25 October 2018
Question: According to MSN: Lifestyle, what are unexpected benefits of spending time alone?
October a frightful month for global investors – Pg. 19
– …All World Index’s loss this month so far to a whopping 7.3%, its worst performance sine the peak of the Eurozone crisis in 2012
– Of the global equity benchmark’s 3,211 members, almost a third have lost more than 20% of their value this year in dollar terms. Well over half are down at least 10% and, as of the end of Tuesday, only 853 companies are still in positive territory for 2018
– Signs of fading economic momentum led the IMF to knock 0.2% off its forecasts for global growth in 2018 and 2019, to 3.7% in both years
– The Chinese economy has been gradually slowing since 2014 as the authorities try to engineer a soft landing after a long, construction-driven, debt-fuelled growth spurt, and a pivot towards a more consumptive-led model
– The Federal Reserve is expected to lift rates for a fourth time this year in December and is slowly but surely shrinking its balance sheet
Fed faces greater challenge in holding main interest rate within target range – Pg. 19
– The Federal Reserve’s main market interest rate has drifted back close to the top of the central bank’s target range, highlighting the difficulty of normalizing monetary policy after the biggest cenrtral banking experiment in the modern era
– The fed funds rate, which the Fed is attempting to keep in the middle of its target range of 2-2.25%, has risen to 2.20%, hitting what the central bank had hoped would be a technical ceiling
– The Fed pays 2.20% in interest on excess reserves (IOER) that banks hold in their accounts with the Federal Reserve. The fed funds rate is the rate at which banks borrow those reserves
– When the Fed first started raising rates in late 2015, IOER was set in line with the upper bound of the Fed’s target range
– But in June, the Fed began setting IOER 5bp below its upper bound, in an attempt to better keep the Fed funds rate in the middle of its band
Answer: (1) It increases empathy; (2) It boosts your intelligence; (3) It could improve your social life; (4) It increases overall energy levels; (5) It boosts productivity; (6) It sparks creativity; (7) It could help you find new interests; (8) It helps you manage stress; (9) It helps increase self-awareness; (10) It promotes mindfulness