Topley’s Top Ten – January 7, 2020

Author

Matt Topley
January 07, 2020

1.Best Performing Stocks in the S&P Over the Last 30 Years.

Charlie Bilello@charliebilello

2.Sector and Size Final Performance 2019

Nasdaq Dorsey Wright  www.dorseywright.com

3.XAR Aerospace ETF Returns Almost Double the S&P The Last 5 Years.

XAR +113% vs. S&P +60%

4.Saudi Aramco Market Value Has Sunk by $200 Billion Since Post-IPO Peak.

  • Saudi Aramco’s market value has fallen by $200 billion since its mid-December peak, and the stock’s downtrend is accelerating in the wake of heightened tensions between the US and Iran.

  • The world’s most highly valued company fell 1.7% Sunday and as much as 1.2% Monday. The two-day drop placed shares at their lowest level since the firm’s December 11 IPO.

Saudi Aramco has seen $200 billion of market value erased since itsrecord-shattering IPO as Mideast tensions drag it lower-Ben Winck

5.The Share of Firms That Are Unprofitable in Russell 2000 Approaching Previous Highs.

GOLDMAN SACHS

Midwestern Hedgie

6.The U.S. Household Total Liabilities as a % of Disposable Personal Income.

7.Lowest Household Debt Service to Income Obligations in 40 Years.

JP MORGAN

8.In Theory Millennials Hitting Median Home Buying Age But …..Is that Age Shifting to Much Older?

Callum Thomas Topdown Charts

9.Troop Levels in Iraq.

GEOPOLITICAL TENSIONS– The killing of top Iraniancommander Qassem Soleimani on Friday has heightened concerns of a wideningMiddle East conflict that could disrupt oil supplies from a region thataccounts for nearly half of the world’s oil production.  In response toIran’s warnings of retaliation, Trump has threatened to hit 52 Iranian sites,including cultural targets, if Tehran attacks Americans or U.S. assets, deepening acrisis that has heightened fears of a new Middle East conflagration.

One of Iran’s main regional goals –driving U.S. forces out of neighboring Iraq – came a step closer on Sunday whenthe Iraqi parliament backed a recommendation by the prime minister forall foreign troops to be ordered out.  Iraq’s rival Shi’iteleaders, including ones opposed to Iranian influence, have united since Friday’s attack in calling for theexpulsion of U.S. troops.

From Dave Lutz at JonesTrading.

10.Start the New Year Off Right With These 7 Simple Time Management Tips

Todd CherchesCEO and Management & Leadership Consultant and Executive Coach at BigBlueGum… See More46 articles Following

OK,you’ve made your new year’s resolutions…but now what? Where and how do youstart?

Asthe management guru Peter Drucker famously put it, “Time is the scarcest resource;if it is not managed, nothing else can be.” So how are you going to manageyour time . . . while you try to manage to find the time to do all that youneed to do this year?

Thereare a million time management and personal productivity tools, tips, andtechniques out there. You can spend hours researching all of them (but thenyou really wouldn’t getanything done), or you can start with any of the following seven simple tips that I’m suggesting below — allof which I use, in one way or another, to get stuff done.

Whilemany of these techniques may at first glance appear to be just commonsense…as the saying goes, “Common sense is not always commonpractice.” And it is putting these ideas into practice — to achieveresults — that really matters.

Sohere are seven of my favorite time management methods tohelp you get the most—and the best—out of your day, week, month, and year:

1.The To-Do List or Master Checklist – So simple and obvious, and yetmost people just don’t have one. You may have a collection of scraps of paperscattered about, Post-it Notes stuck to your computer, or random scribbles in anotebook or on your phone, but most people do no have ONE single organized anddetailed “Master List” of everything you need to do all in one place.If you do nothing else, do this. Consolidate. Life is complex enough, soanything you can do to simplify will help. Having everything in oneplace will not only help you to get your life more organized, so that youcan find everything at a glance, it will reduce stress by helping you to getyour brain more organized, thereby freeing you up to think more clearly, makebetter decisions, innovate, and succeed. As Atul Gawande’s bestsellingbook TheChecklist Manifesto powerfullyillustrates, a simple checklist can, literally, save lives. So why not startwith your own?

2.Time Management Matrix (aka the Eisenhower Matrix) – Popularized byStephen Covey in his classic book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, (and discussedin even greater detail in his First Things First), this simple 4-quadrant model can helpyou more effectively manage your time (and your to-do list) by thinking interms of “urgency” and “importance.” The basic premise is that if we spend allour time scrambling around, dealing with the urgent (e.g., crises,interruptions, and distractions), then when and how do we ever find the time todo the big, important things that really matter?

3.Time-Cost-Quality Triangle – Every decision we make involves these threefactors. It’s up to you to determine what matters, as there are alwaystrade-offs involved and decisions to be made — and a change in any one factorwill impact the other two. (In project management terminology, we may talk interms of Scope, Schedule, and Budget.) Do you want it done right . . . or doyou want it done right now? Usually you can’t have it both ways. For example,delivering high quality tends to take more time, and often costs more. Everyonewants everything “better, faster, and cheaper,” but is that realisticallypossible? Even when deciding whether to walk, take the subway, or take a cab orUber/Lyft, we’re playing these three variables off each other! This simple,triangular model won’t make the decision for you, but it will help you toprioritize and to make better and more confident decisions.

