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Michelle Smith crisis as opportunity

Crisis as Opportunity: Advice from Certified Divorce Financial Analyst Michelle Smith

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A recent wealth management podcast interviewed Source Financial CEO, Michelle Smith. Smith’s unique experience as a long-time financial advisor, premier money manager, divorcee, and co-parent of a child with special needs is insightful and informative. Of the many lessons learned from this interview, perhaps the most pertinent are those that relate to our current Covid-19 reality as well.

Surround Yourself With Positivity

According to Smith, any big crisis brings out the best and worst in us and those around us. When her son was born and she received his Down syndrome diagnosis, she channeled all her energy toward doing what needs to get done. Her husband at the time, however, didn’t make that switch. As she helps many separated couples navigate the corona emergency, she sees those who are rallying and figuring out how to co-parent during a lockdown, and others who are fighting more and harping on old grudges. When she was a new mom, Smith says she used her own positive nature to propel herself forward. She also made sure to leave no room for negativity in her life and surrounded herself with those who shared her optimism. She extends this advice now too: the familial and financial realities of this crisis are not easy, but if you remain positive and focus on action, things don’t have to be catastrophic.

Ask for Help

Divorce is not something anyone should do alone. Individuals going through a divorce must surround themselves with capable legal and economic professionals to ensure their best interests are fairly represented. Encouragement and love from family and friends provide guidance and support. Smith has dedicated her career to helping women build a financially stable and sustainable life after their marriage. The same is true for co-parenting a child with special needs: it takes a village. Now, more than ever, we are seeing the value of community. We all need to get comfortable asking for help and letting our virtual, and literal, villages be there for us when we need them. The key, according to Smith, is to be specific with our requests.

Focus on Shared Goals

Even as a marriage crumbles, it is important to focus on the values and objectives that once brought you together. Remember the respect you have for one another and direct that toward the settlement. Your ex-spouse is not someone you will ever be “rid” of, especially if you share children, so keep things cordial and constructive. Now is an opportunity to rethink the tactics of decoupling: nobody wants to prolong the process of divorce or excessively litigate matters. Mediation, with the right professionals and the proper mindset, can yield fair, equitable, and civil outcomes for all involved. As more families (married, divorced, or otherwise) spend increased amounts of time together during this crisis, concentrating on shared goals – like cohesion, health, monetary sense—can be empowering.

Fox Buys Sky

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Rupert Murdoch at Les Misérables red carpet movie premiere, Sydney, Australia. Photo by Eva Rinaldi.

It took five years, but Rupert Murdoch has finally acquired the rest of the UK-based Sky Network. Murdoch is the Australian-American media mogul billionaire owner of 21st Century Fox, who tried, but failed a complete buyout of Sky in 2011. Now he is getting the 61 percent that he didn’t already own for almost $15 billion, $13.52 per share. The price is a 36 percent increase over the closing price of the stock on December 8. Fox projects that it will be able to close the deal for $14.6 billion before the end of 2017.

The sale was scrapped in 2011 due to News Corp.’s phone hacking and alleged bribery scandal. Because of this summer’s Brexit decision, the value of the pound dived, making the price of Sky’s shares a relative bargain.

“We have been thoughtful, disciplined and focused as we have contemplated the best use of our capital to drive the growth of the business into the future,” said Lachlan Murdoch, 21st Century Fox’s executive chairman.

The deal with Sky is Fox’s largest transaction to date. Sky will add value to Fox by providing its own programming, library to sports broadcasting rights, and more during a time when large telecom and content providers are consolidating.

“All in all, even taking into account the sports cost issue, this is probably a better and more durable business than most US. investors would presume,” said Michael Nathanson, of MoffettNathanson Research, who lowered its rating on Fox shares to Neutral from Buy and increased the target price $2 to $32.

Rupert Murdoch owns 21st Century Fox with his sons James and Lachlan, including Fox TV network, Fox News and Hollywood study 20th Century Fox.

Commercial Droning Regulations to Take Off

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Along with the huge rise in the commercial use of drones has come the need to regulate this activity. Such laws are about to emerge which will clear the way for a regulated business-related drone flight everywhere in the US, hopefully bringing some order to what some have considered chaos.

