#so averaging more than one a week by a fairly significant margin

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

Books of 2024: September Wrap-Up.

Delighted to report I am VERY far behind on my NaNo prep reading goals, and now September is gone (oops). However! This month I did manage to carve nine (9) pages out of a behemoth scene, write a newsletter article for the nonprofit I volunteer at, and alpha/hype read a friend's manuscript, so I still had a fairly wordy month (I say, as if all of my months are not Wordy™).

Photos/reviews linked below:

THE HAUNTED BOOKSTORE, Vol. 1 & 2 - ★★★½ These were cute! I liked them enough that I went ahead and ordered the next two volumes, and I'm glad I did--turns out there are only four manga in the series, so I'll have the whole thing :) I plan on returning to these after November/as part of Driscoll prep again, because they match the vibe I'm trying to channel really well.

CITY OF SAINTS AND MADMEN - ★★★½ (rating subject to change upon series completion) So on my shelf, this book doesn't LOOK like a brick, but it's 704 pages (according to Goodreads, because the pages in the back half of the book are not numbered sequentially lmaooo). It's told in several novellas strung together and then An Appendix full of all sorts of (sneakily?) relevant bits and pieces--fascinating anthology of a book, very meta-textual. It grew on me! If you can get through the first story, it's worth sticking with, and the whole series is turning into a puzzle box. And speaking of...

SHRIEK: AN AFTERWORD - 135/451 pages read; will report back later. I definitely had to dual wield CITY and SHRIEK last night to compare passages that are, in fact, duplicated across books, and I feel like the calculus meme about it. This one is structured interestingly, too: It's written by a sister (first person) about her brother, but the brother is annotating her manuscript in his own first person (in parentheticals wedged into or tacked onto paragraphs, also first person). I'm very excited to finish this, and equally excited to see what's going on with FINCH after that, so. Back to reading I go!!

Under the Cut: A Note About ~*★Stars★*~

Historically, I have been Very Bad™ about assigning things Star Ratings, because it's so Vibes Heavy for me and therefore Contingent Upon my Whims. I am refining this as I figure out my wrap up posts (epiphany of last month: I don't like that stars are Odd, because that makes three the midpoint and things are rarely so truly mid for me)(I have hacked my way around this with a ½). Here is, generally, how I conceptualize stars:

★ - This was Bad. I would actively recommend that you do NOT read this one, no redeeming qualities whatsoever, not worth the slog. Save Yourself, It's Too Late For Me. Book goes in the garbage (donate bin).

★★ - This was Not Good. I would not recommend it, but it wasn't a total waste or wash--something in here held my interest/kept my attention/sparked some joy. I will not be rereading this ever. Save Yourself (Or Join Me In Suffering, That Seems Like A Cool Bonding Activity).

★★★ - This was Good/Fine/Okay/Meh. I don't care about this enough to recommend it one way or another. Perfectly serviceable book, held my interest, I probably enjoyed myself (or at least didn't actively loathe the reading). I don't have especially strong feelings. You probably don't need to save yourself from this one--if it sounds like your jam, give it a shot! Just didn't resonate with me particularly powerfully. I probably won't reread this unless I'm after something in particular.

★★★½ - I liked this! I'll probably recommend it if I know it matches someone's vibes or specific requests, but I didn't commit to a star rating on Goodreads. More likely to reread, but not guaranteed.

★★★★ - I really enjoyed this!! I would recommend it (sometimes with caveats about content warnings or such--I tend to like weird fucked up funny shit, and I don't have many hard readerly NO's). Not a perfect book for me by any means, but Very Good. This is something I would reread! Join me!!

★★★★★ - I LOVED THE SHIT OUT OF THIS, IT REWIRED MY BRAIN, WILL RECOMMEND TO ANYONE AND EVERYONE AT THE SLIGHTEST PROVOCATION (content warning caveats still apply--see 4-star disclaimer). Excellent book, I'll reread it regularly, I'll buy copies for all my friends, I'll try to convince all of Booklr to read it, PLEASE join me!!

[dwellordream]

“...Because if we want to ask “What was life as a woman like in Sparta?” we really need to ask “What was life like as a helot woman?” because they represent c. 85% of all of our women and c. 42.5% of all of our humans. And I want to stress the importance of this question, because there are more helot women in Sparta than there are free humans in Sparta (as from last time, around 15% of Sparta is free – men and women both included – but 42.5% of Sparta consists of enslaved helot women). If we want to say absolutely anything about the condition of life in Sparta, we simply cannot ignore such a large group of human beings living in Sparta.

...The primary economic occupation of helot women was probably in food preparation and textile production. And if I know my students, I know that the moment I start talking about the economic role of women in ancient households, a very specific half of the class dozes off. Wake Up. There is an awful tendency to see this ‘women’s work’ as somehow lesser or optional. These tasks I just listed are not economically marginal, they are not unimportant. Yes, our ancient sources devalue them, but we should not.

First: let’s be clear – women in ancient households (or early modern households, or modern households) were not idle. They had important jobs every bit as important as the farming, which had to get done for the family to survive. I’ve estimated elsewhere that it probably takes a minimum of something like 2,220 hours per year to produce the minimum necessary textile goods for a household of five (that’s 42 hours a week spinning and weaving, every week). Most of that time is spent spinning raw fibers (either plant fibers from flax to make linen, or animal fibers from sheep to make wool). The next step after that is weaving those threads into fabric. Both weaving and spinning are slow, careful and painstaking exercises.

Food preparation is similarly essential, as you might imagine. As late as 1900, food preparation and cleanup consumed some 44 hours per week on average in American households, plus another 14 hours dedicated to laundry and cleaning (Lebergott, Pursuing Happiness (1993)). So even without child rearing – and ask any parent, there is a TON of work in that – a small peasant household (again, five members) is going to require something like 100 hours per week of ‘woman’s work’ merely to sustain itself.

Now, in a normal peasant household, that work will get split up between the women of the house at all ages. Girls will typically learn to spin and weave at very young ages, at first helping out with the simpler tasks before becoming fully proficient (but of course, now add ‘training time’ as a job requirement for their mothers). But at the same time (see Erdkamp, The Grain Market in the Roman Empire (2005) on this) women often also had to engage in agricultural labor during peak demand – sowing, harvesting, etc. That’s a lot of work to go around. Remember, we’re positing a roughly 5 individual household, so those 100 hours may well be split between only two people (one of whom may be either quite old or quite young and thus not as productive).

...Let’s start textiles. Spartiate women do not engage in textile manufacture (Xen. Lac. 1.4) as noted previously, nor do they seem (though the evidence here is weaker) to engage in food preparation. In the syssitia, at least, the meals are cooked and catered by helot slaves (Plut. Lyc. 12.5, 12.7). In the former case, we are told explicitly by Xenophon that it is slave labor (he uses the word doule, “female slave,” which clearly here must mean helot women) which does this.

So helot women now have an additional demand on their time and energy: not only the 2,200 hours for clothing their own household, but even more clothing the spartiate household they are forced to serve. If we want to throw numbers at this, we might idly suppose something like five helot households serving one spartiate household, suggesting something like a 20% increase in the amount of textile work. We are not told, but it seems a safe bet that they were also forced to serve as ‘domestics’ in spartiate households. That’s actually a fairly heavy and onerous imposition of additional labor on these helot women who already have their hands full.

We also know – as discussed last time – that helot households were forced to turn over a significant portion of their produce, perhaps as high as half. I won’t drag you all through the details now – I love agricultural modeling precisely because it lets us peak into the lives of folks who don’t make it into our sources – but I know of no model of ancient agriculture which can tolerate that kind of extraction without bad consequences. And I hear the retort already coming: well, of course it couldn’t have been that bad, because there were still helots, right? Not quite, because that’s not how poor farming populations work. It can be very bad and still leave you with a stable – but miserable – population.

Let’s talk about seasonal mortality. As the primary food-preparers in the helot household, helot women are going to have the job of managing a constrained but variable flow of food through an extended family that may include their husband, children, older relatives, etc. Given the low productivity of ancient farming, this is a tricky operation in systems where rents are extracting 10% or 20% of the farming yield every year, but given the demands of supporting an entirely unproductive class of elites, it becomes even harder. The key task here is stretching one harvest through the next planting to the next harvest, every year. That means carefully measuring out the food consumption of the household against the available reserves, making sure there is enough to last over the winter. If too much food is extracted by the elites, or the harvest fails or (likely) some combination, the family will run into shortage.

Now, the clever helot woman knows this – peasants, male and female, are canny survivors, not idiots, and they plan for these things (seriously, far too many of my students seem to instinctively fall into the trap of assuming serfs, peasants, etc. are idiots who don’t know what they are doing. These people have survived for generations with very few resources, often in situations of significant volatility and violence; they’re not stupid, they’re poor, and there is a difference!) – so she will have strategies to stretch out that food to try to keep herself and her family alive.

But that in turn often means inflicting a degree of malnutrition on the family unit, in order to avoid outright starvation – stretching the food out. It also probably means a lot of related strategies too: keeping up horizontal ties with other farming households so that there is someone to help you out in a shortage, for instance. Canny survivors. That said – especially in a situation where shortages hit everyone at once – a shortfall in food is often unavoidable.

But, we need to note two things here: first: humans of different ages and conditions react to malnutrition differently. Robust adults can tolerate and recover from periods of malnutrition relatively easily. For pregnant women, malnutrition increases all sorts of bad complications which will probably kill the child and may kill the mother. For the elderly and very young children, malnutrition dramatically increases mortality (read: lots of dead children and grandparents), as compromised immune systems (weakened by malnutrition) lead to diseases that the less robust old and young cannot fight off.

Second – and this is the sad and brutal part – feeding the agricultural workers, meaning the adult males (and to a lesser extent, adult females), has to come first, because they need to make it to the planting with sufficient strength to manage the backbreaking labor of the next crop. If it’s a choice between the survival of the family unit, and taking a chance that you lose Tiny Tim, our helot mother knows she has to risk Tiny Tim.

So in a good year, there is food enough for the entire household. Families expand, children grow up, the elderly part of the family makes it through another winter, imparting wisdom and comfort. But the bad years carry off the very young and the very old (and the as-yet unborn). For children who make it out of infancy, a series of bad years in early childhood – quite a common thing – are likely to leave them physically stunted. It was very likely that most helots were actually physically smaller and weaker than their better nourished spartiate masters for this reason (this is a pattern visible archaeologically over a wide range of pre-modern societies).

The population doesn’t contract, because the mortality isn’t hitting adults of child-bearing age nearly as hard, meaning that in future good years, there will be new children. In fact, societies stuck in this sad equilibrium tend to ‘bounce back’ demographically fairly quickly, because massive external mortality (say from war or plague) frees up land and agricultural surplus which leads to better nutrition which leads to less infant mortality which leads to rapid recovery.

...And so helot women must have spent a lot of time worrying about food scarcity, worrying if their sick and malnourished children or parents would make it through winter. Grieving for the lost child, the lost pregnancy, the parent taken too quickly. Probably all while being forced to do domestic labor for the spartiates, who were both the cause of her misery and at the same time did no labor at all themselves and yet were better fed than her family would ever be. Because peasant labor of any kind is so precariously balanced, we can really say that every garment woven for the spartiates, every bushel turned over, represented in some real sense an increase in that grief. Subsistence farming is always hard – but the Spartan system seems tailor made to push these subsistence farmers deeper and deeper into misery.

The instances of brutality against the helots – the murders and humiliations – which our sources preserve are directed at helot men, but it seems an unavoidable assumption that helot women were also treated poorly. Spartiate women were, after all, products of the same society which trained young men to ambush and murder helot men at night for no reason at all – it strikes me as an enormous and unsubstantiated leap to assume they were, for some reason, kind to their own female domestic servants.

In fact, the one thing we do know about spartiates – men and women alike – is that they seem to have held all manual laborers in contempt, regarding farming, weaving and crafting as tasks unbefitting of free people. I keep returning to it, but I want to again mention the spartiate woman who attempts to shame an Ionian woman because the latter is good at weaving, which in the mind of the spartiate, was labor unbecoming of a free person (Plut. Mor. 241d, note Xen. Lac. 1.4). The same attitude comes out of a spartiate man who, on seeing an Athenian convicted for idleness in court, praised the man, saying he had only been convicted of being free (Plut. Mor. 221c). This is a society that actively despises anyone who has to work for a living – even free people. Why wouldn’t that extend to its treatment of helot women?

To this, of course, we must add now the krypteia and incidents like the 2,000 murdered helots recounted by Thucydides (Thuc. 4.80). While the murdered are men, we need to also think of the survivors: the widowed wives, orphaned daughters, grieving mothers. This must have been part of the pattern of life for helot women as well – the husband or brother or cousin or father or son who went out to the fields one day and didn’t come back. The beautiful boy who was too beautiful and was thus murdered by the spartiates because – as we are told – they expressly targeted the fittest seeming helots in an effort at reverse-eugenics (Plut. Lyc. 28.3).

Finally, we need to talk about the rape. We are not told that spartiate men rape helot women, but it takes wilful ignorance to deny that this happened. First of all, this is a society which sends armed men at night into the unarmed and defenseless countryside (Hdt. 4.146.2; Plut. Lyc. 28.2; Plato, Laws 633). These young men were almost certainly under the normal age of marriage and even if they weren’t, their sexual access to their actual spouse was restricted.

Moreover (as we’ll see in a moment) there were clearly no rules against the sexual exploitation of helot women, just like there were no laws of any kind against the murder of helot men. To believe that these young men – under no direction, constrained by no military law, facing no social censure – did not engage in sexual violence requires disbelieving functionally the entire body of evidence about sexual violence in combat zones from all of human history. Anthropologically speaking, we can be absolutely sure this happened and we can be quite confident (and ought to be more than quite horrified) that it happened frequently.

