⚡ Zash Community Update 18: Introducing Zash learn, Creator of the Week and more
Building the future of retail investing
Dear All,
Happy Tuesday, we hope you had a great weekend!
Here’s a quick update for you on our latest happenings, developments, and more.
Why? Community is at the heart of our product. We want you to be part of the crucial steps of our product development. You can read all of our previous Community Updates here.
Creator of the Week 🧠
This weeks Creator of the Week is Finn Hatherell. Finn works for Irish start-up StrikePay. Strike is a payment technology born out of Covid-19 that has been successfully trialled in the EU and UK. It is fixing urgent pain points brought about by the fact that we don't carry cash anymore. Those pain points are Tipping, Giving, and Paying.
What do you generally like to invest in?
I like to invest in cryptocurrency and tech stocks at the moment. I believe cryptocurrency is an asset class that can really move over the next few years and provide healthy returns. Rather than putting money into mutual funds or more long-term investments I’m looking to maximise my returns. My belief in the underlying technology behind a lot of the cryptocurrencies I invest in mitigates my appetite for risk aversion.
How would you describe your investing style?
I tend to have quite an aggressive investing strategy at the moment, I’m looking for high yield mainly and cryptocurrency is offering that in abundance. I also consider some high growth stocks in the tech space, particularly Shopify and online retail.
What industry/company’s future you’re excited by and why?
Galaxy Digital really excites me at the moment. Its structure and set up means it can operate as one of the first purely crypto led banks in the future and this is something I find really interesting as the space grows and matures.
What do you love about the Zash Community?
Finding somewhere to chat with other retails investors is great. I always like learning from retail investors and it can be hard to get that on other apps. The Zash community opened up new opportunities to learn from others which have been invaluable so far.
Zash Learn 📖
Each week we’re going to cover a new topic from the world of finance and investing, this week we’re looking at the U.S. Nonfarm Payroll Report.
On Friday the U.S. released jobs figures for the month of May, this is known as the U.S. Nonfarm Payroll report and its release on the first Friday of each month holds significant sway on the financial markets, particularly foreign exchange.
Nonfarm payrolls is a measure of the number of workers in the U.S. excluding farm workers and several other jobs specifications. The figures are compiled through surveys of private and government entities across the U.S. about the number of employees on their payroll.
Traders focus on the main figure, and once this is released (usually at 8:30am Eastern Time) the market will move according to how many jobs where created or lost versus expectations.
Other than the headline figure careful consideration is also given to the unemployment rate. This figure is a percentage of the total labour force who are unemployed but actively seeking work. This figure usually moves in small increments, except for last year during the initial stages of lockdown. So, how did these figures look last Friday?
The U.S. economy added 559,000 new jobs in the month of May while the unemployment rate fell to 5.8%. This was a pandemic-era low for unemployment, but the jobs figures fell short of expectations. This means the U.S. economy is still roughly 7.5 million jobs below it’s pre-pandemic levels in February 2020.
As a result of the lower than expected figures the US Dollar weakened against its major rivals, albeit only a modest 0.2%
For more on the US jobs report on Friday check out this piece from Politico here!
And here’s a great visual guide from The Guardian
Here’s a more technical analysis from Nasdaq on the May Nonfarm Payrolls Report.
If there’s anything you’d like us to cover please let us know by filling out this form!
Decade of the DAO? 🤔
American entrepreneur Mark Cuban made some bold predictions about DA0s and the impact they’re going to have in the future.
The Dallas Mavericks owner believes that Decentralized Autonomous Organisations will provide a fresh way to fund ventures and democratize decisions over the next few years. These organisations are referred to as “decentralized” because they’re hosted on a blockchain and an equal share of the decision making process is given to executives and stakeholders.
How are these similar to Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway? Well Cuban makes the connection between his sprawling portfolio of business, that includes everything from Geico’s to BNSF railway, and how they have decentralized their operations into dozens of subsidiaries. While obvious differences exist it is clear to see where Cuban draws his comparison between Berkshire and the disruption soon to be brought on by DAOs.
Check out more on this story here.
Reading of the Week 💡
The big story over the weekend was the landmark tax deal agreed by the G7 nations.
For a great example of how governance tokens are being issued for community led organisations check out the daily interest on Nexo Tokens proposal.
Check out this great long read on How To Thrive In The Post-Covid Era: Lessons From Luxury Retailer Asprey
“Increasingly, in many parts of our life we are forced to think that we can’t hold two potentially opposing ideas in our heads at the same time. But the solution to the myriad complex issues in our life, is to find a middle ground where things aren’t so zero sum. Keep that in mind as you build for the long run”
Chamath Palihapitiya, CEO Social Capital
That’s all for now and we’ll see you next week,
Team Zash