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The Club PUBlication 10/29/2018

10/29/2018

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The Club
PUBlication

Fighting Fear in a Volatile Market

KEVIN VOIGT
Minneapolis Star Tribune

After eight months of steady gains, stock-market volatility has again rocked investors .

When stock markets tremble, the advice from financial advisers is simple: Stick to your investment plan.

That’s easier said than done. If your financial house is on fire, you want to fight the flames or flee . To stand back, watch and periodically throw more money on the bonfire is tough even for the most seasoned investor .

Here are some ways to sidestep the natural emotional triggers that can be costly during the next market correction or crash.

Beware of ‘market crash PTSD.’ The last bout of volatility was during February’s correction, in which the major indexes tumbled by more than 10 percent, troubling a market that in 2017 had enjoyed a five-decade low for wild moves.

Sudden market turns have a way of stirring up memories of 2008’s Great Recession . Market corrections and recessions are inevitable, but there’s no reason to expect that a downturn of an equivalent magnitude is right around the corner.

Ignore your portfolio’s peak. Humans are hard-wired to feel drops in portfolio value more than equivalent gains, a phenomenon known as “loss aversion.” So when you see the value of assets below their peak, the urge is to stanch the loss by selling. But really, the smarter thing to do would be to hold — or even to purchase some more of these beaten-up stocks, a practice known as buying the dip.

“ You need to look where you are at now vs. where you started — don’t look at your peak,” says Patricia Jenner-john , a financial planner in Oakland, Calif. “ Look how much your portfolio has grown since you started — keep that in perspective.”

Tune out financial news and panicky ads. When global markets drop, wall-to-wall coverage by the financial media creates a sense of impending doom.

To protect your portfolio — and your sanity — advisers recommend not watching daily moves, but instead checking in monthly, quarterly or annually. Also, resist those strident market pitches online that proliferate in turbulent times.

Keep cash in the market. The return of volatility once again raises concern that the stock market finally will descend into bear territory, defined as a drop of at least 20 percent from the most recent high. Even though there have been five slumps in excess of 10 percent over the past nine years, U.S. stocks still are in the midst of the second-longest bull market in history. During periods of volatility, it can pay to keep calm and invest on.

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The Club PUBlication 10/22/2018

10/22/2018

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The Club
PUBlication

TORNADOES SPINNING TO EAST

U.S. tornado hot spots are shifting to areas where they could be more deadly, and it’s unclear why!

By SETH BORENSTEIN Associated Press
Minneapolis Start Tribune Sun Oct21, 2018

DANNY JOHNSTON • Associated Press Dustin Shaw searched through the rubble of his sister’s house after a tornado in Vilonia, Ark., in 2014. A new study finds that tornado activity is shifting to areas east of the Mississippi River .

WASHINGTON – Over the past few decades tornadoes have been shifting — decreasing in Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas but spinning up more in states along the Mississippi River and farther east, a new study shows. Scientists aren’t quite certain why.

Tornado activity is increasing most in Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, Louisiana, Alabama, Kentucky, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa and parts of Ohio and Michigan, according to a study in the journal Climate and Atmospheric Science. There has been a slight decrease in the Great Plains, with the biggest drop in central and eastern Texas. Even with the decline, Texas still gets the most tornadoes of any state.

The shift could be deadly because the area with increasing tornado activity is bigger and home to more people, said study lead author Victor Gensini, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Northern Illinois University. Also, more people live in vulnerable mobile homes, and tornadoes are more likely to happen at night in those places, he said.

Even though Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma get many more tornadoes, the four deadliest states for tornadoes are Alabama, Missouri, Tennessee and Arkansas, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“More folks are generally at risk because of that eastward shift,” Gensini said.

For a number of years, ideas about shifting tornado frequency have floated around, but little hard data has supported them.

“We believe these trends in tornado environments are significant and have not been documented with this level of detail,” the study says.

Because tornadoes sometimes go undercounted, especially in the past and in less-populous areas, scientists don’t like to study trends by using counts of tornadoes. Gensini and tornado scientist Harold Brooks of the National Severe Storms Lab looked at “significant tornado parameters” (STP), a measurement of the key ingredients of tornado conditions. It looks at differences between wind speed and direction at different altitudes, how unstable the air is and humidity. The more of those three ingredients, the more likely tornadoes will form.

The increases in this measurement mirrored slightly smaller increases found in number of twisters.

Everywhere east of the Mississippi, except the west coast of Florida, is seeing some increase in tornado activity. The biggest increase occurred in states bordering the Mississippi River.

“[We found] a robust downward trend in the annual accumulation of STP across the central and southern Great Plains,” the study says. “Meanwhile, a robust upward trend is found in portions of the Southeast, Midwest, and Northeast.”

Overall there is a slight increase in tornado activity, but it’s not too much and not nearly like what’s happening in the east, Gensini said.

Why is this happening?

“We don’t know,” Gensini said. “This is super consistent with climate change.”

