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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year

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The AI hype bubble is the new crypto hype bubble

Back in 2017 Long Island Ice Tea — known for its undistinguished, barely drinkable sugar-water — changed its name to “Long Blockchain Corp.” Its shares surged to a peak of 400% over their pre-announcement price. The company announced no specific integrations with any kind of blockchain, nor has it made any such integrations since.

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/09/autocomplete-worshippers/#the-real-ai-was-the-corporations-that-we-fought-along-the-way

LBCC was subsequently delisted from NASDAQ after settling with the SEC over fraudulent investor statements. Today, the company trades over the counter and its market cap is $36m, down from $138m.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/textbook-case-of-crypto-hype-how-iced-tea-company-went-blockchain-and-failed-despite-a-289-percent-stock-rise

The most remarkable thing about this incredibly stupid story is that LBCC wasn’t the peak of the blockchain bubble — rather, it was the start of blockchain’s final pump-and-dump. By the standards of 2022’s blockchain grifters, LBCC was small potatoes, a mere $138m sugar-water grift.

They didn’t have any NFTs, no wash trades, no ICO. They didn’t have a Superbowl ad. They didn’t steal billions from mom-and-pop investors while proclaiming themselves to be “Effective Altruists.” They didn’t channel hundreds of millions to election campaigns through straw donations and other forms of campaing finance frauds. They didn’t even open a crypto-themed hamburger restaurant where you couldn’t buy hamburgers with crypto:

https://robbreport.com/food-drink/dining/bored-hungry-restaurant-no-cryptocurrency-1234694556/

They were amateurs. Their attempt to “make fetch happen” only succeeded for a brief instant. By contrast, the superpredators of the crypto bubble were able to make fetch happen over an improbably long timescale, deploying the most powerful reality distortion fields since Pets.com.

Anything that can’t go on forever will eventually stop. We’re told that trillions of dollars’ worth of crypto has been wiped out over the past year, but these losses are nowhere to be seen in the real economy — because the “wealth” that was wiped out by the crypto bubble’s bursting never existed in the first place.

Like any Ponzi scheme, crypto was a way to separate normies from their savings through the pretense that they were “investing” in a vast enterprise — but the only real money (“fiat” in cryptospeak) in the system was the hardscrabble retirement savings of working people, which the bubble’s energetic inflaters swapped for illiquid, worthless shitcoins.

We’ve stopped believing in the illusory billions. Sam Bankman-Fried is under house arrest. But the people who gave him money — and the nimbler Ponzi artists who evaded arrest — are looking for new scams to separate the marks from their money.

Take Morganstanley, who spent 2021 and 2022 hyping cryptocurrency as a massive growth opportunity:

https://cointelegraph.com/news/morgan-stanley-launches-cryptocurrency-research-team

Today, Morganstanley wants you to know that AI is a $6 trillion opportunity.

They’re not alone. The CEOs of Endeavor, Buzzfeed, Microsoft, Spotify, Youtube, Snap, Sports Illustrated, and CAA are all out there, pumping up the AI bubble with every hour that god sends, declaring that the future is AI.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/wall-street-ai-stock-price-1235343279/

Google and Bing are locked in an arms-race to see whose search engine can attain the speediest, most profound enshittification via chatbot, replacing links to web-pages with florid paragraphs composed by fully automated, supremely confident liars:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/16/tweedledumber/#easily-spooked

Blockchain was a solution in search of a problem. So is AI. Yes, Buzzfeed will be able to reduce its wage-bill by automating its personality quiz vertical, and Spotify’s “AI DJ” will produce slightly less terrible playlists (at least, to the extent that Spotify doesn’t put its thumb on the scales by inserting tracks into the playlists whose only fitness factor is that someone paid to boost them).

But even if you add all of this up, double it, square it, and add a billion dollar confidence interval, it still doesn’t add up to what Bank Of America analysts called “a defining moment — like the internet in the ’90s.” For one thing, the most exciting part of the “internet in the ‘90s” was that it had incredibly low barriers to entry and wasn’t dominated by large companies — indeed, it had them running scared.

The AI bubble, by contrast, is being inflated by massive incumbents, whose excitement boils down to “This will let the biggest companies get much, much bigger and the rest of you can go fuck yourselves.” Some revolution.

AI has all the hallmarks of a classic pump-and-dump, starting with terminology. AI isn’t “artificial” and it’s not “intelligent.” “Machine learning” doesn’t learn. On this week’s Trashfuture podcast, they made an excellent (and profane and hilarious) case that ChatGPT is best understood as a sophisticated form of autocomplete — not our new robot overlord.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/4NHKMZZNKi0w9mOhPYIL4T

We all know that autocomplete is a decidedly mixed blessing. Like all statistical inference tools, autocomplete is profoundly conservative — it wants you to do the same thing tomorrow as you did yesterday (that’s why “sophisticated” ad retargeting ads show you ads for shoes in response to your search for shoes). If the word you type after “hey” is usually “hon” then the next time you type “hey,” autocomplete will be ready to fill in your typical following word — even if this time you want to type “hey stop texting me you freak”:

https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/provocations/neophobic-conservative-ai-overlords-want-everything-stay/

And when autocomplete encounters a new input — when you try to type something you’ve never typed before — it tries to get you to finish your sentence with the statistically median thing that everyone would type next, on average. Usually that produces something utterly bland, but sometimes the results can be hilarious. Back in 2018, I started to text our babysitter with “hey are you free to sit” only to have Android finish the sentence with “on my face” (not something I’d ever typed!):

https://mashable.com/article/android-predictive-text-sit-on-my-face

Modern autocomplete can produce long passages of text in response to prompts, but it is every bit as unreliable as 2018 Android SMS autocomplete, as Alexander Hanff discovered when ChatGPT informed him that he was dead, even generating a plausible URL for a link to a nonexistent obit in The Guardian:

https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/02/chatgpt_considered_harmful/

Of course, the carnival barkers of the AI pump-and-dump insist that this is all a feature, not a bug. If autocomplete says stupid, wrong things with total confidence, that’s because “AI” is becoming more human, because humans also say stupid, wrong things with total confidence.

Exhibit A is the billionaire AI grifter Sam Altman, CEO if OpenAI — a company whose products are not open, nor are they artificial, nor are they intelligent. Altman celebrated the release of ChatGPT by tweeting “i am a stochastic parrot, and so r u.”

https://twitter.com/sama/status/1599471830255177728

This was a dig at the “stochastic parrots” paper, a comprehensive, measured roundup of criticisms of AI that led Google to fire Timnit Gebru, a respected AI researcher, for having the audacity to point out the Emperor’s New Clothes:

https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/12/04/1013294/google-ai-ethics-research-paper-forced-out-timnit-gebru/

Gebru’s co-author on the Parrots paper was Emily M Bender, a computational linguistics specialist at UW, who is one of the best-informed and most damning critics of AI hype. You can get a good sense of her position from Elizabeth Weil’s New York Magazine profile:

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/ai-artificial-intelligence-chatbots-emily-m-bender.html

Bender has made many important scholarly contributions to her field, but she is also famous for her rules of thumb, which caution her fellow scientists not to get high on their own supply:

Please do not conflate word form and meaning

Mind your own credulity

As Bender says, we’ve made “machines that can mindlessly generate text, but we haven’t learned how to stop imagining the mind behind it.” One potential tonic against this fallacy is to follow an Italian MP’s suggestion and replace “AI” with “SALAMI” (“Systematic Approaches to Learning Algorithms and Machine Inferences”). It’s a lot easier to keep a clear head when someone asks you, “Is this SALAMI intelligent? Can this SALAMI write a novel? Does this SALAMI deserve human rights?”

Bender’s most famous contribution is the “stochastic parrot,” a construct that “just probabilistically spits out words.” AI bros like Altman love the stochastic parrot, and are hellbent on reducing human beings to stochastic parrots, which will allow them to declare that their chatbots have feature-parity with human beings.

At the same time, Altman and Co are strangely afraid of their creations. It’s possible that this is just a shuck: “I have made something so powerful that it could destroy humanity! Luckily, I am a wise steward of this thing, so it’s fine. But boy, it sure is powerful!”

They’ve been playing this game for a long time. People like Elon Musk (an investor in OpenAI, who is hoping to convince the EU Commission and FTC that he can fire all of Twitter’s human moderators and replace them with chatbots without violating EU law or the FTC’s consent decree) keep warning us that AI will destroy us unless we tame it.

There’s a lot of credulous repetition of these claims, and not just by AI’s boosters. AI critics are also prone to engaging in what Lee Vinsel calls criti-hype: criticizing something by repeating its boosters’ claims without interrogating them to see if they’re true:

https://sts-news.medium.com/youre-doing-it-wrong-notes-on-criticism-and-technology-hype-18b08b4307e5

There are better ways to respond to Elon Musk warning us that AIs will emulsify the planet and use human beings for food than to shout, “Look at how irresponsible this wizard is being! He made a Frankenstein’s Monster that will kill us all!” Like, we could point out that of all the things Elon Musk is profoundly wrong about, he is most wrong about the philosophical meaning of Wachowksi movies:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/may/18/lilly-wachowski-ivana-trump-elon-musk-twitter-red-pill-the-matrix-tweets

But even if we take the bros at their word when they proclaim themselves to be terrified of “existential risk” from AI, we can find better explanations by seeking out other phenomena that might be triggering their dread. As Charlie Stross points out, corporations are Slow AIs, autonomous artificial lifeforms that consistently do the wrong thing even when the people who nominally run them try to steer them in better directions:

https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9270-dude_you_broke_the_future

Imagine the existential horror of a ultra-rich manbaby who nominally leads a company, but can’t get it to follow: “everyone thinks I’m in charge, but I’m actually being driven by the Slow AI, serving as its sock puppet on some days, its golem on others.”

Ted Chiang nailed this back in 2017 (the same year of the Long Island Blockchain Company):

There’s a saying, popularized by Fredric Jameson, that it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism. It’s no surprise that Silicon Valley capitalists don’t want to think about capitalism ending. What’s unexpected is that the way they envision the world ending is through a form of unchecked capitalism, disguised as a superintelligent AI. They have unconsciously created a devil in their own image, a boogeyman whose excesses are precisely their own.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tedchiang/the-real-danger-to-civilization-isnt-ai-its-runaway

Chiang is still writing some of the best critical work on “AI.” His February article in the New Yorker, “ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web,” was an instant classic:

[AI] hallucinations are compression artifacts, but — like the incorrect labels generated by the Xerox photocopier — they are plausible enough that identifying them requires comparing them against the originals, which in this case means either the Web or our own knowledge of the world.

https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/chatgpt-is-a-blurry-jpeg-of-the-web

“AI” is practically purpose-built for inflating another hype-bubble, excelling as it does at producing party-tricks — plausible essays, weird images, voice impersonations. But as Princeton’s Matthew Salganik writes, there’s a world of difference between “cool” and “tool”:

https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2023/03/08/can-chatgpt-and-its-successors-go-from-cool-to-tool/

Nature can claim “conversational AI is a game-changer for science” but “there is a huge gap between writing funny instructions for removing food from home electronics and doing scientific research.” Salganik tried to get ChatGPT to help him with the most banal of scholarly tasks — aiding him in peer reviewing a colleague’s paper. The result? “ChatGPT didn’t help me do peer review at all; not one little bit.”

