Social scientists have been trying to identify the conditions most likely to promote satisfying human lives. Their findings give some important clues about choosing a career: Money matters, but as the economist Richard Easterlin and others have demonstrated, not always in the ways you may think. Consider this thought experiment. Suppose you had to choose…
……What’s Holding You Back? It’s neither intelligence nor technique that holds people back from being successful self-taught learners, says Bach. It’s insecurity. “Feelings of inadequacy stop curiosity,” he says. In Bach’s own field of competitive thinkers, he’s learned that “most people who have ambition have a terrible fear that although they’re good, they’re not good…
Happiness is complicated. There are two components. One is strongly genetic; the second is a question of how you feel at any moment. I am pretty content, but I had a very pessimistic mother, and I’ve always been known as a pessimist. It was always assumed I would be a professor. I grew up thinking…
I came in this morning to see the Missus watching this….. Remind me to take the batteries out of the remote to stop such future abominations…
Yesterday I was having lunch in Brighton and was somewhat bored because the weather was not encouraging use of the local boat ramp which is the greatest source of free entertainment in the world. Particularity in Brighton where a sense of self entitlement allied with copious amounts of plastic surgery, bad hair transplants and way…
Other HL Menckens often paraphrased quote that nobody went broke underestimating the intelligence of the general public. The real lesson from such things lies in what they tell us about investors and group behaviour. What initially piqued my interest in this little phenomena was the sense of permanence people attach to events that are transient.…
Persistent Bias In Advice Giving from Trading Game Pty Ltd
I read with interest last week that Joseph Gutnick had gone bust; apparently he owes some $275 million to various creditors and has about $15 to his name. I read this with a touch of nostalgia because it was Astro Mining that got me started in this business more than three decades ago. It also…
Now that gold has shown a little bit of life along with the various other precious metals my junk mail folder is awash with the requisite number of peanuts trumpeting that gold is the single best investment class in the history of the universe. Which is at complete odds with reality that gold is neither…
Great little graphic on the impact of the American Revolution on the British share price index. More here – The Economist
From the archive of the Lefsetz Letter which although proclaiming to be about the music industry talks about much more. DESIRE Making it can’t be some thing, it’s got to be the ONLY THING. You’re gonna want to sacrifice, but you’re gonna have to forgo more than that, miss out on parties, on social rituals,…
I was reflecting on this post where I looked at the yearly return for stocks in the S&P/ASX50 and I wondered what one of the more ordinary examples would look like if I played around with missing the best and worst days of the year. I actually knew in advance what the shape of the…
