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Canada, Ethiopia starting talks towards investment agreement: Trudeau – CBC.ca

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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau brought to the table the promise of an investment agreement with Ethiopia and $10 million to help empower African women on Saturday as he continued his bid to get African votes for Canada’s attempt to win a United Nations Security Council seat later this year.

Trudeau also spent the first full day of a three-day trip to Addis Ababa meeting with some of the African Union’s heaviest hitters in a series of tête-à-têtes on the sidelines of the union’s 33rd sessional meeting in Addis Ababa.

That included spending most of the morning with Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed for meetings and a private tour of a new public park and zoo on the grounds of the prime minister’s residence. The tour was notable for its length, and the ease with which both leaders strolled around the grounds, though Abiy gave no hints about which way he is leaning for the security council vote.

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Abiy did tell Trudeau Ethiopia is grateful to Canada’s support over the years.

“We Ethiopians have a deep sense of friendship to Canada,” he said.

Ethiopian influence, economy on the rise

Abiy has been named as one of the most influential leaders in Africa, including by New Africa magazine in both 2018 and 2019, and was among Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people of 2019.

Last fall he was also awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Following a private meeting with Abiy, Trudeau noted the promise of Ethiopia’s fast-growing economy and said their meetings were a chance to take Canada and Ethiopia’s relationship to the next level.

However it wasn’t until after he met with Ethiopian President Sahle-Work Zewde for a working lunch at the presidential palace that he provided some detail about what that could mean.

Trudeau said Canada and Ethiopia are about to start negotiating a Foreign Investment Protection Agreement.

Canadian Trade Minister Mary Ng, who is in Africa with a trade delegation of Canadian companies, wouldn’t say how long those negotiations could take or what the agreement could look like. Many times these agreements take several years to put in place.

Canada and Ethiopia currently have a relatively small trading relationship — just $170 million in two-way trade in 2018. But the Ethiopian economy has exploded in the last two decades, with the gross domestic product per person soaring 189 per cent between 2000 and 2018. Addis Ababa is a city in transformation, with construction cranes and new high-rise buildings all over the city’s core.

Trudeau also sat down with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Rwandan President Paul Kagame, Cape Verde Prime Minister José Ulisses Correia e Silva, and Moussa Faki Mahamat, the chair of the African Union. The meetings seemed to largely discuss potential opportunities for economic growth, but climate change and gender equality also played high on the agenda.

WATCH: PM Trudeau pledges funding for gender equality in Africa

Canada’s contribution of $10 million to go to the African Union Commission for gender equality and women’s empowerment. 1:35

On Saturday night Trudeau spoke at an event about Africa’s “blue economy” which refers to using water bodies for sustainable economic growth.

Trudeau also revealed a $10-million contribution to the African Union Commission for gender equality and women’s empowerment.

President Zewde later told Trudeau she appreciated his “strong feminist policy” and support for women’s empowerment initiatives. Zewde is the only female head of government in Africa currently, and is considered to be the most powerful woman in Africa.

There are some who have seen Trudeau’s trip as a Hail Mary pass to secure much-needed African support for the coveted seat on the UN’s powerful Security Council. Canada is up against Norway and Ireland for two seats available to a group of countries that includes western Europe, Canada, Israel, Australia and New Zealand among some others.

Canadian overtures too late?

Several African scholars have said Trudeau did not do enough in his first four years in power to improve diplomatic ties or economic associations in Africa and is only coming to the table now when he wants the votes. African countries will have 54 votes out 193 total cast.

Trudeau is in Africa at the same time as the head of Norway, Prime Minister Erna Solberg. The two politely waved at each other across the room at the morning women’s empowerment breakfast and had a polite embrace in the evening prior to the blue economy discussion.

Solberg told reporters earlier in the day she didn’t want to criticize Canada but she felt Norway’s aid spending was proportionately higher than Canada’s and that Norway has been a steadier partner for Africa over the years.

“I think one of the differences, of course, is we have been on the steady same path for a very long time, so they know us,” Solberg said.

Cabinet ministers accompanying Trudeau insist the relationship with Africa is not last minute, nor is it solely because Canada needs many of Africa’s 54 votes at the UN to win the seat.

“It’s not like we were absent and now we are showing up,” said Families Minister Ahmed Hussen. “Nothing could be further from the truth.”

Solberg also met with Abiy and Zewde on Saturday. She also was in Ethiopia a year ago when she had talks with Abiy, and Abiy visited Norway last fall to accept his peace prize and meet with the country’s top leaders.

This is Trudeau’s first visit to Ethiopia.

Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar visited Ethiopia and met with Abiy in January.

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Amazon Adds $2.75 Billion To Anthropic Investment, Sora Goes To Hollywood – Forbes

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Amazon invests $2.75 billion in Anthropic. This brings Amazon’s investment to $4 billion, as it follows its previous investment of $1.25 billion, which gave the company the option to invest the additional funds. This comes as Anthropic’s new Claude-3 chatbot outperforms ChatGPT- 4 in recent tests. Amazon has unique insight into Anthropic’s performance as it is one of the suite of AI models offered by AWS, which include most of Claude’s competitors.

Sora Goes To Hollywood. Everyone is reacting to a Bloomberg report that OpenAI will soon be meeting with studios and other Hollywood stakeholders to demonstrate the capabilities of the text-to-video generator and explore partnerships. OpenAI says unnamed “A list” directors are already using it.

Based in Toronto, shy kids are a multimedia production company who utilized Sora for the above short film about a man “who is literally filled with hot air.” His head, as you can see, is a yellow balloon. “We now have the ability to expand on stories we once thought impossible,” shares the trio made up of Walter Woodman, Sidney Leeder and Patrick Cederberg. Walter, who directed Air Head, said as great as Sora is at generating things that appear real, what excites us is its ability to make things that are totally surreal.

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Neuralink Shows Paralyzed Patient Playing Chess on a PC. Elon Musk’s brain-computer interface company shared a video of its first human patient, Noland Arbaugh, playing chess and Civilization VI using their brain implant. Arbaugh, who is paralyzed below the shoulders, described the experience as “just stare somewhere on the screen” to move the cursor. While some experts see this as a promising step, others emphasize that it’s still early days and the technology has limitations. Arbaugh acknowledged that there’s still work to be done, but the implant has already changed his life.

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Illuvium Labs Raises an additional $12 million for NFT Gaming Universe. Following an extensive three-and-a-half-year development journey and $60 million in funding, Illuvium Labs is on the cusp of unveiling its interoperable gaming universe. It will feature three interconnected titles designed to utilize the same NFTs seamlessly across all games, promising a first-of-its-kind experience. The influx of $12 million in Series A funding from esteemed firms like King River Capital, Arrington and Animoca will be allocated to developing new gaming titles within the Illuvium ecosystem.

Databricks’ DBRX claims the crown as best open-source LLM. It’s a list that includes Meta’s Llama 2 and Mistral’s Mixtral. Leading companies like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic sell, or rent, their proprietary private models to enterprises and subscribers. DBRX was produced for just $10 million, orders of magnitude less than its competitors. On Monday, Wired reported that the company showed data proving its AI model’s reading comprehension, answers to general knowledge questions, and coding is superior to other open-source models that can be downloaded from Hugging Face and modified by users.

Shiba-Inu Metaverse leader steps down amid dispute over IP. Marcie Jastrow, the well-regarded Hollywood executive who led Technicolor’s XR efforts, has left the company. This led the company’s legions, known as the Shib Army, to speculate about malfeasance, which is easy to do, because Jastrow is the only person involved who is not anonymous, including Ship’s charismatic leader Shytoshi Kusama.

This live football experience was built by Immersiv.io to showcase how AR can transform the live sports broadcast and fan experience using the Apple Vision Pro. Immersiv.io worked with the Bundesliga (the German Football League) on the production. In a post on X, the company said. “This is a 3D reproduction of the live game integrating TRACAB Gen 6 live skeletal data of all players and the ball, complemented with real-time insights, offering the ultimate live tactical perspective of the game.”

SXSW 2024: XR That Makes You Go Wow. The XR competition was won by an AI experience, The Golden Key. This is the second year in a row that an XR experience did not take the immersive festival’s grand prize.

The second annual AI Film Festival is coming to Los Angeles on May 1, and New York May 9. Seats are limited, request to attend at http://aiff.com

This column, once called “This Week in XR,” is also a podcast hosted by author Charlie Fink, and Ted Schilowitz, former studio executive and co-founder of Red Camera, and Rony Abovitz, founder of Magic Leap. This week our guest is Liz Hyman, CEO of the XR Association. We can be found on Spotify, iTunes, and YouTube.

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Where Will Virtual Reality Take Us? (Jaron Lanier/New Yorker)

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FP Answers: What is a 'behavioural edge' in investing and how does it affect returns? – Financial Post

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Temperament is the unsung hero of investing success

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By Julie Cazzin with Felix Narhi

Q: What is a “behavioural edge” in investing? How does it potentially enhance returns? How can an investor develop it? — Giovanni

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FP Answers: Giovanni, the term behavioural edge is just another way of saying “temperament,” which refers to the habitual way a person behaves in each situation. For example, one person may be easygoing and relaxed while another is more likely to be impatient and assertive.

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Temperament is the unsung hero of investing success. Gaining insight about our innate emotional temperament and learning how to work with it gives investors an edge.