The criti-hype isn’t limited to ChatGPT, of course — there’s plenty of (justifiable) concern about image and voice generators and their impact on creative labor markets, but that concern is often expressed in ways that amplify the self-serving claims of the companies hoping to inflate the hype machine.

One of the best critical responses to the question of image- and voice-generators comes from Kirby Ferguson, whose final Everything Is a Remix video is a superb, visually stunning, brilliantly argued critique of these systems:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rswxcDyotXA

One area where Ferguson shines is in thinking through the copyright question — is there any right to decide who can study the art you make? Except in some edge cases, these systems don’t store copies of the images they analyze, nor do they reproduce them:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/09/ai-monkeys-paw/#bullied-schoolkids

For creators, the important material question raised by these systems is economic, not creative: will our bosses use them to erode our wages? That is a very important question, and as far as our bosses are concerned, the answer is a resounding yes.

Markets value automation primarily because automation allows capitalists to pay workers less. The textile factory owners who purchased automatic looms weren’t interested in giving their workers raises and shorting working days. ‘ They wanted to fire their skilled workers and replace them with small children kidnapped out of orphanages and indentured for a decade, starved and beaten and forced to work, even after they were mangled by the machines. Fun fact: Oliver Twist was based on the bestselling memoir of Robert Blincoe, a child who survived his decade of forced labor:

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/59127/59127-h/59127-h.htm

Today, voice actors sitting down to record for games companies are forced to begin each session with “My name is ______ and I hereby grant irrevocable permission to train an AI with my voice and use it any way you see fit.”

https://www.vice.com/en/article/5d37za/voice-actors-sign-away-rights-to-artificial-intelligence

Let’s be clear here: there is — at present — no firmly established copyright over voiceprints. The “right” that voice actors are signing away as a non-negotiable condition of doing their jobs for giant, powerful monopolists doesn’t even exist. When a corporation makes a worker surrender this right, they are betting that this right will be created later in the name of “artists’ rights” — and that they will then be able to harvest this right and use it to fire the artists who fought so hard for it.

There are other approaches to this. We could support the US Copyright Office’s position that machine-generated works are not works of human creative authorship and are thus not eligible for copyright — so if corporations wanted to control their products, they’d have to hire humans to make them:

https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/21/22944335/us-copyright-office-reject-ai-generated-art-recent-entrance-to-paradise

Or we could create collective rights that belong to all artists and can’t be signed away to a corporation. That’s how the right to record other musicians’ songs work — and it’s why Taylor Swift was able to re-record the masters that were sold out from under her by evil private-equity bros::

https://doctorow.medium.com/united-we-stand-61e16ec707e2

Whatever we do as creative workers and as humans entitled to a decent life, we can’t afford drink the Blockchain Iced Tea. That means that we have to be technically competent, to understand how the stochastic parrot works, and to make sure our criticism doesn’t just repeat the marketing copy of the latest pump-and-dump.

Today (Mar 9), you can catch me in person in Austin at the UT School of Design and Creative Technologies, and remotely at U Manitoba’s Ethics of Emerging Tech Lecture.

Tomorrow (Mar 10), Rebecca Giblin and I kick off the SXSW reading series.

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[Image ID: A graph depicting the Gartner hype cycle. A pair of HAL 9000's glowing red eyes are chasing each other down the slope from the Peak of Inflated Expectations to join another one that is at rest in the Trough of Disillusionment. It, in turn, sits atop a vast cairn of HAL 9000 eyes that are piled in a rough pyramid that extends below the graph to a distance of several times its height.]

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theambitiouswoman · 1 year

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How To Get Started Investing In The Stock Market

Educate yourself: Before investing in the stock market, it's important to educate yourself about the basics of investing, including the different types of investments, the risks involved, and how to build a diversified portfolio. There are many resources available, including books, online courses, and investment blogs.

Determine your investment goals: It's important to have clear investment goals before investing in the stock market. Are you investing for retirement, a down payment on a house, or to generate passive income? Your investment goals will help determine the types of investments that are appropriate for you.

Open a brokerage account: To invest in the stock market, you'll need to open a brokerage account with a reputable brokerage firm. Some popular options include Fidelity, TD Ameritrade, and Charles Schwab. When choosing a brokerage firm, consider factors such as fees, investment options, and customer service.

Build a diversified portfolio: Diversification is key to successful investing. By investing in a mix of stocks, bonds, and other assets, you can reduce your risk and increase your chances of long-term success. Consider investing in a mix of large-cap and small-cap stocks, domestic and international investments, and bonds with varying maturities.

Start investing: Once you have a brokerage account and have determined your investment strategy, it's time to start investing. Consider starting with a small amount of money and gradually increasing your investments over time.

WAYS TO INVEST

There are several ways to invest in the stock market, including:

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TOOLS TO START INVESTING

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PLATFORMS

A few popular options:

Robinhood: Robinhood is a commission-free trading app that offers stocks, ETFs, and cryptocurrency trading. It’s designed for beginner investors and offers a user-friendly interface.

Acorns: Acorns is an investment app that automatically invests your spare change. It rounds up your purchases to the nearest dollar and invests the difference in a diversified portfolio of ETFs.

TD Ameritrade: TD Ameritrade is a popular trading platform that offers stocks, ETFs, mutual funds, options, futures, and forex trading. It offers a variety of trading tools and research resources.

ETRADE: ETRADE is a popular online broker that offers stocks, ETFs, mutual funds, options, and futures trading. It offers a variety of trading tools and resources, including a mobile app.

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INVESTMENT STRATEGIES

Value Investing: Value investing involves buying stocks that are undervalued by the market and holding them for the long term. This approach requires patience and a thorough analysis of a company’s financial statements and growth potential.

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Dividend Investing: Dividend investing involves buying stocks in companies that pay a dividend. This can provide a steady stream of income for investors and can be a good option for those looking for more conservative investments.

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Real Estate Investing: Real estate investing involves buying and holding real estate assets for the purpose of generating income or appreciation. This can include investing in rental properties, real estate investment trusts (REITs), or crowdfunding platforms.

Options trading: is a type of trading strategy that involves buying and selling options contracts, which are financial instruments that give the holder the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell an underlying asset, such as stocks, at a specific price within a certain time frame. Options trading can be used to generate income, hedge against risk, or speculate on market movements.

Swing trading is a type of trading strategy that aims to capture short- to medium-term gains in a financial asset, such as stocks, currencies, or commodities. Swing traders typically hold their positions for a few days to several weeks, taking advantage of price swings or "swings" in the market. Swing traders use technical analysis to identify trends and patterns in the market, and they often employ a combination of charting tools and indicators to help them make trading decisions. They look for stocks or other assets that have a clear trend, either up or down, and then try to enter and exit positions at opportune times to capture profits.

TECHNICAL ANALYSIS TOOLS

There are many technical analysis resources available for traders to use in their analysis of financial markets. Here are some popular options:

TradingView: TradingView is a web-based charting and technical analysis platform that provides users with real-time data, customizable charts, and a variety of technical indicators and drawing tools.

StockCharts: StockCharts is another web-based platform that provides a wide range of technical analysis tools, including charting capabilities, technical indicators, and scanning tools to help traders identify potential trading opportunities.

Thinkorswim: Thinkorswim is a trading platform provided by TD Ameritrade that offers advanced charting and technical analysis tools, as well as a wide range of other features for traders, including paper trading, news and research, and risk management tools.

MetaTrader 4/5: MetaTrader is a popular trading platform used by many traders around the world. It provides a range of technical analysis tools, including customizable charts, indicators, and automated trading strategies.

Investing.com: Investing.com is a website that provides real-time quotes, charts, news, and analysis for a wide range of financial markets, including stocks, currencies, commodities, and cryptocurrencies.

Yahoo Finance: Yahoo Finance is a website that provides real-time stock quotes, news, and analysis, as well as customizable charts and a variety of other tools for traders and investors.

Finviz: is a popular web-based platform for traders and investors that provides a wide range of tools and information to help them analyze financial markets. The platform offers real-time quotes, customizable charts, news and analysis, and a variety of other features.

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crudeinourtrading · 3 months

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Will The Market Melt Up Continue To Suck In Investors Before A Potential Reversal?

Money is flowing into small caps, growth stocks, and gold. Is this a bullish or bearish sign? And, what does a one day pop indicate with regard to trend direction?....Watch The Video Here

#stocks #investing #gold #sp500 #daytrading #precious metals #money #silver #nasdaq #commodities

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thehaemanthus · 2 years

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Haves and Have-nots

SURPRISE turns out when I have deadlines I’m really good about writing quickly

Wrote this for @azrielshadowssing ‘s ACOTAR Writing Circle. This is part one of a Modern AU Feysand fic, to be continued by different writers for part two and part three. Can’t wait to see what others do with this!

Enjoy!

Feyre hissed a sharp note as her elbow knocked into a cup of paintbrushes. Firing off curses under her breath, she quickly straightened the cup and dumped the paintbrushes back in before shoving it on the nearest unoccupied space on her shelf.

Scrambling across the room— and tripping on the drop cloth she’d laid out— Feyre slammed her hand on her phone to check the time.

They were going to start arriving any minute.

“Shit, shit, shit,” she continued to mumble obscenities. It didn’t help her cleaning speed, but it did make her feel better.

Frantic hands hastily capped paints and shoved brushes out of sight. Feyre carefully toted her easel and half-finished creation to a corner, making sure it faced away from the one room studio. The drop cloth was a crumpled mess, missing the crisp corners and lines it usually received when Feyre folded it up. She had time to take her brushes to the sink before the irritating scream of the buzzer signaled her time was up. She hustled to the front door of her apartment, buzzing the anticipated guest up and unlocking her front door before sprinting back to the sink. Then she sprinted to the window and shoved it open a grand total of five inches, each of which was a hard fought battle that the window screeched through.

It would be fine. This was fine. Finish cleaning, get out the snacks, act like she was tastefully and intentionally unprepared to host this movie night that she had been obsessing over for a week now.

“Feyre, love!”

The tension that squeezed Feyre’s heart released. That was the power of Mor’s voice, that was how warm and welcoming it sounded.

“Hey!” she tossed over her shoulder, rushing to finish cleaning her brushes. “How was your week?”

“Dreadful,” Mor slid next to Feyre, wrapping an arm around her waist and kissing her cheek. “So many meetings. Why didn’t you save me, Feyre?”

“I like this extra affection,” she joked through the burning blush on her face. Mor was a very attractive woman and Feyre was not immune. “What did I do to deserve it?”

“It’s a down payment,” Mor said. “So that next time, you’ll come up with some reason to need me and I can skip my meetings.”

“I think you secretly like sitting at the head of a table and being in charge,” Ferye said. “No matter how much you complain.”

“Please, Feyre, I don’t sit at the head of the table unless I’m dealing with the male investors and I need to stake my claim.” Mor tossed her hair over her shoulder. On anyone else it would look overdone and cliche, but no gesture or look on Mor was ever anything but perfect.

“You’re done with those stuffy quarterly meetings though, right?” Feyre dried her brushes on a rag. “Back to the real work next week.”

“Hm, we have that meeting on the new product branding,” Mor leaned back out of Feyre’s space. “Are you getting to sit in on that?”

“I am.” Feyre couldn’t help the proud grin. She was just a team member, just another graphic designer for Mor’s growing empire, but she got to sit in on this big meeting. A year ago, Feyre never would have seen where she ended up. Even more shocking— that Mor would some day end up in her dinky little studio apartment.

She hadn’t expected to strike up a friendship with Mor, but somehow it had happened. Two months after graduating, she ended up at Mor’s tiny start up. A year later, and things were no longer so tiny. But their humble beginnings had made everyone close, and for some reason, Mor had been especially taken with Feyre.

“Can I help with anything?” Mor asked as Feyre finished drying her hands.

“Um…let me get out some bowls and snacks, and you can help put it all out.” Feyre darted around the small kitchen, bringing out the grocery bags of cookies, chips, and candy she had purchased for movie night. Certainly a dent in her budget, but a worthwhile one.

Mor tore open a bag of chips and poured them into a bowl. “You got a lot.”

Feyre busied herself with setting out the snacks, avoiding Mor’s gaze. “I like to…know I did a good job.”

“I know,” Mor said. “There’s enough here to make everyone happy. Now come on, I know Cassian said he’d bring the projector and screen, but we can move some stuff around before then.”

The only reason Feyre scored on hosting this movie night was because of the studio apartment. Just big enough to prop up a big screen, lay out some rugs, and lounge in a pile like they were at a sleepover. Cassian was bringing the projector and screen, and everyone had said they would bring blankets and pillows, so all Feyre was really providing was the space and the snacks.

She only hoped it all went right. She liked these people that Mor had introduced her to. The youngest, Tarquin, was still three years older than her. At 22, almost 23, Feyre often felt naive and clueless.

And it wasn’t just her age. It was who she was and who they were.

Mor had her own company, started with money and the connections she had from her family. Others owned their own businesses or held high-power jobs, sat on boards of directors or managed massive inheritances.

And then there was Feyre and her studio apartment on the edge of the city. Fresh out of college and vowing never to get another roommate unless the alternative was being unhoused, it could take upwards of an hour to reach her new friends at their apartments, townhomes, the fancy restaurants they didn’t need reservations for, and the exotic coffee shops they always wanted to meet at.

Sometimes it felt like Feyre had fallen into a dream and couldn’t wake up. Sometimes it felt like a nightmare.

Slowly, guests trickled in and her studio was transformed into a giant slumber party. Feyre scrambled to make sure everyone was comfortable. She handed Azriel a pack of Cadbury chocolate buttons she got just for him because he didn’t like sharing his chocolate, then monitored the microwave as several bags of popcorn rotated through. When Amren arrived, she made sure the older woman had a wine glass in her hand, and she kept Cressida’s gluten-free cookies set aside until she showed up.

“Oh, sweetie, you didn’t have to do that,” Cressida beamed. “How nice! I brought my own snacks but…”

“Oh,” Feyre deflated. What, Cressida didn’t think she could be a good host?

“No, no, this looks so much better!” Cressida grabbed the box of cookies and sauntered to the growing pile of pillows on top of Feyre’s rug. At the far end of the room, Cassian and Mor were snapping at each other as they tried to get the projector set up.

She did a quick headcount. Everyone was present and accounted for. Well, those who were able to make it, anyway.

“Ready to start?” Feyre’s voice rose in an attempt to be heard over the din.

“Not yet!” Mor waved a hand, eyes glued to her phone. “Rhys will be here in ten minutes!”

Several emotions competed for space in Feyre’s head. A bit of shock, panic, joy, and dread.

Cressida perked up. “I thought he was out all week?”

“Just got back a few hours ago.” Mor waved a hand. “It was one of those fancy retreats where they talk and eat and drink more than they work.”

“Don’t you know, that’s called networking, Mor,” Cassian snickered.

“The point is,” Mor said. “Rhys will be here soon.”

Rhys would be here soon. Rhys was coming. To Feyre’s small little studio. The ten minutes rushed by much too quickly, and then he was there.

“It’s movie night, not a happy hour—”

“How did you get here so quickly?”

“Sit, sit— no, you idiot, take off your shoes first!”

“Where’s the remote—?”

“Rhys, your shoes are so shiny I can see my reflection.”

Feyre stood on the edge of the mess, watching as everyone greeted Rhysand. He welcomed their affection with an easy smile, obediently removing his shoes like Mor wanted and folding himself to sit down. He was out of place in his gray button up and slacks, made just slightly casual with rolled up sleeves and a few buttons undone.

“I dropped off my bags at home and came straight here,” Rhys explained.

“Mor, what favor did you trade to get him to come?” Azriel asked.

“No favor,” Rhys said. “No convincing needed. I’m happy to be here.”

Sure. Happy to be in Feyre’s small apartment, sitting on the floor, after days in one of the most luxurious resorts in the world, talking to people who made more money in a month than Feyre did in years.

“Ready!” Her voice was a little too loud, but she didn’t let that stop her from starting the movie, getting settled, then handing a bowl of popcorn to Rhys.

“Thank you, Feyre darling,” Rhys grinned. “And thank you for inviting us—”

“Shh!”

Feyre shared a grin with Rhys. She was captivated by him until he broke the staring contest. While Rhys watched the movie and threw a handful of popcorn into his mouth, Feyre watched out of the corner of her eye. God, even the way he chewed was attractive.

She would not be surprised if everyone was clued into her massive crush by now. It started out as annoying attraction— a man too pretty for his own good. Then Feyre actually talked with him, and she could feel that attraction grow into something more dangerous.

But she maintained control of her rational mind. It was fine to have a crush. Healthy and normal. She knew nothing would, could ever come out of it. Rhys was seven years her senior and out of her league.

A harmless crush, one that was embarrassing should anyone ever mention it. But Feyre would get over it one day.

One day, she would be able to sit next to him in the dark, watch a movie, and retain what was on screen. But when the movie was done and the lights flickered on, grumbles and stretches and plans for the next meet-up floating in the air, Feyre found she hadn’t really enjoyed the movie at all. She had just thought about Rhys.

Her friends gathered their things and helped clean up. She pushed them out of her house, insisting that she could handle it herself. It was late, they needed to get home, Rhys had just come back from a flight that day and needed to rest. The offers for help and cajoling flew back and forth for ten minutes as Feyre worked to empty her home.

Soon, Feyre thought she had gotten everyone on their way. But when the door closed and the sink was running in the kitchen, she realized she missed a person.

Rhys washed the dishes silently, without complaint.

“Oh— Rhys, you don’t have to…” Feyre scrambled over. “Really, it’s fine. Leave it.”

He smiled at her. “I’ll wash, you dry and put away.”

“You should get home,” Feyre insisted. “You must have had a long day.”

“I’m fine,” he shrugged. “Slept a bit on the plane. It’s nice to stand and be a little active.”

He wasn’t stopping, and Feyre couldn’t move him. So she dried the dishes and put them away as he washed.

When she was on the last of the bowls, he gently touched her lower back. “I’ll be out of your hair soon.” He brushed past her to her bathroom.

Feyre finished cleaning the kitchen. Tomorrow she’d do her chores, sweeping and mopping, dusting, there was a load of laundry to do…

“What’s this?”

Rhys’s voice blended into the sound of the city at night— sirens and people talking, cars rumbling and music drifting out of windows. She spun around, watching as he turned her easel to see her work in the light.

“Oh, that’s just…” Feyre wrung her hands, stepping closer, not knowing if it was to explain or to gently remove his hands and hide her painting once more. “Um. A small project.”

“Looks great.”

“Yeah, it’s almost done,” she shrugged. “Just uh, something for fun.”

It was more than that. Feyre didn’t know why she concealed the truth.

The painting was based on a family photo, a loose retelling of a depressing story. The photo was crisp and clean, showcasing lifeless smiles and leeched personality. Feyre, Elain, Nesta; three young girls molded into identical shapes for this occasion. Their mother, ice cold and beautiful, and their father, prideful.

Feyre did not remember the day they took that picture, standing in front of their new home before the housewarming party.

“Your family, right?” Rhys murmured. “Mor told me that your mother passed when you were young.”

“That’s the last picture we took all together before she died,” Feyre nodded at the canvas. “Well no— obviously that’s not the picture. I meant, the painting is based on the picture.”

“Based on, but not the same,” Rhys said softly, still staring at the canvas.

“Yeah.” Feyre wrapped her arms around herself, shielding something vital. “How could you tell?”

“I don’t think any parent would accept this as the finished product,” he chuckled. “You don't look very happy.”

“No.” Feyre smiled. “I remember really hating that dress.” But that’s only part of it.

Rhys hummed. “You look like you were a stubborn child.”

Feyre tilted her head back and forth, noncommittal. “I didn’t act the way my mother wanted me to act.”

“And your sisters?”

Elain looked like a doll. If they all looked slightly lifeless in the photograph, Elain was completely dead in the painting. Stripped of her own personhood as a child, she had to grow and come into her own. Nesta, on the other hand, looked mean. An outsider would think her cruel. Feyre knew that her oldest sister was just fierce, and it took time, maturity, and experience to learn how to channel her fire away from the undeserving.

“We were all…different people,” Feyre sighed. “I don’t know. I tried to capture how I felt during that time, who I thought everyone was. It seemed more honest. I look at that photo, and…I used to think I should feel more, you know? That’s the last picture I took with my mom because she didn’t want to take pictures when she was sick. But I couldn’t feel anything about it because it felt fake. So…I thought if I tried to paint it, show a little more honesty…I don’t know. It’s stupid.”

“It’s not,” Rhys finally took his gaze from the unfinished work, smiling at Feyre. “I think it’s pretty brave.”

She didn’t expect that. “Cool”, maybe, said in a way when someone didn’t quite know what word to use. “Interesting”, to show that it wasn’t his style but he could appreciate it.

But brave?

“Like I said, just a little project.” Feyre uncrossed her arms, walking to the front door. “I’ve kept you long enough.”

“Do you paint often?” Rhys asked, taking his sweet time in joining her.

“When I can,” she shrugged. “I am lucky to have a job where I get to flex creative muscle every day, but my thing was always painting.”

He hummed. “Do you do commissions?”

Feyre laughed. “It’s just a hobby, Rhys.”

“That’s not a no.”

“I’d paint for friends,” she said. “No payment necessary.”

“Good to know.” Rhys finally opened the door, casting one last look at the painting before sliding out of her apartment. “Goodnight, Feyre darling.”

“Good night.” ~*~

It was the “Feyre darling” that started the crush.

Slipped out when Feyre was still new, still an outsider, she had first found it insulting. Infantilizing and rude, since they barely knew each other. Rhys figured out it annoyed her, and that only made him whip out the nickname more.

Then it stuck. Then Feyre paid attention. “Feyre darling” became less mocking and more affectionate.

A nice nickname, an inside joke between friends. Rhys would not be whispering it in her ear or saying it with tenderness.

Rhysand was turning 30 soon, and he had a full time job and promotions under his belt and property he owned. Feyre was 23 and in her first full time position and making spreadsheets to budget every month and hope to tuck away some money into a meager savings account. She had to ask HR how a 401k worked.

A harmless crush that would pass, that’s all it was. In the meantime, Feyre focused on being a good friend.

The next time everyone met was when Mor hosted one of her dinner parties— complete with a nice tablecloth (and a table large enough to fit them all), pretty plates, a separate salad fork and dinner fork, and wine pairings. Mor catered from exclusive restaurants, treating guests to a rotating variety of cuisine.

Feyre arrived early to help set up, rubbing her chilled nose as the elevator brought her up to Mor’s floor. The weather wasn’t cold yet, but it was turning nippy. The elevator ride up was long enough to get her mostly defrosted, and the warmth in Mor’s apartment finished off the job.

Large windows gave a magnificent view of the city. At night, staring out at the thousands of lights was mesmerizing, and during the day Feyre could spend an hour just observing all the life happening down below. Inside, Mor had furnished her apartment with warm colors and clean lines.

They chatted as they expanded Mor’s massive dinner table, adding in a piece in the middle and chairs to the ends.

“So,” Feyre started. “I have a question for you.”

“As long as it’s not about work.”

“It’s not,” Feyre said. “I need a picture of Rhys’s family.”

She hadn’t missed the way Rhys looked at her painting, or the way he asked if she did commissions. Rhys was intrigued by the idea of turning a photo into a nice painting, and his birthday was fast approaching.

While others might get him nice gifts, a new expensive watch or tickets to some high-culture show, Feyre had less to work with. She could spring for some nice oils and a new canvas though.

Mor set down her stack of dishes, giving Feyre her full attention. “Why?”

“When everyone was over for movie night, he saw this piece I was working on,” Feyre said, explaining the concept and Rhys’s interest. At the end, Mor loosened up a bit. “So, yeah, I think it would be a good birthday gift.”

“I think he would like it,” Mor said. “He would appreciate that you put so much time and effort into creating something. But…how much do you know about Rhys’s parents and sister?”

“Nothing,” she freely admitted. “Other than they’ve all passed.”

Mor nodded slowly. “Your personal project is focused on revealing…truths, I guess. Are you going to attempt the same with Rhys?”

“I’ll try,” she shrugged. “But it’s not personal, so it’s not the same.”

“Right,” Mor hummed. “Well. I’ll say this. Rhys’s parents did love each other, very much. But his father was always focused on legacy and security for the family, so much so that I think he missed a lot of what was right in front of him. They went through a lot of passionate ups and downs, but it seemed like things could have been settling when Rhys’s sister was born. I remember going to their house and feeling like something changed. But then…”

“They died,” Feyre completed the thought.

Mor nodded. “Rhys…obviously it still hurts, but he’s in a good place now.”

“Do you think he’d appreciate the portrait?” Feyre worried.

“I think so,” she shrugged. “Try and take his temperature today. If you think you can pull it off, I’ll send you a picture.”

They dropped the conversation to finish preparing. Feyre obediently dished out food into pretty platters, finishing up with putting together the salad when the guests started to arrive.

Around Feyre, conversations about planning exotic holiday vacations, the latest fluctuations of the stock market, gossip about the family everyone else knew, and insider knowledge about the passage of some labor bill shot back and forth.

It would be easier to be jealous of these people if they were anything but kind.

The first time Mor introduced Feyre to some of her friends— just Cassian and Amren— Feyre had almost run away. Amren had complained about her trip to Austria, and Cassian had bemoaned the black-tie event he had to attend and the tuxedo he would have to dust off.

She hadn’t expected a deep conversation to happen right there, middle of the day, lunch at a trendy restaurant. But somehow the topic had come up, and she learned that she and Cassian had more in common than she originally thought.

Obviously, Feyre had been wary about judging a book by its cover ever since then.

Plenty of people in this group were born with silver spoons in their mouth, that was true. But, blessedly, they were aware of it.

“Oh no, you don’t want that,” Helion found Feyre at the wet bar, looking through bottles of wine. “It has an expensive price tag, but it’s not worth it. Try this one.”

“Thanks.” Feyre waited as Helion poured the dark red into a glass, just a bit for her to taste. “Not bad.”

“Amren will tell you it has notes of cherry,” Helion shrugged. “It takes a real snob to detect that, I think.”

Said the man who owned a stable of horses upstate.

Feyre poured herself more wine, letting the warmth flood her senses and fill her with confidence. She had a goal for tonight. If she backed off now, it would be too easy to let it go.

She lingered near the drinks, hoping for the chance to spring her trap. Any moment, Mor would announce the start of dinner and they would have to take their seats.

Rhys wandered over, reaching for the jug of water, and Feyre stepped forward. “Hey, Rhys,”

“Feyre, how are you?” he smiled, pouring himself water and then facing her.

Step one, complete.

“Enjoying the cooler weather,” she said. “But I know that in a couple of months, I’ll be saying the exact opposite.”

“Not a fan of winter?” Rhys asked.

“Not a fan of the cold.” Inescapable, penetrating cold. Memories of little to no heat and numb toes. “My birthday is in the winter, so…it’s not all bad.”

“Right,” Rhys said. “December 21.”

“Yup.” She tried not to smile too broadly when she realized Rhys knew when her birthday was. “And…you’re November…?”

“Sh!” He hissed, but the exaggerated way he looked around told her it was mostly comical. “I don’t want to make a big deal out of my birthday.”

Feyre’s head tilted in confusion. “Mor is your cousin— how can you hide your birthday from her?”

“They all know when my birthday is,” Rhys said. “I just don’t want to remind them.”

“Scared of turning thirty?” Feyre teased.

“No, aging is a gift,” he said with unexpected sincerity. “Just…don’t like inconveniencing people.”

Something shuttered on his face, but Feyre couldn’t probe into it. She didn’t have the time. Later. She might get that chance to ask another time, who knows?

“Well,” she tried to be relaxed, but the way she gripped her wine glass probably was giving away her nerves. “I’d like to make you a gift. And before you say anything, it would not be an inconvenience! It would be something I want to do.”

“Oh, Feyre, you really don't—”

“I insist!” She plowed forward, though was mindful to keep her voice down. Rhys didn’t want people knowing, so she could respect that. “You asked if I do commissions— and when people ask that they are interested. So I’m going to paint you something.”

Rhys raised an eyebrow. “Do I get to know what it is?”

“I’d like it to be a surprise,” Feyre said truthfully. “But I also don’t know if you’ll like it.”

“I really don’t care what it is,” Rhys said without hesitation. “I’m sure I’ll appreciate whatever you make.”

Feyre bit her lip, trying to think of a way to phrase her question without giving it away. “Well…I don’t know. I asked Mor what she thought—”

“Then I’m sure it’ll be fine,” he said, looking away for a moment when someone called his name.

She panicked just a bit. “Rhys, I should just ask—”

“Feyre,” he interrupted gently. “Really. Don’t worry about it so much.”

“This is a painting for you,” Feyre pointed out. “I could misinterpret horribly…”

“If you need direction, you can ask Mor.” Done with the conversation, Rhys backed away. “But I’m interested in your vision, Feyre darling.”

Well. That was as definite an answer as she was likely to get. The next day, Mor sent over the photograph.

~*~

There was a strange balancing act in creating this kind of art.

The piece had to be revealing and poignant— there was a message there, and it needed to be expressed. But too obviously, to gaudy or in your face, and it could not be appreciated.

The depth needed to be in the detail. Feyre aimed to create something that was pleasant to look at upon a glance and beautiful to meditate on. She did ask Mor about Rhys’s family, just wanting to know enough to not offend.

The hand that Rhys’s father laid on his wife’s shoulder had a tighter grip, just a bit exaggerated from the photo. His little sister got a twinkle in her eye, a tilt in her head that screamed innocence and just a hint of something impish. Rhys’s stance changed, from perfectly upright and still to something more dynamic, feet positioned as if ready to keep moving. And his mother got some imperfections, flyaway hairs and an uneven posture as she leaned just a little bit closer to her daughter. Her smile grew, crinkling her eyes.

Feyre added movement, added some life that didn’t exist when everyone was trying to look their best for a fancy photo. It was as terrifying as it was exhilarating. There was a story happening.

The next time everyone crammed together, it was at Rhys's townhome for game night. Monopoly and Catan were banned, as they took much too long and created some extreme emotion, but Battleship, Cards Against Humanity, Clue, and Uno (with some crazy house rules) were some of the approved offerings.

Feyre shrieked in laughter and playfully booed, sampling a few of the games with a rotating cast of opponents and participating as a spectator in lulls. When the pizza arrived, everyone broke to grab a slice.

“I can’t believe we won’t be able to do a Halloween party,” Cressida bemoaned. “When’s the next time everyone is going to be in town? What’s the next excuse to get together?”

“Thanksgiving?” Helion offered.

It was probably Rhys’s birthday, but Feyre kept her mouth shut. So did Mor, Cassian, and Azriel.

Cressida didn’t get that memo. “Huh, maybe…wait no! Rhys! Your birthday!”

He accepted the attention with a smile. “Yes?”

“Don’t do that.” She was close enough to playfully slap his shoulder. “It’s in just a few weeks! What are we doing?”

Rhys shrugged. “I don’t have any plans.”

“Oh no,” Cressida gasped like it was the worst thing in the world. “But you’re turning thirty!”

Helion laughed. “No need to remind the man, Cress.”

“You’re older than all of us, you shouldn’t be making fun of anyone’s age,” she shot back. “But really, Rhys. No plans?”

“Nah,” he shrugged.

Cressida huffed. “Is no one else bothered by this?”

Silenced greeted her. Feyre was giving her own present, and it was a private thing that she would most likely present to him when they were not in a group setting. She was sure that Rhys would probably do a quiet family thing at home with Mor, Cassian, and Azriel, maybe Amren too.

“Unbelievable,” she rolled her eyes. “I bet you all forgot.”

“I didn’t forget,” Azriel said. “I already have a gift in mind.”

“It’s a 30th birthday! You have to do something more fun than just a gift!” Cressida said.

Tarquin shrugged. “It’s a little late to plan now. I’m sure if Rhys had wanted something big, he would have said.”

“Please, it’s Rhys,” Cressida snapped. “And it’s not too late. I already have an idea and I can put it together.”

“Do I get to know?” Rhys asked. “It is my birthday, after all.”

“We’re spending a long weekend at the family beach house,” Cressida announced.

Ferye frowned. “Isn’t it a little cold for a beach vacation?”

“It’ll be fine,” Cressida waved a hand, already scrolling through her phone.

Mor cleared her throat. “The beach house is in Turks and Caicos.”

Oh.

“I’ll get the staff to prepare the house,” Cressida murmured. “We’ll have catering for a party, but for those of us staying at the house I’ll have to make sure the staff does grocery shopping…”

“Free beach vacation? I’m in.” Cassian said.

Cressida pointed at Cassian. “That’s the spirit! It’s Rhys’s birthday! It’s a milestone! Let’s make it fun! I’ll book a DJ and put together a guest list for one night, and that can be the larger party, but the rest of the time it’ll be just us. Mor, you still have that guest list from the summer picnic, right? They’ll all be able to fly out for a weekend.”

“This is too generous, Cress,” Rhys interjected with a polite smile.

“No way,” she put her hand on his arm. “Not for you.”

Something curdled in Feyre’s stomach. She looked away, but the sight that greeted her wasn’t much better. Amren and Varian were looking at his phone, seeming to be searching for flights. All the faces were of mild interest.

“It might be a lot, but it’ll be worth it.” Cressida turned back to her phone. “Right, I need food, I need to contact the staff, we’ll have to coordinate flights and rides…and I’ll need to go shopping. Mor, what was that name of the boutique you were talking about? The appointment-only one, I know it’s late notice but do you think they could fit me in?”

“Cress, it’s winter, they won’t have bikinis…”

Feyre sipped her cider, then rose to throw away her empty plate. The rest of them could talk about their fun plans. She would not be participating.

She didn’t have the money to fly out of the country for a long weekend, especially not with little more than a month's notice. Not to mention the vacation time. The only people who would be able to do such an insane thing were her insanely rich friends.

She knew Cressida wasn’t purposefully excluding her. Feyre was a newer friend, not even that close to her, and Cressida probably never had to make those accommodations.

Hell, Cressida probably didn’t even include Feyre in the invitation. It would be beyond generous to open her home to someone she didn’t really know that well.

Feyre tried to mollify herself as she darted to the bathroom. So she wasn’t participating in this fun. That was fine. She had her own way of celebrating Rhys’s birthday, and that was enough. And if she had to take an extra few minutes in the bathroom to get her emotions under control, well, that was just healthy and mature.

She meandered down the hall, hoping that the conversation had moved on and she could convince Azriel for a rematch at Battleship.

“...it’s really a lot, Cress,”

“You deserve it.”

It was rude to eavesdrop. Feyre should have just keep walking. But she didn’t move out of the hall, keeping to the shadows and out of sight from the bright kitchen.

Rhys’s laugh seemed a little forced.

“I mean it,” Cressida’s voice was so low Feyre almost didn’t catch it. “If you had it your way, you would stay at home for your birthday and return any gifts. This is the compromise.”

“Well, at least you are talking about it with me,” Rhys sighed. “I hate when people push their ideas on me.”

“Who would push themselves on you?”

“Happens more often than you’d think,” his voice was just a bit strained. “It just… reminds me of my dad railroading me, or pretending he was giving me options when he was really just trying to force me into accepting his decision. He didn’t understand that what was important to him wasn’t important to me”

“Well, the vacation is mandatory,” Cressida said. “The itinerary is on the negotiating table.”

“Thanks for the transparency,” Rhys answered. “I really didn’t want any surprises though…”

Feyre heard enough. She slipped into the living room and tried to forget the conversation.

Logically, she knew that Rhys was not talking about her and her gift. But she also realized that she might be doing exactly what Rhys just said he despised. She didn’t take his no for an answer when he said she didn’t have to do anything for his birthday. She took something she cared about— her art— and assumed Rhys would care. She even hedged on telling him what the painting was.

Oh God, the painting included his father. Mor said Rhys had a rocky relationship with him, but that was true disdain Feyre had heard…what had she done?

She was in a trance for the rest of the evening, going through the motions and forcing smiles. Blessedly, everyone was so consumed with party planning that Feyre flew under the radar.

“I’m going to head out,” Feye announced when she had enough. Cressida, in the interest of being transparent, asked who could help cover costs and started rattling off astronomical numbers. No one said it, but being able to cover the cost of the music or food or chip in for a fun excursion suddenly felt like the price of admission.

“I should get going too.” Just her luck, it was Cressida that spoke up.

Feyre kept her attention on her phone, wincing at the price of getting an Uber. Subway it was, then. She tugged on her coat and said her goodbyes, ready to be done with the night. Feyre hustled outside, hands in her pockets to keep them warm as she walked towards the nearest station.

“Feyre!”

She resisted grinding her teeth together and turned around, a pleasant expression plastered on her face. “What’s up?”

Cressida stalked closer. “Where are you going?”

“Um,” she looked around, as if that would provide clarity to the question. “Home?”

Cressida rolled her eyes. “You’re taking the subway.”

“Yeah?”

“Absolutely not.”

“What?” Feyre gaped.

“You’re not taking the subway alone at this time of night,” Cressida said. “I can’t believe Rhys would let you leave his home without offering a ride.”

Rhys knew better than to try and control Feyre. And he probably was busy planning his fancy birthday vacation.

“It’s fine,” she said. “I’ve done it before—”

“Come on,” the other woman turned away, expecting Feyre to follow. “I’ll drop you off.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I insist!” Cressida unlocked her car, opening the passenger door open like a chauffeur. “Get in.”

“You live in the opposite direction,” Feyre backed away. “It doesn’t make any sense—”

“You live so far, it’ll be faster for me to drop you off than to take the subway,” Cressida pointed out. “Just get into the car, Feyre, don’t be so stubborn.”

She hated taking the offered favor. But it would be faster and more comfortable to go with Cressida.

Feyre got into the car.

If Cressida thought it was awkward, she didn’t say anything. The low volume of her music filled the air, quiet enough to hold a conversation if they desired.

Ferye really didn’t want to talk. Cressida, though, obviously wanted the exact opposite. “Are you getting anything for Rhys?”

“Um,” she hesitated. Her gift suddenly seemed so silly. But the longer she was silent, the more suspicious it would seem. “I was going to paint something for him.”

“Oh, that’s cool.” Cressida said one thing, but her tone said something different.

Feyre sat up a little straighter, defensive. “What?”

“I don’t see Rhys as an art guy,” she shrugged, conveniently avoiding Feyre’s gaze and keeping her eyes on the road. “I mean, sure, he might kind of like it. But he’s not like Amren, right? He’s not going to gallery showings and stuff, he’d buy something to hang on his wall from Crate and Barrel.”

“Well…I’m glad I can give him something nice then.” Maybe. Her great idea seemed less and less ingenious by the minute, but Ferye could salvage something. Some sort of pretty, but meaningless piece to hang in a hall. She didn’t have any other ideas.

“Oh no, I don’t mean to discourage you!” Cressida said. “Really! I know you care about your work, and I can tell that you would put so much of yourself in it. And I’ve seen some of your stuff, you’re really good. I’m just one opinion.”

Feyre swallowed roughly. “But you don't think it’s a good idea.”

She tapped her fingers on the steering wheel. “I just don’t want to see you hurt when Rhys doesn’t react the way you might want him to. It’s Rhys, he’ll appreciate the gift of course. But it’s…ugh, how do I put this? Helion is arranging a private tour of an observatory because Rhys is a nerd obsessed with space. Mor is probably going to set aside a day for them to spend together and reminisce on childhood memories. And I want to give him a vacation because he always works so hard and literally never takes a moment for himself.”

“And my gift…” Feyre could barely speak. “Doesn’t matter as much.”

“It matters,” Cressida shot a glance at Ferye. “It does, because it matters to you. But don’t project that onto Rhys. Like I said, he’ll appreciate it, but I don’t want to see you get hurt because he doesn’t seem to care or like it as much as you might anticipate.”

Thankfully, they were only five minutes away from her apartment. Enough time for Feyre to fall silent in quiet contemplation, a late night a good excuse for the murmur of thanks and quick retreat when Cressida dropped her off.

As soon as she was out of the car, icy wind pierced her shields. Feyre’s throat tightened as she hustled into her building, pounding up the stairs. By the time she was through the door, she was well and truly humiliated.

Her phone chimed. Feyre automatically glanced at it and then wished she hadn’t.

Good appointment with orthopedic surgeon. Elain’s text read. Identified a problem, Dad will need more physical therapy, but they’re hopeful it’ll lessen the pain.

Nesta’s reply appeared. Send the bill, we’ll split it three ways. How many weeks of therapy?

Idk, at least 8 I think.

Feyre sagged, falling against the closed door. She and her sisters were getting by now, but their dad’s medical bills always put a strain on all three of them.

Definitely no vacations, or even trips to fun cafes, or going to see a new movie in her future. Not for a while. She took a deep breath, already thinking about her spreadsheets, then looked up.

The unfinished portrait taunted her from the corner.

She was such an idiot. Rhys might think her painting was cool, might have shown genuine interest— but that was because he was Rhys. He wouldn’t make her upset or be anything but kind, simply because Feyre was Mor’s friend.

But she wasn’t a part of his life, wasn't in the same circle. She had foolishly projected her own passions onto him, poured her soul into something that could never see the light of day again.

Grabbing a trash bag from under the sink, Feyre stalked towards the easel.

Pack it up. Get rid of it, and this entire night. She had miscalculated what to give Rhys, and quite honestly she had probably been miscalculating about her place here for a while.

She felt like a nice little pet, a charity case to be ogled by the rest of them until it was convenient to leave her behind. But that didn’t worry them, because they had been to her studio and they knew her too well, and what kind of broke 22-year-old would walk away from rich successful friends?

Feyre sniffed back tears, the product of a long week and too many bottles of cider at game night. She needed sleep. Rest, and in the morning she would be feeling less sorry for herself.

But first.

The painting stretched the plastic bag, sharp corners poking out. Feyre almost left it at her door, ready to be thrown out. But it was too obvious there, too in-her-face. She banished it under her bed instead. There, it could keep the monsters from her nightmares company and be forgotten under a layer of dust and regret.

#acotarwritingcircle #acotar #acotar fanfiction #feysand #feyre archeron #rhysand

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jeffhirsch · 4 months

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February 2024 Almanac: Second Worst S&P 500 Month since 1950

February is in the middle of the Best Six Months, but its long-term track record, since 1950, is not that impressive. February ranks no better than sixth and has posted meager average performance except for the Russell 2000. Small cap stocks, benefiting from “January Effect” carry over; historically tend to outpace large-cap stocks in February. The Russell 2000 index of small cap stocks turns in an average gain of 1.0% in February since 1979—sixth best month for that benchmark. Russell 2000 has had a tough January which could indicate the January Effect may not boost small caps this February.

A strong February in 2000 boosts NASDAQ and Russell 2000 rankings in election years. Otherwise, February’s performance, compared to other presidential-election-year months, is mediocre at best with no large-cap index ranked better than tenth (DJIA and S&P 500 since 1950, Russell 1000 since 1979).

Not a subscriber? Sign up today for a Free 7-Day Trial to Almanac Investor to continue reading our latest market analysis and trading recommendations and get a full run down of seasonal tendencies that occur throughout each month of the year in an easy-to-read calendar graphic with important economic release dates highlighted, Daily Market Probability Index bullish and bearish days, market trends around options expiration and holidays. In addition, the Monthly Vital Statistics Table combines stats for the Dow, S&P 500, NASDAQ, Russell 1000 and Russell 2000 and puts them all in a single location available at the click of a mouse.

#$February #$^DJI #$^GSPC #$^IXIC #$^RUT #$DIA #$SPY #$QQQ #$IWM

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multimilfs · 2 years

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Elizabeth Collins-Stoddard x Fem!Reader: Of Signatures and Subtlety

Summary: "I chose you." or A late-night conversation between you and your partner.

AO3

A/N: I've been sitting on this one for a minute! I wrote it at the beginning of October when I attempted to do Fictober (privately) and then ended up in the midst of the busiest month I've ever had! So I fell off the Fictober train but not without writing this. I feel like Elizabeth is really unappreciated and that makes me sad.

Little snippets into day-to-day life are always my favorite to write, but also what I struggle with. So I really hope everyone enjoys it!