But we don’t need to guess or rely on comparative evidence, because this rape was happening frequently enough that it produced an identifiable social class. The one secure passage we have to this effect is from Xenophon, who notes that the Spartan army marching to war included a group he calls the nothoi – the bastards (Xen. Hell. 5.3.9). The phrase typically means – and here clearly means – boys born to slave mothers. There is a strong reason to believe that these are the same as the mothakes or mothones which begin appearing with greater frequently in our sources. Several of these mothakes end up being fairly significant figures, most notably Lysander (note Plut. Lys. 2.1-4, where Plutarch politely sidesteps the question of why Lysander was raised in poverty and seemed unusually subservient and also the question of who his mother was).”

- Bret Devereaux, “This. Isn’t. Sparta. Part III: Spartan Women.”

[ekstremewriter]

How Forex Trading Platform Reviews can Help you in Selecting the Right Broker For You?

Forex trading is the method of trading one currency for another, also considered as buying or selling of currency pairs, based on widespread exchange rates from the forex market. The forex market is the biggest international market, trading nearly $6.59 trillion on average per day.

 When it comes to exchanging foreign currency, you employ a forex broker, also recognized as a currency trading broker, to position your exchanges. When you exchange forex, you buy or sell in currency pairs, e.g. "EUR / USD" (Euro / U.S. Dollar). You activate an account, deposit funds, then employ the broker's trading platform to buy and sell currency employing margin. The forex markets are open and active 24 hours a day, five days a week.

 As beginners, we recommend you choose the best brokers by seeing the reviews of each. We’ll tell you what is required to take notice of if you’re double-checking the reviews and comments of brokers:

 ●       The organization type: is it a broker or a dealer? What’s the capitalization of the organization?

●       Trading platform(s) offered: whether the platforms the company is offering are prominent, well- or little known; are they credible, what are the hitches?

●       Categories of trading accounts. Are there accounts for vendors with numerous levels of mastery, the proportion of investment, and trading priorities?

●       Fee and commission structures: additional costs a vendor has to spend.

●       What type of bonuses and publicity does the firm offer?

●       Company’s ideals regarding leverage and margin calls.

●       Customer support: is it valid, productive, and accessible at any time when you might need assistance?

●       Regulation: Which license(s) does the firm have, at which jurisdictions were they handed out?

 Each of these points is critically significant. Make sure you know the answers before you start up on any broker. The reviews and comments of the people on different sites can help you provide the answers to these and decide on one reputable firm.

Additional Parameters for Choosing the Best Forex Broker

 Account Minimums

 If you want to deposit the minimum.of your capital, you can. Some brokerages offer rock-bottom account minimum deposits. You don’t have to deposit high capital anymore, to trade Forex. What you need to do is search for the broker that offers the minimum deposits.

 Promotions

 Online brokers will try to offer fame to your business by proposing promotions. Cash and prizes are all part of the game.

 Education

 The educational services your broker provides will benefit your proficiency in the Forex market.  Most vendors offer a variety of educational equipment to boost a trader’s assessment of the Forex market. Choose a broker that offers such services so you can gain more profits with better learning.

 Why Do You Need a Forex broker?

 If you’re wondering why you need a forex broker, here’s the answer. You might assume that you can effortlessly manage this type of contract by yourself. But speculate the fact that to make any kind of profit on a Forex transaction, you have to trade thousands, tens of thousands, and even hundreds of thousands of currency battalions.

That confuses things a little, doesn’t it?

 Now to that, put in the fact that the Foreign Exchange market glimpses over $4 trillion worth of currency difference hands every day. It would be difficult for any particular vendor to find a buyer/seller at a decent price among all that disturbance.

 And that’s where the Forex Broker comes in.the spotlight.

Not only do Forex brokers organize the trade, but they can also leverage your exchange so you don’t have to plop all your savings into one Forex undertaking, and do it for a much smaller fee than, for example, a bank.

 How much risk you can handle

The only one who can recognize your risk enthusiasm is none other than you. Since elevated leverage arrives at an increased risk, but can also direct to much enormous profits, it is completely up to you to confirm the leverage ratio that conforms to the risk level you are after. If you are inclined and eligible to stake more then go for brokers giving high leverage ratios, while if your risk appetite is lesser, then seek brokers offering lower leverage too.

Most Famous Brokers that You can Investigate on:

The most famous brokers that you can invest in are listed down below. However, you can and should investigate them before you start trading. Here are the five famous brokers of 2021 that you can look up to:

●       TD Ameritrade - Best overall, best for beginners.

●       Fidelity - Best for everyday investors.

●       Charles Schwab - Best IRA accounts.

●       Interactive Brokers - Best for professionals.

●       E*TRADE - Best web trading platform

 Other than these top brokers, there are some others that you can look up:

●       Firstrade

●       Ally Invest

●       Trade Station

●       Webull

●       Robinhood

 Steps to Trade in Forex

To make your first forex trade, you need to follow the following steps:

●       Select a currency pair - Choose a pair that you want to exchange. Exchanging pairs means you’ll always have to buy a currency while selling another one.

●       Analyze the market - Research the market and analyze the charts, monitor the news, and analyze the market.

●       Read the quote - You’ll find the two prices. Selling price and buying price.

●       Pick your position - You can speculate up and down movements in the market.

The Bottom Line

No matter where you reside, getting started as a retail forex trader is fairly susceptible if you have some risk capital, but exchanging currencies successfully expects broadly more than that. You’ll need to formulate substantial market knowledge, an achievable trading strategy, the discipline to stick to your strategy, the emotional resilience to bounce back from losing trades, and lastly yet importantly, choosing a reliable and reputable forex broker.

 If you meet these requirements, then you have an adequate chance of being productive as a forex trader. If you don’t, then you can still contribute by activating a demo account at an online broker that benefits social trading and copying a prosperous trader’s transactions.

[ravencromwell]

Disability Wealth Gap in the U.S.

Have been pondering the U.S. disability wealth gap a lot over the last few days while simultaneously realizing the lack of familiarity around disability finance outside the fairly narrow disabled community. So here's the disability wealth gap breakdown in the U.S. no one asked for.

Let's get a couple terms out of the way first, on the understanding these are fairly generalized explanations--the accompanying links will give you more broad information.

SSDI is social security disability insurance, available only if you've paid taxes into the social security system, usually for at least five years.

SSI is supplemental security income--a needs-based program for low-asset holding disabled folk, that requires no taxes having been paid into the system.

But! unlike disability insurance, where there's a fairly generous yearly earned income cap and no asset cap, both those things exist with SSI--one of the reasons means-testing is one of neoliberalism's worst evils

Essentially, SSI is the greasy spoon compared to the meat & 3 that's available if you've paid in the system. Your only criteria is being born disabled and low-income. And then are promptly kicked off of if you have assets over $2,000. Yeah, you read that right: no fluffy college degrees if you're disabled. You better make damn sure you get something that'll keep you employed come hell or high water

You'll notice that both the source links are to breakdowns regarding income; I'm not the person to ask about eligibility, particularly when it comes to Social Security disability insurance, having never been one of those lucky tax-paying folks. I'm here to talk assets and economics if you're born disabled and poor. More specifically, how disability--especially when viewed intersectionally with other isms--makes it damn near impossible to escape poverty

So, you're allowed to have $2,000 in assets as a single person and qualify for SSI. Assets, as defined by the social security administration include:

cash

money in a checkings or savings account

cash value in life insurance policies (over $1,500)

stocks and bonds

vehicles (they grant us the grace of one for transportation)

real estate (except our house)

(Source link)

Do a real slow once-over of that list. Barely any life insurance; no easily accessible investment opportunities, and most of all, no easily accessible savings or checking. And this's a flat rate, assessed yearly; your accounts can never, under any circumstances, go over $2,000 in a year. (Easily accessible is an important caveat here, because there are beginning to be some legal work-arounds which I'll address later)

And the SSI payment itself? I'm on the upper-most end, and it comes in at about $800 a month, which you'd better spend within that month, cause remember, no accumulating over $2,000. Average one-bedroom apartment rent in the U.S. in the year of our lord 2019? $1,078. This rent report, while capitalist as hell, in that it celebrates the growth that's sucking everybody dry, is a very good overview of just how bad the rent situation is. If you're insanely lucky, you can scrape an apartment at $601, and if you're shit out of luck, you'll end up at $2,311.

I specifically mention one-bedrooms because disabled folk tend to be shy of apartment-sharing arrangements. There're a lot of reasons for this, from needing to carefully organize our refrigerators by memory to avoid expensive labeling technology (if you really want a trip, go look up the price of a roll of Dymo tape, which's the best kind of tape for inserting into a brailler for labeling.) to serious concerns on the part of nondisabled folk about rooming with us. The fear of being asked to change your life in significant ways or take on responsibilities outside those normally expected of apartment-sharing agreements is one I heartily sympathize with.

And then, there is, of course, disabled folks' healthy fear of crime. This isn't a topic I want to linger over, particularly because I think there is a real danger of inflating carceral myths around crime that've already ravaged poor, majority-minority communities. But it is a reality that disabled folk are three times more likely to be victims of violent crime than their nondisabled counterparts. Just as with many other marginalized folk, we need to take care in our housing situations etc. etc.

The unfortunate reality, however, is that the low-wage work that many marginalized folk rely on for survival is barred to us, especially if we have significant physical or visual disabilities. As a blind person with cerebral palsy, for example, cashier and receptionist are out for me.

There're two vitally important discussions that need to be had that don't fit neatly into this 101 post where I'm specifically using the most universalist language possible to encompass the broadest cross-section of the disability community, but which I want to acknowledge nonetheless: the complete lack of a social safety net, and the fact that even as a dirt-poor white, I'm farther up on the privilege ladder than most people of color.

One of the most enlightening passages of Brittney Cooper's Eloquent Rage is the following:

Skyrocketing childcare costs continue to disadvantage Black families, particularly in households like mine, headed by a single breadwinner mother. According to the Institute for 206Women’s Policy Research, 60.9 percent of all Black families are headed by a single mother who is the breadwinner for the family. Another 20 percent of Black households rely on a married mother as the breadwinner. In every state in the United States, there are more single than married Black mothers. In every state in the United States, there are more married white mothers than single ones. In twenty-four states, the cost of childcare exceeds the cost of rent, and in many states the cost of childcare exceeds the 10 percent income-affordability threshold established by federal agencies.

Consider that many of those single women are also disabled--a definition complicated, I'm beginning to learn, by the racism of the white disability community and many black folks' distrust of identifying with any term that harkens back to eugenics. Especially as utterly baseless, slanderous filth about intellectual or physical inferiority is still propagated as one of the multiple cudgels of racism to this day. (which is one of the reasons, honestly, that I'm doing this post; because disability, and the financial limitations thereof, often intersect with the movements against police brutality in ways not immediately apparent. If we as disabled folk are three times as likely to be victims of violent crime, you know! black disabled people, be that an identity they embrace or no, are going to be more vulnerable.)

But I also bring up Cooper's point above because it highlights the scarcity of resources and general social mobility. I've been trying to obtain a housing voucher for years. This would allow me to set aside some of my SSI money--in those legal work-arounds I'll touch on in a moment. Not a lot, mind you, but enough to build on a slight savings foundation. As a person with disabilities, I'm even considered high-priority. But there simply are no openings. The waiting list is lengthy, and gets lengthier every year. Because the people reliant on said vouchers can't gain better-paying employment. * So they need those vouchers, and the state and federal government refuse to create more. (And understand, this goes beyond simple dem or gop administration categories. I was as thoroughly fucked, housing-voucher wise, under the Obama admin as the Trump one. There is a fundamental housing crisis HUD has failed to grapple with, of rising rent and shrinking availability for low-income individuals. This failure has been a long time in the building, and just happens to disproportionately impact those of us with disabilities.)

In a system where the statistics Cooper cites are a grim reality for so many black women, it is absolutely no surprise the system is gridlocked, especially when you look at Cooper's elucidation that in 2011, median wealth for white families was over $141,000 while black families' rested at $11,000. And single black women: had a net wealth of $5, while single white women had an average of $42,000.

I may be dirt-poor, but I recognize that my ability to be left a tiny nest-egg of an inheritance is a massive fucking white privilege, and I want to make clear again that a lack of spots on that voucher list is absolutely not the fault of anyone but the folk in power. But when you can't get an entry-level job, and you! can't get a voucher, having anything to build on is insanely tough.

Especially because: the first legal work-around to SSI didn't arrive until the year 2014. Yeah, you fuckin read that right: six years ago. Known as the Able, or A Better Life Experience Act, this let us create savings accounts. We can--and are expected to--sock money away in those for investments in housing, education, etc. etc.

And look; it's revolutionary, ok. It lets me have a tiny nest-egg without having my SSI snatched away. But when your SSI is $800 a month, it's essentially eaten up by expenses. If and when disaster makes that nest-egg dwindle, there's nothing to replenish it. And understand: this is significant progress. Remember that $2,000 SSI asset limit? Until March 9th, 2005, household resources were counted towards that total. (Yeah, that means everything from furniture to your cell phone counted towards your assets, and then people ask why there's a disincentive in the disability community towards employment when your SSI is so often tied to decent, affordable insurance.)

There is progress made, but god there is so much more to be made. I didn't even know about the trusts until two years ago. Until this week, I didn't know that friends could gift directly into the trust, when I went looking after generous people offered help and I went: but can I take it without fucking up the SSI, cause god knows I desperately need replenished savings, but can't possibly get kicked off that, too. There are so many people who have no idea Able accounts exist, or the means to fill them.

Disabled people who aren't employed in white-collar jobs and want to get married? are absolutely fucked. If you have SSI, you can only have $3,000 in assets between you and your spouse, excluding some pensions etc. etc. Exceed that limit, and poof, you're done. So if you're born disabled, better either go to college or have a spouse who makes enough to support two. (These restrictions are slightly less onerous with Social Security Disability Insurance, or SSDI, but as I've said before, I'm not the one to speak to that.)

Part of making that progress is being well-informed. Start understanding how race and disability are woven together--something I'll freely admit I'm just learning. Start understanding that programs like a child allowance? are simultaneously some of the best antiracism and antipoverty work we can be doing, and would be revolutionary for parents with kids with disabilities.

Even more revolutionary, and the program I hear no one talking about? baby bonds!

You have to understand: there is a lot of shit Senator Booker and I disagree on--google his notorious charter school support. But this program? was one of the best things to come out of the 2020 campaign--aside from Warren's wealth tax, and the entire policy page which's just a well-constructed dream suite of proposals.

Booker's baby bonds program makes me do the delighted flaily hands. A. the strides it would make to reduce the black and white wealth gap between young people are just phenomenal. B. it would so radically reshape the landscape for disabled folk I haven't even entirely managed to wrap my head around all its implications. But let me give you an example.

As members of the disability community, there is some limited aid available to us for college. States will usually pay the amount of tuition for an in-state student at a local university of their choosing. So let's say $9,500. Now, we all know that's not going to go very far at all, particularly if you go out-of-state for college. And considering the steep unemployment rate in the disability community--most reputable studies put it at around 70% in the blind community. Well.

Even taking into account methodology concerns e.g. not necessarily surveying whether someone wants a job or are cognitively capable of job performance, but instead relying on whether they have one, those statistics are fucking grim. (I try really hard not to ponder it; the only way to pursue my ambitions is to believe, with either mad optimism or bulldog stubbornness, in my chances of success.)

When you're looking at those steep odds in a world where networking is already hard for non-disabled professionals: you need! the burnished credentials of a fancy school. You oftentimes need that gloss just to get you noticed as a blind individual. And that? means a lot steeper tuition than what the state departments of rehabilitation will fork over.

If you're straight out of high school, you have some real hope of scholarships for your undergrad. If you are, like me, a nontraditional student, things get...complicated.

Current plan looks something like: take advantage of the free 2-year-college that just! got passed in my GOP state about a year ago. And have the amount of a semester's tuition (so around $16,000) in savings by the end of that. After that first semester, I'll use internships and work study and fuck knows what else, but I need that first semester: to undertake the arduous task of learning routes as a blind person. To understand what my resources are on-campus as a disabled person and how to utilize them.

Booker's baby bonds? An account worth tens of thousands by the time I was eighteen? would've erased so many of those obstacles. By now, I'd be out of college, out of law school, gainfully employed. The possibilities are almost too vast to contemplate.

So, yeah. I have no neat conclusion to this. Start understanding disability issues as critical intersectional issues. Fight for economic equality, understanding that you're fighting, in large part, for disability equality. Ask questions. I'm open to them. I suspect you have other disabled friends who are, too

*There's a whole discussion around incarceration crippling employment, especially in majority-minority communities. Follow any good decarceral thinker, from Chris Hayes to Josie Duffy Rice to Ruth Wilson Gilmore (the latter understands disability as a crucial part of the struggle in ways I deeply appreciate) to understand the issue better.

[c4c-phac]

Reflections on the week of August 2 - August 9, 2019: Planning for a diversity of voices in User Research

What did we do last week? Mostly sent email. Emails, emails, emails. Basically this was me:

Ok, wait. Not interesting? Let’s talk instead about the purpose of these emails: planning and coordinating our UX Research. And more specifically, on ensuring that we are able to hear from a diverse and representative group of users as we move forward.

User Experience Research is about understanding and placing your users at the centre of design. It’s about listening (and then designing!) with empathy, making sure that you’re building a product that is relevant and really meets their underlying needs. It’s about making something delightful that excites them or, perhaps, maybe making their experience so seamless that they don’t even really think about the design at all.

But the thing is that, unless you’re marketing your product to a very specific segment of people, user needs can vary greatly. And unfortunately, our biases - and, let’s be real, systemic marginalization - mean that we often miss surfacing the needs of certain user populations. 

We’ve all heard by now about how office air conditioners are often set for the metabolic needs of men, leaving workers of other genders wearing blankets at their desk during summer (I am wearing one right now!) and, with more serious (and less fashionable) consequences, crash test dummies are based on men’s average weight and proportions, leaving others more vulnerable during an accident. There’s also the story of the soap dispenser that didn’t register the hands of black users. Yikes.

This is what happens when your research and testing does not take into account the varying needs of users. And when we’re talking about government services, accessibility and usability across a broad range of geographies and demographics is key - at the risk of perpetuating or exacerbating the exclusion of certain communities.  

Of course, empathy has limits, and the best way to ensure that design is inclusive is to have a diverse and representative design team. But in the absence of that possibility, the next best thing is to make sure that diverse voices are heard, that their needs are taken into consideration, and that products be built with them and not for them.

Ensuring that you have a diverse, representative sample of users for research is essential, and it may require extra time, resources, and consideration dedicated to planning. This is what we spent much of last week doing.

In our context, we’re lucky that our product has a fairly well-defined group of users; rather than designing for the Canadian public at large, as many government services target, our product is for organizations who are seeking PHAC funding. But right now, most of the funded organizations PHAC works with are based in Vancouver, Toronto and Ottawa. 

It should be fairly straightforward, both logistically and content-wise, to talk to urban-based organizations to understand what they’d like to see from an updated application process. But what about organizations outside of major urban Canadian centres? Who can we talk to from up North, from Atlantic Canada, from Francophone Canada, from rural communities, from Indigenous communities? How might their needs differ? How can we not only make the process better for current applicants, but actually encourage a broader range of applicants to apply?

The designer on our team, Rosemarie, encouraged us to think about “Extremes and Mainstreams” in our user research recruitment. In other words, how can we make sure we include the voices of users who experience significant barriers to the current process? Like, maybe poor Internet access or digital literacy levels. According to the Extremes and Mainstreams methodology, “an idea that suits an extreme user will nearly certainly work for the majority of others. And without understanding what people on the far reaches of your solution need, you’ll never arrive at solutions that can work for everyone.”

So last week, we dedicated a lot of time and energy to identify organizations across geographies and demographics to help us answer these questions. We also spent some time learning from other government departments - Natural  Resources Canada, for example - who already work closely with Indigenous communities on grants and contributions programs to help us anticipate the issues that may arise and make sure we get the most out of our conversations with these users.

We know it’s worth the effort to ensure that new government services are informed by the experiences of more than just easy-to-access organizations in major Canadian cities. We can’t wait to share with you the findings of our research across diverse and representative user groups!

- Glennys Egan, Product Manager

[cindylouwho-2]

RECENT NEWS, RESOURCES & STUDIES, mid July to August, 2019

Welcome to my latest summary of recent news, resources & studies including search, analytics, content marketing, social media & ecommerce! This covers articles I came across from July 14 to August 24, although some may be older than that.

Tumblr has not been saving all of my drafts correctly, which has led to me rewriting some of this post more than once. (I’m now going to be compiling it elsewhere & pasting it here when done, to avoid this issue in the future.) That, a heavy workload, and some vacation time delayed & truncated this report. 

But the good news is I am now on a more consistent schedule, with more time to read and write. I expect to be getting this back to 3 times a month very soon. 

Are there types of news you would like to see here? Please let me know! Leave a comment below, email me through my website, or send me a message on Twitter.

TOP NEWS & ARTICLES

The priority placement is US search for items that ship free has been around for nearly 4 weeks, and doesn’t seem as disruptive as some feared. Etsy is conscious that non-US sellers are particularly upset about this, and have therefore published a list of things they are doing to help international sellers. (note that most of those things also help US sellers that ship to other countries, 

Etsy’s 2nd quarter results came out on August 1. Everything was up, but not quite as much as some experts predicted, so the stock is down quite a bit. The big announcement was that Etsy will be combining Promoted Listings & Google Shopping ads bought by sellers into Etsy Ads. They are supposed to launch in August, but I have yet to hear of any seller who thought this was a good idea.

3.5 million people worldwide use at least one social media platform. (That’s 46% of the planet’s population.) And more than half of the planet  - over 4 billion people - watch videos online. “[H]alf of all internet users below the age of 35″ use voice to operate their devices, with 43% of internet users worldwide using voice at least occasionally. 

SEO isn’t enough; you are going to have to spend money to be seen, if you don’t already “The last 18 years have been an anomaly. Twenty years ago, if a brand couldn't afford to pay for a newspaper or a radio ad, the media company didn't give the company time to publish a public service announcement. SEO allowed companies to go through a period where they received free listings on search engines like Google and Bing. Sending people to a brand's website is like getting a free television or radio commercial or newspaper ad or billboard at the baseball park in 1984″

Trend watch: both clothing retailers and makeup companies are seeing a drop in sales as their markets shrink. If you sell either, you will want to read both articles, as there are some parallels between the two areas in regard to what is and is not working. 

ETSY NEWS

Etsy purchased musical gear website Reverb for $275 million; it will continue to run separate from Etsy. Etsy stock went up at the time. This is notable because Etsy hasn’t bought much lately; it looks like they are slowly dialing back the panic mode, single-goal approach. Their business acumen has disappointed one commentator [humour].

Etsy is “improving” Etsy shop stats. (Note that the Google Shopping category is apparently for the ads you buy yourself only, not the ones Etsy buys, so you will need to use Google Analytics to look at those hits for the moment.) This seems to be leading up to the launch of Etsy Ads (see above).

Here’s some coverage of Etsy changes in the past few years (not a lot new, with some errors). 

Etsy seems to be ramping up its monitoring of seller customer service factors, as more people are receiving email notifications that their shops are falling below Etsy’s customer service expectations. I expect that any updates in this area might involve the new chat convo thingy: Convos are changing to live chat threads, which you cannot write more than one paragraph for because hitting return sends the message. It’s a mess. (Please forgive my frustration; I’ve already had to deal with over 40 separate convos from one buyer alone.)

There will be a site-wide Labour Day sale August 30-September 2, which Etsy will apparently be promoting. 

Fall fashion trends as promoted by Etsy: apparently silk scarves are in, for all sorts of uses. They also released their holiday trend report (pdf file), which I will summarize next week if I can find the time. It’s worth a look, because they divulge some top search data. You can also listen to the podcast, or read the podcast transcript. 

This article on tiered pricing and increasing your average order value is geared towards people using the $35 free shipping guarantee, but it is also useful for anyone wanting their customers to buy more from them. 

Staff will be using the Etsy Success section of the forum to post weekly tips called “Etsy Insights”. So far, they have been posting each week’s thread in that announcement post, so it is easy to skim and see if any topics are relevant for you. 

They are also asking members to sign up for more research surveys; so far, I am finding it pretty boring, and all of the content on their “hub” page is over a year old. 

The expansion into India saw their domestic listings more than double last year. Free workshops have helped bring many new sellers aboard. 

SEO: GOOGLE & OTHER SEARCH ENGINES

Google’s John Mu, who does SEO outreach & education, reminds us that “LSI keywords” are not actually a thing. (LSI was a computer method to figure out relationships between words back in the 1980s; no search engine today is using it, as they have real search data on how people relate words to each other, and it just doesn’t give any insight into modern search technology.)

You don’t need tons of backlinks, but you do need good ones. And linking out on your own site is a good idea in many cases [video], as long as it serves your readers. 

Using images that show up on many different web pages can harm your SEO. They used stock photos that showed up on hundreds of pages for this experiment, so it is not likely that using your own image on 5 sites, for example, would be a problem. 

It looks like there was a fairly significant Google update around July 18th; there’s a bit more coverage here. The last 3 large Google updates are summarized & analyzed here. 

Google then released a blog post explaining their core updates and what you should do if you are negatively affected by one. They linked to several SEO websites explaining Google’s concept “E-A-T” (Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness), which is particularly important if you produce blog posts or educational materials.  

Less than half of Google searches now lead to a click on a website result, at least on desktop. Mobile Google searches overwhelmingly do not result in traffic to a website any more. (Note: as I always remind people, the data from these types of studies is always a bit suspect, because they only have a slice of the data, but the provider here probably has the biggest slice worldwide. 

Do you do some simple coding on your website or blog? You will find this beginners’ guide to canonical tags and the different uses of redirects and canonical tags [video & transcript] very helpful. If you are a bit more advanced than that, here’s a good guide to meta tags. 

CONTENT MARKETING & SOCIAL MEDIA (includes blogging & emails)

Hubspot puts out a lot of good digital marketing guides; check out their “Ultimate Guide to Content Distribution”. Also, they covered how to write a great (& SEO-effective) blog headline, with examples. 

Some stats on current social media usage [infographic]. 

Verizon sold Tumblr to Wordpress owner Automattic. 

Snapchat users continue to increase, as does revenue. They still aren’t profitable, but didn’t expect to be yet. 

Not getting enough traffic on Facebook? Here’s how to get seen by more people there. 

There are ways to optimize your LinkedIn profile to get more sales.

How to get valuable Twitter followers, that is, not bots. (They use Etsy as an example of a well-optimized Twitter profile.) 

ONLINE ADVERTISING (SEARCH ENGINES, SOCIAL MEDIA, & OTHERS)

Amazon is making advertising an even bigger slice of its income. 

Digital ad spending is continuing to increase in most areas.

Facebook is expanding its search ads to more businesses; it’s not really clear how it all works, though. The ads must also run as news feed ads. Here are some basic tips on how to get the most out of Facebook’s ad algorithm. 

With Etsy possibly ending the free Google Shopping ads it currently buys for us (see the Etsy Ads announcement above), this might be a good time to look into buying Google Shopping ads for your website; here is your complete guide to setting them up. 

More changes to regular Google ads mean less control for the business buying ads, meaning that exact match phrases are no longer even close. “Google says 15% of its daily searches are new — and advertisers will miss out on these new queries if matching is too tightly controlled. Its machine learning systems, the company says, can infer intent and spare advertisers from creating exhaustive keyword lists in order to get their ads to trigger on relevant queries.”

If you are thinking about paying for ads on Pinterest, you will want to read this starter guide. 

Twitter video ads now have an option to not pay for a click unless people view at least 6 seconds of the video. 

STATS, DATA, OTHER TRACKING

How to use Instagram Analytics to boost your business. (That is written for companies that are larger than most Etsy shops, but there is plenty of good material there.)

ECOMMERCE NEWS, IDEAS, TRENDS

eBay beat earnings expectations in the second quarter. 

Amazon had higher than expected sales but lower than expected earnings in the second quarter. They keep thriving despite low profits margins because they have a massive cash flow. 

Alibaba reported higher than expected revenue and profit for its first quarter ending June 30th. 

Amazon sales on Prime Day (July 15-16, actually 2 days) were greater than last year’s Black Friday & Cyber Monday combined, and also signed up more new Prime members on each than ever before. Other websites also saw a big boost, especially for electronics. 

Amazon forced to amend its seller policies worldwide following German legal action. As of August 16, they will give 30 days notice for standard account cancellations. 

And they have expanded their robot deliveries (still followed by humans, though!)

BUSINESS & CONSUMER STUDIES, STATS & REPORTS; SOCIOLOGY & PSYCHOLOGY, CUSTOMER SERVICE

While buyers do love free shipping, nearly half of US consumers surveyed will choose to pay for shipping in certain circumstances, most commonly when they really want the product. Only 11% said they never buy unless shipping is free. 

When you are trying to sell something, and especially if you want a repeat buyer, make sure you are pitching it to the right target market. For example, people who don’t want to spend a lot of money won’t buy things they can get for free elsewhere. Provide value for the right people. (A lot of this article is pitched at entrepreneurs selling classes and events, not tangible products, but I think there is a lot of value in the explanations.)

MISCELLANEOUS

WordPress is one of the most popular ways to set up your own website; here’s a beginner’s guide to getting started. 

Google beat earnings expectations in the second quarter. Ad revenue was up a lot. Microsoft also had a better-than-expected quarter, but the growth of their search ads and of LinkedIn (which they own) has slowed. 

How to choose colours that will work together well. 

There is a lot of research on productivity; here are 10 things you can do to get more done. 

If you use Chrome, you could really use these Chrome keyboard shortcuts. 

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Even if you knew in advance about the “blue shift” that would occur in states like Pennsylvania — and we did know in advance about it! — it’s been hard to make enough of a mental adjustment for it this week. Numbers flashing across a TV ticker have a certain magnetic power and certitude to them. It was easy to forget that Joe Biden would gain ground once mail votes were added to the tallies because such votes were overwhelmingly Democratic this year in Pennsylvania and most other states.

But just because of that blue shift — and the red shift that occurred in states where mail votes were counted first — that doesn’t mean the presidential race was all that close in the end. Joe Biden’s win was on the tighter side of the likely range of outcomes suggested by polls, but it was a thoroughly convincing one judged on its own merits.

So put aside your anxieties of the past few days and the premature media narratives that have been circulating since Tuesday night. Suppose, instead, that you’d been on one of those weekslong rafting trips in the Grand Canyon (sounds pleasant, doesn’t it?) and woke up to this map:

It’s not a landslide, by any means, but this is a map that almost any Democrat would have been thrilled about if you’d shown it to them a year ago. Biden looks to have reclaimed the three “blue wall” states — Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin (ABC News has announced that Biden is the “apparent winner” in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin1) — that were central to Hillary Clinton’s loss. He may also win Arizona (he would become the first Democrat to do so since 1996) and, in the opposite corner of the country, Georgia (the first Democratic winner there since 1992). Additionally, Biden easily won Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District, which could be a thorn in the side of Republicans going forward. He also ran far ahead of Clinton in rural northern states such as Maine, Minnesota and New Hampshire.

Extrapolating out from current vote totals, I project Biden winning the popular vote by 4.3 percentage points and getting 81.8 million votes to President Trump’s 74.9 million, with a turnout of around 160 million. This is significant because no candidate has ever received 70 million votes in an election — former President Barack Obama came the closest in 2008, with 69.5 million votes — let alone 80 million. That may also be a slightly conservative projection, given the blue shift we’ve seen so far and the fact that late-counted votes such as provisional ballots often lean Democratic. I’d probably bet on Biden’s popular vote margin winding up at closer to 5 points than to 4, and 6 points isn’t entirely out of the question either.

The margin is also a bit more impressive in the context of our highly polarized political era, which has tended to produce close elections. If I’m right about the popular vote margin, Biden’s win would come via the second-largest popular vote margin since 2000, exceeding Obama’s 3.9-point margin against Mitt Romney in 2012 but lagging behind Obama’s 7.3-point win over John McCain in 2008.

Biden also defeated an elected incumbent, which is relatively rare. Since World War II, five elected incumbents who sought reelection have won it — Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Obama. Trump is now the third sitting president to lose his reelection bid in that time, along with Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush.

What about the polls? Didn’t they show a wider margin for Biden? Yes, they did — Biden led in the final national polls by around 8 points. So we’re probably going to wind up with a polling error of around 3 to 4 points, both nationally and at the state level. (Although that will reflect a combination of states like Georgia, where the polls were spot-on, and others like Wisconsin, where there were big misses.) This is, of course, a subject on which we’ll have more to say in the coming days. For now, it’s safe to say that pollsters will have some questions to answer, especially about how they missed in the same direction (underestimating Trump) in some of the same states two elections in a row.

At the same time, this election’s polling error may wind up being fairly normal by historical standards. Indeed, the final polls miss by around 3 points, on average, in presidential elections. The error this year may be somewhat wider than that, but we should wait for all the votes to be counted because margins may shift substantially in some states before results are certified.

In any case, Biden’s ability to survive a polling error of the size that sank Clinton was precisely the reason he was a fairly heavy favorite in our forecast. Biden won (or is likely to win) several states — Georgia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona2 — by margins that will probably be between 0 and 2 percentage points, in contrast to Clinton, who lost Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Florida by margins of 1 percentage point or less. Biden’s 89 percent chance of winning the Electoral College included the possibility of nail-biter wins in critical states — although, again, it’s hard to know if this race would be regarded as that much of a nail-biter if not for the timing of ballot counting and the blue shift.

The bigger problems — both for Democrats and for the polls — were in races for Congress.

There weren’t necessarily any huge upsets in the Senate; it’s just that Democrats lost most of the tossup races. Among races where winners have been projected so far, Democrat Sara Gideon is the only Senate candidate favored in our forecast to have lost, and she had only a 59 percent chance of beating Sen. Susan Collins, according to our final forecast. Gideon, however, is likely to eventually be joined by Cal Cunningham in North Carolina once that race is projected, who had a 68 percent chance, although the polling in that Senate race had tightened in the closing days of the campaign following a Cunningham sexting scandal. Republican Joni Ernst held off challenger Theresa Greenfield in Iowa, although Ernst was a narrow favorite in our forecast.

Democrats do retain a chance at a Senate majority, or more likely a 50-50 split in which Vice President-elect Kamala Harris would be the deciding vote. Democrats currently hold 48 seats,3 but there are two runoffs in Georgia on Jan. 5 that are sure to attract hundreds of millions of dollars worth of advertising. I’m a little too exhausted to prognosticate about the Georgia runoffs all that much, but Democrats are at least mathematically alive here in a state that Biden appears likely to win. They also retain some outside chances at winning a Senate seat in Alaska, where mail votes have not yet been counted.

But Democrats underperformed in the U.S. House, where they’ve lost almost every toss-up race that has been projected so far and Republicans have made a net gain of 5 seats and counting. It also appears as though Democrats will underperform in the House popular vote relative to the presidential vote and the generic ballot, where Democrats led by about 7 percentage points. That looks like a significant polling miss (although the House popular vote can take a long time to finalize). In that sense, the election could be described as more of a repudiation of Trump specifically than of Republicans writ large.

Biden did have some shortcomings, however. One major one was his apparent underperformance among key groups of Hispanic voters, especially Cuban Americans in South Florida and Mexican Americans in South Texas. As you can see in this chart from The New York Times, there were huge shifts toward Trump in these areas:

Indeed, even with the addition of Georgia and Arizona in their column, Democrats’ Electoral College coalition is somewhat fragile if it doesn’t contain Florida and/or Texas. It’s not clear yet what the tipping-point state will be in this election — but mostly likely it will be Arizona or Wisconsin, where it appears as though Biden will win by around 1 percentage point. That could mean there’s around a 4-point gap between the roughly 5-point popular vote victory that we eventually expect from Biden and his margin in the tipping-point state, a bigger Electoral College disadvantage than Clinton had in 2016 (3 points).

Still, this brings up one last point: This is the seventh election out of the past eight in which Democrats have won the popular vote for president. If American elections were contested on the basis of the popular vote, this race could probably have been called fairly early on Tuesday night, and we could all have gotten a lot more sleep the past few days. But don’t let bleary eyes obscure Biden’s accomplishment.

[patriotsnet]

Will Republicans Take Back The House

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/will-republicans-take-back-the-house/

Will Republicans Take Back The House

Republicans Positive To Win Back Both Chambers

Will Republicans take back the House?

Republican Sen. Rick Scott said, “This is going to be like 2010, 2012, 2014 where we pick up seats because of Obama’s agenda.” He also added, “Now what I talk about every day is do we want open borders? No. Do we want to shut down our schools? No. Do we want men playing in women’s sports? No. Do we want to shut down the Keystone Pipeline? No. Do we want voter ID? Yes.”

He also added that the;Democratic lawmakers;and Biden Administration are on the opposite side, giving them the advantage in the upcoming midterm election.;

Big Odds For Republicans To Win Back The House Of Representatives Next Year

The internal consultation of the National Republican Congressional Committee revealed that their party has favorable conditions to retake the majority of seats in the House of Representatives in the mid-term elections to be held next year.;

Contributing to these good predictions is that voters prefer Republicans as their leaders, and the increased unfavorability of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, according to data provided by the NRCC website on April 26.;

Even the decennial census results are on the side of a Republican triumph because the data presented by the Census Bureau show that they gained seats in the new distribution, although it is not definitive.;

Likewise, throughout the 100 days of the Biden administration at the helm of the White House, Americans have become alerted to the convenience of changing the political course.;

In this regard, NRCC spokesman Mike Berg commented in a statement, The Democrats dangerous socialist agenda is providing the perfect roadmap for Republicans to regain the majority.

Among voters most pressing considerations are the border crisis and the rampant illegal immigration that the Biden and the Democrat open border policies have fostered.;

At least 75% of voters see the border situation as a crisis or significant problem, while 23% say the border is a minor problem or not a problem at all.

Thus, 57% of voters do not believe that the CCP Virus stimulus approved by Biden is helping them and their families.

Pelosi Tells Republicans To ‘take Back’ Party From ‘extreme Right’

Nancy Pelosi has urged her Republican colleagues to “take back” their party from those at on the extreme right.

Accepting an honorary degree from Smith College in Massachusetts, the Speaker of the House said that the “country needs a big, strong Republican party” so that politicians can compete ideas for governance. Ms Pelosi urged members to prevent the party from being “a cult of personality on the extreme, extreme, extreme right”.

“This isn’t about liberal or conservative, they don’t believe in governance” she added, “Take back your party, which has done so much for the country”.

You May Like: Trump 1998 People Magazine Interview

House And Senate Odds: Final Thoughts

There is less than 1% equity on the notion that Democrats will win the House and lose the Senate, because while New Hampshire could move in a weird, contradictory manner, if Democrats win the House, the nation will be sufficiently blue that they hold all three of Nevada, Arizona, and Georgia, and they will gain Pennsylvania too.

Races are too nationalized and partisanship too entrenched for the Senate GOP to outrun a national environment blue enough to win the House, which means you can get a Democratic Congress for another term at $0.21. Its a better value than the House outright market for almost no extra risk, and thats the best kind of value.

Dont Miss: What Are The Main Differences Between Democrats And Republicans

Poll: 78% Of Capitol Hill Staffers Believe Gop Will Take Back The House In 2022

78% of Capitol Hill staffers believe that House Republicans are on track to reclaim the house majority in 2022, according to a new poll.

Capitol Hill staffers were asked a series of questions, gauging congressional support for President Bidens agenda and individual issues such as gun control in a new Punchbowl News poll.;While responses to individual issue questions fell down partisan lines, 78% of respondents indicated they believe the GOP will control the House of Representatives after the 2022 midterm elections.

Seventy-eight percent of senior Capitol Hill aides believe the Republicans will regain the House in 2022, according to a poll from Punchbowl#RepublicanParty#HouseOfRepresentatives#Nrcc#NancyPelosi#PunchbowlNews

H24 News US

The poll surveyed 158 staffers serving as chiefs of staff, legislative directors, press secretaries and communications directors to members of the House of Representatives and the Senate. The partisan breakdown of the survey was fairly even with 80 respondents identifying as Democratic staffers and 78 respondents identifying as Republican staffers, according to Punchbowl.

Respondents also gave their predictions on which party will control the Senate, with 70% of respondents indicating their belief that Democrats will control the Senate after the 2022 midterm elections.

Punchbowls poll was conducted between May 11 and May 28.

You May Like: How Many Congressmen Are Republican

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For further information, please visit AGF.com.

Democrats Odds Of Keeping The House Are Slimming Fast

The Democratic House majority emerged from the 2020 election so bruised and emaciated that experts gave it less than three years to live.

In defiance of polling and pundit expectations, Republicans netted 11 House seats in 2020, leaving Nancy Pelosis caucus perilously thin. Since World War II, the presidents party has lost an average of 27 House seats in midterm elections. If Democrats lose more than four in 2022, they will forfeit congressional control.

