#UK: PM Starmer "PAINFUL" and "unpopular" DECISIONS. @RealConstable, @BatchelorShow Occitanie.

By SIMON CONSTABLE 

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#FRANCE: SUNFLOWERS AND BLACKBERRIES @RealConstable, Occitanie. @BatchelorShow

By SIMON CONSTABLE 

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Camille Pissarro , Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

WSJ: How Much Do You Know About Energy-Efficient Appliances?

 By SIMON CONSTABLE

Test your knowledge about appliances and home energy use with this quiz. Read more here.

Marty5550, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Quit With No Net? Hard Work But Worth It — Tess Vigeland Simon Constable

Quitting the job that’s killing your soul! It’s one of those seemingly ever-present fantasies of office workers. But to leave without a net that’s unnerving to the vast majority of people. Yet it’s what long-time radio host Tess Vigeland did. She recently wrote a book about her experience: Leap: Leaving a Job with No Plan B to Find the Career and Life You Really Want.

Unlike many confessional books, this one won’t tell you how easy it was. Or that the post-quit euphoria just kept on going for months. Or that everyone should do it because, hey, what the hell. No, the story here is quite different. If you believe Vigeland, it’s hard work, and there will be loads of anxiety. It will upend your life in ways you never imagined.

Things like that make this book more believable than some self-help books urging you to make your way in the world — it’ll be like riding a bicycle, as such books seem to promise. Except they gloss over the time when you scrape the skin off your knees. Or they seem to leave out something that you can’t quite put your finger on. For instance, who’s paying the mortgage while all this quitting is happening? Or where did all the money necessary to sustain eating every day come from?

In some ways, Vigeland’s work is the antidote to “the easy route to happiness” books, which imply you can do everything (wealth, harmony, and relaxation) if only you’d follow a few simple rules. Such promises are chimeras.

The worries about money, career, and leaving what, for many, would seem like a dream job are what Vigeland focuses on. It is her self-perceived shortcomings that make the story so much more realistic and so much more relatable. She becomes something more than the voice we remember from the radio — a three-dimensional individual, just like the rest of us. On top of that, the willingness to open up, in a warts and all way, is a sign of herculean strength. Have you ever noticed that the people who never admit to their failures are, deep down, the weakest? She’s the opposite.

I’d say after her experiences, leaping and then writing this book, Vigeland will be unstoppable.

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website or some of my other work here.

This is an edited version of a story first published on Forbes.com in 2015. Copyright CONSTABLE CONFIDENTIAL 2015

How To Succeed Like Moby In A Booze And Drug-Fueled Industry When You Don’t Drink

It might be hard to imagine Moby as anything other than an uber-famous artist, musician, and DJ. But once upon a time, he lived in a disused factory in Connecticut, paying the guards $50 a month to look the other way. In the big scheme of things, that wasn’t so long ago — 1989.

That’s basically where Moby’s book, Porcelain, starts. It then moved location to New York in the early 1990s, a time and place with which I am well acquainted. But that’s not why this book caught my eye.

Rather it is the way that Moby, a descendant of Moby Dick author, Herman Melville, went about creating an unlikely career for himself. Unlikely, that is, to many people in his chosen field. That is something we can all learn from. Here are some key takeaways from his story:

1. Cut out the unnecessary. Moby was prepared to live illegally in an abandoned factory for $50 a month. It gave him the freedom to pursue his dream. What would you give up to follow your passions?
2. Don’t take no for an answer. That should be self-explanatory. There are always naysayers.
3. Don’t be pigeonholed. Moby is a devout Christian who also navigated the wild, drug-fueled club scene of 1990s Manhattan.
4. Take the path less traveled. In the early 1990s, in New York, the big investment banks still held the allure of enormous riches. For many, it was the place to be. Not Moby. He took his own, albeit harder, route.
5. Network. Meeting people helps you make connections to those who can help you. A truly successful person knows how hard it is starting out and will want to help.
6. Bounce back. Moby describes a scene where the record needle skips over the vinyl at one of his gigs: Total failure for a DJ. He writes: “I had killed Christmas. I had stopped joy dead in its tracks.” Was it the end? Of course not.
7. Remember to give back. If you don’t think you earn enough, consider this. “I was DJing regularly and making around $8,000 a year, so I figured I could afford fifty cents or a dollar for every homeless person who asked,” he writes. Even in the 1990s $8,000 wasn’t much, and there were far more homeless people in NYC then compared to now.
8. Be true to yourself. Moby doesn’t drink, which is an anomaly in the club world.
9. Experiment. Well, he doesn’t drink much, but there is an illuminating section of the book titled “Alcohol Enthusiast 1995–1997.”
10. Shake off the haters. Following on from a scene of booing clubbers, he writes: “You can hate me, I thought, but right now I don’t care. The headliner canceled. […] but right now I’m here and I’m going to scream at the top of my lungs.” He was a hit.

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website or some of my other work here.

This is an edited version of a story first published on Forbes.com in 2016, Copyrite CONSTABLE CONFIDENTIAL 2016

How The Meme Stock Revolution Can Help Explain Wall Street

Spencer Jakab has done it again. He’s produced a book that tackles a complex piece of recent history and yet makes it understandable and entertaining for those not familiar with Wall Street's ways. It’s hard to recommend this book enough, especially for new investors.

“The Revolution that Wasn’t: GameStop, Reddit and the Fleecing of Small Investors,” deals with the period when a group of small investors communicating via Reddit pushed up the value of some stocks of beleaguered companies and inflicted huge losses on seasoned Wall Street professionals who made bets that the shares would drop. Eventually, the pros got hit with massive losses.

This story screams “David versus Goliath,” only not in the holy land thousands of years ago but rather on Wall Street recently and with a twist. It’s clear that Jakab also knew that recounting and decoding the events would be a suitable lens to explain American finance's weird inner workings. It’s like an insider's guide for those who have never worked in the field.

The book will take you through the characters involved in the events of 2020 and the beginning of 2021. These include :

Keith Gill, a.k.a. “Roaring Kitty” and “DeepF*ckingValue.”

Vladimir Tenev, billionaire behind investing platform Robin Hood

Gabriel Plotkin, founder of Melvin Capital Management

Ken Griffin, founder of hedge fund Citadel.

Steve Huffman, co-founder of Reddit

While the story will keep you gripped, it’ll also soften readers for sound advice on making money on Wall Street, as did his last book, “Heads I Win, Tails I Win.”

Take, for instance, the following snippets, which impart much wisdom.

• “[A University of California Berkley study] showed that, even without the effect of commissions, the more people traded, the less they earned on average compared with just being passively invested in stocks.”
• “In the 1990s, dentists were the stereotypical retail investors who learned the hard way that they couldn’t translate their general smarts to making smart investments and outwitting Wall Street.”
• Technology and competition have made Wall Street a friendlier and more profitable place than in the bad old days for individuals as long as they play a different, less exciting game.”

To overly simplify Jakab’s message: Investing isn’t for entertainment. A buy-and-hold strategy generally beats frequent trading, and if your know-how isn’t in Wall Street savvy, forget trying to beat the house.

If you do those things, then you stand a chance of winning. But if you don’t, the house will. At least, that’s what I take away from the book.

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website or some of my other work here.

This is an edited version of a story first published on Forbes.com in 2022. Copyright 2022 CONSTABLE CONFIDENTIAL

#France: Perfect climate as the commodity prices retreat. @RealConstable @BatchelorShow Occitanie.

By SIMON CONSTABLE

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National Archives and Records Administration , Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons