Economic and Regulatory Opportunities

Economic Opportunities

Economic 1:
a) Microsoft is acquiring GitHub for $7.5B in stock announced today and expected to close on the deal by the end of the year per Yahoo Finance at https://finance.yahoo.com/news/official-microsoft-spend-whopping-7-131139569.html.
b) The main reason I believe this presents a huge opportunity is because Microsoft is a world leader in software and GitHub is a world leader in software development for engineers around the world. The acquisition price is higher than the previously expected one of $5B and represents Microsoft's interest in the services GitHub provides as well as their expected growth and revenue from this acquisition.
c) The prototypical customer in this case is anyone who uses Microsoft software on their computer including students, employees and whole corporations. Customers also include anyone in the financial services industry looking for places to park capital.
d) This opportunity is fairly easy to exploit, right now Microsoft stock is in the midst of adjusting to the information and Wall Street is getting it's valuations down for the company based off of this new information. The simple idea would be to invest capital into Microsoft in hopes it will go off based on future developments from this acquisition.

Why? I am very interested in financial markets and stock news, acquisitions and data but also how these relate to one another. The acquisition of a open source software development company by a leader in software products may seem counter intuitive as open source does not lead to revenue that Microsoft clearly relies on as a corporation. However, this is the acquisition of talent and ideas, problem solvers, that Microsoft now has on tap in order to inject themselves into global markets and people around the world. They have direct access to putting their software into the hands of people freely and having continuous updates on that material at no cost to them. 

Economic 2:
a) Trumps actions are worsening economic relations with Europe and pushing them to seek energy more from the Russians and Putin according to https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-04/as-trump-riles-europe-on-trade-putin-offers-more-natural-gas?utm_source=yahoo&utm_medium=bd&utm_campaign=headline&cmpId=yhoo.headline&yptr=yahoo
b) The new pipeline proposed and in progress by Putin and the Russians goes directly into Germany from Siberia and bypasses current stops in the Ukraine that provide crucial revenue for the region. this is also making the European area more dependent on Russia for it's energy needs. The dependency on energy solely from Russia and the deprived workforce of Ukraine presents two strong opportunities for business.
c) The typical consumer here is going to be workers in the Ukraine that are unemployed because of the deal and have knowledge and experience working in the energy sector. They would be perfect candidates for a new energy company based in their country that can compete with the Russians for the European marketplace consumers.
d) This opportunity is pretty difficult to exploit as it involves traveling across the world to the Ukraine and setting up an energy company that can compete with an entire country already established in the energy business.

Why? Energy is a passion of mine and moving towards renewable energy sources is something that I see as vital to the technological progression of the world. The fact that the energy Russia is providing here is natural gas means that it is not as clean as it could be and eventually will run out. Europe is also an area that is moving towards more renewable and sustainable sources of energy so the interest to pursue those sources is already there. Also, Europe would be pleased to move away from a dependency on Russia for energy when they are allies with the United States.

Regulatory Opportunities 

Regulatory 1:
a) Proposal 67 to Florida's Constitution Revision Commission to phase out commercial greyhound racing by 2020 found at http://www.orlandosentinel.com/sports/george-diaz-en-fuego/os-sp-florida-dog-racing-george-diaz-0323-story.html.
b) Greyhound racing and betting is a huge industry in Florida, where 13 of the nations 18 tracks reside. There is major revenue for these tracks in the gambling that occurs and the phasing out will leave a gambling consumer base that does not have a similar area to go to and gamble, opening opportunities for other establishments to capture these revenues. 
c) The prototypical customer here is going to be the avid gambler that goes to the track and spends tens to hundreds to thousands of dollars per week on greyhound racing.
d) This opportunity is relatively easy to exploit, given the federal ban on sports gambling being recently lifted so that new places can be built to capture these gamblers.

Why? I knew about this because I love animals, in particular dogs, and I am up to date on changes being made in laws in Florida. This is a relatively obscure piece of news but it is gaining some traction now as the greyhound racing is cruel and inhumane, killing hundreds of dogs and treating them very poorly. I wish to see the end of this industry and hopefully move people who do want to gamble into better areas that are not killing animals.

Regulatory 2:
a) The General Data Protection Regulation aims to give control to users of their personal data in the European Union but Google is disrupting that based on https://digiday.com/media/google-data-protection-regulation-gdpr-strafing-ad-sellers/.
b) Google is redirecting ad vendors to its site to buy demand because users have already given consent through using Google. This is crowding out it's competitors and making them lots of money. There is going to have to be a shift by someone in the marketplace to recover some users and revenue back from Google and being up to date on industry knowledge will put you in the best place to be able to capitalize on this information.
c) The customer here is ad companies looking for users who have given their consent to personal data being used to match with ads to generate revenue.
d) The opportunity is somewhat tricky to exploit as it requires extensive knowledge of who is in the ad sector currently and what they are working on to combat Google, one of the worlds largest and most powerful companies.

Why? Our lives rely heavily on the internet now and personal data is a huge concern after recent Facebook events so it is a hot topic. Most people right now are concerned with their own data and not necessarily monitoring companies' uses of other peoples data. People are also more locally focused like in the United States, rather than what is happening over seas in other countries, whereas I'm pretty globally minded.