Markets In Everything: Invest in your Star Athlete

How about investing in a financial security linked to the income stream of financial performance of your favorite professional athlete? 

From Deal Book New York Times: 

First, there was old-fashioned gambling on football. Then came the fantasy leagues. And now, thanks to Wall Street, fans can buy a stake in their favorite player.

On Thursday, a start-up company announced a new trading exchange for investors to buy and sell interests in professional athletes. Backed by executives from Silicon Valley, Wall Street and the sports world, the company plans to create stocks tied to an athlete’s financial performance.

After considering a number of possibilities for its inaugural initial public offering, the company found a charismatic candidate in Arian Foster, the Pro Bowl running back of the Houston Texans. Investors in the deal will receive stock linked to Mr. Foster’s future earnings, which includes the value of his playing contracts, corporate endorsements and appearance fees.

The company, Fantex Holdings, has grand ambitions beyond a Foster I.P.O. — it hopes to sign up more football players and other athletes, as well as celebrities like pop singers and Hollywood actors.

This is demonstrative of the market’s innovative process at work. Entrepreneurs think up ways and means to profit from what they see as economic opportunities by taking risks through the introduction of new instruments, products or services.

Innovation is a common feature of capitalist societies. As Austrian economist Robert Higgs pointed out

In his justly famous 1942 book Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, Joseph A. Schumpeter described the dynamics of a market economy as a process of “creative destruction.” In his view, innovation—“the new consumers’ goods, the new methods of production or transportation, the new markets, the new forms of industrial organization that capitalist enterprise creates”—drives this process. Its most important result is that for the first time in history, the mass of the population in developed countries enjoys a standard of living that even the aristocrats of past ages could scarcely have imagined, much less have actually had.

In the above case, stocks linked to celebrities seem like a new form of entertainment.

Markets in Everything: Solar Impulse, the Fuel Less Plane

Speaking of the gush of technological advancements from the deepening of the information age, here is another: the advent of fuel less solar driven airplane: the Solar Impulse

Here is an excerpt from Wall Street Journal (hat tip EPJ)

FOR BERTRAND PICCARD, the idea to build a solar-powered plane capable of circumnavigating the globe was hatched while running on empty. In March 1999, Piccard was on the final leg of an around-the-world journey by hot air balloon—the first-ever nonstop flight of its kind—when his Breitling Orbiter 3 swept low over the Egyptian desert and skidded to a halt on the corrugated plains. As Piccard stepped out onto the hot sand, he checked the fuel tanks mounted on his gondola and got a shock that became a defining moment. "We had left Switzerland with four tons of propane," he remembers. "We only had 40 kilos left! We almost didn't make it. I promised myself that next time I would fly around the world without using any fuel at all."

The 55-year-old Piccard, a trained psychiatrist with a confident, intense manner to match, is adept at making sure there is always a "next time"—no surprise, since he's descended from explorer royalty. His grandfather, Auguste, broke high altitude records in the '30s by designing a balloon with a pressurized cockpit, and later became the inspiration for Professor Calculus in the Tintin comics. In 1960, Piccard's father, Jacques, descended seven miles beneath the Pacific Ocean in another pressurized module to set a deep-dive record that has been matched only twice.

In 2003, Piccard approached European companies to sponsor what has become a $148 million project and began assembling a team of 80 engineers and technicians plucked largely from Swiss universities. After seven years of tinkering, they arrived at a machine with a deceptively simple design: Solar Impulse—with its sleek, clean lines, white-gloss finish and rakishly angled 208-foot wings (bent to increase the plane's stability)—resembles what you might get had Steve Jobs reimagined a child's balsa-wood glider in giant form.

Read more here

The wonders of human ingenuity.

Markets in Everything: Rent a Boyfriend

In China, online entrepreneurs have found a business niche by serving female lonely hearts: the rent a boyfriend business model

From the Telegraph (hat tip Carpe Diem's Mark Perry)

The Chinese New Year is fast approaching, and millions of girls will be schlepping home from their jobs in the city to their families in the countryside. According to the Globe and Mail, “Because so many Chinese live and work away from their native towns and villages, and travel home only once a year, the treasured family time is weighted with pressure to show what you’ve accomplished over the last 12 months.” It can be a particularly miserable experience for girls who don’t bring home a boyfriend, leading to endless questions about why they’re not dating and where their life’s going. In this sexist society, ladies over 27 who aren’t hitched are labelled “leftover women.”

Thankfully, the internet has a solution for all those loveless leftovers. If you don’t have a man to bring home to the folks, just rent one for the week.

Over 300 boyfriend-rental services are currently listed on the Chinese shopping site Taobao. One ad reads, “Not getting any younger and still dreading facing the nagging parents? Need a boyfriend to face the family?" If the answer is “yes” then a girl can pick from a wide range of boys who charge a flat rate plus commission on a whole host of thrilling activities.

Markets in Everything: Speculating on Airfare, Beer for Space Travelers

How about this: When buying your airfare; get a discount if speculate right on fuel prices or pay more if you’re wrong.

