Topley’s Top 10 – February 28, 2022

1. The Markets for Now Making Lower Highs.

Stock markets need to break pattern of making lower highs….3 in play right now

QQQ—same pattern

2. Bitcoin -47% Correction High to Low….But Held Lows Twice in Last Month

3. KWEB Chinese Internet ETF -67% from Highs…Breaks to new lows.

Chinese Internet Stock ETF–50day just breaking thru 200day to the downside….BABA had mediocre earnings pushing stock and ETF to new lows

https://www.barrons.com/articles/spacs-mergers-51645665116?mod=past_editions

4. SPACS—105 SPACS from 2021 Yet to Find a Target Company

Barrons-A little more than half, or 58%, of those SPACs have found and closed acquisitions, an analysis by Barron’s has found. That means that 105 SPACs, including 33 that have deals pending and 72 that have yet to find a target, haven’t been able to complete a merger.

SPACs become wildly popular during the second half of 2020—the 247 SPACs that went public that year was, at the time, the most ever. That record was toppled in 2021 when 613 blank-check companies began trading, according to Dealogic.

SPACs Are Scrambling to Find Mergers. What That Means for Investors.-By Luisa Beltran Foo w https://www.barrons.com/articles/spacs-mergers-51645665116?mod=past_edition

5. Moderna Stock -65% Correction….They hold 13x more cash than pre-covid when stock traded at $20

6. After Russian Invasion of Ukraine…Europe (VGK) Still Outperforming S&P Year to Date

SPY -9.2% vs. VGK Vanguard Europe -7.6%

www.yahoofinance.com

7. Aluminum and Nickel Spike to New Highs on Huge Exposure to Russia/Ukraine

JJU Aluminum ETF

JJN-Nickel Index

Russia strikes Ukraine from multiple directions; Biden vows ‘consequences’

8. Americans are No Longer Moving Every 6 Years….Percent of Americans Moving Hits New Lows

https://www.vox.com/22939038/rents-rising-home-prices-americans-moving-residential-stagnation-stuck-mobility-freedom

9. Ukrainian Opinion of Russia Changed Dramatically After Crimea

One interesting chart we’ve seen, originally in the NYTimes, was of Ukrainian public opinion towards Russia. As shown above, before Russia’s annexation of Crimea — the peninsula in the south — Ukrainian public opinion towards Russia was overwhelmingly positive.

Respondents to surveys from the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology showed that more than 80% of Ukrainians polled had mostly positive views towards Russia. After the annexation that figure dropped dramatically, and hadn’t recovered even prior to Russia’s latest invasion.

Regional variation

Not every region of Ukraine feels the same. Residents of western Ukraine are a lot less likely to have a positive view of Russia (21% of respondents) than their counterparts in the east — where 53% had a positive view.

www.chartr.com

Putin’s attack on Ukraine echoes Hitler’s takeover of Czechoslovakia

Michael Ruane – Yesterday 1:15 PM

By 1939, parts of Czechoslovakia had already been carved off and taken over by Nazi Germany, which claimed that millions of ethnic Germans were being persecuted there.

The previous September, European powers, seeking to avoid war, had acquiesced and done nothing.

But six months later, German troops were massed on the Czech border, as Nazi leader Adolf Hitler railed and threatened the country with destruction.

On March 15, 1939, the sickly Czech president, Emil Hacha, was in Hitler’s study surrounded by the Führer’s henchmen.

“Hitler was at his most intimidating,” historian Ian Kershaw wrote in his 2000 biography of the Nazi leader. “He launched into a violent tirade against the Czechs.” The Nazis needed to take over Czechoslovakia to protect Germany. Hacha must agree or his country would be immediately attacked and Prague, its capital, bombed.

Hacha fainted, according to Kershaw, but was revived and gave in to Hitler’s demand. German troops marched in a few hours later. Hitler said it was the happiest day of his life.

Russia’s Vladimir Putin did not bother to speak with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, before launching his assault Thursday. But some observers see brutal similarities to Hitler’s seizure of Czechoslovakia just before World War II.

“This is all truly dictated by our national interests and dictated by care for the future of our country,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday after the Russian assault began.

