a bit edgy. Being in a room with celebrities and industry icons, even if you’re not a speaker, creates a feeling of shared presence that’s flat out electric. So it’s no wonder that Clubhouse invites are going for $125 on eBay.

But while Clubhouse may be the hottest app in the world, Twitter is well positioned to co-opt its energy with Spaces, a clone that replicatesClubhouse’s features and integrates them into the Twitter app. Twitter’s version — just rolling out — is intuitive, a logical fit, and adds a meaningful new experience to the app. It may not work (see: Rule three), but it’s likely not Google+ 2.0.

Do you need an AudioBook Narration, or do you want someone to Narrate your YouTube/podcast script, then please do check out: https://www.linktr.ee/unitynarrator

2020 has been a wild year on the stock market. Currently, the broad US indices are at or close to all-time highs. Yet, institutional investors sitting on piles of cash with nowhere else to turn for returns than the stock market.

In March, panic over the impact of the lockdown of the world economy in response to the COVID-pandemic triggered an abrupt drawdown.

The S&P 500 dropped more than 25 percent from peak to bottom, with the 9.5 percent plunge on March 12 being the largest daily fall since 1987. The drawdowns were even larger in severely affected sectors such as travel and entertainment.

November saw news of successful clinical trials for several vaccine candidates — a sign of relief for investors. News of efficient vaccines and the imminent distribution of them in the US has brightened the outlook for the world economy in 2021 and injected investors with additional risk appetite.

The week of Thanksgiving saw both S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite close at weekly all-time highs. The Dow Jones Industrial Average had its 3rd highest weekly close, crossing 30.000 for the first time ever during the week.

CNN’s Fear & Greed index — an index of seven indicators of investor sentiment — currently sits at extreme greed. Scoring 92/100, it indicates investors are all guns blazing.

Investors may wonder whether valuations have been stretched too far. The current rise in covid-infections across the US and Europe bring uncertainty around when lockdowns will end. There are also concerns about the economy’s speed of recovery.

But as argued below, several factors contribute to further upside potential in equities over the coming twelve to eighteen months. They range from low interest rates and growing central bank balance sheets to accumulated liquidity burning in the pockets of investors with nowhere else to go.

Do you need an AudioBook Narration, or do you want someone to Narrate your YouTube/podcast script, then please do check out: https://www.linktr.ee/unitynarrator

A story originating from the Times of London claims that a UK hospital, the Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust, has banned the use of words like “breastfeeding,” instead using gender-neutral terms like “chest feeding.” Additionally, the Times reports the hospital has allegedly banned the use of gendered terms throughout its maternity ward.

The story quickly went viral, hitting the American conservative press. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) tweeted his own outrage. A wave of transphobia poured over social media, even among some liberals who thought the hospital “went too far” in supporting trans people.

But the story is a fabrication. And it had its intended effect.

According to the hospital’s guidelines, the gender-neutral language is meant to be “additive,” and not a replacement for traditional terms. The guidelines stress that some people may react negatively to gender-neutral language, and so it’s important to consider broader sensitivities in language usage.

“Please note that these language changes do not apply when discussing or caring for individuals in a one-on-one capacity where language and documentation should reflect the gender identity of the individual,” reads the guidelines. “When caring for cis women it is good practice to use terminology that is meaningful and appropriate to the individual; this may include terms such as woman, mother or breastfeeding.”

In other words, “breastfeeding” isn’t a banned term, and the viral story is false.

The policy was meant to make the hospital’s maternity ward slightly more trans-inclusive, while still servicing the vast majority of new birthing parents who are cis women, and even this was too much for Britain’s transphobic (and the US conservative) press.

And now trans people across the English-speaking world are having to deal with the fallout and harassment campaigns for something that we barely even asked for in the first place.

I suggest that we all need to stop and take a breath when these stories start to go viral, inevitably there’s more to the story than is usually being told. It’s a sad state of affairs when so many press outlets need to (but won’t) issue a broad correction on a viral story, but it’s hardly surprising.

There’s been a long-running media anti-trans media campaign across the pond designed to stoke outrage at the mere existence of trans people and it’s largely worked. The stories generate a lot of clicks and little introspection as they often stroke the readers’ basest bigotries. I’d ask you all to start taking deeper looks at the facts behind these outrageous stories, but I know most of you won’t.

Do you need an AudioBook Narration, or do you want someone to Narrate your YouTube/podcast script, then please do check out: https://www.linktr.ee/unitynarrator

Imagine a world without Google, the search engine so pervasive it’s the starting point for more than five billion queries a day. That’s the reality facing Australia, where the tech giant is threatening to unplug its homepage in a standoff with the government.

Google opposes a planned law that would force the company and Facebook Inc. to pay Australian publishers for news content. The Internet juggernaut’s ultimatum to local lawmakers -- change the legislation, or else -- has left a digital vacuum hanging over a nation that essentially knows just one way to navigate the web. Google runs 95% of Internet searches in Australia.

Do you need an AudioBook Narration, or do you want someone to Narrate your YouTube/podcast script, then please do check out: https://www.linktr.ee/unitynarrator

The education system is failing us.

You check off boxes in standardized tests to gain entry to a system that prioritizes students from the most privileged backgrounds. You then graduate tens of thousands of dollars in debt into an economy where jobs are scarce, and competition is fierce.

That’s a pretty grim picture, but unfortunately, it’s true as of this moment we’re living in right now.

If your ambition is to become a doctor, or a lawyer, or a cancer research scientist, by all means, go to college. Heck, even if you want to read Tolstoy or study the ancient Greeks, or become fluent in Arabic, you should go to college.

I’m not discouraging higher education, but I do believe we need to think about alternatives.

The online e-learning market is set to be worth over $375 billion by 2026. With the transition to internet-based education due to the pandemic, more people are discovering that you don’t need to go to college to learn meaningful skills for your future life and career.

There is an alternative to college that anyone can follow, regardless of their age or background. The bad news is it takes much longer than four years to complete. I like to think of it as more of a lifelong learning program.

The good news is that if you are creative and have an insatiable thirst for knowledge, it won’t feel like work at all to you. It’ll feel like living true to yourself and learning as you go.

Here’s how to create your own self-directed independent learning program for life.

If you do anything creative in your life, whether by trade or passion, the best thing you can do is be curious and observant of the world around you.

A self-directed learning program is a commitment you make to follow your curiosities and learn new things, with some structured planning done beforehand to help you have these experiences.

When researching the lives of famous creatives and entrepreneurs, I found that what they all had in common was a broad range of unique life experiences and perspectives.

Like many of us, they went to college, but they never stopped learning or experiencing new things after.

Do you need an AudioBook Narration, or do you want someone to Narrate your YouTube/podcast script, then please do check out: https://www.linktr.ee/unitynarrator

If your blog gets over 10,000 monthly unique visitors, then yes – it’s relatively easy to monetize and create a nice revenue stream with it.

The real challenge is making money from a blog that generates fewer than 1,000 visitors per day.

I know that most of my readers have blogs that fall into this category. When I speak to an audience, I usually ask them how much traffic their blogs generate.

The answers aren’t always impressive.

Just as in life, there are different stages to a blog’s life cycle. You can’t compare your new blog to one that’s been around for years.

Truth be told: “It takes time to build an income from blogging.” No matter what stories you’ve read on different blogs, no true success ever happened overnight. It only happens that way in the movies