If you have ever wondered why the world seems to be run by complete and utter idiots consider this….. If you had to work out where to dig so that you didn’t cut off the water supply to an entire town, would you rely on a Ouija board for your answer? Probably not, but that…
MODERN COMPARISONS The peak value of the Dutch East India Company was so high, that it puts modern economies to shame. In fact, at its height, the Dutch East India Company was worth roughly the same amount as the GDPs of modern-day Japan ($4.8T) and Germany ($3.4T) added together. Even further, in today’s chart, we…
Abstract Using a novel data set of hedge fund manager automobile purchases, we show that, motivated by sensation seeking, hedge fund managers often take risk for personal and non-pecuniary reasons. In line with the sensation seeking view, managers who own powerful sports cars take on more investment risk but do not deliver higher returns, resulting…
I caught a piece in Bloomberg this morning that had FX traders lamenting the lack of volatility in FX markets this year and using that as an excuse for their lack of profitability. Upon seeing this I thought to myself that this sounds awfully familiar amd it does – it is the classic I dont…
Benoit Mandelbrot was a Polish-born, French and American “mathematician with broad interests in the practical sciences.” I met him only once at a lecture at Microsoft Research before he passed away in 2010. Mandelbrot and Richard Hudson are the authors of the influential book The Misbehavior of Markets: A Fractal View of Financial Turbulence. I suggest you…
The ability to focus is an important driver of excellence. Focused techniques such as to-do lists, timetables, and calendar reminders all help people to stay on task. Few would argue with that, and even if they did, there is evidence to support the idea that resisting distraction and staying present have benefits: practicing mindfulness for 10 minutes a day, for example, can enhance leadership effectiveness by…
It is often said that there is a relationship between the length of a text message that you receive and the mental stability of the person that is sending the message. Messages that run to only a few words to my mind demonstrate both an understanding of the what the technology is actually for and…
If we’re going to be precise about it, work gets done at 11AM on a Monday in October. At all other times of day, we’re basically slacking from our most productive. Sustaining 8 hours-plus of intense focus year-round is more of a Herculean pipe dream than a reality of the modern day workplace. We come…
Do investors holding an asset in the midst of a price bubble all come to share similar beliefs, even if they did not do so previously? Asset price bubbles are unfailingly supported by a captivating narrative, which is ‘validated’ by price movements, draws in investors and allows for traditional valuation considerations to be discarded. It…
I once knew a girl whose father had, when she was just a little child, left her mother one night without warning or explanation, who grew up to be a young woman that was always seeking that absent father. She sought him in bad relationships, where neither person could give the other what they needed,…
Over the past 20 years, hedge funds have gained almost mythic status. Loved and loathed, they are held to be sharply distinct from the broader asset management industry. The fortunes of the best-known firms are followed with great interest. There is nothing that definitively marks hedge fund managers apart from other investment managers, however. Instead,…