Putin on Monday claimed pro-Russian residents of Ukraine faced “genocide.”

“The killing of civilians … the abuse of people, including children, women and the elderly, continues unabated,” he said. “There is no end in sight.”

“Neanderthal and aggressive nationalism and neo-Nazism … have been elevated in Ukraine to the rank of national policy,” he said. “How much longer can one put up with this?”

In March 1938, during the run-up to World War II, Hitler had first engineered the Nazi takeover of Austria, which already had strong pro-Nazi sympathies.

Seven months later, he was plotting the seizure of part of Czechoslovakia, claiming that ethnic Germans in the Sudeten regions bordering eastern Germany were being mistreated.

“I must also declare before the German people that in the Sudeten German problem my patience is now at an end,” Hitler said on Sept. 26, 1938. Czechoslovakia must “give the Germans their freedom, or we will get this freedom for ourselves.”

Four days later, during the famous Munich conference — now known as the centerpiece of the “appeasement” of the Nazis — Great Britain, France and Italy agreed to the handover of the Sudeten region to Germany, hoping it would prevent further aggression.

“It is the last territorial claim which I have to make in Europe,” Hitler said. Within six months, he took the rest of Czechoslovakia, and on Sept. 1, 1939, he attacked Poland, starting World War II.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/putin-e2-80-99s-attack-on-ukraine-echoes-hitler-e2-80-99s-takeover-of-czechoslovakia/ar-AAUgcx9?ocid=uxbndlbing

10. Patience is not Passive

Farnum Street

“Patience is not passive, on the contrary, it is concentrated strength.” ― Bruce Lee

People wait in different ways. Some are passive. Others are active. These two approaches are as different as the results they yield.

Passive patience is waiting for the world to give you the thing you want. A lot of people live their life with passive patience. Rather than go after the promotion at work they expect it to fall in their lap. Rather than go after the love of their life, they sit back and expect to be courted. Rather than chase their dreams, they wait for just the right opening that always seems around the corner but never comes. These people have the wrong kind of patience.

Active patience is different. Active patience demands action and intention, even while waiting for results. Active patience means not only applying for the promotion but taking your time to build the skills you need to put yourself in the best position to succeed. Active patience means starting the business, writing the book, going after the love of your life.

Active patience puts you in the best position to get what you want. There is almost always an action you can take to improve the odds.

Active in the moment but patient with the results.

Active patience.

(Share this Tiny Thought on Twitter)

https://fs.blog/brain-food/february-27-2022/

Topley’s Top 10 – February 22, 2022

February 25, 2022

https://twitter.com/FactSet

1. Political and Geopolitical Events Impact on S&P 500

Zerohedge

2. Updated Trailing and Forward Price to Earnings Ratios

FactSet

The trailing 12-month P/E ratio for $SPX of 21.8 is below the 5-year average (23.1) and above the 10-year average (20.0). https://bit.ly/3sQM7aR

The forward 12-month P/E ratio for $SPX of 19.2 is above the 5-year average (18.6) and the 10-year average (16.7). https://bit.ly/3sQM7aR

3. Reaction to Earnings Surprise by Sector Thru Friday

Nasdaq Dorsey Wright https://www.nasdaq.com/solutions/nasdaq-dorsey-wright

4. European Financials Outperforming

Michael Gayed Lead Lag Report ….Banks in U.S. have Outperformed since last year….Euro financials also adding sizeable alpha this year

https://www.leadlagreport.com/

EUFN Ishares Euro Financials close to breaking out of 11 year sideways move

5. Russia Stock ETF -30% Correction from Highs.

Russian ETF Hit $14 during Covid then rallied to $33 as energy prices rose…$23 last

https://lplresearch.com/2022/02/18/weekly-market-performance-the-fed-and-ukraine-influence-this-weeks-markets/

6. Top 10 Companies with Exposure to Russia/Ukraine

The Daily Shot Blog

7. Emerging Markets After Sucking Wind for Years…Start 2022 Beating U.S. Stocks and Bonds.

LPL Research-Asset Class Returns Thru Friday

8. Metaverse Jump in Mentions on Corporate Transcripts

Blackrock Blog-A giant leap into the metaverse
Momentum of ‘metaverse’ mentions in company transcripts vs. other themes

Reid Menge https://www.blackrock.com/us/individual/insights/metaverse-investing-in-the-future

9. The Economics of Food Delivery

CHARTR -Indeed, many of the restaurants on aggregator platforms may actually be losing money (70c) on an average order. Drivers are making ~$9 per order including tip before considering their own expenses, and the platforms are generally squeezing out just a 3-4% contribution margin.

