Bored with the usual headline of the looming war with China, North Korea, Russia and the Packenham Upper Under 12B’s the Murdoch press has now turned its hyperbolic panic based radar onto the housing market. Apparently that house you bought last year for $3M is now worth one ugly camel, a distributor from a Datsun…
Legendary investor and philanthropist Paul Tudor Jones talks to Goldman Sachs’ Lloyd Blankfein about the guiding principles that have driven his life’s work, from finance to philanthropy. Click here for full transcript and player
I saw this piece over someones shoulder whilst having lunch yesterday and I thought I must have misread it. You know those times when something flashes into your view and you make a snap judgement about what it was and your initial guess seems stupid and is proved to be so upon revision, It does…
We are approaching the ten year anniversary of the implosion of Lehman Brothers and the subsequent meltdown in the financial system that precipitated the GFC. As always it is instructive to look back in history and see what lessons can be learned. Although I will offer a spoiler – there is nothing new to be…
It may sound weird but I really like playing with software that simulates distributions – it probably comes from when I had a semester free at Uni and simply took subjects that looked interesting. One of the ones I dropped into was Mathematical Ecology which is largely the mathematics of natural distributions. I found it…
You would have thought that someone like me would have already explored all the ways in which you can upset people but over the past few days I have managed to discover two more. Tell people they are living the life they have created. This is simply a variation on the old theme of you…
In July 1838, Charles Darwin, then 29, sat down to make a decision that would alter the course of his life. The decision he was wrestling with was not related to scientific questions about the origins of species. It was a different kind of decision — existential as well, but of a more personal nature:…
I have always been fascinated by this….. Four times every day, on radios all across the United Kingdom, a BBC announcer begins reading from a seemingly indecipherable script. “And now the Shipping Forecast issued by the Met Office on behalf of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency,” says the voice over the wire. “Viking, North Utsire;…
For more than a quarter century, Wall Street analyst Mike Mayo has danced to the steady beat of corporate America. His work habits, his family events, his social life, even his workouts and vacations — all have been dictated by the seemingly immutable cycle of quarterly earnings reports. Four times a year, forget about everything…
Unfortunately the archetypal image of a trader is of an individual who is constantly on the move. In the old days the appearance of a trader would include the endlessly repetitive scenes of someone yelling down the phone to their broker issuing a constant stream of instructions. Nowadays the image might be of someone using…
THERE’S AN OLD adage – “Let me fall if I must fall. The one I become will catch me”. When we’re going through the swamp, we forget we can grow because of it. After a traumatic event, half of all people report at least one positive change (compared with 15% who develop Post Traumatic Stress…
I LOVE LISTENING to Chris Tate talk with our traders. A crazy blend of harsh life advice, and raw trading tips. Here are some quotes I feel will set you up beautifully for the month: “You won’t have a life-changing trade based on a 5-minute chart. If you’re only trading short-term, you’re trading for cashflow,…
“BUT I’M TIRED.” Yeah… I get it. It’s hard to ‘adult’. But as an excuse for NOT learning about the markets, it’s piss poor. You are the sum total of all the decisions you’ve made in the past. What you see in your life right now is the result. It’s ‘excuses’ or ‘results’. There is…
IF THERE’S ONE THING that the banking Royal Commission into Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry has shown us, it’s that we have to take more control. We can’t trust the big corporations to have our best interests at heart. Heck… the recent shenanigans show that we can’t really trust they won’t break into our…
Abstract This paper compares mortality between Gold and Silver medalists in Olympic Track and Field to study how achievement influences health. Contrary to conventional wisdom, winners die over one year earlier than losers. I find strong evidence of differences in earnings and occupational choices as a mechanism. Losers pursued higher-paying occupations than winners according to…
What prompted me to revisit this topic this is that once again my inbox is being bombarded with stuff about the magic of ETFs – it seems the gloss has completely gone from cryptos so we are back to old standard. The problem with most of these genius ideas is that they lack depth –…
I am in the process of finishing up my presentation of the IFTA conference in Kuala Lumpur in October. My topic is a bit of an exploration of volatility and how it is incredibly poorly understood by most. Whilst in the throws of banging together charts I generated the one below of the S&P/ASX 200…