Tag List: @escapetodreamworld @ghostsunderstoodmysoul @multifandomfix

Warning(s): None

Running a Cannery was a lot more involved than you expected. You curse Angelique for making it look simple as you sign off on another contract and throw it on top of the enormous pile, wincing as you try and flex your hand. Had you known better, you wouldn’t have agreed to take on such a large role; you’d rather run around all day than sign another piece of paper.

A hand settles on your shoulder and you look up into a pair of smug eyes. Elizabeth raises an eyebrow, a not-so-subtle smile pulling at her lips.

“Yes, dear?” You ask.

“You’re grumbling under your breath again,” Elizabeth says and her smile grows a little, “I told you that I can transfer some of the contractual obligations to Barnabas.”

Absolutely not. Barnabas is a good cousin, sure, but he’d been very odd in the beginning about how your role in the company was larger than his. You wouldn’t give any of his outdated views fuel, however small they may be.

You give Elizabeth a long look and she chuckles. Her hand brushes over your shoulder and the back of your neck as she crosses around the desk, glancing out the window overlooking the Port. It’s raining and growing darker with every minute. Lights on the fishing boats out in the water bob up and down, while some pass and dock just below the window.

It’s a peaceful scene that you often take a few minutes to enjoy, when the paperwork is manageable. Busy season had brought in enough money for new boats and with it, new employees. More fish meant more work, who knew?

“How are the preparations for tonight going?” You ask, capping your pen and joining her by the window.

She takes a deep breath, pinching the bridge of her nose, “Are people always so infuriating?”

“Typically. That’s why I let you handle them.”

“Well, they’ve been nothing short of exhausting. It’s a banquet for investors, for heaven’s sake, not a coronation. And that awful Scavena woman won’t stop interrupting preparations to suggest changes to the floral arrangements.”

You try to hide your smile, “Still holding energy about her, Liz?”

“I’ll stop doing so when she stops asking after you. ‘Oh how is the dear girl, Elizabeth?’” She mocks, a scowl on her face, “'Do tell her to give me a call, would you? I so miss our teas.’ Ugh.”

“She’d be less obnoxious if you’d let me make a scene.”

Many times you’d suggested some overt display of affection to ward off the woman. A few dates—a few very bad dates—had left her following after you like a lost puppy. Sure, she was pretty, but why settle for pretty when you had Elizabeth? Miss Scavena had been a moment of weakness before your perfect woman had given you a chance.

Elizabeth wasn’t one for public displays of anything, least of all affection, so all you’d managed was a lingering kiss on the cheek in front of the other woman. And you’d been given a stern lecture afterwards for that. It didn’t help that Carolyn had been going on and on that night about how obnoxiously loving you two were; you conveniently forgot to pick up her favorite ice cream at the grocery store that week.

“Absolutely not.”

“Then ignore her. I chose you. Doesn’t that count for anything?” You ask, batting your eyelashes.

“I suppose.” Elizabeth rolls her eyes.

Arms crossed over her chest, she tries to keep her scowl in place when you steal a long kiss. But her blushing cheeks say all you need to hear. She even goes so far as to steal one herself before pulling back and crossing the room, throwing behind her, “I want those contracts done before the dinner!”

“Yes, dear.” You laugh as the door closes behind her and settle in for another few hours of cramped signatures.

#elizabeth collins stoddard #elizabeth collins stoddard x reader #dark shadows #dark shadows x reader #elizabeth collins stoddard imagine #dark shadows imagine #elizabeth collins #wlw #wlw imagine #oct2022 #multimilfswritings

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trading-appz · 7 months

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Diversifying Your Investments: A Guide to Balancing Midcap and SIP (Systematic Investment Plan) Mutual Funds

Many investors focus their portfolios heavily on large cap stocks while ignoring midcap and small cap companies. However, diversifying your holdings across market capitalizations can provide greater growth opportunities and balance risk. Combining midcap funds with an SIP mutual fund (Systematic Investment Plan) allows you to spread your assets efficiently.

Midcap mutual funds invest in mid-sized companies that offer higher growth potential than large caps that are already well established. Though midcaps carry higher volatility, the long-term growth can outweigh short-term fluctuations. A well-managed midcap fund invested in over 50 companies can mitigate the risk through diversification. Midcap funds have delivered nearly 14% annual returns over the last decade, outperforming large cap funds.

Rather than trying to hand-pick midcap stocks, investing through a mutual fund scheme allows you to gain exposure managed by an experienced fund manager. They can identify fast-growing companies across sectors before they gain wider attention. A SIP plan spreads your investment out steadily in the fund through small periodic contributions rather than a lump sum. This lets you take advantage of rupee cost averaging and reduces the impact of market ups and downs.

SIP plans start with minimal amounts like ₹500 per month so you can begin without a large capital pool. The enforced saving discipline will help you accumulate a corpus over time without worrying about market timing. SIP instalments can be automated directly from your account, making investing completely hassle-free. As your savings grow, you can increase the SIP amount.

A prudent approach is to allocate about 30% of your portfolio to midcap funds through SIP, with the balance in large cap funds. This allows you to benefit from midcap growth while limiting risk through diversification. Avoid investing in just one midcap fund. Spread your investment across 2-3 funds from different fund houses to diversify fund manager risk.

Review and rebalance your portfolio at least annually to maintain your target allocation. As your midcap funds grow, part of those gains can be booked periodically and shifted to large cap funds. This ensures you lock in some gains and maintain your original asset allocation.

Rather than chasing the hot new IPO or small caps, a disciplined SIP plan in diversified midcap funds can help grow your wealth steadily. Focus on long term metrics like rolling returns rather than short term NAV changes. With patience and consistency, your SIP portfolio will reap the benefits of midcap investing.

#mutual funds #ipo #stock market

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mariacallous · 11 months

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Buoyed by a wave of buying from overseas, including the stamp of approval from legendary investor Warren Buffett, Japan’s economic outlook is brightening, deflationary concerns are dissipating, and the stock market is on a climb that could take it above its all-time record highs. It only took 33 years.

On Dec. 30, 1989, Japan’s premier market index, the Nikkei 225, closed at 38,915.87, capping a year that saw a 29 percent rise and an amazing 15-year climb that helped to put Japan at the center of the global economic map. But in 1990, it fell 39 percent, marking what is now known as the end of the so-called bubble economy. The sharp fall that year was far from the end. Despite numerous attempted rallies over the years, the market was on a long and seemingly inexorable fall, hitting just 7,054.98 points in March 2009. Over 20 years, the market had fallen 82 percent.

The latest rally shows how far the market has come back, with valuations now up more than 370 percent from the 2009 nadir. And it may have a long way to go yet. While Tokyo, as of mid-June, remains 13 percent below its 1990 high-water mark, in the same time period the FTSE 100 in London has risen 213 percent, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average has soared 1,146 percent. No wonder investors are now seeing opportunity in Japan, since just catching up to the rest of the world would represent potentially large gains.

One of the main drivers in the market’s climb is a surge in inflation that started with the shortages and higher commodity prices of the COVID-19 pandemic. While the higher external costs have been a headache for all major economies, in Japan they quickly produced what a decade of monetary easing had failed to achieve: demand-driven inflation where wages and prices both rise. After nearly three decades of deflationary price pressures, Japan’s inflation rate has quickly climbed from near-zero levels to 4 percent. While that is still subdued by global standards, it is still the highest since September 1981. “A cycle between inflation and wages is finally emerging in Japan. I think this is a structural change in the economy,” said Kentaro Koyama, Japan chief economist for Deutsche Bank.

This is exactly what former Bank of Japan Gov. Haruhiko Kuroda vowed to create when he took office in 2013. He quickly undertook a bond and equity buying spree that left the central bank holding 50 percent of all the Japanese government bonds in circulation and becoming a major holder of stocks. The target he set was a consistent 2 percent inflation rate that would be seen in both prices and wages. After 10 years in office, making him the longest-serving Bank of Japan governor in history, but with little sign of numbers moving, his goal finally came into sight just as he stepped down earlier this year.

Even Japan’s stingy employers, which have offered near-guaranteed job security but little extra cash over the years, are now pushing up wages at their highest level in 30 years. Japan’s Trade Union Confederation this spring won a 3.8 percent increase for its nearly 7 million members. Medium- and small-sized businesses are now seeing that they need to keep up to avoid losing people.

Another attraction is the health of Japan’s corporate sector. While the global dominance of companies such as Sony, Panasonic, Japan Steel Works, and Toshiba is long gone, major corporations have remained highly profitable, finding specialist areas that offer strong profit margins. Instead of producing the electronic goods or even the computer chips that drive them, Japanese companies have done well in a globalized economy with specialist products, ranging from the chemicals needed to make the chips to the industry-leading motion sensors needed for a robotic work floor.

But experienced Japan watchers might feel a twinge of disquiet. Ever since the mid-1990s, when it became clear there were serious structural issues in the economy, there have been a series of “Japan is back” declarations, with the fizzling of initial rosy forecasts giving way to declarations that “this time is different.” Stock market rallies in 1996, 2000, and 2007 all gave way to renewed bear markets. Promises that corporate Japan had now changed and was serious about rewarding shareholders instead of hoarding cash also seemed to be more talk than action. Retained earnings have risen steadily, reaching 242 trillion yen ($2.2 trillion) in 2020.

But even some veterans who have seen it all before are much more optimistic today. “Japan is back,” said Tokyo strategist Nicholas Smith of the Asian financial services firm CLSA. In a report to clients in May, he said that strong earnings and attractive valuations have now been kickstarted by a new drive coming from regulators and the Tokyo Stock Exchange to push up share prices through stock buybacks. This cooperation is coming together in a way he has not seen in 35 years of watching the Japan market. “Japan’s market is still very much more than just cheap. It has growth when others haven’t, due to belated reopening; it’s awash with cash, driving some eyepopping buybacks,” he said in the report.

Helping this along, Smith said, is the involvement of once-shunned activist investors. His data shows that Japan is now the No. 2 market for activists in the world, after the United States. When the firms, including major international names, first saw opportunities in Japan in the early 2000s, they were often derided as hagetaka, the Japanese word for vultures. But after some high-profile agreements with corporate titans such as Toshiba and Olympus, the mood has changed. Well-known names such as the Carlyle Group and Bain Capital are active in Japan, along with some home-grown Japanese firms that often work from offshore.

The other big recovery has been in real estate values, which had plunged at the same rate as stocks in the 1990 collapse. Foreign investment is pouring into the sector as investors look at prices little-changed over the past 30 years, made even cheaper by a weaker Japanese yen, which has fallen 20 percent over the past two years. According to the Numbeo international cost-tracking website, apartment purchase prices in Tokyo are around half the price of the equivalent space in New York.

As depressingly often with economic developments, the boom has left one group out of the party: the average Japanese person, especially the estimated 88 percent who do not own shares. And while wages are rising, the gains are being outstripped by inflation.

“The current situation is a very good tailwind for risk assets. Real estate valuations are being helped by low interest rates. But will it help the average Japanese person? To be honest, I don’t think so,” said Deutsche’s Koyama.

He cites government data showing that even as wages are rising, inflation is one step ahead. According to the Labor Ministry, Japan’s inflation-adjusted real wage index fell 3 percent in April from a year earlier, the 13th consecutive month of declines.

Part of the problem, he said, is that wages are raised only annually, in many cases through the spring labor negotiation season, while prices rise continuously.

