Data Analysis

As a non-American observing America’s enthusiastic self-destructing, I find it utterly baffling that a man like Donald Trump could secure a second term. Over half the nation saw the individual who somehow achieved the rare feat of bankrupting not one but two casinos, which are famously designed to print money, as the best choice to lead the country. There’s definitely something wrong with America right?

When I relocated to Melbourne last September, I found myself renting again for the first time in nearly a decade. One of the hardest parts of moving to a new country was having no intuitive sense of which neighbourhoods were considered good, up-and-coming, or best avoided.

Few things frustrate me more than seeing anti-lockdown protestors, anti-vaxxers, or those who believe that vaccines somehow infringe upon their personal freedoms. The value of vaccination should be self-evident to anyone with even a shred of common sense.

It’s not often that three of my interests mash intersect together, in this case, my love of video games, data and technology. So you can imagine my excitement when I discovered a scandal in the making currently brewing in the collectable gaming world. Two significant players are colluding to inflate prices, causing a bubble rapidly.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not the greatest fan of politics, in a typical scenario I’d avoid talking about it like the plague. However, as the elections have come and gone, it’d be sacrilege for me to pretend the goldmine of electoral data now available did not exist. In this case, my love for all things data outweighs my disdain for politics. So I thought, why not make it fun?

New Zealand has officially entered into a recession after 11 years following two consecutive periods of negative GDP growth. This last time New Zealand was in a recession was in 2008 due to the global financial crisis. Given the current circumstances, it’s no surprise that this has occurred.

At the beginning of March, I made the unfortunate decision of investing into two exchange-traded funds (ETFs) which were SmartShare’s FNZ (NZ Top 50) and USF (Fortune 500). It was unfortunate because the world decided to set itself on fire due to the COVID-19 pandemic.