If I had learned anything at all over the last decade of my professional life and investing, it is that banking is a transaction-based business. Year-end performance appraisals are evaluated almost entirely based on the number of deals closed, number of trades made, etc. Not that is not obvious but we subconsciously ignore this when it comes to investing.
Much like brokerage firms, media works pretty much in the same way. Money is made on trades, and indirectly from viewership. The company who provides you with news and updates stays in business not because your knowledge is enriched, but because they are hoping that you will act on that piece of news - making that stock trade, sharing it with someone else who might act on it, and make money from the commissions. Bluntly speaking, these companies profit from the influence they have over their customers, and that has commercial value.
Once you come to understand this, stuff that you read online, you take with a pinch of salt, you analyze and approach it with a healthy sense of criticism (and sometimes skepticism). It will help you make better and well-informed decisions rather than acting on impulse.
"Money is made in the sitting."
I conclude.
Without a doubt.
That the McDonald's double cheeseburger.
Is the best cheeseburger in the world.
I was watching a documentary on TV that talked about how the urgency for reducing our global carbon footprint and its impact on the climate.
I believe that as temperatures rise - to intolerable levels of 40 and 50 degrees Celsius - a huge proportion of our land mass will turn to deserts (as compared to over 20% currently). This implies a significant land shortage, which will becomes even more pronounced as the global population increases. This land shortage doesn't only affect arable land but also inhabitable land i.e. residential housing, retail malls, parks, office spaces, etc. As a result, land and property will start to rise dramatically and render the cost of housing increasingly inaccessible to the mass market. The rich-poor gap widens and home ownership - which once used to be a financially serviceable amenity turns into a luxury product available only to a privileged few who can afford it.