Good morning.
The labor market continues to defy other economic data showing a slowdown. The danger? Strong job growth – as well as wage growth – is keeping inflationary pressures high. And the Federal Reserve looks to the job market as one of many signs for how their policy changes are working.
With yield curves deeply inverted, it’s likely that if the labor market starts to truly flip to rising unemployment, things could change quickly. That’s a good reason not to chase the market rally since the start of the year, and why traders should continue to look for downside trades as well as upside ones.
Now here’s the rest of the news:
Bloomberg’s Gold Investment Advice Is Spot On
Do Bloomberg’s readers really need a primer on gold investment? Aren’t they all experienced economists and investors who know every asset inside and out?… [Read Here]
February 13, 2022
Today’s adventure…
It’s not just any, newly found day!
February 13, 2021
The Overlooked Secret to Success
“Vision is the ability to see potential in what others overlook.”
Vision is the indispensable quality of success. Take leadership, for example. Without vision, a team’s energy ebbs, people begin to miss deadlines, team members’ personal agendas begin to dominate, production falls, and eventually team members scatter. With it, the team’s energy surges, people meet their deadlines, personal agendas fade into the background, production increases, and the people working together become a thriving team.
Now, consider fitness, or more specifically, weight loss. With a vivid vision of where you see yourself, you remain passionate and focused, you hit your daily and weekly exercise goals, you stick with your nutrition plan, and you plan and prepare appropriately. Without vision, you’re likely the next statistic, falling off the diet wagon, skipping workouts, and victim to weight regain (if you actually lost any in the first place).
As Andy Stanley said, “Vision gives significance to the otherwise meaningless details of our lives… Too many times the routines of life begin to feel like shoveling dirt. But take those same routines, those same responsibilities, and view them through the lens of vision and everything looks different. Vision brings your world into focus. Vision brings order to chaos. A clear vision enables you to see everything differently.”
Clear vision does wonders – for yourself and those around you. Among its greatest benefits are direction and passion. Vision sets direction for your life. It’s like having a road map. It prioritizes both action and values, helping you remain focused. And it creates passion. It lights a fire within leaders that can spread to others.
Before moving on, let’s highlight a very important point, made particularly clear by Joel A. Barker, who said, “Vision without action is merely a dream. Action without vision just passes the time. Vision with action can change the world.”
When it comes to vision, Helen Keller may have said it best. When asked what would be worse than being born blind, she answered, “To have sight without vision.”
The most successful people have one thing in common. They see more and before others. What makes that indispensable is that it allows themselves and others around them to begin expanding their vision and acting on it quicker. If the leader, for example, doesn’t see the vision, the people never will.
When you discover your vision, it becomes your fire, your inspiration, and your guide. If you haven’t found it yet, don’t give up. Keep looking. You’ll know it when you find it. And when you do, nurture it, embrace it, own it, and paint a compelling picture of it to others.
Because vision is the indispensable quality of success. Without it, you will never develop the amazing person within you to the fullest.
Make it a great day,
Change That Up!
February 13, 2020
Good Morning.
The price of housing represents the most acute part of this crisis. In metro areas such as the Bay Area, Seattle, and Boston, severe supply shortages have led to soaring prices — millions of low- and middle — income families are no longer able to purchase centrally located homes. The median asking price for a single-family home in San Francisco has reached $1.6 million; even with today’s low interest rates, that would require a monthly mortgage payment of roughly $6k — assuming that a family puts down the standard 20 percent. In Manhattan, listings for sale now ask an average of nearly $1,800 per square foot.
The housing cost crises in the Bay Area and New York might be the country’s most obscene. But the problem is national, driven by a combination of stagnant wages, restrictive building codes, and under-investment in construction, among other trends. Home prices are rising faster than wages in roughly 80 percent of American metro regions. In 2018, housing affordability declined in every one of the 160-some urban areas analyzed by the National Association of Realtors, save for Decatur, Illinois. Rising prices and housing shortages are squeezing families in Reno, Minneapolis, and Phoenix.
The problem now even extends to rural areas, where income growth has lagged in the post-recession period. A recent report by the Pew Charitable Trusts found “sizable” increases in the number of house-holds spending half or more of their income on housing in rural counties across the country. The housing crisis is hitting Bertie County, North Carolina, and Irion County, Texas, too.
One central effect of the housing-cost crisis has been to turn the United States into a country of renters. The homeownership rate has fallen from a peak of nearly 70 percent in the mid-aughts to under 65% today; the numbers are more acute for Millennials, whose homeownership rate is 8 percentage points lower than that of their parents at the same age. Unable to buy, roughly 3.5 million younger families have kept renting — delaying the Millennial and Gen X cohorts’ wealth accumulation, thus consigning them to worse networth trajectories for the rest of their lives. And renting, for many families, is not affordable, either: Nearly half of renters are facing uncomfortable monthly bills, and the cost of renting has risen faster than renters’ incomes for a full 20_years now.
The cost-of~living crisis extends beyond housing. Health-care costs are exorbitant, too: Americans pay roughly twice as much for insurance and medical services as do citizens of other wealthy countries, but they don’t have better outcomes. In the post-recession period, premiums, deductibles, and out-of-pocket costs in general just kept rising, eating away at families’ budgets, casting millions into debt, and consigning millions more to bankruptcy.
The “cost burden” of health coverage climbed through the 2010s; just from 2010 to 2016, family private-insurance premiums jumped 28 percent to $17,710, while median household incomes rose less than 20 percent. That meant less take-home pay for workers. Deductibles — what a family has to fork over before insurance kicks in — also soared. From 2010 to 2016, the share of employees in health plans with a deductible jumped from 78 percent to 85 percent. And the average annual deductible went from less than $2,000 to more than $3,000.
The country’s insurance premiums and out-of-pocket health-cost burdens are just very, very high — including for people with publicly subsidized or public coverage. The average person on Medicare spends $5,460 on health care beyond what they pay for insurance every year. The average person with Medicaid forks over nearly half that. No wonder two in three bankruptcies are related to medical issues, and nearly 140 million American adults report “medical financial hardship” each and every year.
“Don’t even ask about student-loan-debt.” It’s mind boggling… 😉
February 13, 2019
Spoke to my friend Ken on the phone about how his new ‘ground breaking’ MLM business is really taking off. I said I would follow his progress… but, I’ve got enough going on right now, right here. … it’s about to EXPLODE.
I’ve always been fascinated by dreamers. And making dreams come true for myself and others is what my life is about. Today’s ”Live the Dream” quote:
”The best reason for having dreams is that in dreams no reasons are necessary.” — Ashleigh Brilliant
