Forbes Video: Grow Your Business With SnapChat? Maybe So.

By SIMON CONSTABLE

Once upon a time, getting your product to market meant placing ads in newspapers, magazines, or on TV. That can still be helpful, but only in as much as that is where people are consuming their media. 

There is also SnapChat, which according to one social media expert can be useful in growing your business as well.

Socialfly co-founder & co-CEO, Courtney Spritzer explains the benefits of the service in this video. She clearly knows more about it than I do, so watch, listen, and learn.

Forbes Video: Why You Should Read Shakespeare Now.

By SIMON CONSTABLE

It's a cliche to say it, but I will anyway: "The more things change, the more they stay the same." Still, there is much truth in it. 

The reason is that people are the same throughout the ages. They end up having the same weaknesses. Some are power-hungry. Others are vengeful. Occasionally, people are treacherous. You get the idea. That was true 3,000 years ago, and it is true today.

William Shakespeare, possibly the greatest playwright ever, captured such characters and how they behave in various scenarios. His plays are as relevant today as they were when he wrote them, possibly more so. 

That's why you should read some of them. Or failing that, maybe watch a movie, go to the theater, or listen to a recording of the plays. Documentary maker Michael McKinley explains his thoughts in this video.

Forbes video: Why Inflation Is Going Higher

By SIMON CONSTABLE

Even before the financial crisis, pundits expressed their concern that devil-may-care bank lending, and loose monetary policy would result in inflation. Despite the same repeated calls that such an event was imminent, the inflation didn't really show up in the government's main statistic -- the Consumer Price Index. 

That phenomenon of very low levels of recorded inflation is now coming to an end. Soon it will start to edge higher. It won't be 1970s style high, just that there will be more inflation than we've seen in a long while. That's according to Lakshman Achuthan, co-founder of the Economic Cycle Research Institute. He explains his thoughts in this video.

U.S. News: Why the Dollar Will Surge Further in 2017

By SIMON CONSTABLE

Hold onto your hat. The dollar surge, which started in April, looks set to continue next year.

The trade-weighted dollar index versus major currencies recently hit 95, having rallied from 88 at the end of April, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

There are plenty of reasons to believe that the recent move is the start of something a lot bigger. Read more here.

Forbes: Unskilled Manufacturing Jobs Aren't Coming Back -- They Never Existed

By SIMON CONSTABLE

Whenever I hear of the need to bring back unskilled manufacturing jobs to the U.S., I want to scream. It happened to me late November. Somehow I managed to stay calm.

Don't misunderstand me. It's not that I hate manufacturing jobs. Rather, what riles me is this pernicious idea that such jobs are unskilled. They aren't and they likely never have been. Read more here.

Photo by carlos aranda on Unsplash

WSJ: When Will Investors Stop Dumping Japanese Stocks?

By SIMON CONSTABLE

What a difference a year makes. 

Individual investors have soured on Japan in a big way since December 2015, pulling $12.7 billion from mutual funds and exchange-traded funds that specialize in Japanese stocks, according to research firm Morningstar Inc. Only one month, January, saw an inflow in the period through October.

The outflow might not seem to be much in dollar terms, but it amounts to more than a quarter of the total $44.3 billion of assets held in such funds a year ago. Read more here.

WSJ: What Is a ‘Moat’ and Why Does It Matter?

By SIMON CONSTABLE

Medieval castles were surrounded by moats to keep attackers at bay. 

Now comes the 21st-century version. 

Today, the term “moat” is used in the business world to describe companies with a sustainable competitive advantage that allows them to keep competitors at bay. Read more here.

Caerphilly Castle and Moat 

by David Dixon, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons