The Periodic Table of Commodity Returns 2017
This is a neat little graphic from US Global Investors that enables you to slice and dice commodity returns for the past decade.
Why willpower is overrated
People with a lot of self-control — people who, when they happen upon a delicious food they don’t think they should eat, seemingly grin and bear the temptation until it passes — have it easy. But why? For a long time, the thinking was that these people are good at inhibiting their impulses. That they…
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Want to Get Wisdom?
Crowds of humans can be very good at solving certain kinds of problems. If, for example, you wanted to guess how many bacteria live in Lake Erie, you’d be better off asking a random group of people and averaging the result than trying to answer the question alone. But what if you could be your…
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Ten Things I Learnt From Last Weeks Correction
Apropos all the post- dictive self congratulatory tug fest that seems to be going on within the finance industry particularly within the financial media I offer the top things I learnt last week. Market go up and market go down. If you cannot understand that as a basic premise then being involved in markets is…
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Traders Amnesia
Traders are often afflicted by many psychological maladies, foremost amongst them is their remarkably short memories. This is particularity true on the sell side of the industry where those flogging various products seem to have the attention span that is worse than a goldfish. Allied to this is the basic thickness some people have when it comes…
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How Active Managers Are Fighting Back
In a world where investors are flocking to dirt-cheap index funds and comparatively low-cost smart-beta and quantitative options, active managers are under intense scrutiny to outperform — and earn their heftier fees. To that end, they’re looking to a slew of new tools, including portfolio analytics software, to help them gain an edge in the…
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Bayes and Deadweight
The quality of your life will, to a large extent, be decided by whom you elect to spend your time with. Supportive, caring, and funny are great attributes in friends and lovers. Unceasingly negative cynics who chip away at your self-esteem? We need to jettison those people as far and fast as we can. The problem is, how do we…
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A Work In Progress
At the end of each year I have a ritual. LB and I write down what we consider finds of the year. These finds can be anything from a new place for lunch, to a new person who has entered your lives to anything in between. The only requirement is that it made life better…
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All Ordinaries Weekly Returns
Having just done this exercise for the US market I thought I would repeat it for the All Ords. There are a few things that stand out out. 1987 was a major pullback the likes of which have not been replicated, not even by the GFC. The local market is prone to periods of pullback…
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