As the average investor or trader who the worlds best investor/trader is and chances are the name Warren Buffett will be thrown around liberally. Unfortunately, like most things the masses believe they are wrong. The best I know of in in this field is Jim Simons who has a truly remarkable public record. The two…
Interesting look at bubbles and the impact of timing upon them. Abstract: Investment manias and financial bubbles have likely existed for as long as humans have been involved in financial markets. In this research piece we take a look at some of the more famous market bubbles in history and the extreme volatility…
What’s worse: Ebola or AIDS? Measles or malnutrition?Lung cancer or low back pain? As individuals, as a nation, and as a global community, where should we focus our time and money to improve lives the most? The way we usually answer these questions is to count the number of deaths: The more people killed, the more important the problem. Counting deaths…
The stress of growing up poor can hurt a child’s brain development starting before birth, research suggests—and even very small differences in income can have major effects on the brain. Researchers have long suspected that children’s behaviour and cognitive abilities are linked to their socioeconomic status, particularly for those who are very poor. The reasons…
Part Two of Michael Yardneys article on psychological bias’s We like to think we’re rational human beings. However last month I’ve shared with you the concept that we are in fact prone to a group of cognitive biases that cause us to think and act irrationally, and this affects many of our investment decisions.…
In the circuitous way you often come to things I was looking at a collection of charts on base metals. As you can see from the screenshot below there really has been nothing to get excited about over the past few years, which puts lie to the notion of our supposed mining boom. What we…
“It took off in just about a heartbeat,” says Evans, who oversees instruction with help from guest lecturers and a small army of student volunteers, who lead discussion groups. Today, 17% of seniors enroll in “Designing Your Life,” and many more vie for the limited seats in each section. “We’ve had students literally teach the…
The worst sort of business is one that grows rapidly, requires significant capital to engender the growth, and then earns little or no money. Think airlines. Here a durable competitive advantage has proven elusive ever since the days of the Wright Brothers. Indeed, if a farsighted capitalist had been present at Kitty Hawk, he would…
On the flip side if we were not overconfident we would still be living in caves….
The story of Kodak fascinates me – the company that invented the digital camera 1975 was eventually sent broke by it. What happens after a tech company is left for dead but the people left behind refuse to give up the fight? At Kodak the answer is to dig deep into a legacy of innovation in…
