Rabbi's 🧠Deli W3 June 2020
Rabbi's 🧠Deli W3 June 2020
Marcus Rashford 🦸♂️, Anxiety Overdrive 😨, Looking like a V 📉📈, 💣Blowing Up 💥
Be careful of headlines. 📰
My media consumption over the last week has caused my anxiety to go up. I am not an anxious person but the confinement has started to infect my brain with it.
Like most, I consume most of my news online through a social media platform. The news stories that show up on my feed has fought a Darwinian battle inside the recommender system of the platform. And sadly the stories that win (or those that my brain chooses to pay attention to) are very intense. I have seen a lot of violence over the past week, and none of it was in a warzone. I can’t help but think that the platforms amplify the most violent videos because these get the most attention. And I admit I sometimes look for violent videos because I distrust the media to show the full story. So because I look for it the algorithm will feed me even more of it.
Yesterday the algo went on complete overdrive. It so happened that North Korea blew up something in South Korea, that China and India had a military confrontation. And there are videos of armed clashes between Chechens and Algerians in Dijon, France. Meanwhile, a new c19 cluster in Beijing and ongoing BLM protests, and shootings in the US.
I noticed this wasn’t going to lead to any good place. So I logged off Twitter. Clearly, it was time for a break. It’s all a bit too crazy now. WE WERE SUPPOSED TO BE WATCHING THE EUROPEAN FOOTBALL CUP WITH ALL OUR MATES 😂😂😂
Anyway, there is a lot of hysteria right now. Far more than normally. And it clouds our decision making and our moods. However, it is also true that there are far more non-hysterical people. Look outside and most of the time nothing hysterical happens. Right now because of the pandemic, some activities we used to do to release the pressure are not available. As countries are opening up again and people can go back to work, to sports, to dinner and to bars I expect anxiety will go down and that we will collectively get better.
A couple of days back Morgan Housel made an observation that is worth re-reading:
-The world breaks about once a decade.
- Stories are more powerful than statistics.
- More people want to solve problems than cause harm. But people who cause harm get more attention than people who solve problems.
A ⚽ Hero
In a time like this, we need to see examples of people that use their power for good. Take an example from a 21-year-old. Yesterday Marcus Rashford, a striker from Manchester United, forced the government to rethink the free school meals for the kids that need it most. He wrote an open letter that was also published in The Times to urge the UK government to not stop the free meals program. He managed to generate so much support with the hashtags #schoolmeals4summer and #U-turn the government eventually decided not to end the program and commit £120million to meals for kids this summer.
Obviously Marcus has become a national champion.
Here is an interview with the young man were he explains his own struggles with poverty.
💲💲STONKS 💲💲
Currently, in the US the stock market recovery and the economic recovery slowly starting to look like a V.
Nasdaq made a come back last week.
Retail spending is picking up steadily
it also looks like manufacturing activity is making a comeback.
Industrial production index shows a blimp
Bonds are back to ATH (the fed is buying so that is no surprise)
Oil prices are back from the $20 slump.
People are also recharging their Tesla cars. Which means they are moving about,
Going Out modest but in the right direction.
Jobs are slowly coming back
For now, what people are seeing is that the arrow is up and to the right for many factors and that is good for the spirit.
Still, anyone sensible knows we are quite far from back to normal. There is still a good chance for a second wave of C19. And also still a lot of scepticism as to how many businesses survived the three months and that will ultimately tell us how many jobs might have permanently been lost. So far this year over half of the bankruptcies come from Energy and consumer discretionary:
Education 📚
Compound Interest
financial advisors love to talk about compound interest. And for good reason.
As a parent, this is something you should teach your kids as soon as possible because then they might see the effects when they reach adulthood. Here is a great way to show them how it works:
Cold Email Tips:
🐼 China 🐼
Inspired by this tweet I am currently trying to read more about the Chinese Cultural revolution.
If you have any good resources let me know.
Things I wrote ✏
💣Blowing Up💥
a short note about the other people blowing up investments. Besides making mistakes yourself there is a lot of value in studying mistakes others have made so that you hopefully don’t make those.
Thanks for reading all the way to the end!
Have a good rest of the week and as always remember:
The mere existence of millions of books on love, parenting, Business and self-help is proof that there is NO ONE ANSWER. ~ Josh Wolfe
👋
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Thanks!