It is at this time of the year when superannuation funds crow about how good they have done and of their inestimable benefit to mankind in general and this year was no exception. So as is my now annual tradition I thought I would have a look at how good they have done and compare…
My contingent shorts were hit last night so I have to disclose that I am currently short silver. It will be interesting to see how these silver stocks fare during the day ahead.
In my junk folder I have for the past upteen decades been getting random charts by a group called Chart of the Day. Surprisingly, I dont get them everyday – so the implication that you get a chart everyday that is interesting is perhaps a little bit of an oversell. This morning I go the…
“Anxiety can just as well express itself in muteness as with a scream,” wrote existential philosopher Søren Kierkegaard in 1844. While Kierkegaard spent much of his work analyzing the agonizing nature of anxiety, he did not think that it was an emotional state to be avoided. Instead, the philosopher argued that one cannot live an authentic life…
I have always been acutely aware that financial success can often disappear with a single misstep. I have over the past three decades seen many people who have made a single error and never recovered. I have known high flying brokers who after the 1987 crash went to work in their local news agency and…
It may cost more than $100 million, but many social problems could be alleviated with the creative infusion of cash. Compensating organ donors could increase the supply of organs and save thousands of lives annually. Paying opium farmers in Afghanistan and Latin America to grow something else could bring an even larger dividend in averted…
In our newest conversation on Bespokecast, we sit down with short seller Marc Cohodes. Marc manages his portfolio from San Francisco, and has had great success with high profile bear cases focused on frauds, fads, and failures in recent years. His investment industry experience dates to the early 1980s, and has helped him hone his…
I am not one for historical comparisons because they are largely specious and mostly irrelvant but this one gives a nice bit of history that I lived through so consider it a nostalgia piece. ……The Nikkei stock index rose more than 900% in the 15 years before it finally topped. It was a frenzy powered…
One of the best things about heading away for a few days is not necessarily the break from Melbourne’s winter but rather the enforced break from trading. Whilst technology now gives us the ability to trade from anywhere there is a stable internet connection I tend to switch off when on holidays and drop into cant…
I am somewhere over the Pacific reflecting upon my time in Fiji. I am not an easy traveller – I don’t move from country to country with the ease and grace that many do. Mine is not the liquid carefree transnational border hopping where people just set off for a new destination without a care…
Before I head off to Fiji for a week I was cleaning out an image archive I keep when I came across this chart of Poseidon from the 1960’s. Source: Reserve Bank of Australia Despite what people say nothing ever changes…..
