3 charts for you today:
In the last 12 months, the US stock market (S&P 500 index) has gone up 70% — a bounce that almost no-one would have predicted during March of last year, when stocks were crashing and the pandemic was just beginning to grind our lives to a halt.
We've gone back over all of the US stock market data we could get our hands on, all the way back to the late 1920s, to get some historical context — and the results are pretty astonishing. Stock markets haven't risen this fast in a 12-month period for literally 85 years. Markets came close in 2009, but the last time US stocks went up this much in 12 months was all the way back in 1936.
Egypt's Suez Canal has been blocked by an enormous 400-metre (1300+ ft) long tanker that has run aground sideways in one of the world's busiest trade routes.
To say that the Suez Canal is an important trade route would be a phenomenal understatement. About 10% of global trade passes through the human-made Suez Canal, which connects the Mediterranean Sea with the Indian Ocean, cutting off more than 7,500km for a trip from London to Mumbai. It's plenty long (190km), but only a few hundred metres wide.
In 2019 almost 19,000 cargo ships passed through the Suez Canal, transporting 1,200 million tons of cargo through the waterway — a record for the canal.
Time = Money
We all know time is money, but for the Suez Canal, that saying holds particularly true. Around 50 container ships pass through the waterway every day, with an average toll fee of around $300k per ship — although the fees vary greatly depending on size, tonnage and other factors.
That means every day the passage is blocked is potentially $10-15m of lost fees, not to mention the delays and costs incurred by the waiting ships, which likely runs into the many millions as well. And you thought parallel parking with a few cars waiting was stressful.
Facebook has announced that in the last 3 months of 2020 they removed approximately 1.3 billion fake accounts from their platform. That means that Facebook has now deleted almost 16 billion accounts since 2018, which is equivalent to deleting their entire monthly active userbase fives times over.
Whack-a-mole
Removing tens of millions of fake accounts every single day has become routine for Facebook, like an obscene game of whack-a-mole, in which perpetrators hope to slip through Facebook's net in order to try and defraud its users, spread misinformation or perpetrate a scam.
A quick Google search reveals just how big a problem Facebook has on their hands. Within a few seconds of searching we found 3 websites offering to sell verified Facebook accounts, with "real" photos, ages and information for somewhere between $10-15 per account (bulk discounts exist even in shady deals it seems).
Moderating fake accounts is arguably the most important part of Facebook's wider moderation strategy. Misinformation, hate-speech, nudity, fraud and drug sales are all often perpetrated through fake or pseudonymous accounts.
Facebook recognises the battle it has on its hands, and it employs 35,000 people to help it moderate its content. Although algorithms catch a lot of the harmful content, much is still flagged by actual human moderators, some of whom have suffered PTSD from some of the content.
Our bad: In last week's newsletter we wrote: "in Italy each woman gives birth to 1.3 children per year on average". Our apologies folks - Italy wouldn't have an ageing population if that was true. The words "per year" should not have been there.
1) The latest World Happiness Report is out and Finland has come top of the country list (again). You can check out the full rankings here. We also wrote about the relationship between happiness and income last year, which you can read here.
2) Robinhood, the brokerage of choice for many retail traders, has confidentially filed for an IPO. The trading platform raised money at an $11.7bn valuation last year. Does this mean people can trade Robinhood stock on Robinhood?
3) An EU inspection has "found" 29 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine in Italy. The EU is reportedly willing to block the export of the doses, if they are not already intended to be used within the EU.
4) A great visualization from Neil Kaye on reddit, explaining visually the weekly gain or loss of daylight over the course of year (for someone in the Northern Hemisphere).
5)Quickbase apps have been delivered 3-4x quicker than with traditional development. Schedule a free demo with Quickbase and see if no-code building can help your business.*
***This is a sponsored snack.
