One of the most common statements since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic is that the economic and market outlook has become more uncertain. Given that the future is inherently difficult to predict with any level of confidence and we are generally terrible forecasters can it really be true that the world is now more…
It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is well invested. But when it is squandered in luxury…
One of the things that is interesting about trading psychology is the notion that it is idiosyncratic, that is the psychological processes that afflict traders are only found within the realm of trading. This is a somewhat narrow dogmatic view and in many ways is simply an attempt to distinguish the filed of trading psychology…
I came across the chart below this morning which looks at the performance of what you would term large or dominant stocks within an index. What these sorts of charts do is educate you about the history of markets but they also reaffirm that there is nothing new under the sun. As the article that…
In medicine, there is a phenomenon known as the incidentaloma, that is you have a scan or test for one thing and they find something completely unrelated. These incidental findings which seem to be quite common in imaging present somewhat of a problem for medical practitioners. They raise the question of doing something about the…
Here is the question and it comes in two related parts because the first question prompted the second one. On my social media feeds I follow a number of science-related folks and as you would expect much of the talk has been about COVID-19 and how it brings people out of the woodwork with all…
I frequently tell the apocryphal story about how Max Planck, after he won the Nobel Prize, went around Germany giving the same standard lecture on the new quantum mechanics. Over time, his chauffeur memorized the lecture and said, “Would you mind, Professor Planck, because it’s so boring to stay in our routine. [What if] I…
I heard the following the other day – what you tolerate in your present becomes your standard. I cannot remember where I heard but it stuck in my head because it is somewhat akin to my notion that you are where you are because that’s where you want to be. If you wanted to be…
Traders are an interesting bunch in that they believe themselves to calm, rational and disciplined and that through the application of this cold logic they see the world as it actually is. If truth be told traders are among the most gullible, least logical and certainly least scientific/innumerate group I have come across. Consider the…
Much has been written about how life will be after we are done with COVID-19 – some of it sensible, some of it mere hyperbole but one of the more thoughtful pieces I have come across is this one by Paul Kedrosky a venture capitalist who jotted down some thoughts in one of his in…
The science of resilience, which investigates how people weather adversity, offers some clues. A resilient individual, wrote Harvard University psychiatrist George Vaillant, resembles a twig with a fresh, green living core. “When twisted out of shape, such a twig bends, but it does not break; instead it springs back and continues growing.” The metaphor describes…
At the start of the last decade everyone was bullish on emerging market equities. It is hard to recall now, but it was the consensus trade. You couldn’t attend a meeting or conference without being told how many people there were in China or how underwhelming the growth prospects were for developed economies compared to…
When a concert opens with a refrain from your favorite song, you are swept up in the music, happily tapping to the beat and swaying with the melody. All around you, people revel in the same familiar music. You can see that many of them are singing, the lights flashing to the rhythm, while other…
Courtesy of the good Dr Joe More here – LIoyds Auctioneers and Valuers
