Hello C3 Family!

Weekly Rant - Finally...

TWO THINGS

#1

The New York Stock Exchange is polling Market Participants on whether they would want to have a 24/7 trading platform. There are already numerous workarounds to be able to trade 24/7, but this idea would create an actual exchange that would be constantly open. If we thought the growth for the sake of growth rat race was bad now, this would be catastrophic, especially for the interior lives of traders and brokers. But hey, more money would be made through an unjust means that hurts our neighbors via decreased buying power, so what's not to love?! The obsession with always being on in every industry is a product of our materialistic culture that promotes careers and obtaining thing as the end all be all. We must as the Body of Christ fight against this at every turn. Otherwise, future generations of Saints will be lost, because of our participation or passive opposition.

#2

I mention the proposed TikTok Ban in the stories below but want to just touch on it briefly here. Should we all get rid of TikTok...absolutely, and for many reasons. Should we allow the government to force us to get rid of TikTok? Yeah, probably given it is a legitimate national security threat that looks to corrupt American youth. Will this give more power to our government to limit free speech? Yes, and this is not ideal. In a more perfect world, there would be a very specific law written by a legal mind far more intelligent than any of us that would make the banning of a foreign social media company that is proven to be gathering data with the intent to harm our country a very unique thing. However, our world is nowhere close to perfect and every time we stomp out one evil another will arise. Only on the individual level can we oppose evil in a more full way. So, Elon Musk has justification for not wanting to ban TikTok because then the government will have power to ban X (Twitter) for some obscure reason, yet the banning of TikTok must be done. This is similar to the banning of hard drugs or pornography debates. I think these things should be eradicated from society, but the methods in which we rid ourselves of them needs to be well thought out and not done flippantly.

Top Stories

• The Supreme Court may band sleeping outside public areas even if the city/town that the person is sleeping in does not provide homeless shelters. This would be a landmark decision in the US. The affects on homelessness in the US would be monumental.

• The Nasdaq and the S&P 500 ended their weeks on a six-day losing streak, but that streak was snapped on Monday. The longest losing streak since October of 2022. Nvidia alone lost $212 billion in valuation on Friday.

• An industry bigger than Hollywood is struggling and laying off thousands of workers. That industry is GAMING. Video games to be exact. Simply put revenues are not covering costs. Developing the games people flock to takes a longtime and a lot of money, but the rice of games has only gone up by about $10 in the last 16 years.

• The market is poised to get a boost this week as AI driven growth will be sure to make Big Techs's earnings reports look favorable. 75K tech layoffs this year, but still coming out on top thanks to AI. Read into that all you want.

• Tesla has had its first year over year drop since 2020 in deliveries. The demand for EVs is just not strong and even GM and Ford are slowing their roll on EV projects.

• Russia is still getting to fund their war with Ukraine thanks to India and China buying up all Russia's oil exports. Russia exports 4 million barrels a day and Asian countries are now buying more than 3 million of them.

• Electricity is outpacing overall inflation and consumers are going to experience the brunt of increased costs over the next 5 years where demand is thought to increase by 5%.

• The TikTok ban is becoming more of a possibility each day but is still a far way off. The bill is expected to pass the Senate (thanks to foreign aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan being in the bill) and it will most certainly be signed by Pres. Biden, but that doesn't mean TikTok is dead. The bill says TikTok has 9 months to sell, but its ticker price is hundreds of billions of dollars, and China says it won't allow the owning company ByteDance to sell to a foreigner of the CCP.