Some of these numbers come from the National Restaurant Association and may tell a slightly different story to DoorDash’s own analysis, but the fact remains that despite ~10 years of rapid growth, food delivery profits are hard to find. Add to the mix the new and fiercely competitive ultra-fast grocery delivery market, and things get even murkier still.

Please sir, I want some more

With trends like larger average orders, more users to optimize multi-order trips, better technology, more in-app advertising and higher market concentration, these numbers are going to keep evolving — but how any improvement in economics is shared between stakeholders remains to be seen.

If there’s a local spot you’d like to support (it is Friday after all), your best bet is probably still to go to the restaurant direct.

Move fast and break even

US delivery behemoth DoorDash reported their full year 2021 results on Wednesday, shaking off some doubts that food delivery demand would slow amidst re-opening with 369 million orders coming through the platform in the final quarter of last year.

That number was ahead of expectations, and sent DoorDash’s share price higher, but it still wasn’t enough for the company to make a net profit, instead notching a $155m loss.

That’s not a surprise to anyone familiar with the industry. Some great research from our friends at McKinsey suggests the economics of food delivery are still challenging for everyone involved – delivery companies, drivers and restaurants.

www.chartr.com

10. 34 Things You Need to Give Up to Be Successful

INC…BY BENJAMIN HARDY, PH.D., CONTRIBUTOR, INC.COM @BENJAMINPHARDY

1. Wasting five minutes.

When you have five minutes of down time, how do you spend that time? Most people use it as an excuse to rest or laze.

By lazing for five five-minute breaks each day, we waste 25 minutes daily. That’s 9,125 minutes per year (25 X 365). Sadly, my guess is we’re wasting far more time than that.

I was once told by my ninth-grade English teacher that if I read every time I had a break?–?even if the break was just for a minute or two?–?that I’d get a lot more reading done than expected. She was right. Every time I finished my work early, or had a spare moment, I’d pick up a book and read.

How 4 Top Performers Maintain Their Mental and Physical Wellbeing How we spend our periodic five-minute breaks is a determining factor in what we achieve in our lives. Every little bit adds up.Why can we justify wasting so much time?

2. Not valuing one dollar.

I was recently in Wal-Mart with my mother-in-law buying a few groceries. While we were in the check-out line, I pointed an item out to her I thought was interesting (I honestly can’t remember what it was anymore).

What stuck out to me is that she said, “One dollar. That’s a lot of money!”

Why this surprised me is that my in-laws are not short of money. Actually, this happened while we were on a family trip (30-plus people) at Disney World?–?the whole thing being paid for by them.

Understanding the value of one dollar is the same as coming to appreciate the value of time. To thoughtlessly spend one dollar may not seem like a big deal, but it actually is. That frivolous spending compounded over a long enough time could be millions. It also reflects a lack of care about the details, which is where the true art and value lies.

Additionally, most millionaires are self-made, 80 percent being first-generation rich, and 75 percent being self-employed. Not getting paid hourly challenges you to take more responsibility for every minute and every dollar. Consequently, a great majority of millionaires are extremely frugal with?–?or at least highly mindful? of–?their money.

3. Believing success will make you happy.

“One of the enemies of happiness is adaptation,” says Thomas Gilovich, a Cornell psychologist who has studied the relationship between money and happiness for more than two decades.

“We buy things to make us happy, and we succeed. But only for a while. New things are exciting to us at first, but then we adapt to them,” Gilovich further states.

Actually, savoring the anticipation or idea of a desired outcome is generally more satisfying than the outcome itself. Once we get what we want?–?whether that’s wealth, health, or excellent relationships?–?we adapt and the excitement fades. Often, the experiences we’re seeking end up being underwhelming and even disappointing.

I love watching this phenomenon in our foster kids. They feel like they need a certain toy or the universe will explode. Their whole world revolves around getting this one thing. Yet once we buy the toy for them, it’s not long before the joy fades and they want something else.

Until you appreciate what you currently have, more won’t make your life better.

4. Believing you’re not up for the challenge.

Just as we deceive ourselves into believing something will make us happier than it will, we also deceive ourselves into believing something will be harder than it will.

The longer you procrastinate or avoid doing something, the more painful (in your head) it becomes. However, once you take action, the discomfort is far less severe than you imagined. Even to extremely difficult things, humans adapt.

I recently sat on a plane with a lady who has 17 kids. Yes, you read that correctly. After having eight of her own, she and her husband felt inspired to foster four siblings, whom they later adopted. A few years later, they took on another five foster siblings, whom they also adopted.

Of course, the initial shock to the system impacted her entire family. But they’re handling it. And believe it or not, you could handle it too, if you had to.

The problem with dread and fear is that it holds people back from taking on big challenges. What you will find, no matter how big or small the challenge, is that you will adapt to it.

When you consciously adapt to enormous stress, you evolve.

5. Pursuing “happiness.”

There is no way to happiness?–?happiness is the way. ?–?Thich Nhat Hanh

Most people believe they must:

first have something (e.g., money, time, or love)
before they can do something (e.g., travel the world, write a book, start a business, or have a romantic relationship),
that will ultimately allow them to be something (e.g., happy, peaceful, content, motivated, or in love).

Paradoxically, this “have?-?do?-?be” paradigm must actually be reversed for you to experience happiness, success, or anything else you desire:

First, be whatever it is you want to be (e.g., happy, compassionate, peaceful, wise, or loving);
then, you can start doing things from this space of being; and
almost immediately, what you are doing will bring you the things you want to have.

You attract what you are. If you want the things happy people have, you must be happy to get those things. If you want things wealthy people have, you must be and live wealthy to have those things.

Results translate from attitudes and behaviors. Not the other ways around.

6. Undervaluing what you have.

In an interview at the annual Genius Network Event in 2013, Tim Ferriss was asked, “With all of your various roles, do you ever get stressed out? Do you ever feel like you’ve taken on too much?”

Ferriss responded:

Of course I get stressed out. If anyone says they don’t get stressed out, they’re lying. But one thing that mitigates that is taking time each morning to declare and focus on the fact that “I have enough.” I have enough. I don’t need to worry about responding to every email each day. If they get mad, that’s their problem.

Ferriss was later asked during the same interview:

Having read The 4-Hour Workweek, I got the impression that Tim Ferriss doesn’t care about money. You talked about how you travel the world without spending any money. Talk about the balance and ability to let go of caring about making money.

Ferriss responded:

It’s totally OK to have lots of nice things. If it is addiction to wealth, like in Fight Club, “the things you own end up owning you,” and it becomes a surrogate for things like long-term health and happiness?–?connection?–?then it becomes a disease state. But if you can have nice things, and not fear having them taken away, then it’s a good thing. Because money is a really valuable tool.

If you appreciate what you already have, then more will be a good thing in your life. If you feel the need to have more to compensate for something missing in your life, you’ll always be left wanting no matter how much you acquire or achieve.

7. Downplaying your current position.

It’s easy to talk about how hard our lives are. It’s easy to talk about how unfair life is, and to believe that we got the short-end of the stick.

But does this kind of talking really help anyone?

When we judge our situation as worse than someone else’s, we are ignorantly and incorrectly saying, “You’ve got it easy. You’re not like me. Success should come easy to you, because you haven’t had to deal with what I’ve gone through.”

This paradigm has formally become known as the victim mentality, and it generally leads to feelings of entitlement.

The world owes you nothing. Life isn’t meant to be fair. However, the world has also given you everything you need. The truth is, you have every advantage in the world to succeed. And by believing this in your bones, you’ll feel an enormous weight of responsibility to yourself and the world.

You’ve been put in a perfect position to succeed. Everything in the universe has brought you to this point so you can now shine and change the world. The world is your oyster. Your natural state is to thrive. All you have to do is show up.

8. Compartmentalizing your life.

Human beings are holistic. When you change a part of any system you simultaneously change the whole. You can’t change a part without fundamentally changing everything.