As the Great Plains dry out, there’s less moisture to have the type of storms that spawn tornadoes, Gensini said. Tornadoes form along the “dry line” where there are more thunderstorms because there’s dry air to the west and moist air from the Gulf of Mexico to the east.

That dry line is moving east.

“This is what you would expect in a climate change scenario, we just have no way of confirming it at the moment,” Gensini said.

Gensini said unless there are specific detailed studies, he and others cannot say this is caused by global warming .

The Washington Post contributed to this story.

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The Club PUBlication 10/15/2018

10/15/2018

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The Club
PUBlication

New Roof = 3 trees?

3M’s smog-reducing granules in shingles use sunlight to photocatalytically convert smog into water-soluble ions, actively reducing air pollution.

3M's new granules for shingles help curb air pollution

3M has developed coated granules that can break up some elements of smog.
By Dee DePass Star Tribune

OCTOBER 13, 2018 — 3:22PM

3M Co. has a new product to fight air pollution, and it’s not a filter or industrial monitor. It’s a granule used in roof shingles.

When the granules are exposed to ultraviolet sunlight, “radicals” are generated that then transform nitrogen oxide into a substance that washes away with rain instead of polluting the air, officials said.

The product falls under 3M’s industrial mineral products unit and is aimed for use on residential homes. Commercial buildings for many years have had solutions such as solar-reflective granules and “green roofs,” which grow grass or gardens on top of buildings to help with the environment.

Solutions for the residential side of the business have not been nearly as robust, 3M said.
The company is marketing its new product as residential asphalt shingles, which cover about 80 percent of U.S. home roofs.

The new smog-reducing “roofing granules are a first for residential asphalt shingles,” said Frank Klink, 3M senior laboratory manager. “This smart solution for pollution mitigation can help communities toward their [nitrogen oxide] emission reduction efforts.”

The new product adds to 3M’s roofing might.

The company, which started making granules in the 1930s, is now one of the largest roof materials suppliers in the country with customers such as Owens Corning, Malarkey Roofing, Atlas Roofing and CertainTeed. Over the years, 3M has developed products with environmentally friendly elements such as heat reflective granules for “cool roofs” and coatings that fight roof algae.

Gayle Schueller, 3M’s chief sustainability officer, expects demand for the smog-reducing granules will grow as cities continue to grow and environmental concerns continue to be front of mind.

“We expect there will be a lot of interest in this,” she said.

For example, Los Angeles recently mandated all new home roofs be made with products that help the environment.

In June, Oregon-based Malarkey Roofing Products became the first shingle maker to blend and adhere 3M’s anti-smog granules onto its shingles.

Every shingle leaving Malarkey’s Los Angeles factory is now made with the new product. Malarkey’s shingle plants in Portland, Ore., and Oklahoma City will follow soon. The company started in Los Angeles because of the new mandates.

Malarkey CEO Jim Fagan expects his new shingles will be popular elsewhere, too. Salt Lake City, Phoenix, San Antonio, and Austin, Texas, are all dealing with smog-related problems.
By January, all shingles shipped to Minneapolis will have the 3M granules as well, Fagan said.

The smog-reducing granules cost more than other varieties, he said.

To avoid consumer price shock, only 5 percent of each shingle has 3M’s product. But that 5 percent was enough to provide “three trees’ ” worth of air pollution fighting might per roof.
“That three trees is what we wanted,” Fagan said. “It’s the simple concept that you can do little things to make a big change. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.”

Other shingle makers and the state of Minnesota say 3M has piqued their interest.

“This new technology from 3M is very interesting to us. It has the potential to be a differentiator in the market,” said Matt Schroder, spokesman for Owens Corning Roofing, which has a shingle plant in Minneapolis. “As with any new technology, our team must first research how, when and where it could make sense for us to go to market.”

According to San Francisco-based Grand View Research, asphalt/shingle roofing represents about 27 percent of the global $105 billion roofing materials market.

3M would not discuss revenue expectations for the new smog-resistant product.

Wayne Gjerde, a market development coordinator with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, said 3M could be onto something novel.

“Anything that can reduce smog containing material is a good thing. We would be positively in favor of that,” Gjerde said.

To prove the smog-resistant technology actually works, 3M sent the new roof granules to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which evaluated the product using gasses in a reaction chamber. The nitrogen oxide concentrations were recorded in real time before, during and after being exposed to ultraviolet light.

“The testing validated the efficacy of 3M’s photocatalytic materials in reducing smog and contributing towards air purification,” Klink said.

Jonathan Parfrey, executive director of the nonprofit Climate Resolve, hailed 3M’s efforts.

“We view smog-reducing technology [that is] embedded into mainstream roofing materials as a great step forward in addressing air quality and climate concerns,” Parfrey said. “This is not a magic bullet on its own, but it is a very helpful bullet on the approach to controlling air pollution. So we are very excited about this solution. I could see 3M having a very robust market here in California. … If you look at the 10 most smoggy areas in the county, eight of them are in California,” Parfrey said.

