Today!
July 01, 2021
Good morning.
For the first half of the year, one of the top trades investors could have made wasn’t a play on oil, or even market volatility. Rather, it was owning the Russian ruble. The currency has advanced roughly 200 percent relative to the dollar, and is trading at a multi-year high against the US dollar.
Does that make it a winning play in the second half of the year? Not if you’re just chasing an asset that’s already performed well. But given Russia’s oil properties and exports, it’s likely the currency can continue to appreciate.
In the meantime, volatility in all other asset classes remains the likely outlook as traders hit the second half of the year.
Now here’s the rest of the news:
Democrats Push “Inflation Relief” Stimmy Checks
As the Fed attempts to crush aggregate demand through the most aggressive monetary tightening policies in decades to cool red-hot inflation, Democrats have come up with the brilliant idea to stoke even more demand through a new round of… [Read Here]
July 01, 2021
Good morning.
Investment markets closed out the first half 2021 strong. Despite some fears of rising interest rates, overall markets performed well, and are on track for an above-average return this year.
But the real story this year has quieted down, but isn’t over yet. That story is the rise of retail traders. Centered around supposedly dying companies like Hertz, GameStop, and AMC Entertainment, these companies have managed to end up more valuable as customers turned to their brokerage accounts to save these firms from extinction. The latter two companies have even managed to pay down most of their debt, and have substantial cash on the books to continue growing in the years ahead.
While brokers like Robinhood may have settled with the government, retail traders have seen the power of standing up to the trading practices of Wall Street pros, and a number of smaller meme trades are in play at the markets now on any given day. As GameStop’s motto says, power to the players. Here’s to a profitable second half of 2021.
Now here’s the rest of the news:
Legendary Investor Grantham Calls Market “a Meme-Fueled Bubble” –Matthew Fox,Markets Insider
This is a “classic finale to an 11-year bull market,” he says. Grantham won’t touch stocks till they fall at least 40%. Here’s why it’s so hard to predict when the bubble will pop… [Read Here]
July 01, 2020
Today! Canada Day! Canadians’, those who are at work, despite the corona-related interruptions get the day off, usual with pay… and if ‘at work’ today, get overtime pay!!! Down south, the Financial Markets are open, so… we’ll go there!
Good morning.
If you were told that we would enter the quarter in recession and see multiple bankruptcies by large companies, around 20 million people on continuing unemployment claims nd myriads other data points that would typically be negative for equities would you have though the market would post a near record quarterly advance?
What if I told you that the Federal Reserve would have increased its balance sheet by $3 trillion? Would that have changed your mind?
Now here’s the rest of today:
Failure = Feedback
What is failure? What’s the secret to success? We’re not sure if we have the answer, but we know one thing: Mindset Matters.
When something doesn’t go our way — doesn’t go according to our plan — and those negative voices come shouting and doubting, “Failure, failure, failure!”…when the self-doubt creeps in… This is where perspective and reframing become such powerful tools.
Nelson Mandela once said, “I never lose. I either win or learn.”
John C. Maxwell wrote a best-selling book that goes by a similar title: Sometimes You Win, Sometimes You Learn.
The isn’t that you’ll never fail. You will… when you try. The point is that failure is a powerful teacher. Instead of looking at failure negatively — as something to avoid at all costs — we have to reframe and view it as a learning opportunity.
As John Maxwell says, “Fail early, fail often and always fail forward.”
There are two important takeaways here. First, try. Don’t not try out of fear of failure. The next try — whether you “win” or you “learn” — may be the gateway to success.
Consider this quote from Michael Jordan, the greatest basketball player of all time, who “failed” 50% of the time: “I can accept failure. Everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying.”
Secondly, when you fail — and you will fail when you try — recognize that there’s a huge difference between the statements “I failed” versus “I am failure”.
We encourage you to keep forging ahead in your journey, starting from wherever you are with whatever you’ve got.
If fear of failing is holding you back, consider that the next attempt may be the successful path you desire. And if you do “fail”, it may be the doorway to learning the secret to success.
If you’ve failed before, recognize, first, that you are NOT a failure. You are a brave, courageous soul. What can you learn from that attempt? What can it teach you about success?
Consider this beautiful analogy from Jacob Riis: “Look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred-and-first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not the last blow that did it, but all that had gone before.”
Be the stonecutter. Continue to hammer away at your rock, chipping away, effort by effort. As Robert Collier says, “Success is the sum of small efforts — repeated day in and day out.”
To You, my friends! 
July 01, 2019
Should we be living our lives more ‘dog-like’, after what I experienced the other day in the park!
I’ll try and explain:
It was a weekend, and this couple on the park-bench next to me were rocking their small child in a stroller. I saw no other children in their care, so I presumed it to be their first born child. The discussion seemed to center around “that feeling of internal conflict that you sense when you have mixed emotions about a decision – or indecision. It’s that gut-wrenching feeling when you don’t follow your gut instinct – even though you know you should”.
Ambivalence. That is the word I was searching for! [Thanks Caryl, I just couldn’t put my little grey-cells together fast enough!]
There are many reasons why you might experience ambivalence – the simultaneous and contradictory attitudes or feelings toward an object, person, or action – and tuning into this dysergy can pay huge dividends toward achieving our most important goals and priorities.¹
Okay, back to the dog-like part, I began this post with. Lots of things were going on around me … I wasn’t trying to listen to that couple, but rather ‘overheard them’, while I was there really just watching the dogs running around playing and chasing each other. The dogs were having a good time … [Unlike our stressed-out couple] … the dogs would occasionally slit up and run around on their own for a little while, only to rejoin the pac’.
One of the dogs came up to visit me. He was a sparky little guy with a lot of energy and a lot of spunk. After about 45 seconds he left to rejoin the group. That’s when I noticed that he was missing one of his hind legs.
I didn’t notice this before. The dog wasn’t limping or paying any attention to his hind legs. He wasn’t shy or embarrassed that he was missing his leg. This dog didn’t even seem to realize his leg was missing … this dog was a ‘natural borne networker’.
I could only imagine what thoughts or concerns this young couple were experiencing as they talked on the park-bench.
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- Was mom at the end of her maternity leave?
- Who would take care of the child?
- Cost of childcare is not cheap … if the decision was to go back to work?
- Could (s)he/they afford not to?
- Stay-at-home mom/dad?
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¹To better understand this, you simply need to take a page out of the great Zig Ziglar’s book and ask yourself the following question:
Will what I’m about to do bring me closer to or take me further away from my goals?
Ouch,
