The Scientific Method & Investment Management
The cognitive trick that elite athletes use to achieve seemingly impossible goals
In July 2011, I was crawling down the aisle of a plane on my hands and knees while passengers screamed around me. We were on a flight from Spain to the US, and we thought our number was up. The plane had hit a bout of extreme turbulence just as I’d left the restroom, causing…
Apparently Its All Over For Commodities
Commodities form an important part of my trading universe, in fact as a I par back my universe of instruments they form a more and more integral part of what I do. This pivotal role occurs for a few reasons ranging from ease of trading, price discovery and familiarity. The first trade I ever did…
A Man in a Hurry: Claude Shannon’s New York Years
….English philosopher George Henry Lewes once observed that “genius is rarely able to give an account of its own processes.” This seems to have been true of Shannon, who could neither explain himself to others, nor cared to. In his work life, he preferred solitude and kept his professional associations to a minimum. Robert Fano, a later collaborator…
Sovereign Wealth
I do hold a more than passing fascination with the idea of Sovereign Wealth Funds – I find the idea of a nation being a custodian of the wealth of the nation to be intriguing. I am also interested ( read fucken appalled) in how badly managed our resources are. For example in 2021 it…
A Few Charts To Chat About
Every quarter JP Morgan Chase put out what they call a Guide to the Markets. The report itself is largely noise and is the sort of thing that research departments like to show to clients in an attempt to convince them that they are more than the sum of their convictions and misdemeanours. Generally I…
Why Cant Monkeys Talk?
Decades ago, while Philip H. Lieberman was soaking in a bathtub and listening to the radio, he heard anthropologist Loren Eiseley ponder an evolutionary puzzle: Why couldn’t monkeys talk? Like us, they’re social primates, intelligent and certainly not quiet. Rhesus macaques grunt, coo, screech and scream. Infant macaques make sounds known as geckers. Despite the grunting and geckering, though, no other…
A MATH GENIUS BLOOMS LATE AND CONQUERS HIS FIELD
….Huh’s math career began with much less acclaim. A bad score on an elementary school test convinced him that he was not very good at math. As a teenager he dreamed of becoming a poet. He didn’t major in math, and when he finally applied to graduate school, he was rejected by every university save…
Conundrum Of The Day
I have reflected on the post I wrote last week about the great superannuation rip off in which I compared the returns from investing in an average growth fund with those derived from investing in the index. It struck me over the weekend that the majority of fund managers (read almost all ) are followers…
How you see the world has a significant effect on your success by Michael Yardney
I’ve asked Michael Yardney to write a special guest column today. Michael has been a friend of mine for many years and is our ‘go to’ guy when it comes to property. I’m sure you’ll find his insights powerful. Now… over to Michael. There are, broadly speaking, two ways to see the world and these…
50 Smartest Companies
You will note somewhat sadly that not one of them is located locally…. More here – MIT Technology Review
Paradoxes of Probability and Other Statistical Strangeness
You don’t have to wait long to see a headline proclaiming that some food or behaviour is associated with either an increased or a decreased health risk, or often both. How can it be that seemingly rigorous scientific studies can produce opposite conclusions? Nowadays, researchers can access a wealth of software packages that can readily analyse…
The Great Idiot Tax Continues
It is at this time of the year when superannuation funds crow about how good they have done and of their inestimable benefit to mankind in general and this year was no exception. So as is my now annual tradition I thought I would have a look at how good they have done and compare…
