MBW - 2/24/2022
Good morning guys. Your info digest for today is ready. Let’s get down to it:
Seems like the Russian military build-up was not for nothing after all. Putin has just ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. This is a tragic event no matter where you stand on the issue.
The whole process that lead to this was quite weird for any modern military conflict.
-First Putin comes up with a list of demands the most important of which was for Ukraine to never join NATO. Ukraine and NATO don’t commit.
-Putin brings the core of the Russian army on Ukraine’s borders. Western countries go public with each and every move of the Russian army at the border. Russia accuses West of war propaganda.
-Diplomatic negotiations take place. Nothing concrete comes out of those. At one point Russia claims to be bringing back troops which was clearly false.
-Putin decides to recognize the two breakaway republics in Donbass as independent, as well as their territorial claims for the whole of Donbass.
-Russia invades the whole of Ukraine.
Building up a credible narrative that justifies this kind of assault has been the main challenge for Putin. Russian media has tried a lot with genocide claims supposedly going on in Donbass or as the video below shows the “constant bombing” of the Donbass.
Russian TV with alleged shelling of journalists by #Ukraine. Judge for yourself how convincing you find it.The stock market has been on the longest bull run in history since the 2008 financial crisis. The loose monetary policy of the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank as well as the Covid related stimulus in the past two years has helped the S&P500 index reach record highs. But in the recent several weeks stocks have been steadily declining mostly driven by macroeconomic factors such as supply chains issues, inflation fears, Russian war in Ukraine etc.
Most financial media speak now of the market being in correction territory.
Investopedia defines a correction as a decline of 10% or more in the price of a security from its most recent peak, while a recession is defined as a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales.
It may not be obvious just yet, but I believe that judging from the market performance we are beyond correction territory. Below is a list of stocks and their decline compared to the recent all time highs. This is a few days old, the decline has gotten steeper during the past few days:
They say that when you die, your life flashes in front of you. That seems to be true as shown when a team of scientists measured the brainwaves of a dying patient during his last moments. It revealed that in the 30 seconds before and after, the man's brainwaves followed the same patterns as dreaming or recalling memories.
You can read more about this here.
Magnus Carlsen is a Norwegian 31-year-old chess grandmaster who is the reigning five-time World Chess Champion. Carlsen has held the No. 1 position in the FIDE world chess rankings since 1 July 2011, and trails only Garry Kasparov in time spent as the highest rated player in the world. His peak rating of 2882 is the highest in history. He also holds the record for the longest unbeaten streak at the top level in classical chess. We are speaking about him because he just got beaten at speed chess by a 16-year-old Indian boy. You can read more about it here.
Magnus contracted Covid-19 in the days before the tournament, and he believes his game is being affected by the after-effects of the virus which he is still feeling.
Here’s a video of a 13-year-old Magnus playing Garry Kasparov, one of the sport’s greats.
And lastly, here’s a bunch of pics and memes from around the web:
An inception-like photo of San Francisco
And another one for Barcelona.
A map of nuclear reactors in Europe. Most of the German ones are shut down though, only three are still active.
It’s for a noble cause.
That was it for today folks. Have a great day!