Unless, of course, people change jobs, an idea that is alien to traditional Japanese workers. But with Japan’s labor force now shrinking and demand for employees rising, the younger generation has taken to job hopping, which can easily add 10-20 percent to salaries.

The demand is clearly there, with 1.3 jobs for every job seeker, according to the Labor Ministry. (For those in construction, there are nearly 12 jobs per person.) The problem is that with one of the world’s fastest-shrinking populations, Japan is starting to face critical labor shortages, and the problem is expected to worsen.

This could undermine another potential area of growth for Japan from the new drive for economic security and the decoupling from China, which is now more politely called de-risking. While investment flows are typically slower to change than trade due to the long lead times involved, foreign investment into China was down 7 percent, at $76.7 billion, in the second half of 2022.

“The simple story of foreign business retreating from China is overdone and often just wrong. But neither is there a stampede back to China now that the mood music has become more positive,” Andrew Cainey, a senior associate fellow with the Royal United Services Institute in London, said in a commentary for Japan’s Nikkei.

With companies now increasingly nervous about their prospects in China, Japan is burnishing its credentials as a rule-of-law country that also offers solid infrastructure, a good lifestyle, and surprisingly low costs. Tokyo, which was for decades was ranked the most expensive place for foreigners, now scrapes in at No. 19, according to the latest Mercer ranking of cities by cost of living.

It’s not that costs have come down significantly; instead, they have gone up everywhere else. Japan’s newfound status as a low-cost destination is the natural result of 30 years of near-zero inflation. The longer-term problem is how to find the people to fill the jobs needed for any new boom period. But for now, foreign investors seem unconcerned. The bargains are just too good to pass up.

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timothypagliara · 1 year

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Building a Profitable Investment Portfolio

A well-diversified portfolio is essential for any investor to achieve their goals. As an individual, you must know how to allocate your assets to meet your goals and risk tolerance. Having a well-designed strategy can help you avoid unexpected expenses and ensure that your investments are well-positioned for the long run.

Step 1. Determine Your Asset Allocation

Before you start building a portfolio, you must clearly understand your goals and financial situation. Some of the most common factors affecting a person’s investment strategy are their age, income needs, and the amount of available capital. For instance, an unmarried 22-year-old college graduate may need a different approach than a 55-year-old who plans on retiring in ten years.

If you’re not willing to risk losing money, then your investments might not be able to provide you with the high returns you’re looking for. Having a good understanding of these factors will help you determine how you should allocate your investments.

Another important factor you should consider when building a portfolio is the risk/return tradeoff. For instance, if you’re planning on having a relatively stable lifestyle and are not planning on relying on your investments for income, then you might want to take more significant risks. On the other hand, if you’re planning on having a more tax-efficient retirement, you might want to focus on protecting your assets.

Step 2. Achieving Your Portfolio

Once you have determined the appropriate asset allocation, you must divide your capital into two equal parts. For instance, you should allocate your money between bonds and equities. You can also break down the various asset classes into subclasses to better understand each class’s risks and potential returns. For instance, an investor may divide the equity portion of their portfolio between foreign and domestic stocks and companies and industrial sectors. On the other hand, the bond portion may be allocated between government and corporate debt and short- and long-term bonds.

Step 3. Reassess Your Portfolio Weightings

After you have an established portfolio, you must regularly re-evaluate and adjust the components of your portfolio to keep up with the changes in the market. Doing so will allow you to determine the appropriate asset allocation for your needs.

Factors affecting your financial situation and risk tolerance will also change over time. For instance, if your risk tolerance has decreased, you might need to reduce the number of stocks in your portfolio. Or, if you’re at the stage where you’re ready to take on more risk, then you might want to allocate a small portion of your assets to small-cap stocks.

Step 4. Rebalance

Before you start re-evaluating and adjusting the components of your portfolio’s details, you must determine which securities you should reduce and how much you should sell. This will allow you to determine which under-weighted securities to buy.

If you’re planning on reducing the number of stocks in your portfolio to re-balance it, you might owe a significant capital gains tax. However, it’s better to maintain a steady allocation of assets to other asset classes instead of selling all your growth stocks. This will allow you to reduce the overall weightage of your portfolio without having to pay taxes.

Even though you may be planning on selling some of your growth stocks, you should still consider the market’s outlook. If you’re worried that the same stocks may fall, you might want to sell them even though the tax implications are still significant. One way to reduce your tax bill is by selling some of your growth stocks through tax-loss selling.

#Timothy J Pagliara #Finance #investment #portfolio

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stockscreeneraustralia · 11 months

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Finding Tomorrow's Winners: Utilizing Sivastatz's Growth Stocks Screener for Promising Investment Opportunities

Investing in growth stocks can offer significant upside potential for investors seeking to capitalize on companies with strong growth prospects. One valuable tool for identifying these promising investment opportunities is Sivastatz's Growth Stocks Screener. By utilizing this powerful screener, investors can narrow down their search and identify tomorrow's potential winners in the market.

Sivastatz's Growth Stocks Screener provides a comprehensive platform that allows investors to filter stocks based on specific growth criteria. This includes parameters such as revenue growth rate, earnings per share (EPS) growth rate, return on equity (ROE), and other key performance indicators. By applying these filters, investors can identify companies that demonstrate strong growth potential and may outperform the broader market in the future.

Here are some steps to effectively utilize Sivastatz's Growth Stocks Screener for identifying promising investment opportunities:

Define Your Growth Criteria: Start by determining the specific growth criteria you want to focus on. Consider factors such as revenue growth, EPS growth, and ROE that align with your investment goals and risk appetite. Set realistic expectations based on your investment horizon and market conditions.

Conduct Market Research: Stay informed about emerging trends, industries, and sectors that are experiencing robust growth. Research market forecasts and identify areas where companies have the potential for significant expansion. This research will provide a foundation for your growth-focused investment strategy.

Set Filters: Utilize the Sivastatz Growth Stocks Screener to set filters based on your defined growth criteria. For example, you can screen for companies with a minimum revenue growth rate of a certain percentage or an EPS growth rate above a specific threshold. Adjust the filters based on your desired level of growth and risk tolerance.

Analyze Results: Review the list of stocks generated by the Sivastatz screener based on your growth filters. Dive deeper into the financials, competitive advantages, and growth drivers of each company. Assess the scalability of their business models, market share potential, and ability to capitalize on emerging opportunities.

Conduct Fundamental Analysis: Perform a thorough fundamental analysis of the shortlisted companies. Evaluate their financial health, profitability, cash flow generation, and management capabilities. Consider qualitative factors such as innovation, market positioning, and competitive advantage to assess their growth potential.

Assess Risk Factors: Evaluate the risks associated with each potential investment. Consider industry-specific risks, market competition, and any regulatory or geopolitical factors that may impact the company's growth trajectory. Diversify your portfolio to mitigate risk and capture growth opportunities across different sectors.

Monitor and Review: Once you have made your investment decisions, regularly monitor the performance of your portfolio. Stay updated on news and developments related to the companies in your portfolio to ensure they continue to meet your growth criteria. Adjust your holdings as needed based on changing market dynamics.

Remember, investing in growth stocks requires careful analysis and a long-term investment horizon. While growth stocks have the potential for significant returns, they also carry higher volatility and risk. By utilizing Sivastatz's Growth Stocks Screener and conducting thorough research, you can identify promising investment opportunities and position yourself for future success in the dynamic world of growth investing.

Also, check out different products

Small Cap Stocks Data Screener

#Sivastatz #Growth Stock Screener Data #Sivastatz Growth Stock Screener

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warningsine · 1 year

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U.S. authorities were preparing "material action" on Sunday to shore up deposits in Silicon Valley Bank and stem any broader fallout from its collapse, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Biden administration officials worked through the weekend to assess the impact of startup-focused lender SVB Financial Group's (SIVB.O) failure, with a particular eye on the venture capital sector and regional banks, the sources said.

Earlier, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said she was working with regulators to respond to the implosion of SVB, which on Friday became the largest bank to fail since the 2008 financial crisis.

SVB's sudden collapse has roiled markets and left billions of dollars belonging to companies and investors stranded but Yellen ruled out a bailout, as fears deepened of a broader fallout across the U.S. regional banking sector and beyond.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which was appointed receiver, was trying to find another bank willing to merge with SVB, people familiar with the matter said on Friday.

Yellen said she was working closely with banking regulators to protect depositors.

"We want to make sure that the troubles that exist at one bank don't create contagion to others that are sound," Yellen told the CBS News Sunday Morning show.

"Let me be clear that during the financial crisis, there were investors and owners of systemic large banks that were bailed out...and the reforms that have been put in place means we are not going to do that again," she said.

U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy told Fox News' Sunday Morning Futures program that President Joe Biden's administration and the U.S. Federal Reserve were working to come up with announcement before the markets open. McCarthy did not provide details but said he hoped the announcement would come later on Sunday.

Reuters was unable to determine whether a deal for the bank was forthcoming. Some industry executives said such a deal would be sizeable for any bank and would likely require regulators to give special guarantees and make other allowances for any buyer.

With $209 billion in assets, the Santa Clara, California-based lender was the 16th largest U.S. bank, making the list of potential buyers who could pull off a deal relatively short, they said on condition of anonymity.

The Fed and the FDIC were weighing the creation of a fund that would allow regulators to backstop more deposits at banks that run into trouble, Bloomberg reported.

Regulators discussed a new special vehicle in conversations with banking executives and hoped such a measure would reassure depositors and help contain any panic, the report said.

However, it was not clear if regulators would have political support to throw a lifeline to SVB, which catered to Silicon Valley startups and investors.

The Fed and FDIC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

OTHER BANKS

Some analysts and prominent investors warned that without a resolution by Monday, other banks could come under pressure.

"The good news is it is unlikely an SVB-style bankruptcy will extend to the large banks," risk and financial advisory firm Kroll said in a research note.

But small community banks could face issues and the risk is "much higher if uninsured depositors of SVB aren't made whole and have to take a haircut on their deposits," Kroll added.

SVB had an unusually high level of deposits that were not covered by the FDIC's guarantees, which are capped at $250,000.

Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman said in a tweet on Saturday that failure to protect all depositors could lead to the withdrawal of uninsured deposits from other institutions.

"These withdrawals will drain liquidity from community, regional and other banks and begin the destruction of these important institutions," Ackman, who said he does not have direct exposure, warned.

Kyle Bass, founder and chief investment officer of Hayman Capital Management, who also does not have exposure to SVB, told Reuters that the Fed needed to "arrange a marriage" for SVB by Sunday evening, before markets opened in Asia.

The S&P 500 regional banks index (.SPLRCBNKS) dropped 4.3% on Friday to end the week down 18%, its worst week since 2009.

Signature Bank (SBNY.O) dropped about 23%, while San Francisco-based First Republic Bank (FRC.N) fell 15%. Western Alliance Bancorp (WAL.N) tumbled 21% and PacWest Bancorp (PACW.O) dropped 38% after those stocks were halted several times due to volatility. Charles Schwab Corp (SCHW.N) slumped more than 11%.

Signature Bank, First Republic Bank, PacWest Bank and Charles Schwab did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Western Alliance Bank declined to comment.

Some banks could look to preemptively raise capital to fortify their balance sheets or try to strike deals of their own, industry executives said.

When IndyMac and Washington Mutual collapsed in 2008, the FDIC found other firms to take on the assets and keep deposits intact. If no buyer is found for SVB, uninsured depositors will probably be left with a portion of whatever funds the FDIC can raise selling off the bank's assets.

GLOBAL DOMINOES

In Britain, where SVB has a local subsidiary, finance minister Jeremy Hunt said on Sunday he was working with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and the Bank of England to "avoid or minimise damage" resulting from the chaos.

"We will bring forward very soon plans to make sure people are able to meet their cash flow requirements to pay their staff," Hunt told Sky News.

More than 250 UK tech firm executives signed a letter addressed to Hunt on Saturday calling for government intervention, a copy seen by Reuters shows.

Advisory firm Rothschild & Co is exploring options for Silicon Valley Bank UK Limited as insolvency looms, two people familiar with the discussions told Reuters on Saturday. The BoE has said it is seeking a court order to place the UK arm into an insolvency procedure.

#svb #Silicon Valley Bank #us #economy #finance #news

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ohbutwheresyourheart · 2 years

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OK OK HERES A WEIRD PROMPT: "splinter"

Madeleine/Willy - Factory Era

This is not technically done but it was getting extremely long, was turning into essentially a speedrun of what should be a pretty long multi-chapter fic, and any further than this was going to dive into some pretty heavy, dark stuff, so - capping it here for now! I will probably come back in the next few days and write the rest.

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Looking back, years down the line, Madeleine would be able to put her finger on a series of fracture points: here is where it began, here and here and here is where it got worse, and here the grand denouement.

At the time, however, it was just -- a mess. An incomprehensible, gut-churning, living nightmare. Piles and piles of sales reports, forecasts, data split every conceivable way, but none of it giving her the answers she so desperately needed: the product, or the tactic, or even the fucking magic spell, that would save the factory.

Ça coûte bonbon, she had jokingly told Willy when he first brought up the idea of the factory, while they were still in the cosy little apartment above the shop on Cherry Street. While they were growing apace, flush with success, but still a small business: Madeleine had not been able to imagine how they would raise the capital for such an endeavour. Especially when, in true Willy fashion, he insisted not just on a factory but the biggest factory in the world, fifty times as big as any other.

Typical Willy; not satisfied with anything less than being the biggest, brightest, best. He grinned, laughed, flashed those perfect white teeth and showed the world the image of a young genius who had been touched by the wand of destiny. It was only Madeleine who, behind closed doors, saw the moments when certainty failed and doubt crept in. The nights when he lay awake, haunted even now by the father he has not seen in years but whose memory drove him ever further on to prove, against all possible doubt, that he was a success.

The biggest chocolate factory in the world. Taken at face value, it was absurd. Better, more sensible, surely, to start small and work their way up in a managed, sustainable way.

But it was Willy’s dream and Madeleine knew, just as she had when he was sleeping on her sofa and peddling chocolate across London, that he had everything within him he needed for success, if he was just given the opportunity. So while Willy poured everything he had into his own awe-inspiring brand of confectionary alchemy, Madeleine sat up at night reading books on business accounting, investment, managing corporate loans. She set up meetings with banks and private investors, lugging cases filled with candy and business plans across the country, and she sold that dream to anyone who would listen.

Vouloir c'est pouvoir. It became her mantra. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Willy was a genius, already garnering international attention in the confectionery world, and Madeleine flattered herself that the business plans she’d pulled together were pretty damn good too, but it was also the right moment to try. The economy at the back end of the 80s, after a decade of volatility, was booming again: lenders were optimistic, unemployment was low, normal people had money in their pockets for luxuries. It was the best time to invest in a growing candy business headed by an unmatched visionary.

It all happened so fast. The lenders said yes, the loans were eye-wateringly large but the interest rates were low, everyone had so much faith in Willy - they didn’t even have to put up much in the way of collateral relative to the amounts, just the Cherry Street shop and then a lien against the factory itself. Madeleine, aware in the midst of all the excitement that she was out of her depth, all but begged Willy to sit still long enough for them to comb through the contracts together, but he was too giddy to care about anything as mundane as paperwork.

“I trust you, Maddy!” he kept saying, more concerned with drawing up plans for the factory with the architects and engineers; often infuriating them with his ideas that should not have worked but somehow did. “You know more about it than me, anyway. It will be fine. We’re going to make way more money than we’ve had to borrow, right?”

And Madeleine had to admit there was no reason to think that was not true.

They laid the first foundation stone together in the autumn of 1989, as delighted with it as any other couple might have been with a positive pregnancy test. Indeed, it felt like the factory was their child: Madeleine had certainly laboured to bring it about. Six months later, Willy cut the ribbon to open the completed factory, and that very night asked Madeleine to marry him.

They were the king and queen of candy - they were a team; Willy the face of his wild and wonderful creations, Madeleine the face of the business side - they were invincible.

Oh, God, they were not invincible. Not even close.

When the economy began to take a downturn, Madeleine was not initially worried. Candy was one of the most affordable luxuries; even when money was tight, most people could still find the spare change for a bar of chocolate or a bag of sweets. Besides, Wonka Candies was now a wholesaler, not a retailer; as long as their partners kept placing orders, the factory prospered.

Even so, ever cautious with money, and aware that there was a lot of money on the line, Madeleine made a point of bringing in more accounts, more clients, and most importantly more prestigious clients. Willy made candy for the love of making candy, but even he was proud as punch when they finally achieved the vision Madeleine had had in London years before: a display of Wonka candy in the window of Fortnum & Mason. Target the audience with money, was Madeleine’s reasoning, and they would be insulated if the economy continued to spiral downwards.

It turned out to be a smart decision. Before they had even reached the second anniversary of the factory opening, the country was officially in recession. Interest rates spiked sharply, and Madeleine almost cried when she saw the jump, month on month, of the loan repayments. They could afford it, but it seriously curtailed their floating cash - which, in turn, limited Willy’s ability to invest in technology for the factory for new products.

“But I need this,” Willy protested as they stood in Madeleine’s office, looking over plans he had drawn up for new machinery, and pages of complex formulas that Madeleine could not begin to follow, all spread across her desk. “It’s for my latest idea - you ought to like this, it’s economically appropriate--” said with finger quotes, “--I’m calling them Everlasting Gobstoppers. For kids who don’t get a lot of pocket money anymore, they can buy one and it will last forever. Well, pretty much forever.”

Madeleine hated that her first reaction was to think that was a terrible financial decision. She pushed the thought away, guilt clenching her stomach, knowing how many children would be ecstatic to have candy that would never run out. What was this job doing to her?

“It’s a great idea, I just…” Madeleine shuffled through the papers until she found the estimates Willy had drawn up for the materials he’d need. She ran a finger down the column of figures and bit her lip. God, she felt like a monster, but if theoretically they’d only sell one unit per customer on this outlay… and if the target customer was kids without much money, price per unit would be low… And would any of their accounts even take a one-and-done product like that? Madeleine quickly ran through the mental maths and her heart sank. “I don’t think we can afford the outlay, not right now.”

Willy stared at her as if she’d grown a second head. “But we have loads of money. Didn’t we make record sales last month?”

“Record sales, yes,” Madeleine admitted. “But not record net profit. The loan repayments keep going up, and I’m nervous about some of the smaller accounts potentially pulling out if the economy doesn’t pick up. Then there’s payroll - we’ll have to put wages up again, inflation is going mad: I think it’s at nearly seven percent now. That’s going to affect our cost prices, too; we’re losing margin already on at least half of our products, and that won’t change until we renew our contracts at the end of the financial half. If you came to the sales meetings,” she couldn’t help adding, “You’d know all this.”

It was a petty jab and Madeleine regretted it as soon as the words left her mouth, especially when Willy flinched, visibly hurt.

“I’m working too, you know,” he retorted. “These prestigious accounts you were so eager to get are being pretty damn demanding about how many new products they want each month. Then they all want different new products, so they can outdo each other.”

It was on the tip of Madeleine’s tongue to point out that, with the biggest chocolate factory in the world, they should be equal to fulfilling those demands - but then she looked at Willy properly. Looked at him and really saw him, for what felt like the first time in weeks. Saw that his skin, always pale, was now chalky; his eyes sunken and shadowed; his mouth turned down into a frown rather than his usual smile; the lines forming between his brows that hadn’t been there before.

“You should have told me it was getting too much,” she said instead, reaching for his hand; a gloved hand, he’d taken to wearing those latex gloves almost constantly, but she hoped he could still feel the warmth of her hand through the material. “I’ll call them tomorrow, see if I can renegotiate the contracts.”

“No,” Willy said quickly. He pulled away from her hand, and Madeleine had to restrain herself from snatching him back. “No, I--I can do it. I can. It’s what I do, isn’t it? I just -- I don’t have time to come to meetings, okay? That’s what I need you for.”

“Okay.” Madeleine looked down at her hand and flexed it, still fighting the urge to grab at Willy again. She couldn’t remember the last time he’d done that. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean… I shouldn’t have said that. I know how hard you work. Look, let’s… let’s clear this away for now. We can’t do anything else tonight anyway. I’ll make dinner, what do you want?”

But Willy just shook his head. “I’ll keep working for a while. I want to run some more tests; I’m trying a new flavour of Wonka bar, something with fudge and marshmallows, but it’s taking some time to get right.”

“Oh -- okay, I’ll wait for you, then.”

“No, don’t, I could be a while. Just leave me a plate or something.”

“Willy--”

“What do you want, Madeleine?” Willy burst out. He spread his hands out, inviting a response that Madeleine did not feel able to give. “Do you want me to fulfil these contracts or not? If they’re that important then, yeah, I need to keep working! Unless you have another chocolatier hidden up your sleeves?”

Madeleine’s chest clenched; her pulse raced; she tasted static electricity in the back of her mouth. Willy had never, never, spoken to her like that before. They had disagreed, yes, of course, even had their spats - but she’d never known him be so… sarcastic, so venomous.

“But… what about the team you put together, the additional designers?”

Willy sighed heavily. HIs arms dropped back to his sides and he shook his head. “They’re doing the basic stuff; alternate flavours, things like that. I don’t… I don’t like them doing the big things. It’s mine. What if they leave, and take their recipes with them, ‘cause they’re the ones who came up with them? I can’t have that. It’s Wonka Candies. It’s mine.”

They stared at each other in silence; both aware, perhaps, that they had gone too far and not sure how to find their way back to the right side of the line.

“I’m sorry,” whispered Madeleine again; she didn’t know what else to say. If it was one of their usual spats, she would sweet-talk him back into a good mood, or tease him until he admitted he was overreacting. Now, though, he wasn’t overreacting, and Madeleine didn’t know how to surmount the problem.

Willy made a little gesture; half shrug, half nod. “It’s--” he sighed. “I need to get back to work.”

WIth that, he made a swift exit, the door slamming closed behind him. Madeleine stared after him, feeling numb, wondering how and where that conversation had gone so very wrong.

#willy wonka #charlie and the chocolate factory #catcf 2005 #johnny depp #depp wonka #tim burton #willy #madeleine #you'll be free (if you truly wish to be)#neither whole nor unbroken #which is the working title for the full version of this #angst #relationship breakdown #behold: two idiots who have been in love for years and still cannot communicate #to save their lives #or their livelihood

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