Every pebble of thought?–?no matter how inconsequential?–?creates endless ripples of consequence. This idea, coined the butterfly effect by Edward Lorenz, came from the metaphorical example of a hurricane being influenced by minor signals, such as the flapping of the wings of a distant butterfly, several weeks earlier. Little things become big things.

When one area of your life is out of alignment, every area of your life suffers. You can’t compartmentalize a working system. Although it’s easy to push certain areas?–?like your health and relationships?–?to the side, you unwittingly infect your whole life. Eventually and always, the essentials you avoid will catch up to your detriment.

Conversely, when you improve one area of your life, all other areas are positively influenced. As James Allen wrote in As a Man Thinketh, “When a man makes his thoughts pure, he no longer desires impure food.”

We are holistic systems.

Humanity as a whole is the same way. Everything you do effects the whole world, for better or worse. So I invite you to ask:

Am I part of the cure? Or am I part of the disease? ?–?Coldplay

9. Competing with other people.

All failed companies are the same: They failed to escape competition. ?–?Peter Thiel

Competition is extremely costly to maximum product reach and wealth creation. It becomes a battle of who can slightly out-do the other for cheaper and cheaper. It’s a race to the bottom for all parties involved.

Instead of trying to compete with other people or businesses, it’s better to do something completely novel or to focus on a tightly defined niche. Once you’ve established yourself as an authority on something, you can set your own terms rather than reactively responding to the competition. Thus, you want to monopolize the space in which you create value.

Competing with others leads people to spend every day of their lives pursuing goals that aren’t really their own, but rather what society has deemed important. You could spend your whole life trying to keep up, but will probably have a shallow life. Or, you can define success for yourself based on your own values and detach yourself from the noise.

10. Trying to have it all.

Every decision has opportunity cost. When you choose one thing, you simultaneously don’t choose several others. When people say you can have it all, they are lying. They are almost certainly not practicing what they preach and are trying to sell you on something.

The truth is, you don’t want it all. And even if you did, reality simply doesn’t work that way. For example, I’ve come to terms with the fact that I want my family to be the center of my life. Spending time with my wife and three foster kids is my top priority. As a result, I can’t spend 12 or 15 hours a day working, as some people do. And that’s OK. I’ve made my choice.

And that’s the point. We all need to choose what matters most to us, and own that. If we attempt to be everything, we’ll end up being nothing. Internal conflict is hell.

Although the traditional view of creativity is that it is unstructured and doesn’t follow rules, creativity usually occurs by when you think inside the proverbial box, not outside of it. People flex their creative muscles when they constrain their options rather than broaden them. Hence, the more clearly defined and constraining your life’s objectives, the better, because it allows you to sever everything outside those objectives.

https://www.inc.com/benjamin-p-hardy/34-things-you-need-to-give-up-to-be-successful.html?cid=sf01003&sr_share=facebook

Topley’s Top 10 – February 21, 2022

February 21, 2022

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/historical-guide-how-stocks-perform-during-tightening-cycles

1.The Ratio of Negative Earnings Guidance is the Worst in a Decade

From Callum Thomas Chart Storm –Earnings Guidance: From boom to gloom. One explainer for this chart is the fact that the pandemic gifted a lot of companies a *one-off* surge/pulling-forward in growth (e.g. zoom, peloton, netflix, etc) — something that could not be repeated. Add to that rising cost pressures and signs of a slip in growth momentum and the picture below begins to seem the obvious outcome.

Source: @C_Barraud Callum Thomas https://www.linkedin.com/in/callum-thomas-4990063/

2. Fed Raising Rates in an Expensive Market

Zerohedge –But an even bigger risk to the upcoming tightening cycle, where banks are now rushing to outbid each other on how many rate hikes they think the Fed will let loose before sending the economy into a recession, is that as Bank of America’s Savita Subramanian writes, the “key risk today is that the Fed is tightening into an overvalued market.”