The FAA announced its first set of laws which will permit anyone to use drones, as long as they follow the steps and meet the requirements. The first of those will be the acquisition of a remote pilot’s certificate, which can be had by sitting for a written test at an FAA testing center.

Once you’ve received your license to fly, you will need to make sure your drone is under the 55 lb. (25 kg) limit. This covers the vast majority of drones generally in use.

The new rules also limit the maximum altitude an operator can send their drone to under 400 ft. (122 m). Speeds must also be kept under 100 mph (161 kmh) and must always be within seeing distance of the pilot. No night flying with the exception of 30 minutes before sunrise and after sunset, but only if your drone is fitted with anti-collision lights. One pilot-one drone: a single operator cannot fly more than one drone at a time, and a drone is never allowed to fly over the heads of people.

The FAA says it is willing to be lenient on some of the rules if the operator can demonstrate that safety will not be compromised. A special on-line portal will be set up for pilots to make their cases for special waivers.

This is a step towards the future of retail drone delivery, but as Matt Sweeney, whose startup Flirtey carried out the first FAA-approved drone delivery exercise last year explains:

“This is to some extent broader than some people in the industry were expecting. But as currently written, you can still not fly over people, you can still not fly beyond the line of sight and you cannot operate more than one drone at a time. And those are really the three key things that are required for the drone delivery industry to emerge at scale.”

Westerlies Blowing Ozone from China to US

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zone molecular electrical potential surface 3D-vdW.

Despite efforts to reduce the levels of ozone in the US, overall reduction has been stymied by the arrival of pollution across the Pacific Ocean from China.

A new study conducted by six researchers at US and Dutch universities shows that ozone concentrations in the air over China has gone up 7 percent between 2005 and 2010, and that this increased level of  ozone  is traveling through the air all the way from China to the western United States, off-setting the significant reduction in production in ozone levels there.

The US has put into place public policy to reduce emissions which are pre-cursers to the formation of ozone, such as nitrogen oxides. On the West Coast of the US that reduction in production amounted to about 20 percent. Yet the overall air quality, especially in ozone concentrations, did not improve.

Lead researcher from the Wageningen University in the Netherlands, Willem Verstraeten, said that the worsening air pollution in Asia could be the reason the US is not seeing the kind of ozone reduction it should.

Verstraeten theorized that the “dominant westerly winds blew this air pollution straight across to the United States.  As a manner of speaking, China is exporting its air pollution to the West Coast of America.”

Successful Social Media Giants Fail in Profitability

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Despite the importance and influence social media sites have had on the way we journey through the world, as businesses, they are almost universally failures.

Yelp was founded in 2004, and went public in 2012, boosted by the millions of people who were using the site to rate local businesses and read those ratings. Prior to the IPO the company raised $56 million in venture capital investments. The IPO brought in an additional $107 million. Still not able to switch to black ink after all this time, a secondary stock offering raised $250 million. Yet, profitability remained an elusive dream.

Before we judge Yelp to harshly, this is a good moment to point out that profitability for social media sites is the exception and not the rule. Today there are only two such online platforms that can be said to make money rather than lose it. Those two are Facebook, which took years to reach profit-making status, and LinkedIn, which has a paid pro subscription, making it less dependent on advertising. You will be looking long and hard to find another social media company that is in this exclusive club. Not YouTube. Not Twitter. And not Yelp.

Now Yelp is looking for a buyer. But its prospects are not good. This is a quote from the company’s annual report:

“We expect that our revenue growth rate will decline as a result of a variety of factors, including the maturation of our business and the gradual decline in the number of major geographic markets, especially within the United States, to which we have not already expanded.”

Over its lifetime Yelp has raised a total of about $400 million from investors. The company has a market value of $3.51 billion, and in 2014 they did manage to eke out a profit for the first time in their history. Over its lifetime, however, Yelp has reported a total of $34 million in losses.

Who will buy this company is yet to be seen. If they do, it will be not as a source of income, at least not soon, but as a way to provide this service to its otherwise loyal customers.