Foreign Exchange Dwarfs The Rest
And that’s why we’ll call it a new inning. The first four innings were about central bank raising rates (and that’s not over). But now, a new and much larger element has taken center stage.
Numerator (Un)Happy Talk Season Is Here
Here is your not-very-bold prediction.
Multinationals will tell you everything is uncertain, and that foreign exchange translations hurt them. Useless information, really. What we need is a sensitivity between a 10% increase in the US Dollar, what effect that would have on their earnings next quarter or next year. Do not hold your breath, you will not get this out of them.
The securities industry is programmed to discard foreign exchange volatility. How America-centric of you. No one is disputing that the US has the world’s most flexible economy. But if your job is to sell packaged sugar in liquid or solid form, this seems kinda important. They are paying in foreign currency, so if you want to make the same number of US dollars, then you need to raise prices in those countries, in their currency.
US Consumers: 330 Million
Chinese consumers: 1.7 Billion
Indian (not Native-American, don’t get me started): 1.1 Billion
European Consumers: 750 Million
That also gives you insight on what I said this past weekend, and that it’s not necessarily negative. That also implies we are nowhere close to the ninth inning. Top of the fifth inning, at most.
Yay, I Win! Boo, I Lost!
Entry fee was $500, yikes. There is no way I am parting with $500 of my own moolah for that (that is equivalent to something like 700 books, woe is me). So I won a qualifier at a fraction of the cost ($25). Woo hoo!
So as you probably know, people stream video games on YouTube and Twitch. Same thing for poker. There are well over 500 poker channels on You Tube, and some of them are hosted by the world’s best. I am nowhere close to them.
Poker is an exercise of:
Understanding of probability
Understanding of the costs and payouts of situations
Understanding of nuance as the probability and payouts change
What Happened?
The stream for actual, studied poker players, will laugh at my “analysis” of the hands themselves. But by osmosis, I am attaching the logic that they know, listed above, and explain the list’s link to financial fluency topics. I suspect some of them didn’t want to hear that jibber-jabber.
Hey, just like…you =).
Anyways, started well, top 15% of a field that has professionals. Then reality kicked in, and the sad, albeit expected, result. I lost (boo).