Indeed, the S&P 500 today is more expensive ahead of the first rate hike than any other cycle besides 1999-00 (23x P/E vs. 30 P/E) and everyone remember what happened to the Nasdaq then. Making matters worse, this time the real cost of debt is negative, where in ‘99, the cost of equity was negative. The Fed Funds rate increased by 150bp during that cycle, and the market was up during the hiking, but the S&P peaked in March of 2000, and subsequently declined by 49% over the next 2.5 years

3. Crude Oil First Weekly Loss in 8 Weeks.

Bespoke –The rally over the past few months has been very consistent for crude oil. In fact, crude oil is on pace for its first weekly loss in eight weeks. Historically, it has been uncommon for crude oil to rally for such a long span. Since 1983, there have only been five other weekly winning streaks that have also gone on for at least 8 weeks in a row. The most recent of these ended at nine weeks last October.

Below we show the performance of crude oil following each time that it has ended a winning streak of at least 6 weeks, of which there have been 24 since 1983. Performance following the end of these streaks has been mixed with positive performance around 50% of the time one week, one month, six months, and one year later across these instances. Three returns, however, have more consistently seen positive returns which have on average been larger than the norm.

https://www.bespokepremium.com/interactive/posts/think-big-blog/crude-oil-snapping-a-historic-winning-streak

4. 10 Year Treasury Yield Now Higher than S&P Dividend Yield

Lawrence C. Strauss Barrons

https://www.barrons.com/articles/rising-treasury-yields-are-diminishing-the-appeal-of-dividend-stocks-51645215301?mod=past_editions

5. Nasdaq Composite Bearish Technical Indicator….50day Crosses Below 200day

Nasdaq is testing previous low…see if it breaks this week

www.stockcharts.com

6. Microcap Stocks -25% Correction from Highs.

Microcap ETF bounce but full correction of 25% top to bottom

IWC Microcap also breaking BLUE uptrend line going back to 2020

www.stockcharts.com

7. Homebuilders Break Previous Lows

Homebuilder ETF breaks October 2021 Lows

Homebuilders breaking an uptrend BLUE line going back to 2020….$69 would be clean break on chart

www.stockcharts.com

8. Housing Battle Between Massive Demand vs. Low Supply …And Now Possible Lack of Affordability (high prices/rising rates)

Home Supply is Finally Coming as Building Permits Hit Highest Levels Since May 2006

@Charlie Bilello The US Housing Boom continues with Building Permits rising to their highest levels since May 2006.

Powered by YCharts

Incredibly, the Fed is still stimulating, with holdings of mortgage-backed securities hitting another record high.

Powered by YCharts

Incredibly, the Fed is still stimulating, with holdings of mortgage-backed securities hitting another record high.

But this is all set to end in March (QE over, first rate hike), and the markets are quickly adjusting to that new reality. The 30-Year Mortgage rate in the US has moved up to 3.92%, its highest level since May 2019. The problem for home buyers? Housing prices are up 32% since May 2019 with many areas of the country (Phoenix, Tampa, Miami, Las Vegas, San Diego, etc.) up even more. That means affordability for new buyers is falling fast.

9. Here’s How Jeff Bezos Spends His Money

Kate Prince Business Investing.com

1. Cruising the Aegean Sea

Year Purchased: 2021
Estimated Value: $70 million* (Price of Eos yacht)

Before Jeff Bezos went to space in 2021, he went on a cruise. He was spotted visiting the Greek Islands aboard a super-luxurious yacht. He went on a cruise of the beautiful Aegean Sea, and he was spotted having dinner at Omega3, a cosmopolitan restaurant in Platis Gialos, located on Sifnos, a Cycladic Island.

Bezos wasn’t alone for this cruise. He went sailing with his fellow billionaire businessman, Barry Diller. Diller’s wife is famed fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg. Also along for the trip was Anderson Cooper, a journalist and anchor at CNN. The trio sailed on Eos, one of the world’s largest sailing yachts. Eos is owned by Diller.

2. Dog sledding above the Arctic Circle in Norway

Year Purchased: 2018
Estimated Value: $150-$250*

The Arctic Circle runs straight through the middle of Norway, and it is one of the country’s biggest tourist attractions. Not everyone can afford to travel there, but Jeff Bezos certainly can. The billionaire not only took a vacation there; he also dog-sledded, posting a lot of pictures from his vacation.

above the Arctic Circle in Norway @JeffBezos / Twitter.co

Bezos talked about going dog sledding above the Norwegian Arctic Circle, saying on Twitter that it inspired him to “go to space to save the Earth.” He said that he believes Earth is the solar system’s “best planet,” and we have “no plan B” to save it.