From Business Opportunities Weblog Network

AllegiantAir wants it’s customers to be able to gamble on fuel prices. They’ve written a letter to the Department of Transportation asking for permission to allow their customers to be able to choose between a traditional fixed-price ticket and a discounted, variable-price one. If the price of jet fuel falls by the departure date, customers with a variable ticket would get some cash back. If the price climbs, they would pay more, up to a pre-disclosed cap.

Or how about specialized beer for astronauts and for space travelers?

From another Business Opportunities Weblog Network article

It’s too late for Oktoberfest, but the world’s first space beer will soon be available, if tests by Astronauts4Hire prove it has the right stuff.

The beer, produced as a joint venture between Saber Astronautics Australia and the 4-Pines Brewing Company, is a recipe designed for easy drinking in both in microgravity and on Earth. It is intended to meet anticipated demand from the nascent space tourism market.

Yes space tourism will be accessible to the paying public very soon.

Markets in Everything: Prison Cells, Car Pool Lane and More…

It is inherent in us to trade.

From the Atlantic

THERE ARE SOME THINGS money can’t buy—but these days, not many. Almost everything is up for sale. For example:

• A prison-cell upgrade: $90 a night. In Santa Ana, California, and some other cities, nonviolent offenders can pay for a clean, quiet jail cell, without any non-paying prisoners to disturb them.

• Access to the carpool lane while driving solo: $8. Minneapolis, San Diego, Houston, Seattle, and other cities have sought to ease traffic congestion by letting solo drivers pay to drive in carpool lanes, at rates that vary according to traffic.

• The services of an Indian surrogate mother: $8,000. Western couples seeking surrogates increasingly outsource the job to India, and the price is less than one-third the going rate in the United States.

• The right to shoot an endangered black rhino: $250,000. South Africa has begun letting some ranchers sell hunters the right to kill a limited number of rhinos, to give the ranchers an incentive to raise and protect the endangered species.

• Your doctor’s cellphone number: $1,500 and up per year. A growing number of “concierge” doctors offer cellphone access and same-day appointments for patients willing to pay annual fees ranging from $1,500 to $25,000.

• The right to emit a metric ton of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere: $10.50. The European Union runs a carbon-dioxide-emissions market that enables companies to buy and sell the right to pollute.

• The right to immigrate to the United States: $500,000. Foreigners who invest $500,000 and create at least 10 full-time jobs in an area of high unemployment are eligible for a green card that entitles them to permanent residency.

Read more here

Markets in Everything: China’s Village Specializes in Breeding Snakes

Markets emerge when people discover economic value in specific goods or services.

In China, cuisine and medicinal demand for snakes has led to a village specializing in snake breeding.

From Reuters,

This sleepy village nestled in the heart of vast farmland in China's eastern Zhejiang province hides a deadly secret.

A step into the homes of any of the farming families here brings visitors eye-to-eye with thousands of some of the world's most feared creatures -- snakes, many of them poisonous.

Cobras, vipers and pythons are everywhere in Zisiqiao, aptly known as the snake village, where the reptiles are deliberately raised for use as food and in traditional medicine, bringing in millions of dollars to a village that otherwise would rely solely on farming.

"As the number one snake village in China, it's impossible for us to raise only one kind of snake," said Yang Hongchang, the 60-year-old farmer who introduced snake breeding to the village decades ago.

"We are researching many kinds of snakes and the methods of breeding them."...

Today, more than three million snakes are bred in the village every year by the 160 farming families.

Snakes are renowned for their medicinal properties in traditional Chinese medicine and are commonly drunk as soup or wine to boost the person's immunity.

Web Business Model: Online Coaching Or Mentorship

This is definitely one business model I’d like to be part of: Online Coaching or Mentorship.

Unfortunately I need to be popular first!

Reports the Bloomberg, (bold highlights mine)

Lots of bandwidth and $5,000 can get anyone an hour with Nobel Prize-winning economist Gary Becker.

A couple more computer clicks can also remake a tennis serve, fix a golf swing and provide tips on how to out-bluff the poker world’s top pros.

Becker, a University of Chicago professor who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1992, will be selling his time on ExpertInsight.com, a website offering one-to-one video chats with leaders, which opened yesterday. He’ll join people such as economics professors Jeffrey Miron of Harvard University and Laurence Kotlikoff of Boston University, “Freakonomics” co- authors Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, poker celebrities Patrik Antonius and Tom Dwan, and tennis coach Jeff Salzenstein.

“The idea is to bring this coaching model to everything,” said Brandon Adams, Expert Insight’s 32-year-old founder and chief executive officer.

The site’s roster blends the interests and contacts of Adams, a top poker professional who taught undergraduates in Harvard’s Department of Economics for the past eight years. Adams, the primary research assistant for Michael Lewis’s book “The Big Short,” began giving one-to-one poker lessons over the video-chat service Skype in March 2010, charging $300-$400 per hour....

Internet video chat has potential to be used for services ranging from tutoring and counseling to home repair and psychic readings. It may also help the world’s biggest celebrities interact with fans.

As I have been saying, the internet has been reshaping the way we do things.

Markets In Everything: Booming Sales of Underground Shelters

Markets always find ways to address people's demand for almost anything, such as demand for safety from fear of catastrophe or war.

The video below (from CNN/Mark Slavo) shows of the booming sales for bunker shelter....