Dee DePass is a business reporter for the Star Tribune. She spent the last four years covering Minnesota's manufacturing and mining industries. She previously covered the economy, workplace issues and banking.
dee.depass@startribune.com 612-673-7725 DePassStrib

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The Club Publication 10/08/2018

10/8/2018

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The Club
PUBlication

Sauna habit may have benefits of regular exercise

Sauna habit may have benefits of regular exerciseResearchers say benefits increase with frequency.
By Amby Burfoot Washington Post

SEPTEMBER 29, 2018 — 10:49AM

New research indicates that regular saunas could be as healthful as regular exercise. Bonus: You don’t really have to do that frosty dip.

Finns are known for their ancient sauna habit, which dates back 10,000 years to the use of earthen pits. Nowadays their tradition is to toast themselves in a tent or small wooden cabinet, often followed by a jump in a frigid lake.

New research indicates that regular saunas could be as healthful as regular exercise. Bonus: You don’t really have to do that frosty dip.

The Mayo Clinic Proceedings published a paper titled “Cardiovascular and Other Health Benefits of Sauna Bathing: A Review of the Evidence.” The researchers conclude: “Emerging evidence suggests that sauna bathing may be linked to several health benefits, which include reduction in the risk of vascular diseases such as high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, and neurocognitive diseases; nonvascular conditions such as pulmonary diseases; mortality; and amelioration of conditions such as arthritis, headache, and flu.”

A team of researchers (yes, from Finland) reviewed all existing studies on sauna bathing through February of this year. The studies typically included subjects who spent five to 20 minutes in a sauna heated to 175 to 210 degrees, followed by a swim, shower or return to room temperature. Sauna exposure raised subjects’ heart rates to 120 to 150 beats per minute and increased blood flow to the skin, much as moderate exercise does.

Several large studies have determined that the practice is linked to lower blood pressure and decreased artery stiffness. In addition, subjects who visit a sauna four to seven times a week have 60 percent lower rates of heart disease and stroke than those who visit once a week. “Sauna may be a new way to reduce cardiovascular risk,” said lead researcher Jari Laukkanen, a cardiologist and professor at the University of Eastern Finland. “It is a kind of third factor in addition to diet and exercise.”

But be aware of the risks. Saunas are superheated. Drinking water is fine but not alcohol; consumption of alcohol has led to sauna and post-sauna accidents. And while there’s little evidence associating a chilly plunge or shower with heart attack or arrhythmia, experts generally advise against a cold shock.

As with any exercise routine, start slow, with maybe just a few minutes of heat exposure for your first sauna. Increase sauna time gradually

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The Club PUBlication 10/01/2018

10/1/2018

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The Club
PUBlication

Diets too low in carbs may increase risk of premature death over time.
Deep cuts can offer gains in short term, but may be risky over the long haul, researchers say.
By Karen D’Souza Mercury News

SEPTEMBER 22, 2018 — 12:51AM

Pasta. Sourdough. Mashed potatoes. If you are one of the legions of dieters out there who have been religiously cutting carbs in an attempt to get lean and fit, you may be surprised by a recent study that showed that low carb diets may not be healthy after all.

In fact, they may be unsafe.

Research presented at the European Society of Cardiology Congress in Germany found that diets very low in carbohydrates may actually increase the risk of premature death over time
.
The author of the study, Professor Maciej Banach, of the Medical University of Lodz, Poland, said: “We found that people who consumed a low carbohydrate diet were at greater risk of premature death. Risks were also increased for individual causes of death including coronary heart disease, stroke, and cancer. These diets should be avoided.”

The study — which has not been published in a peer-reviewed journal — used diet and health data from almost 25,000 people collected through the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey between 1999 and 2010, according to Time.

The researchers found that over an average of 6.4 years of follow-up, people who consumed the lowest amount of carbohydrates had a 32 percent higher risk of total mortality, a roughly 50 percent higher risk of dying from vascular diseases and a 36 percent higher risk of dying from cancer, compared to people who ate the most carbs.

As Banach said: “Low carbohydrate diets might be useful in the short term to lose weight, lower blood pressure, and improve blood glucose control, but our study suggests that in the long-term they are linked with an increased risk of death from any cause, and deaths due to cardiovascular disease, cerebrovascular disease, and cancer.”

Part of the problem may be that people who eliminate carbs might be pigging out on high fat foods instead.
As Despina Hyde, a registered dietitian at NYU Langone’s Weight Management Program, said: “When you’re not eating carbs, you have to eat something. We tend to eat higher protein and higher fat (on a low-carb diet).”

Plus, she said, “carbohydrates are the only source we have of fiber, and fiber is great for reducing risk of breast cancer, lowering our cholesterol and making us feel full for longer.”

Apparently it’s possible to have too much or too little carbohydrate in your life.

“These findings bring together several strands that have been controversial,” said co-author Walter Willett at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “Too much and too little carbohydrate can be harmful but what counts most is the type of fat, protein and carbohydrate.”

Although it’s not a sexy answer, the best path may well be moderation.

Eating carbs is good for us, as long as we are choosing good carbs. Think black beans, fruit, quinoa and whole grains.

You can feel free to cut back on stuff like white bread, white pasta and cookies.

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