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3. A “robot dog”

Year Purchased: 2018
Estimated Value: $75,000*

Robots of any kind are impressive and worthy of a few thousand dollars, but what about a robot dog? They aren’t quite as easy to cuddle up with at night, but that didn’t stop Boston Dynamics from creating the SpotMini. Jeff was pictured with the new dog in 2018.

It’s thought that Spot costs around $75,000, but what do you get for that price? Apparently, a 55-pound pooch can race around the garden for 90 minutes before needing to be charged up again. Doesn’t sound quite as fun as Fido, does he?

4. Wimbledon Tickets

Year Purchased: 2019
Estimated Value: $1,300 per day*

Jeff Bezos made his public debut with his new girlfriend, Lauren Sanchez, in 2019. He and Sanchez attended the men’s Wimbledon final, which saw a thrilling match between Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic. He and his girlfriend sat right behind the Royal Family during their five-hour viewing of the match.

Wimbledon tickets aren’t cheap, especially if you’re sitting in the front row. Celebrities, from actors to musicians to CEOs, have been seen at the famed tennis match, smiling for the camera. Tickets can cost up to $1,300 a day for the best seats in the house, like the ones Bezos and Sanchez had.

5. 11-Minute Flight to Space

Year Purchased: 2021
Estimated Value: $4.4 billion*

Jeff Bezos described his adventure in his Blue Origin New Shepard capsule, which is autonomous and doesn’t require a pilot, as “the best day ever.” The eleven-minute spaceflight included the billionaire and three crew members, one of which was the oldest person to travel to space and the other the youngest.

The spaceflight cost $4.4 billion. Bezos’ entire flight was eleven minutes, but he only spent three of them actually in space. The flight wasn’t overly risky, as the New Shepard capsule had never had an accident in fifteen spaceflight tests. Blue Origin was founded in 2000, and, twenty-one years later, Bezos saw the fruits of his company’s labor.

6. Wind Farm in Ireland

Year Purchased: 2021-2022
Estimated Value: $23 million*

Jeff Bezos recently stepped down from his position as the head of Amazon to focus on his more pressing interests: space travel and eco-friendly energy generation. He’s attempting to achieve the latter through three wind farms which are located in the remote Irish town of Esk, near Balligree.

The 23-megawatt farms are the first to be built using all-private funding. Bezos commissioned the windfarms in the hopes of using power to offset carbon emissions that Amazon data centers, also located in Ireland, emit. The first of the three wind farms opened in 2021. The other two are expected to become operational by 2022.

7. Four City Blocks in Seattle

Year Purchased: 2012
Estimated Value: Part of the $4 billion Amazon campus*

In order to make the huge Amazon campus that he dreamed of, Jeff had to buy the land first. Incredibly, the Amazon campus in Seattle runs across four whole blocks. That’s an incredibly large area of land that would have cost a fortune to purchase.

It’s not clear just how much Bezos spent on it, but it would have been an eye-watering amount of money. Still, every tech giant needs its state-of-the-art HQ and Amazonwasn’t about to fall behind when everyone else was racing forward.

8. Google

Year Purchased: 1998
Estimated Value: $1.885 trillion*

Google currently has a market cap of nearly $2 trillion, making it one of few companies to achieve this feat. In 1998, things looked a lot differently for Google. The tech company’s headquarters, run by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, were in a garage in Menlo Park, California.

Jeff Bezos saw something in the tiny company, and he invested $250,000 into the venture. The investment in the startup is now up 20,000% today, and Bezos has cashed in on his now 3.3 million shares of stock. These shares are worth over $3 billion today. Bezos’ Google investment is yet another example of how his belief in tiny startups has made him billions.

9. Uber

Year Purchased: 2011
Estimated Value: $76.54 billion*

Though Amazon, as a company, has invested in Uber competitors, Jeff Bezos has his bet on a different horse. The tech billionaire put $3 million into the ride-sharing company, and he watched that investment pay off handsomely. Now, that paltry-seeming $3 million is worth around $400 million.