The common misconception is that you need a high level of intelligence to be a successful investor. No doubt, that can be helpful, but based on many years in the industry, I’ve seen it is not always the most important differentiator.

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Once someone has at least an average level of intelligence, it is temperament that often provides the investing edge in leading to better returns over the long term. “Investing is not a business where the guy with the 160 IQ beats the guy with the 130 IQ,” famed investor Warren Buffett has pointed out.

Having the right temperament can potentially enhance investment returns in several ways. An investor who is very reactive to external events is likely to fare poorly over the long term because, quite simply, the world is full of uncertainty and always will be. Markets are highly reactive, abetted by algorithmic trading and automatic rebalancing by exchange-traded funds. Individual investors should not be.

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Research shows that investors who trade frequently or try to time the market underperform. On the other hand, those investors who can remain calm and patient throughout market cycles do better because markets historically trend upwards. Hands down, being calm, cool and collected is the right temperament for an investor to have.

The concept of “homo economicus” — or economic man — describes a hypothetical person who consistently makes rational decisions. In real life, our decisions are coloured by our formative experiences, moods, external circumstances, what we ate for lunch and a host of other factors. These influences drive our behaviours, but they often operate below conscious awareness (even artificial-intelligence apps “hallucinate”).

Given that behaviour is some combination of cognitive and emotional inputs, an investor can create an edge by developing a disciplined investment process that overrides temperament, especially during highly volatile periods.

The term “active patience” means being clear about your investment principles and what you are looking for, and practicing active patience until the right opportunity arises.

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In contrast, regular patience is making an investment decision and sticking with it no matter what, even if it was the wrong decision. The latter approach is unlikely to bring financial success, which is the major goal of investing.

Active patience is what Buffett would call the “fat pitch,” which occurs when the market (occasionally) presents a very attractive opportunity. It is easy to spot a great opportunity and take full advantage of it when an investor has clear principles on what they are looking for.

Can we change our temperament? Recent studies show that personality traits and moods are subject to change, sometimes within the hour, so temperament may not be as fixed as we’ve been led to believe.

Becoming a better investor starts with self-knowledge — and lots of practice. The behavioural traits associated with good investment outcomes are patience, discipline, emotional control and risk awareness. It so happens, these qualities lead to good life outcomes, too. A calm temperament is the bedrock of making sound investment decisions.

Every investor must determine for themselves how to achieve greater equanimity and there is no shortage of books, videos and TikTok tutorials on that evergreen topic. I would also add the importance of staying humble.

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In investing, as in life, the learning never stops. Staying open to new information and having the courage to challenge our own and others’ beliefs and habitual behaviours are the keys to future success.

Felix Narhi is chief investment officer and portfolio manager at PenderFund Capital Management Ltd.

Bookmark our website and support our journalism: Don’t miss the business news you need to know — add financialpost.com to your bookmarks and sign up for our newsletters here.

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Lenders Rally After India’s Central Bank Eases Investment Curbs – BNN Bloomberg

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(Bloomberg) — Indian banks and shadow lenders rose Thursday after the country’s central bank eased capital requirements for a unique type of investment, a move that may free up more funds for loans.

The gains came after the Reserve Bank of India issued Wednesday modified rules on lenders’ required provisions for exposure to alternative investment funds, or AIFs, that invest in the lenders’ borrowers. Under the new policy, a lender needs to set aside capital only for the amount the AIF invested in the debtor company, and not the entire investment of the lender in the AIF.

Shares of Piramal Enterprises Ltd., which reported among the biggest provisions for such investments, closed 1% higher after rising as much as 6% during the day. A gauge of financial services firms climbed 1%, the most since March 1.

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Lenders led the rally in the broader market, with the NSE Nifty 50 Index registering its best day since beginning of the month.

The RBI’s softening stance came after industry players raised concerns over clarity and uniformity after it announced in December restrictions on lenders’ exposure to AIFs that hold stakes in their borrowers. The latest move will likely help firms including Piramal, HDFC Bank Ltd. and IIFL Finance Ltd. reverse some of their relevant provisions made previously, according to analysts at Citigroup Inc. and Jefferies Financial Group Inc.

Read more: India’s Crackdown on Financial Risks Puts Industry on Watch

“Select private banks and NBFCs like Piramal had provided for their entire AIF exposure during 3Q and could see some write-backs in 4Q if they decide to reverse the excess provision,” Jefferies analyst Bhaskar Basu wrote in a note.

Regulators introduced a flurry of new rules last year to prevent a buildup of financial stress at a time when India’s economy remained resilient in the face of rising interest rates, slowing global growth and unabated geopolitical tensions.

©2024 Bloomberg L.P.

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