If the headwinds facing House Democrats have been clear since November, the preconditions for overcoming those headwinds have also been discernible: The party needed Joe Biden to stay popular, the Democratic base to stay mobilized and, above all, for Congressional Democrats to level the playing field by banning partisan redistricting.

A little over 100 days into Bidens presidency, Democrats are hitting only one of those three marks.

Historically, theres been a strong correlation between the sitting presidents approval rating and his partys midterm performance. Only twice in the last three decades has the presidents party gained seats in a midterm election; in both cases, their approval ratings exceeded 60 percent.

The party that controls the presidency tends to gets less popular as time goes on, and future declines are surprisingly correlated with first quarter polling.Many reasons that this cycle might be different, but so far public polling points to Dems getting 48% on election day.

It didnt.

Don’t Miss: What Will Happen If Republicans Win

National View: Republican Resurgence In 2022 Already On The Horizon

Reading the political tea leaves 18 months in advance is as tricky as making a weather forecast for the same timeframe. But every so often, circumstances combine to increase the odds in the forecasters favor. Looking ahead to next years midterms is one of them. Because if things continue on their current course, Nov. 8, 2022, will be a very good night for Republicans around the country.

For starters, history is on the GOPs side going into the campaign. Theres a long track record of the incumbent presidents party losing seats during a midterm election. In fact, since 1934, only two presidents have enjoyed an increase in their partys numbers in the House and Senate: Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1934 and George W. Bush in 2002.

Excluding those two exceptions, losses are big for the party that occupies 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Especially for first-term presidents and particularly in the House. Consider Presidents Donald Trump , Barack Obama , Bill Clinton , Ronald Reagan , and Gerald Ford . All were shellacked at the ballot box, resulting in significantly fewer members of their party in the House of Representatives.

According to FiveThirtyEight, the GOP also has a turnout advantage in midterms. Under Republican presidents since 1978, the GOP has enjoyed a plus-one shift toward party identification for those who vote in midterm elections. That margin swells to plus-five under Democratic presidents.

A Zombie Republican Party Will Overwhelm Joe Biden In The 2022 Midterms

Representative Kevin McCarthy discusses if Republicans can take back the House in 2020

President Biden promised he will restore the soul of America. Hes already running out of time. The commander-in-chief is 78 and unlikely to see out more than one term in office. By the time the pandemic crisis passes mid-2021, inshallah Biden could find his administration has run out of gas before it ever really got started. A week is a long time in politics. Two years can whizz by.

For now, Biden appears to hold the aces. He has a Democratic majority in the House Of Representatives and his vice president, Kamala Harris, can cast the deciding vote in a split Senate. The economy, stimulated to its guts, is expected to roar as this year goes on. His opposition, the Republican Party, looks prone wrecked by its calamitous marriage to Donald Trump. The Republican base still hates the Republican establishment and vice versa. The infamous storming of the Capitol on 6 January, we are told, has tarnished the American right for a generation or more.

The Republican Party, for all its problems, remains the strong favourite to win the House in the 2022 midterms, possibly by a large margin, and they may even take back the Senate

Trump or no Trump, the Grand Old Party marches on. The mistake pundits make is to confuse Republicanism with a normal democratic movement. It is more like the political equivalent of the undead a zombie army that horrifies every sane voter but somehow always wins because people hate the Democrats more.

Recommended Reading: Are Democrats Red And Republicans Blue

Mcconnell: House Senate Gop Wins In 2022 Would Check Biden

Addison Mitchell McConnellHouse approves John Lewis voting rights measureThe Hills 12:30 Report Presented by AT&T Pelosis negotiates with centrists to keep Bidens agenda afloatMcConnell urges Biden to ignore Aug. 31 Afghanistan deadlineMORE on Thursday pledged that if Republicans win back control of Congress next year they could be a check against the Biden administration, forcing it into the political center.

McConnell, speaking at an event in Kentucky, said that American voters have a big decision to make in 2022, when control of both the House and Senate are up for grabs.

Do they really want a moderate administration or not? If the House and Senate were to return to Republican hands that doesnt mean nothing happens, McConnell said.

What I want you to know is if I become the majority leader again its not for stopping everything. Its for stopping the worst. Its for stopping things that fundamentally push the country into a direction that at least my party feels is not a good idea for the country, he added. And I could make sure Biden makes his promise to be a moderate.

Democrats are trying to keep their majorities in both the House, where they have a nine-seat advantage, and the Senate, which is evenly split but where they have the majority since Vice President Harris is able to break ties.

The Cook Political Report rates both the Pennsylvania and North Carolina seats as toss-ups, and Johnsons seat as lean R.

‘the Beast Is Growing’: Republicans Follow A Winning At All Costs Strategy Into The Midterms

Much remains uncertain about the midterm elections more than a year away including the congressional districts themselves, thanks to the delayed redistricting process. The Senate, meanwhile, looks like more of a toss-up.

House Democrats think voters will reward them for advancing President Joe Biden’s generally popular agenda, which involves showering infrastructure money on virtually every district in the country and sending checks directly to millions of parents. And they think voters will punish Republicans for their rhetoric about the Covid-19 pandemic and the 2020 election.

“Democrats are delivering results, bringing back the economy, getting people back to work, passing the largest middle-class tax cut in history, while Republicans are engaged in frankly violent conspiracy theory rhetoric around lies in service of Donald Trump,” said Tim Persico, executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

But the challenges Democrats face are real and numerous.

They knew they would face a tough 2022 immediately after 2020, when massive, unexpected GOP gains whittled the Democratic majority to just a handful of seats.

“House Republicans are in a great position to retake the majority,” said Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Minn., who chairs the National Republican Congressional Committee, “but we are taking nothing for granted.”

His rural district had been trending Republican for years. Kind won re-election last year by just about 10,000 votes.

Don’t Miss: Will Any Republicans Vote For Impeachment

Republicans Are In An Excellent Position To Weasel Their Way Back To House Control

When the Democrats took control of all three branches of the federal government following the 2020 election, they did so with the slimmest margin possible â a 50/50 split in the Senate and an 11-seat advantage in the House of Representatives, which has already slipped to a margin of just eight votes, thanks to special elections and run-offs. The first test of how well that razor-thin Democratic advantage will hold will come in 2022, and it may be decided before a single vote is cast. A new study conducted by Democratic data firm TargetSmart and published by Mother Jones found that Republican-controlled state legislatures around the country could effectively take back control of Congress simply through the shady and dubious practice of gerrymandering.

Here’s the problem that faces Democrats with the 2022 election season approaching: Despite having control of the federal government, the left has lost ground at the state level. Republicans control 61 total chambers of state governments, including holding a trifecta in 23 states. In many of these states, the party with legislative control gets to re-draw the lines for congressional districts, allowing them to create bizarre borders that serve only to set up a favorable outcome. According to TargetSmart, Republicans will have the ability to re-draw 187 congressional districts, while Democrats will only control 75.

I Ultimately Decided Against Running For Congress In A Red District But My Research Found A Way For Democrats To Make Inroads In Such Places

Political pundits seem united in their belief that Democrats will struggle to hold the House of Representatives in 2022.

The historical precedent that the party out of power in the White House always gains in the midterms and the likely impact of partisan and racial gerrymandering has fostered a consensus that Democrats will lose seats.

Theyre wrong. Democrats have the opportunity to widen the playing field in 2022 with the right candidates, a message focused on economic growth anda surprise to somea clear pro-democracy appeal designed to woo the one-quarter to one-third of Trump voters who are Liz Cheney Republicans.

My opinion is based on nearly 40 years in government and politicsbut more importantly, it is based on the last eight months that I spent actively exploring a race for Tennessees 3rd congressional district.

I recently decided for personal and professional reasons that I cannot run in 2022. But through the testing the waters process, I discovered a path to possible victory in my east Tennessee district that should be replicable in many other similar districts around the nation.

The remainder of Hamilton County, suburban and rural areas outside of Chattanooga, accounts for another one-quarter of the district population: It is Republican turf and the home to the districts five-term incumbent, Chuck Fleischmann. And half of the district vote comes from all or parts of 10 other counties, the largest being Anderson County, home to Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Don’t Miss: What Do Republicans Think About Daca

Renewable Energy And Health Care Among The Sectors That Could Get Shakeup Due To Midterms

The 2022 midterm elections are already affecting Washington, and the results could shake up sectors such as renewable energy, health care and finance.

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As Democrats in Washington work to deliver on infrastructure spending and other priorities, theyre trying to make progress in large part because of a key event thats still more than a year away.

That event is the midterm elections on Nov. 8, 2022, when Republicans will aim to take back control of the House and Senate and become a more powerful check on the priorities of President Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats.

What leaders are thinking about, particularly since we have unified party control, is that these midterm elections are inevitably a referendum on the governing party, said Sarah Binder, a senior fellow in;governance studies;at the Brookings Institution and a professor of;political science;at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

In that sense, shrinking time coupled with What is it that Democrats want to run on? it adds pressure on Democrats to get their priorities through the door.

Time is growing short, Binder said, because party leaders often avoid making their members vote on tough issues in the same calendar year as an election, since that can hurt incumbents in tight races. Party leaders often think primarily about what they can get done in the first year of a Congress, as opposed to counting on the second year, she said.

Sectors that could win or lose

Year

[londonforexweb]

10 Secrets The Trading Industry Doesn’t Want You To Know About

Today’s lesson goes to be somewhat controversial and should ruffle some feathers. I shall blow wide open and debunk tons of the knowledge you've got presumably been exposed to the present far in your trading journey.

The average trader is out there walking through a confusing and conflicting maze of data from a spread of sources including; blogs, forums, broker websites, books, e-books, courses and YouTube videos.

With of these learning resources available there's naturally getting to be some excellent and a few very bad information, but actually , there just isn’t how for many aspiring traders to understand what to concentrate to, who to concentrate to, or what information is useful and what information is non-beneficial.

I’m not getting to pretend that there's how for an aspiring trader to filter this giant sea of data composed by of these resources and mentors out there, because there simply isn’t. knowledgeable trader with 10,000 hours of experience might stand an opportunity of deciding the great from the bad and therefore the valid from the invalid. However, you, the beginner or intermediate trader simply won’t possess that filtering ability yet.

Becoming ‘Non-Average’

As traders, we concede to our instinctive feelings of social trustworthiness supported what we see and listen to , often to our extreme detriment. we frequently tend to require a leap of religion with our mentors and have a habit of taking things said to us at face value. we would like to hold close information that resonates with us and is sensible to us, especially if it’s delivered by a well-known source that we've come to understand and trust.

The ‘average trader’s brain’ is usually trying to find a shortcut due to the overwhelming desire to form money and be free. The brain wants to urge a winning result immediately with the smallest amount amount of effort possible. If you would like to ever make it as a professional trader or investor, I suggest you are doing everything you'll to avoid thinking with the ‘average trader’s brain‘ and begin being ‘non-average’. meaning becoming far more aware, thinking outside the box more and questioning and filtering the knowledge you read and watch. most significantly , slowing everything all down!

This now begs the apparent question…how does one even know what I’m close to write during this lesson is actually valid and factual? How are you able to really be sure? the reality is unless you've got followed me and my posts on this blog for an extended time and know me and know my work, then you can’t really make certain , and that i don’t expect you to easily believe it at face value. If you would like to return back and re-read this lesson during a few weeks, or a couple of months, or a couple of years, after you work out that i'm somebody worth taking note of about trading OR that i'm somebody not worth taking note of about trading, then so be it.

So with a degree of healthy skepticism, I ask you to think about the below list of eye-opening secrets that professional traders and therefore the trading industry, don’t want you to understand about or understand. I hope it helps…

Visit : توصيات الذهب اليوم

FOREX isn’t the sole market the Professionals trade

The FX market is large , with billions of dollars per day changing hands. It can cause you to great money if you recognize what you’re doing OR it can send you broke if you don’t. It’s a really popular market to trade globally, BUT it’s not the sole market the professional’s trade and it’s not always the simplest market to trade either.

A note on leverage:

The brokers and platform providers want you to trade FX on high leverage because the profit margins are very high for them. However, if you trade FX on lower leverage, the profit margins shrink dramatically for them. once you trade FX, start brooding about what can fail rather than just brooding about what can go right. I suggest avoiding stupidly high leverage like 400 to 1, as this will be very dangerous for you if the market moves quickly or experiences a price gap and your stop-loss orders aren’t executed at the worth you set. A more sensible leverage level would be 100 to 1 or 200 to 1, but any higher seems crazy. (Using an excessive amount of leverage is what wiped tons of traders out during Swiss Bank Crisis in 2015, The Brexit choose 2016 and therefore the Currency flash crash in early 2019).

Broaden your view:

Going forward, it'll serve you well in your trading career to start out watching a spread of worldwide markets including FX, Stock Indicies and Commodities. additionally to FX, I personally trade GOLD (XAUUSD), S&P500 Index USA, the SPI200 Index Australia, and therefore the Hang Seng Index Hong Kong , and sometimes individual stocks on various global exchanges. In short, there's more to the trading world than simply FX. I discuss the foremost popular markets I trade this lesson here.

Day trading isn’t what Pro trading really is

The internet is crammed with marketing trying to convince folks that the definition of a trader may be a one that spends all day actively trading in and out of the market on a brief term basis, all whilst living the life-style of a Wall St millionaire. there's a significant agenda within the industry to push this story to the masses, it's been relentless for many years .

I am yet to satisfy one successful day trader who is consistent over the future and that i have almost 25,000 students and 250,000 readers on this blog. i'm not saying there isn’t a couple of out there, but 99.9% of the people that do this sort of trading or attempt to live up to the standard day trader stereotype are getting to fail and perhaps even harm themselves financially or mentally. Watching a screen all day and searching for trades constantly is that the like a compulsive gambler playing roulette during a casino.

