Elan's 340 Blog

After reading the quote by Novogratz and thinking about what my first step in making the world a better place might be, I immediately thought about the volunteer work I have done for the organization Habitat for Humanity. Habitat for Humanity is a nonprofit organization that builds affordable housing for underprivileged households in the greater Los Angeles area. I did volunteer work for the organization throughout high school by helping construct houses. I was drawn to Habitat for Humanity as I plan to purchase and develop real estate when I am older and this organization does exactly this in a charitable way.  However, since going to college, I haven’t worked with the organization at all. But after reading this quote and being assigned this project, it has once again sparked my interest in volunteering for the organization. That’s why my first step in making the world a better place would be to volunteer for Habitat for Humanity. This would start by giving my “sweat equity” to th...

The Current State of the Watch Market Why luxury watches have surged in price over the last 2 years Since I was a kid, I always had an interest in watches. I would actively follow the watch market to see if watches were going up or down. As I have saved up money and bought a couple of watches myself, I now look at the watch market for potential deals that I could capitalize on. I’ve always seen watches not only as an item that I could wear out, but also as an investment. Luxury watches usually retail for a certain price, but in many cases, they sell for more than the retail price in the secondary market. However, in the past couple of years, the watch market has gone off the rails. Most luxury watches have seen an increase in price anywhere from 30-50% with some watches doubling and some even tripling. This is very uncharacteristic of the market and can be attributed to one underlying cause: the pandemic. The pandemic led to two things that were the catalyst of this boom: low supply an...

In the book “On Tyranny Graphic Edition: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century,” Timothy Snyder shows us how history doesn’t repeat itself, rather it is an instruction manual for how people should behave moving forward. The book is broken down into 20 chapters, each of which is a lesson from the twentieth century. The first few lessons of the book give insight into some of the ways dictators manipulate civilians and eventually get them to follow them. Snyder gives some tips on some of the signs of this and how to avoid them as civilians can be influenced pretty easily. The next few lessons exhibit how dictators sway people higher up in the government to leave behind their morals and commit war crimes to help the dictator achieve their goals. The middle of the book details how people can defend themselves and stand out for what they believe in and defend against the lies of the authoritarian regime. This involves believing in truth and doing the necessary research to find out what i...

The book that I chose for this time around was “On Tyranny Graphic Edition: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century” by Timothy Snyder. As I looked through the list of options we had for Book 2, there were two words that caught my eye: Graphic Edition. I consider myself to be a visual learner so I knew that this book would probably be the best one for me to read from the list. However, this wasn’t the sole reason why I chose the book. This led me to do more research on the book to see what it was really about. As I looked at different reviews of the book, I realized that the book was about totalitarian regimes and what we can learn from their dominance in the 20th century to apply in the future. This resonated with me as my parents were in Iran during the Iranian Revolution in the 1970s. This was when the Shah of Iran was overthrown by Ayatollah Khomeini and a dictatorship was formed in Iran. My parents were forced to flee the country and ended up moving to Los Angeles and never look...

AMDP Investment Proposal Memo TO:                  Professor Clark Hansen, CEO, AMDP FROM:            Elan Fahimian, Research & Development, AMDP DATE:             March 11, 2022 SUBJECT:      Investment Opportunity: Pangaia In response to your request for an investment opportunity, I wanted to share with you a company called Pangaia. Pangaia is a materials science company that meets our investment criteria by being socially responsible, environmentally sustainable, and profitable. I highly recommend you take advantage of this opportunity and invest in the company. In this memo, I will: Discuss the investment standards at AMDP Give a detailed overview of Pangaia Review some expert opinions on the company Give you my final recommendation AMDP Investment Standards Before I started talking about Pangaia, I first wanted to touch on the investment standards we use here ...

Pickleball For this “Random” blog post, I wanted to share a little about my favorite sport currently: pickleball. Pickleball is taking the world by storm right now and is the fastest-growing sport in the United States. In this blog post, I will take you through the origin of pickleball, how to play it, and why it is the hottest sport right now.  Origin of Pickleball Pickleball started in 1965 in Bainbridge Island, Washington. One summer day, Joel Pritchard came home from playing golf with his friend Bill Bell. They sought to entertain their kids so they decided to play badminton. However, they couldn’t find the right equipment and improvised by playing with ping pong paddles, a wiffle ball, and a badminton net. They started to play and realized that this could be an actual game. The next weekend, they invited their friend Barney McCallum to play with them, and they created the rules for the game. Once the rules were in place they had to come up with a name. They eventually decided ...