Orwell offers a lot of advice on writing well, a vital skill for any investor, in his essay “Politics and the English Language”
This postpulls out some of the main “bad habits” to be avoided.
It matters because writing clearly reveals understanding.
“You can shirk it by simply throwing your mind open and letting the ready made phrases come crowding in. They will construct your sentences for you — even think your thoughts for you, to certain extent — and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even yourself.”
“A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?“
Useful resource assessing the state of the logistics industry.
The index has been going for 5 years, consists of eight components and is calculated using a diffusion index i.e. readings above 50 indicate expansion.
The current stretch above 70 – meaning significant growth – is the longest on record.
Will be interesting to watch if the situation improves and along which components.
It shows how various financial assets (down the rows) react to the changing economic cycle (columns) as measured by the ISM Manufacturing Composite Index.
It covers the period 1995 – 2019.
Right now we are above 50 on the ISM index (59.9) but trending down.
How bad? “Forty million acres of land in the US consists of lawns. Maintaining them requires 800 million gallons of mower fuel and three million tonnes of (carcinogenic, endocrine-disrupting) fertilisers a year, and they guzzle up to 60 per cent of fresh water in urban areas.“
To make matters worse, grass only works as a carbon sink if it is left wild.
“Maintaining a patch of blank land on which no food grows, no animal feeds and no carbon is stored is as absurd as installing fake plastic grass.“