The successful traders i do know of (myself included) are watching higher time frames and longer time horizons (minimum 4-hour chart timeframes and predominantly daily chart time frames). they need no restriction on how long they're looking to carry a trade for and that they tend to let the trades find them. The professionals i do know , don't day trade, they are doing not watch screens all day, they are doing not search for trades constantly. they're going to typically fall under the category of a swing trader, trend trader or position trader.

The obvious paradox and conflicting reality within the ‘day trader story’ is blatantly obvious. How does a trader who is consistently watching a screen and constantly trading have time to enjoy his life and live the lifestyle? They chose to trade as a profession to possess a life, they didn’t choose it to observe a screen 24/5.

Here are some points to think about that employment against the so-called ‘ day trader’:

The shorter the time-frame the more noise and random price movement there's , thus increasing your chance of simply being stopped out of the trade.

Your ‘trading edge’ features a higher chance of yielding a result for you if you’re not trading within the intraday noise.

The same trading edge doesn't work or produce an equivalent results on a 5 min chart compared to a Daily chart.

Commissions and spreads churn your account, therefore the more you trade the more you lose in broker platform costs. (I will mention this below)

Risk-Reward ratios aren't relative on shorter and longer time frames. Statistical average volatility across different time periods also as natural market dynamics play an enormous role during this . there's much more weight behind higher time frames than lower timeframes.

Great trades take time because the market moves slower than most of the people ever anticipate. Trading from the upper timeframes and holding trades for extended time periods will provide you with greater opportunities to ascertain trades mature into big winners. However, shorter timeframes don’t provide you with this same opportunity fairly often .

[spearmatch55-blog]

Just how Do I Get A Mini Loan Of 10,000?

Just how Do I Obtain A Mini Loan Of 10,000?

#toc background: #f9f9f9;border: 1px solid #aaa;display: table;margin-bottom: 1em;padding: 1em;width: 350px; .toctitle font-weight: 700;text-align: center;

Content

Do You Need To Borrow Money?

Making a decision Whether You Should Be Borrowing Cash

Do You Really Need To Invest The Cash In Any Way?

Can You Save Up Or Make Use Of Some Financial Savings Rather Than Loaning Money?

Excellent Money Loaning Versus Bad Money Borrowing

Do You Need To Borrow Money?

When it comes to making your payments, adaptable financings function in much the very same means as conventional personal lendings however permit you a little bit much more wiggle-room. Unlike with a basic personal loan, versatile personal car loans permit you to change the dimension of your repayments when you need to.

Choosing Whether You Need To Be Loaning Cash

Once the totally free term is over, many cards will certainly hike the passion rates up to around 15 or 20%. This is why it is important to get onto a different card prior to this happens. Overdraft accounts are not appropriate for long-term borrowing, as they can bill greater rate of interest than what you would certainly obtain with a loan or bank card. They are only helpful to those that are trying to find a little amount of money for a brief time period. One significant advantage of residence equity finances is that their rates of interest are fairly sensible.

Do You Really Need To Spend The Money Whatsoever?

Like bank card financial debt, nonetheless, these lendings can be hazardous if you are not a disciplined debtor. You might incur extreme penalties for late or missed out on repayments, with the worst being the repossession of your residence.

Can You Conserve Up Or Use Some Financial Savings Instead Of Borrowing Cash?

It might, therefore, be smart to work out a settlement plan prior to you request a residence equity loan. If a specific demands to obtain a small amount of money for a brief period, a credit card (or a cash advance on a charge card) might not be a poor concept. After all, there are no application charges (assuming you currently have a card). For those who pay off their entire equilibrium at the end of every month, credit cards can be a resource of fundings at a 0% rate of interest.

Great Money Borrowing Versus Bad Cash Loaning

It is necessary to note that most of these credit cards have a minimum monthly repayment figure of 2% of the overall impressive balance on the card. It is necessary that you at least make these payments but it is also important to remember that you should be paying back more than this if you intend to remove all of you financial debt prior to the initial duration mores than. These cards enable you to relocate your money throughout to them at not too great an expense and also will likely be cheaper than your current card will certainly be once the introductory offer is over. The majority of the charge card which use 0% rate of interest for lengthy introductory periods will improve the passion up a whole lot hereafter time finishes.

Individuals secure personal fundings for a selection of various reasons, including to spend for a brand-new vehicle, house enhancements, or vacations.

But while some loan providers are also reducing APRs for brand-new fundings, numerous are likewise tightening up eligibility needs-- indicating if you have below-average credit, you may locate it more difficult to certify.

As a result of the impacts of COVID-19, several financial institutions and also online loan providers are readjusting their individual loan offerings.

As they tend to have reduced interest rates than credit cards, some individuals also make use of individual car loans to combine numerous debts into a solitary, lower-cost regular monthly payment.

If this holds true, attempt starting your loan search with the financial institution that holds your checking or savings account, or make use of prequalification alternatives with lenders that currently concentrate on bad-credit financings.

If you only need to obtain a small amount, the cheapest way to do this is to obtain from your bank by organizing an overdraft account. Your financial institution will not charge you a set-up fee and also rates of interest are much lower than those of any payday loan company. If your bank won't offer you an overdraft account, nevertheless, or prolong the one you already have, your next finest wager is to secure a bank card which offers absolutely no per cent rate of interest for the first six months and also place all acquisitions on that. You do need to be disciplined regarding paying off the equilibrium, nonetheless, prior to the interest-free duration is over if you want to avoid higher rates of interest. These kinds of fundings, likewise referred to as cash advances, offer tiny quantities of money no more than ₤ 1,000.

Regular Monthly Expenses-- Month-to-month expense varies from one month to the next, so it isn't constantly very easy to project just how much your costs will set you back. A high energy expense or expense of living boost may be enough to disrupt your monetary circulation, causing a lack in between paydays. When your expenses exceed your earnings, one feasible option is to borrow money online.

Who is offering zero percent financing?

OneMain Financial. OneMain Financial, an option for borrowers with poor credit, funds personal loans as soon as the same day if you complete an online application early in the day and visit a branch to receive your loan funds via check. Sending funds automatically to your bank account can take one to two business days.

Payment schedules usually two weeks after borrowing and also generally should be settled in one payment consisting of service fees and passion. Obtaining money is available in several sizes and shapes - overdraft accounts, home mortgages, store cards, bank card and individual financings are all kinds of methods to borrow money. Some featured a structured plan to pay them back, while others are a lot more relaxed - however the thing they all have in common is they need to be repaid, often with rate of interest. Some lenders use poor credit fundings particularly for people with inadequate credit report.

What is the catch with zero percent financing?

Using Collateral Rather than getting an unsecured personal loan, you might be able to get a no income loan if you secure it with something valuable. If you own something like a car, valuable antiques or even have a bank account or CD, lenders might be willing to consider those as collateral for no income loans.

If you want to borrow money in order to purchase an auto, it is thinking about worth hire acquisition or individual contract purchase (PCP). If they are greater than a loan from a financial institution or building culture, obtain your cash from them instead and also pay for the vehicle upfront.

These loans commonly have a lot higher rate of interest as well as lower maximum credit line. These can be useful for individuals to aid improve their credit history so they can get less expensive loans in the future.

What is a zero interest loan?

Credit Cards & Loans with a 450 Credit Score You'll find it very difficult to borrow with a 450 credit score, unless you're looking for a student loan. In particular, you're unlikely to qualify for a mortgage with a 450 credit score because FHA-backed home loans require a minimum score of 500.

One of the best means to easily see the various items that are out there on the market today, is by using a versatile loan rate comparison tool. These devices function by searching through their substantial, regularly-updated databases to discover which flexible lendings are currently being provided by financial institutions and also constructing cultures throughout the nation. This means that you can save on your own a great deal of time by not needing to scroll with all the numerous web sites of all the various banks and constructing cultures in order to locate the one that is appropriate for you. Among the alternatives for obtaining credit, that many individuals typically do not consider, is to check into securing credit in the form of what is referred to as a flexible loan.

What this suggests is that you are permitted to repay more than the specified monthly payment amount, whenever you wish to and also doing this will not incur a fine of any kind. All you need to do is start costs and making the needed acquisitions on the card as soon as you have gotten your credit limit and also you have your new credit card. It is very important that you make all of your payments by the end of the 0% introductory interest period, otherwise you will certainly wind up being charged a lot more than you would have been before.

[junker-town]

All the ways Emmanuel Sanders makes the 49ers even scarier

Photo by Dustin Bradford/Getty Images

George Kittle, Matt Breida, Marquise Goodwin, and the entire 49ers defense should all be very happy the team traded for Emmanuel Sanders.

The San Francisco 49ers hardly needed to make a splashy move before the NFL trade deadline. They’re sitting at 6-0 on the season with a win over the rival Los Angeles Rams under their belts. But for a team that has made huge strides on defense, the Kyle Shanahan-led offense has been missing something.

That something was a reliable wide receiver, which they now have after making a trade with the Broncos for Emmanuel Sanders.

Sanders, 32, has more yards (367) this season with Joe Flacco throwing to him than any 49ers receiver has had from Jimmy Garoppolo. With his addition, the 49ers are a much more complete team on offense, and that should help the team across the board.

The 49ers are winning games on the back of a strong defense, a powerful running game, and a complex Shanahan offense that will only get more difficult to predict now that Sanders has arrived.

Let’s take a look at the ways Sanders makes the 49ers better.

Sanders is immediately the best receiver on the team

Going into this season, Shanahan was upfront about George Kittle’s usage, claiming that the tight end would probably see a drop in targets as his offense comes together. The 49ers really like Kittle’s blocking in the run game, especially with fullback Kyle Juszczyk currently injured.

But Garoppolo has had to rely on Kittle more often than not, going to the tight end when his receivers are well-covered. Kittle is the team’s leading receiver through six games, with 34 catches for 376 yards and a touchdown. After that, Marquise Goodwin is the top receiver with just 181 yards.

Goodwin, Kendrick Bourne, Dante Pettis, and rookie Deebo Samuel were the team’s top four receivers prior to this deal, and while all of them have made some good plays, none have stood out much.

In fact, Sanders has more yards this season than the 49ers’ top two receivers combined.

Sanders: 367 yards, 30 receptions, 2 TDs in 7 games Goodwin and Samuel, combined: 349 yards, 26 receptions, 2 TDs in 6 games

Sanders has also eclipsed 1,000 yards receiving three times in his career, including the last time he played a 16-game season in 2016.

His numbers since then have declined slightly with a rotating cast of bad quarterbacks in Denver, but not by a significant enough margin to truly matter. What the 49ers like about Sanders should be obvious: he’s a fantastic route-runner with a high catch rate (68.2 percent this season and 72.4 percent last season).

You can see his route running ability in a couple notable plays below:

This is the first reception from the last game Emmanuel Sanders played in. Three yards of separation on a five-yard route. Easy button. pic.twitter.com/oFkKHPSrDu

— KP (@KP_Show) October 22, 2019

Look at the separation Sanders gets from the single short cut on the play above — that kind of separation is sorely needed on the 49ers’ offense. You can see an even bigger gap created by Sanders when he makes his outside cut on the play below, where the Broncos were showing run:

2nd quarter: #Broncos come out with 22 personnel, a Max Protect Play Action shot to Emmanuel Sanders. Lindsay & then Jano release into route. #Jaguars match 22 with base personnel. MOFC. Send 26 at snap. pic.twitter.com/DJGjUY869h

— Joe Rowles (@JoRo_NFL) October 19, 2019

Sanders provides more room for Goodwin and the running game to shine

San Francisco got a glimpse of what Goodwin could do when he put up multiple 100-yard receiving games with Garoppolo under center in late 2017. But his 2018 season was quieter, which is unsurprising given he was primarily catching passes from C.J. Beathard and Nick Mullens.

Goodwin is a stellar fit for the 49ers’ offense, and the only thing he really needed was to not be drawing the top corner and a safety over the top on every play. As a deep threat, he gets the safety look fairly often, but with Sanders and Kittle to worry about, defenses are going to have to commit fewer resources to covering Goodwin.

Then there’s the running game, led by Matt Breida, Raheem Mostert, and Tevin Coleman. Now that they comprise the second-best rushing attack in the NFL, teams are starting to realize that these guys are serious threats. Defenses won’t be able to stack the box on every play and if they do, Kittle should be allowed to block more. Breida leads the way with 411 yards and a touchdown, and he’s averaging 5.6 yards per carry — that mark should go up (or at least not regress) with extra receiver help.

Another weapon that will take some pressure off the defense

Through six games, the 49ers have fielded one of the top defenses in the NFL, alongside the also-undefeated Patriots. Led by Richard Sherman in the secondary and pass rushers Dee Ford and rookie Nick Bosa up front, the San Francisco defense has been nothing short of dominant. It allows the fewest yards in the league and an average of just 10.7 points per game, second behind only the Patriots.

The 49ers haven’t shown that they can win a game solely on the back of their offense, though. They haven’t had to yet because the defense has looked so good, but with games against the Packers, Ravens, and Saints looming on the schedule, there is always a chance an opposing offensive coordinator finds the right attack to throw them off.

Now, Robert Saleh’s defense should feel a lot less pressure about having to carry a game week in and week out. Not to mention a more effective offense often leads to longer drives, which gives the defense more time to rest.

At 32, Sanders’ best seasons are likely behind him. That said, he’s shown through seven games this season that he’s still effective and if not a true No. 1 receiver, close enough to one for the 49ers.

San Francisco probably didn’t need to make this deal, just like the Patriots didn’t need to trade for Mohamed Sanu. But they’re a team that’s coming along faster than most predicted, and this move puts them firmly in “win now” mode.

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Alabama’s long and strange special election for U.S. Senate comes to a close on Tuesday. Democrat Doug Jones and Republican Roy Moore face off in their bids to fill the seat vacated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions for the remainder of the term. Moore is the favorite, according to the polls, but Jones is just a normal polling error away from winning.

Let’s talk about where the race stands, what to keep an eye on after the polls close at 8 p.m. Eastern time and how today’s results could affect the national political landscape.

1. The race has been volatile

President Trump won Alabama by 28 percentage points in 2016. Alabama is a very red state, so this race really shouldn’t be close. Moore, however, was a divisive figure in Alabama politics before this campaign. He was already significantly underperforming Trump’s margin in surveys before The Washington Post first reported, on Nov. 9, that Moore had been accused of sexual misconduct. Since that Post report, the polls have swung to Jones and back to Moore again, and now they’re a bit muddled.

Alabama Senate polls since the first Moore allegations

Surveys taken after accusations of sexual misconduct against Roy Moore were first reported by The Washington Post on Nov. 9

POLLSTER DAYS SINCE ACCUSATIONS DOUG JONES ROY MOORE MOORE MARGIN Opinion Savvy 0 46% 46% 0 Gravis Marketing 1 46 48 +2

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Change Research 2 40 44 +4

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Emerson College 2 40 49 +9

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JMC Analytics 2 48 44 -4

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Strategy Research 4 43 49 +6

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Fox News 6 50 42 -8

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Gravis Marketing 6 47 42 -5

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Change Research 7 46 43 -3

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Strategy Research 11 45 47 +2

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Emerson College 18 47 53 +6

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Change Research 18 44 49 +5

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JMC Analytics 19 44 49 +5

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Washington Post 21 50 47 -3

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YouGov 22 43 49 +6

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Emerson College 23 46 49 +3

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Gravis Marketing 24 48 44 -4

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Strategy Research 25 43 50 +7

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Change Research 28 44 51 +7

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Trafalgar Group 28 46 51 +5

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Gravis Marketing 29 45 49 +4

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Monmouth U. 30 46 46 0 Emerson College 30 44 53 +9

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Fox News 31 50 40 -10

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SurveyMonkey 32 50 48 -2

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Change Research 32 45 51 +6

–

Monmouth University and SurveyMonkey data is taken from an average of their likely voter turnout models.

The polling swings have roughly tracked with voter interest in the Moore scandals. According to Google Trends data, the volume of Alabamians’ searches for Moore dropped off about a week after the Post’s Nov. 9 story. That lines up well with when Jones’s polling surge stopped and Moore began to recover.

Moore was also probably helped by President Trump giving him a quasi and then a full-throated endorsement. Surveys taken before and after Trump got involved show that Moore’s margin over Jones among Trump supporters jumped by 10 to 15 percentage points. Given Trump’s national unpopularity, that jump might not have been a big deal in many states, but it’s a huge deal in Alabama, where Trump is still fairly popular.

All told, an average of polls conducted over the final 21 days of the campaign has Moore up by a few points, 49 percent to 46 percent. But there’s a big spread in results, everything from Moore +9 points to Jones +10 points. These divergent results make sense because …

2. This is a tough race to poll

Senate polling conducted within three weeks of an election has historically been decent, though by no means perfect. Since 1998, Senate polling averages that use at least 10 polls (like the Alabama race) have been off by an average of 3.5 percentage points. In other words, an average polling error in his favor could hand Jones the win.

There’s also reason to believe that there’s a higher-than-usual chance for error in Alabama. Perhaps because of the lower turnout usually associated with elections that are held on days other than the traditional November Election Day in a midterm or presidential year, Senate polls for these races have had an average error that’s nearly a point higher than the average error for those November races.

Indeed, no pollster really knows what turnout is going to look like in Alabama. In addition to the fact that this is a special election occurring two weeks before Christmas in an off-year, there hasn’t been a major competitive statewide general election in Alabama since 2002. SurveyMonkey, The Washington Post and YouGov all have Moore doing better among likely voters than registered voters. Fox News shows the opposite. SurveyMonkey has also demonstrated how weighting for different factors (including past voting patterns) can make a big difference in who a poll shows as being ahead. (My colleague Nate Silver wrote a more in-depth story about what’s going on with pollsters’ assumptions.)

Additionally, the way pollsters are conducting their surveys seems to be having an impact on their findings in Alabama. Only three pollsters who meet FiveThirtyEight’s gold standard1 have conducted polls in Alabama since Nov. 9: Fox News, Monmouth University and The Washington Post. Fox News gave Jones his largest lead of the campaign. Monmouth and The Washington Post surveys were more favorable to Jones than the average. Traditionally, gold-standard pollsters have been more accurate than other pollsters.

It’s also possible, though, that the non-gold-standard polls will be more predictive in this campaign. To meet the FiveThirtyEight gold standard, one thing a pollster must do is use a live interviewer to conduct its surveys. It’s plausible that some voters may not want to admit to another person that they plan to cast a ballot for someone accused of child molestation. They may feel more comfortable saying they are voting for Moore to a recorded voice or to a computer, which is how the vast majority of polls in Alabama have been conducted.

Either way, there’s a lot of reason to be uncertain about how predictive the Alabama polls will be.

3. Jones must win big in the cities — really big

No Democrat has won a statewide race in Alabama since 2008. During that losing streak, Democrats have tended to do their best in two types of places: counties where a large share of the population is black and cities.

But to win the Alabama Senate race, Jones will have to do even better than a typical Democrat — after all, Democrats usually lose in Alabama. He’ll probably need to run up even larger margins than normal in the black belt and win handily in counties with significant population centers, such as Jefferson (Birmingham), Madison (Huntsville), Mobile and Montgomery. Beyond that, it’s difficult to pinpoint how well Jones will need to do in each county to win — we don’t have a string of competitive statewide elections to get a sense of the baseline.

So instead of one baseline, let’s use three that each share some characteristic with today’s election: a federal race, a race with Moore on the ballot, and a combo of the two. Below, I’ve created a table of the three county benchmarks, estimating how well Jones needs to do according to each to win the statewide Senate race. The first is based on the 2016 presidential election results. The second is based on the vote share margin between the 2012 Democratic candidate for state Supreme Court chief justice and Moore, who won that race. And the third is an average of the first two.2 To take one example, if Jones is winning Madison County (average benchmark Jones +9.5 points) by more than 9.5 points, that’s a good sign for his chances of winning statewide.

The benchmarks Doug Jones needs to beat in Alabama

Jones’s target margins over Moore based on the 2016 presidential election and Moore’s performance in a 2012 Supreme Court race

BENCHMARKS COUNTY▲▼ SHARE OF 2016 VOTE▲▼ 2016 PRESIDENTIAL▲▼ 2012 SUPREME COURT▲▼ AVG.▲▼ Winston 0.5% -53.3 -54.0 -53.7 Blount 1.2 -53.2 -49.8 -51.5 Cleburne 0.3 -49.3 -49.4 -49.4 Geneva 0.6 -44.3 -54.0 -49.2 Cullman 1.8 -49.4 -46.4 -47.9 Marion 0.6 -48.1 -44.4 -46.3 St. Clair 1.8 -40.1 -40.0 -40.1 Covington 0.8 -40.5 -37.0 -38.8 Lamar 0.3 -41.0 -35.4 -38.2 Chilton 0.9 -38.6 -37.8 -38.2 DeKalb 1.2 -41.2 -32.0 -36.6 Marshall 1.7 -41.2 -31.4 -36.3 Cherokee 0.5 -41.3 -29.2 -35.3 Fayette 0.4 -37.2 -30.4 -33.8 Walker 1.4 -39.3 -27.0 -33.2 Coffee 1.0 -28.4 -32.4 -30.4 Bibb 0.4 -27.5 -30.6 -29.1 Franklin 0.6 -32.7 -25.0 -28.9 Clay 0.3 -32.8 -24.4 -28.6 Baldwin 4.5 -29.4 -25.8 -27.6 Jackson 1.0 -34.3 -19.0 -26.7 Dale 0.9 -22.4 -28.6 -25.5 Randolph 0.5 -25.4 -24.8 -25.1 Shelby 4.8 -21.7 -23.0 -22.4 Houston 2.0 -19.4 -24.6 -22.0 Elmore 1.8 -23.8 -20.0 -21.9 Morgan 2.4 -24.1 -18.8 -21.5 Limestone 1.9 -20.9 -19.4 -20.2 Autauga 1.2 -21.3 -15.8 -18.6 Henry 0.4 -13.7 -18.8 -16.3 Washington 0.4 -15.3 -16.8 -16.1 Crenshaw 0.3 -17.7 -12.2 -15.0 Lawrence 0.7 -20.9 -8.6 -14.8 Etowah 2.1 -22.0 -6.0 -14.0 Lauderdale 1.9 -17.7 -9.4 -13.6 Tallapoosa 0.9 -13.8 -10.4 -12.1 Calhoun 2.3 -13.3 -8.0 -10.7 Escambia 0.7 -8.2 -9.8 -9.0 Colbert 1.2 -10.2 -2.6 -6.4 Coosa 0.2 -2.8 +0.4 -1.2 Lee 2.8 +5.1 -2.0 +1.6 Talladega 1.6 +2.3 +1.4 +1.9 Pike 0.6 +7.7 +3.6 +5.7 Monroe 0.5 +13.5 +3.0 +8.3 Tuscaloosa 3.9 +8.4 +8.4 +8.4 Pickens 0.4 +12.1 +5.8 +9.0 Chambers 0.7 +12.9 +5.4 +9.2 Madison 7.7 +11.3 +7.6 +9.5 Clarke 0.6 +17.0 +4.6 +10.8 Choctaw 0.3 +14.0 +8.8 +11.4 Mobile 8.1 +14.4 +10.4 +12.4 Butler 0.4 +14.3 +11.0 +12.7 Barbour 0.5 +22.1 +17.6 +19.9 Conecuh 0.3 +22.6 +18.8 +20.7 Russell 0.9 +29.6 +19.6 +24.6 Marengo 0.5 +31.2 +21.6 +26.4 Jefferson 14.3 +35.0 +29.6 +32.3 Hale 0.4 +47.6 +38.0 +42.8 Montgomery 4.5 +53.6 +45.4 +49.5 Dallas 0.9 +65.2 +47.0 +56.1 Wilcox 0.3 +70.1 +56.8 +63.5 Perry 0.2 +73.5 +58.0 +65.8 Lowndes 0.3 +74.6 +60.8 +67.7 Bullock 0.2 +78.4 +61.0 +69.7 Sumter 0.3 +77.0 +62.8 +69.9 Greene 0.2 +92.7 +75.4 +84.1 Macon 0.4 +94.8 +76.0 +85.4

Source: DAVE LEIP’S ATLAS OF U.S. PRESIDENTIAL Elections

Broadly speaking, the three benchmarks are similar. However, there are some differences. For one, the 2016 benchmarks show that Jones needs to do a lot better in heavily black counties like Bullock, Dallas and Macon than the 2012 benchmarks show. The 2012 benchmarks have Moore underperforming the usual Republican vote share in his home county of Etowah and the surrounding Cherokee and DeKalb counties, so if you go by those, Jones needs to do better in those areas. The 2012 benchmarks also have Jones needing to make up a disproportionate amount of ground in counties that are on the periphery of statistical areas (as defined by the federal government) such as Jackson and Lawrence, which are in the Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Huntsville, Alabama, statistical areas respectively.

It’s not clear which of these provide the best baseline. On the one hand, 2016 was a federal election, as is Tuesday’s election. On the other, Moore is a unique candidate, so it could be best to look at an election in which he was a candidate. For now, the best bet is probably to look at some average of the two.

4. This election has national implications

There will be a lot of talk about what a Moore win or loss says about the Republican Party. But the most immediate potential effect of the election would be from a Moore defeat, which would: (i) make Republican efforts to pass legislation in the current Congress more difficult and (ii) make Democratic efforts to take over the Senate in 2018 easier.

Republicans currently have 52 seats in the U.S. Senate. A Jones win puts that majority at just 51 seats. That means that Republicans could afford to lose only one GOP vote on legislation3 — two would be enough to sink any bill that is universally opposed by Democrats. Given all the trouble that Republicans have had passing legislation with a two-seat margin for error, it’s likely that they would struggle even more with a one-seat cushion.

Meanwhile, in 2018, Democrats hope to take control of the Senate, but they have limited opportunities. There are only two Republican-held seats up for election in states where Democrats are normally competitive: Arizona and Nevada. If Republicans have 52 seats heading into next year, Democrats will have to win those two seats and at least one additional GOP-held seat to take control of the Senate in 2019. If, however, Jones wins, the path to a Democratic-controlled Senate in 2019 gets a lot easier.

Finally, no matter who wins, Alabama’s Senate race will almost certainly be another special election this year in which Democrats outperform the presidential lean of the district or state. Although there are obviously some particular circumstances in Alabama, that Trump’s approval rating (even if still relatively high in Alabama) is below his percentage of the vote in last year’s election hasn’t helped Moore’s cause. Moore’s likely very poor performance versus Trump’s 2016 showing adds to the evidence that the national environment favors the Democrats heading into 2018.

[stigbrodersen-blog]

The Intrinsic Value of GNC Holdings, Inc.


Introduction


GNC Holdings, Inc. is a leading multinational health and wellness brand which is a manufacturing and retail business at its core. GNC manufactures its own branded products, while also manufacturing white-label products for third-party companies. Its retail segment consists of company-owned physical stores, franchise locations, and e-commerce. Of its 8,500 locations, approximately 75% of them are in the United States, while the remaining 25% of stores are spread across about 50 different countries. Through its physical and online stores, GNC sells performance and diet supplements, vitamins, health and beauty products, other food and drink products, and general sports-related goods.

At the time of this writing, GNC’s market capitalization is about $120 million, which has been cut from over $4 billion as recently as mid-2015. Its revenue and cash flows for the 2018 fiscal year were $2.4 billion and $77 million, respectively. Its stock has hit a 52-week low of $1.32 and a 52-week high of $4.65. At today’s price of $1.42, is the stock undervalued?

Source: Google Finance

The Intrinsic Value of GNC Holdings, Inc.


With net income being easily manipulated and not a true representation of the cash available to a company’s owners, we prefer to use free cash flow to value a company’s stock. Using free cash flow instead of net income allows investors to value the company based on the actual cash it generated for its owners. Below is a chart of GNC’s free cash flow for the past ten years.

 From the bottom of the Housing Crisis in 2008-2009 to its peak in 2015, GNC was able to grow its cash flow from $85 million to over $309 million, a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20%. However, since then, it’s cash flow has been in a near free fall. Its 2018 free cash flow was $8 million lower than it was a decade ago. The various risks discussed in detail in the “Risks” section below illustrate the causes of this large decline.

To value GNC’s stock, its future free cash flows must be estimated. To do this, the array model below has been developed to account for three potential outcomes of GNC’s future free cash flows.

The upper-bound line (red) illustrates a -15% contraction rate with a 15% probability of occurrence. The middle line (blue) represents a -33% contraction with a 50% probability of occurrence. Finally, the lower-bound (green) line illustrates a -50% contraction with a 35% probability of occurrence. The contraction in GNC’s free cash flow generation is assuming that competitors and online retailers continue to disrupt the retail industry, GNC’s management fails in its strategic and joint venture initiatives, and the United States economy enters into a recessionary period, resulting in a significant slowdown in consumer spending. 

Looking at these growth rates and probabilities, you will notice there is a drastic skew towards negative growth/contraction over the next decade. This may seem quite pessimistic, which it is, but it also allows for a conservative valuation and to consider the potential downside risk. While protecting downside risk is almost always important when making an investment, I see it as even more important in a situation like GNC. The stock may appear undervalued on a quantitative basis, which we will visit in the next part of this article, but the momentum of the stock has been very strong downwards, leading to a potential “falling knife” or “value-trap” situation.  

When creating a valuation model, one must consider the economic environment in which their investment would be made. In today’s environment, it is likely wise to estimate growth rates very conservatively with a margin of safety. Any outperformance of the conservative growth rates would provide investors with additional returns above and beyond what was expected.

It is also important to recognize that the above-estimated contraction rates are not expected to be exact each and every year over the next decade. In fact, that is very unlikely. GNC’s results will likely fluctuate from year-to-year. We do not attempt to estimate results on a yearly basis; rather we look to estimate accurate growth/contraction rates annualized over 5-10 years.

Assuming the estimated outcomes discussed above prove accurate, GNC’s stock may be priced at an 11.3% annual return at today’s price of $1.42.

Two other valuable quantitative metrics to consider when analyzing a stock’s potential return are the earnings yield (inverse P/E) and free cash flow yield (inverse P/FCF). At the time of this writing, GNC’s current earnings and free cash flow yields are 34.2% and 111.1%, respectively. This is due to its low P/E ratio of just 2.92x and its P/FCF ratio of just 0.90x. Its earnings and free cash flow yields are significantly above our DCF analysis and are at levels that are not realistic. In many cases, these yields are indicative of the potential return an investor might earn by owning a stock, but not always – as we can see here with GNC. This example provides investors with a reminder that an investment cannot be made blindly based solely on quantitative metrics with the expectation of actually obtaining those returns. An investor must consider other quantitative factors, as well as qualitative factors when developing an investment thesis.

Given the abnormally and likely unrealistically high yields just discussed, GNC appears to be priced significantly better than the S&P 500 and the industry average on an earnings and free cash flow yield basis. This relationship is not unexpected as it is indicative of investors having a much higher required rate of return when investing in a struggling individual company than they do when investing in a broad index, like the S&P 500. The graph below illustrates the earnings and free cash flow yields for GNC, the S&P500, and the industry average.

Up to this point, everything quantitative about GNC’s valuation indicates it may be undervalued and priced to outperform the S&P 500 over the next decade. However, before we come to that as our final conclusion, let’s further compare GNC to its competitors.

In the graph below, you will see GNC’s valuation metrics compared to that of the industry’s average on a P/E, P/B, P/S, and P/FCF basis. GNC currently trades at a significant discount to the industry averages on a P/E, P/S, and a P/FCF basis (GNC’s book value is negative, so its P/B value is incalculable). Given GNC’s risks that we will discuss in the next section, it is reasonable to believe that GNC should trade at a discount to the overall industry. The size of the discount is subjective to the investor; if you believe that GNC’s risks are overstated by the market and it shouldn’t trade at this deep of a discount to its competitors, you may consider the stock undervalued. However, if you believe the market is rightly capturing the risks facing GNC, then the discount may be warranted.

The Competitive Advantage of GNC Holdings, Inc.


GNC’s competitive advantages will be discussed in detail below:

Brand. While GNC does face significant competition with many of its products, it does have a very strong brand. GNC’s supplements and overall health products are very well known across the world and are known for being high-quality. It will be able to leverage its strong brand as the company continues to expand internationally.

Diversified Business. Its diversified business model provides various avenues for potential growth, while also providing a hedge against competitive pressures. As the health and wellness industry continues to grow, GNC has the ability to take advantage of this buy, increasing its focus on manufacturing and white-labeling products to third-party companies.

Risk Factors


Let’s look at the potential risks that can offset GNC’s competitive advantages discussed above:

Weak Balance Sheet. GNC appears to have a fairly strong cash position (1.14x its market cap), but in comparison to its debt levels, it is immaterial and misleading. It currently has nearly $900 million in debt, in addition to $518 million in capital leases, $175 million in accounts payable, and over $250 million in “other long-term liabilities.” Also, a significant portion of its assets is not easily usable to generate cash or growth the business. Over $800 million of its $1.7 billion in assets is tied up in intangible assets and “other long-term assets.” Its debt-heavy and cash-light balance sheet does not allow for GNC to take advantage of potential opportunities that may arise.

Severe Competition. With the strong growth in the popularity of the health and wellness industry over the last 5-7 years, there has been a massive influx of competition into the industry. Combine the significant growth in new and strengthening competitors with the issues being faced by physical retailers (due to Amazon), GNC is faced with competitive pressures; it may not be able to overcome. 

Economy. Many of GNC’s products are discretionary and premium. This means that if/when the economy enters into tough times, GNC is going to have significantly weaker demand for its products in two-fold because, 1) consumers do not need its products, and 2) its products are premium and expensive. When consumers have less disposable income, they will cut their spending on supplements, or transition away from the premium brands like GNC towards more affordable products. 

Opportunity Costs


Although opportunity costs will not appear in your brokerage statements, it is a very real cost to investors that must be considered. When making an investment, an investor makes the conscious decision to forgo other investment opportunities for the one chosen. Despite having a positive real result, an investment could actually be negative when considering opportunity costs if capital is not allocated to its most successful and efficient use. GNC is currently priced to return better results than the 10-year treasury and the S&P 500 over the next decade, but it may not offer the best risk-adjusted return in comparison to other individual companies.

Macro Factors


Attempting to time the market is rarely a recipe for success when investing, but it would likely be unwise to not at least consider the overall macro environment. Specifically, with brick-and-mortar retailers and premium brands like GNC, economic conditions play a pivot role in their success. During a recessionary period, consumer spending is significantly reduced, and retailers see their sales plummet. Unemployment is currently at, or near, 50-year lows, and U.S. private debt levels have exceeded previous major financial crisis. With various economic indicators pointing to a potential peak, an investor should consider protecting oneself from an economic downturn.

Summary


On a quantitative basis, GNC appears to be a perfect Benjamin Graham “cigar-butt” or potentially Warren Buffett “value-investment.” However, the momentum of GNC’s stock indicates investors seeking a value opportunity might be instead purchasing into a value-trap. GNC provides a great example for investors of when they must look past the numbers and consider the qualitative side of the business. Purely quantitatively speaking, GNC would be a buy, but when you consider the headwinds it faces and the risks involved, an investor must carefully weigh the risk-reward opportunity presented. If you decide, based on your risk tolerance, that GNC provides a valuable opportunity rather a value-trap, with more potential upside than downside, it is recommended you consider your portfolio allocation strongly when initiating your position. Given the assumptions outlined in this analysis, a return of approximately 11.3% can be expected at today’s prices. 

Disclaimer: The author does not currently hold any ownership in GNC Holdings, Inc. (GNC) and has no intentions of initiating a position over the next 72 hours. 

This article was written in collaboration with Robert Leonard from “The Investor’s Podcast.”

Stig Brodersen is the host of the business podcast “We Study Billionaires.” You can find his free intrinsic value index here of popular stock picks.

[carriebradshawsprotege]

The Evolution of the Info Pushed Corporation

It sometimes seems to those people of us from the exterior that huge firms with significant info gathering and assessment capabilities just "are" - that they have constantly been this way. That is, of system, not genuine. Each and every firm, regardless of its latest sizing, experienced to evolve its information abilities. Even your enterprise may well these days have some primary info collecting and analysis capabilities. It is valuable to make a number of "stages" of this facts evolution. We do this for a couple of causes. Initial, it really is vital to have a scale - a advancement chart, if you will. This scale lets you know wherever you stand in relation to complicated facts collecting and analyzing companies. But we do this for an additional reason also. At unique levels of this evolution, firms have various abilities. We want to classify these capabilities so that any corporation - irrespective of its phase in the facts evolution process - can consider benefit of facts-pushed processes. Phase . Little to No Knowledge Collecting Of study course, all people has to get started at the beginning. Initially, providers obtain minor to no data on their processes. Every corporation has a very little facts - fundamental accounting details is needed to continue to be afloat. The Phase firm is characterized by two standards: 1. The Phase corporation does not have a great deal information further than payables and receivables, and 2. The Stage firm recreates facts when needed to remedy a business enterprise concern fairly than gather it in progress. In other terms, the Stage firm collects very little or no information on an ongoing basis. This isn't really to say a Phase enterprise does not know its organization. On the contrary, in purchase to be effective any organization demands to have a fantastic perception of product sales cycle instances, the kind of potential clients most interested in getting, the products or providers that are most financially rewarding, and roughly how substantially they should really charge for individuals products and solutions and expert services. But that is different than inquiring what the profits cycle situations have been for the past five revenue. Or the very last fifty revenue. Or inquiring what the profitability was for the previous fifty shoppers. In addition, quite a few firms are in a position to determine this facts out from data, recreations, and study. But Phase companies have not gathered this information and facts in advance, getting all set to response these types of queries just before they're requested. If you discover oneself as a Stage enterprise, which is okay. You should not fret, you happen to be in excellent firm. Currently being a Stage company doesn't imply there are no possibilities for you to consider advantage of info-pushed business enterprise approaches. In simple fact, this guide will define incredibly specific points you can do today to commence turning your enterprise into a facts-pushed business enterprise. Stage 1. Simple Reporting Organizations that gather facts normally report on it. The Stage one business generates this basic analytic resource: the report. To be crystal clear, a report is just a summary of gathered facts, maybe even some standard studies guiding that details, this sort of as averages, totals, minimums, or maximums. These are quite prevalent in most businesses: product sales action reports, prospect summary studies, income projection studies, funds move reports, producing experiences, and many others. The Phase one business, having said that, is characterised by the deficiency of official examination of these reviews. In other words, decoding of these reports is remaining to human beings. Now, there is certainly absolutely nothing erroneous with human interpretation. In reality, human beings can see designs in facts often that laptop systems are not capable of getting. The crucial criterion of a Phase 1 corporation is that there is nowhere else for this information to go. Of study course, there is a lot of prospect the moment the facts is gathered and saved. In this e-book we'll specifically go over those upcoming methods that Stage one corporations can just take in order to use the knowledge they have. Stage 2. Trending and Forecasting The moment more than enough knowledge is accessible, and a organization has the proper instruments in area, historic facts can be employed to assist discover styles and probably forecast foreseeable future outcomes. The Stage 2 company takes advantage of their information to forecast tendencies and predict outcomes.If you cherished this informative article and you desire to get details relating to Sureshot.io generously stop by our own web site. To be crystal clear, these classifications and predictions take place in an automated manner with calculations and procedures. It is not ample for a Phase 2 corporation to count on human interpretation on your own. A Stage two company can convey to you what upcoming week's sales forecast is, alongside with a margin of mistake for how confident they are in that number. They can tell you how prolonged it usually takes to system an order or how a lot time will be expended in services or set up. In purchase to know this, data has to be collected more than a sensible time period of time. How extended is affordable? Nicely, that depends on your sector and the sort of small business you do, but afterwards in the e book, we'll protect a handful of techniques you can guess how prolonged is "prolonged more than enough." A Stage 2 business will get extremely very good at predicting outcomes. They you should not often get shocked by the regular ups and downs of business enterprise, for the reason that they've been tracking "typical" for some time now. But as fantastic as the Phase two business is at predicting outcomes, they cannot appear to be to affect them with any regularity. That's where by our upcoming stage arrives in. Stage 3. Inferring and Classifying It can be 1 thing to know that you will offer one hundred widgets following week. It really is an totally distinctive point to know that if you reduce the cost by ten%, you may market one hundred fifty. The Phase three company is familiar with this since they use their information to infer interactions and classify influences. Inferring interactions calls for us to go outside of predicting results and analyze the internal workings of why things materialize. What can make our revenue figures go down in November? Which customers are probable to spend far more for our item? What blend of item, line, and workers develop the greatest probability of delay in producing time? These concerns need us to stack information up versus other info and see if there is a link. Above time a Phase 3 firm can inform you not just who their most rewarding clients are, but why. And they can use that information to come across other a lot more financially rewarding consumers. The Stage 3 company can make lists of influences of their outcomes, or essential drivers. These vital drivers can affect numeric results, like earnings, or non-numeric outcomes, like: did they acquire or not? These essential drivers enable manual conclusion making. When a senior chief or government makes a choice to stage tactic, the Stage three organization can use these important drivers to get a feeling of how outcomes will react to that new system. Simply because they can do this, simulation is often a crucial decision creating instrument.