We hope that this weekend is a peaceful holiday for you and your loved ones! The markets and our office will be closed on Monday in observance of the Labor Day holiday.
We are so fortunate to live in a time of tremendous abundance. Of course, there are individual challenges and tragedies that increase the difficulty of many lives. We live in an imperfect world, with imperfect people, and the consequences of collective and individual poor choices are a fact of life. But compared with any other period of time in human history, humans alive today have won an extraordinary historical lottery.
This thought was prompted by an interesting website,Any Human Ever. The idea behind it is that more than 100,000,000,000 people have lived on the earth. It assigns you a random life and explains what that chance selection would have been like.
In our first selection, we were assigned someone who was born in 716 AD, when about 280 million people were alive. Our person, a girl, lived in the Bengal delta (modern India), when the most common cause of death was malaria and life expectancy was only 28 years.In this specific example (not a real life, but based on data)she married at 14, was widowed at 21, and died at 40 having survived her two children. This speculative exercise illustrates how remarkable it is to live right now.
There are numerous challenges, often very distressing, but much to be grateful for. Perspective doesn't eliminate today's challenges, but it can help us view them more clearly.
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As we spend a long weekend, based on a holiday meant to recognize the contributions of workers, we’ll reflect on how remarkable such an occasion is and consider what we have to be grateful for.
Practicing gratitude can improve our perspective. Important toourwork, it can help us clarify our goals and priorities, making planning more meaningful and effective.
It also appears to release dopamine and serotonin, which are associated with improved mood and well-being. It can help improve sleep and the quality of rest. It can also provide perspective on our relationships or encourage us to make productive changes.
As we enjoy the weekend, it’s worth taking a moment to reflect on what we are most grateful for and whether our time, energy, and financial resources are aligned with those priorities.
Above all, we are grateful for your trust and confidence.
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Here are some other things that caught our attention:
- Chris Fascianopublished his September market thoughts in this brief video.
- There are many tools for identifying AI-written material. We likePangram. They have a free version with a daily allowance for checks.
- This paper finds that data centersdo not increase electricity expenses for neighboring residential customers. The ongoing building boom may change this analysis, but this is an interesting initial finding.
- College football begins in earnest this week. Despite a storied sports history, the UCLA athletic department is in very poor shape.It has lost a total of $241 million since 2019! Rutgers University is in even worse shape, with losses of $356 million.