4.SMART Goals –A big part of New Year’s resolutions is setting our goals or objectives for theyear. So why do we so often fail to achieve them? Because the goals we setwere, most likely, not “SMART”! A “SMART” goal is:

Specific (as opposedto broad, vague, or general); Measurable (thatis, quantifiable—as Drucker said, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manageit”); Achievable (that is, a challenge and a stretch,but realistically doable); Relevant (thegoal must be meaningful and significant); Time-oriented (thereneeds to be a deadline to be met, because what you can do “anytime” will, mostlikely, be done at no time).

Saying“I’d like to lose some weight this year” is a good intention; but it’s not aSMART Goal that will increase your odds of getting you there. Saying (or,better yet, writing it down and saying out loud to others who will hold youaccountable): “I am committed to only eating X number of calories per day, andworking out five days a week, with the realistic and tangible goal of losing 5pounds a month over the next 6 months” is more likely to get you closer toachieving your ultimate objective than just hoping it will somehow magicallyhappen by itself. Take it from me: Two years ago I lost a little over 10 poundsa month for 3 straight months (yes, 36 pounds total!)…and (other than a fewfive-pound-fluctuations) I’ve managed to pretty much keep it off ever since. Icould not have accomplished this difficult feat without setting — and keeping— my SMART goals.

5. The Three B’s: Bookending, Blocking, and Batching –Very simply, these three B’s are easy to remember and not that difficult todo…if you make the time and take the time to actually do them.

Bookending: Reserve thefirst and last half-hour or hour of your day (e.g., 8:00am-9:00am and5:00pm-6:00pm, depending on your schedule) for solo, silent, undistractedreflection, planning, and reading time. You could also “bookend” your week,month, and year. Not taking the time – with yourself and for yourself — toreflect, assess, strategize, and plan is a good way to spend dayafter day just spinning your wheels and burning out, while never getting any ofthe most important things done.

Blocking: If you don’tcontrol your calendar, everyone else will. Block out a few hours a week of“me time” (even if it’s just a half hour or an hour atlunchtime), so you can recharge and refresh, and/or to actually get somereal work done…rather than just running from one meeting or task to the next.

Batching: Instead ofstopping and starting as things pop up, group similar things together (e.g.,responding to non-urgent emails and phone calls, doing paperwork, filing, billpaying, etc.) and knock them out all at one time when you can give theselow-priority (but highly important) tasks your undivided attention.

6.The 18 Minutes Method –Author Peter Bregman, in his thought-provoking and highly engaging book of thesame name, recommends something similar to bookending, with an added twist: Hesays that you should dedicate five minutes at the start of each day forplanning and five minutes at the end of the day for reflection (that’s ten ofthe eighteen minutes). But he also suggests you spend one minute of every hourin between (set the alarm on your watch or phone to go off each hour) toSTOP…pause…and ask yourself: Is what I’m doing right now what I SHOULD bespending my time on right now?

Inthis day and age, it’s way too easy to go online to check Facebook “for aminute,” only to look up and realize that it’s lunchtime already and you’vegotten absolutely nothing done. So you come back from lunch, log back in, andthen go off on a “Google Field Trip” – you know…when you go online to looksomething up, only to find that it’s now five hours later and you can’t evenremember what “that” was.

7.The Two-Minute Rule –If something will take less than two minutes (or even less than five minutes)to do, just get it done RIGHT NOW. Rather than adding it to your To-Do list, ortaking ten times as long to delegate and explain it to someone else, just knockit off now and move on to the next thing. You’ll feel good about makingprogress as you check things off your list; and, again, it will allow youto focus on the big things. (This and other great tips can be found in DavidAllen’s GettingThings Done,which is probably the most popular personal productivity book out there today.)

Asmentioned previously, there are tons of other related tools, tips, andtechniques around, but I’ll stop here.

You’reprobably thinking: I barely have time to keep up with my email and all mymeetings — how am I supposed to find the time to do everything on this list?The answer is, don’t try to do everything. Just pick one or two of these suggestions—the onesyou think will have the biggest immediate impact—and focus on making a fewsmall adjustments and improvements . . . one day at a time.

Doingso is an investment. And like any long-term investment, you may not see thepayoff right away, but you will see the return on investment — yes — overtime. You know, the whole “journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”and all that.

Thekey is to just get started.

Andnow is as good a time as any.

CEO and Management & Leadership Consultantand Executive Coach at BigBlueGumball; TEDx speaker; author of the book,“VisuaLeadership.”Published • 3hhttps://www.linkedin.com/pulse/start-new-year-off-right-7-simple-time-management-tips-todd-cherches-1f/?trackingId=nmeDexYjk69ONvnWua5YTA%3D%3D