Bezos was one of the first investors in the app. Benchmark invested $30 million, and the company made $7.9 billion from its early investment. Bezos has an eye for good business opportunities, and he definitely placed the correct bet with this multi-million investment. Even Travis Kalanick, the ousted founder of Uber, made $9 billion from his 8.6% stake.

10. Whole Foods Market

Year Purchased: 2017
Estimated Value: $13.7 billion*

There’s a lot of money to be made in online groceries – and Jeff knows it. He’s been trying to break into the online grocery games since 2007, but despite creating AmazonFresh, it never really became a big player.

Jeff didn’t give up his dream though, and purchased Whole Foods through Amazon for $13.7 billion in 2017. This certainly helped boost Amazon’s position, but it’s still a big work in progress. Buying a trusted brand, Whole Foods, was a smart move on Jeff’s part and could be the key to future success.

https://za.investing.com/magazine/how-jeff-bezos-spends-his-money/?utm_source=Yahoo&utm_medium=cpm&utm_campaign=423353958&origin=yahoo&yp[campaign_id]=423353958&yp[adgroup_id]=9799388008&yp[ad_id]=37697082394&yp[network]=n&yp[device]=c&yp[publisher_id]=FINANCE_US&site_id=finance.yahoo.com&im_dars=1x100_3x102_5x171_7x904&vmcid=p%24g%2co%241c694064-9269-11ec-ba7e-008cfac348d0-7fea37938700%2ct%241645374068660

10. How to Turn Discipline into Consistency

Farnam Street Tiny Thought–One of the most practical life skills that no one talks about is turning discipline into consistency. Discipline will only take you so far. It’s hard to be consistently disciplined.

Relying on discipline to do what you know you should do requires a lot of effort. But what if you could take that discipline and turn it into something that happens without much effort?

Consider my twelve-year-old son who has about an hour of homework a night with his Grade 7 class. If we relied on discipline to get that homework done, it would be a mess. Sure, some nights it would be easy but other nights it wouldn’t. I can almost hear the excuses now. “Dad, I don’t feel like doing it now. I’ll do it later.” In the end, what he did would depend on how he felt.

Doing things when you feel like doing them won’t get you the results you want. If you don’t feel like doing your job, you get fired. If you give it 50% because you don’t feel like practicing, you sit on the bench while other kids play in the game. If you don’t feel like studying, you get a crappy mark. That’s not to say that feelings are not important — they are — but they’re also a luxury when it comes to doing things.

The most successful people consistently do the thing they’re great at. They do it on easy days and they do it on hard days. They do it when they feel like it and when they don’t. Only what I’ve learned is that they’re not more disciplined than you or I. So how do they do it? The answer is they create a ritual.

The power of rituals can be easy to overlook because they seem so simple. Rituals include habits, systems, and even group traditions.

Once started, rituals are hard to stop. Think of rituals as anything structured that creates inertia. Not all inertia is positive. Your rituals can work for you or against you. And their mechanical neutrality is key to using them to your advantage.

Instead of relying on motivation to do homework, we started a ritual after school. Come home, shower, get a snack, and start your homework. As the days turn to weeks the structure takes hold and becomes the path of least resistance. Now, he consistently does homework every day, even when he doesn’t feel like it. The ritual took over.

What looks like skill is often just consistency. While you can’t snap your fingers and become more talented, you can create your own talent. Consistency creates talent. And you won’t be consistent if you only do things when you feel like it.

When people seem uncommonly disciplined, look for a powerful ritual hiding in plain sight. It’s not that they have more discipline than you or I, but they were able to turn that discipline into consistency with a ritual. Short-term results come from intensity but long-term results come from consistency. Turning intensity into consistency unlocks a powerful asymmetry.

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Explore Your Curiosity

★ “There’s this premise that the success of player depends on ability, which is made up of technical, physical, tactical and phycological aspects, and that this is then multiplied by their availability,” the doctor points out during the interview. “Many players have told me that Arjen Robben could have been close to Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi in ability, but he didn’t make it because he didn’t have much availability.”

https://fs.blog

Topley’s Top 10 – February 18, 2022

February 18, 2022