The History of Light
This is somewhat apt given that I spent last night in the dark due to a power failure. Click the player below to be taken to the NPR site and the podcast.
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Sultans Of Super Set On ‘Developing’ Your Wealth
I wish I had written this…. Our latter-day sultans of superannuation have breezily lavished a $20 million junket on their sales force and themselves to boot. Before this year’s Byzantium bash, the AMP held its ”conference” in Dublin, South Africa, Amsterdam, Colorado and Buenos Aires. If the behemoths of superannuation shell out two bob supporting…
Scariest Chart I have Seen For Awhile
I snipped the chart below from How Americans Die – parts of this little booklet are not relevant locally since we dont have the same childish fascination with guns that Americans do but the chart below is probably universal to Western economies. What caught my eye was the expansion of the deaths related to Dementia, Alzheimer’s…
A Self Fulfilling Fantasy
I came across this interesting piece on the British Psychological Society website. You can read the article in full at your leisure but I wanted to look at one particular piece of the article. In short the article looks at the gamblers fallacy – that is the notion that after a series of losses that…
Motivation Monday
I might have to break out the textbooks and get my arse into gear….. SARAH FERGUSON, PRESENTER: 93-year-old Elisabeth Kirkby has just about done it all. She was a soapy star in the risque 1970s hit TV show, Number 96. She then became a member of Parliament for the Democrats and received the Order of…
Money Can’t Buy Trustworthiness
Try not to be that person. To relate that to social class, consider this experiment. You’re standing on a corner in downtown San Francisco. It’s a four-way stop, meaning cars are supposed to pause before entering the intersection. As you’re sipping your latte, you look to your left before stepping off the curb. The car…
John Henry and the Making of a Red Sox Baseball Dynasty
Then, in 1975, Henry’s father died. Suddenly, at 26, he was back in Arkansas and running a 1,000-acre farm. Farmers often guard against volatile crop prices by buying futures contracts to hedge risk. Henry began purchasing soybean and corn futures and soon realized he was more interested in futures trading than farming. As Seth Mnookin…
Surviving Anxiety
Let’s say you’re sitting in an audience and I’m at the lectern. Here’s what I’ve likely done to prepare. Four hours or so ago, I took my first half milligram of Xanax. (I’ve learned that if I wait too long to take it, my fight-or-flight response kicks so far into overdrive that medication is not…
S&P 500 Day By Day…..
I came across this image on Bespoke – those folks who generate arrays of dazzling data very few of which are in any way helpful to market participants. It shows the daily change on the S&P 500 since January and I have no idea why this would be of interest but I thought I would…
Shiller Says `Easy to Beat the Market’ Long Term
Talk is interesting – host is a pain in the arse.
28 Killer Home Trading Desks From All Around The World
Apparently I have far too few screens and need to pull up my socks
This Guy Got $58 Million for 15 Months of Work
Henrique de Castro was booted as COO by Marissa Mayer after she personally poached him from Google about 15 months earlier. Mayer said de Castro “was not a fit and that’s a regrettable conclusion,” but he still walked with $58 million in salary, bonuses and stock. Source – Time I could be twice as incompetent…
Don’t Be A Member Of The Hedge Fund Club
I believe it was the American writer HL Menken who once said you will never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public. A statement that is probably a bit harsh on the Yanks but one that can definitely be applied to those who invest in hedge funds. 2013 was another great year for…
