Author: Douglass Gaking

Doug is a certified business educator and music educator. He currently teaches businesses and computer science at Avon High School in Avon, Indiana and is the director of IGNITE Winter Percussion in Shelby County, Indiana. He was a band and choir director for 13 years and continues to judge and clinic with ensembles. He performs drums and percussion, composes and arranges music for concert band, marching band, and percussion ensemble, and teaches and writes about business, finance, and economics. He has a B.M. in Music Education from Butler University and an M.B.A. in Economics from Southern New Hampshire University. He is also an avid reader and a lover of art, history, science, and nature, especially birds and other wildlife.
New Look, New Mission
Uncategorized

New Look, New Mission

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GakingFinance is now Econ4All!

Most of my content in the past has focused on personal finance and stock investing, which is great and will continue to be covered here. I also plan to branch into more economics and related topics. The new mission is to create content that is interesting, useful, and accessible to a wider audience.

Economics is for everyone! Economists are covering everything from home economics to sports analytics. Most of it is useful, and all of it is fascinating. And you can expect to find it all here.

All of my old writing content is still here. You can still access the same content the way you always have, but you can now also access it at Econ4All.com. I have been working on several new research and writing projects, so new content is coming soon.

Book Reviews

Book Review: Moneyball

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Moneyball is an amazing multi-genre book that is changing the way that millions of people think about sports as well as other topics. The statistics used to evaluate baseball players were not an accurate portrayal of player value. When Bill James blew that wide open with his Baseball Abstract, most of baseball didn’t notice. Those who did shrugged.

Once Oakland A’s manager Billy Beane started winning against all odds by using sabermetrics as the basis for player selection, people finally started paying attention. Even then, it took a long time for baseball to come around.

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Investing

Gamestop and Robinhood Explained

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Yesterday, I visited the Chris Spangle Show on the We Are Libertarians Network to discuss the Gamestop (GME) short squeeze, Robinhood keeping users from buying GME and related securities like Blackberry (BB), Bed Bath and Beyond (BBBY), and Nokia (NOK), what all this means for the market and the public, and how the government might intervene.

View the Youtube video below or click here to listen to the podcast episode.

Education and a Happy Life
Education

Education and a Happy Life

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I am an educator. I have been teaching for 10 years. This week, as I reach a huge milestone in my own continuing education, finishing my Master’s degree, the field of education is facing an existential crisis. K-12 schools are underfunded by state and local governments and have huge issues in inequality. College educations are increasingly necessary but wildly expensive. Covid-19 has magnified many of these problems and brought to our attention how vulnerable the system is. To use a finance metaphor, our society is in a period of price discovery for education. We cannot figure out what it is worth to us.

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