Imagine we have a way back machine and we wander into your broker or financial planners office in 2007 and ask them to generate a portfolio for us. I can guarantee you that your portfolio will have at least two of the local big four banks in it. The argument for including them will include…
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A study set to appear soon in the Journal of Accounting Research asks whether deceptive chief executives and chief financial officers give themselves away by the language they use in the course of their conference calls. David F. Larcker and Anastasia Zakolyukina, both of Stanford University, Graduate School of Business, have developed prediction models (though still rather…
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Whilst I was away travelling I checked into my LinkedIn account and was greeted with the usual amount of spam and rubbish job offerings but in typical LinkedIn fashion, I was bombarded by ads extolling the virtues of Australian Super. You can imagine my delight when they dropped in an ad with the tagline Proven…
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If ever there were a parable about saving money and not splurging your bonus on the first car or watch that crosses your path, the sorry tale ofJPMorgan’s employee benefit trust (EBT) would seem to be it. Well over a decade since bonuses were allocated, some JPMorgan recipients are being asked to pay money back – to…
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You’re a Russian criminal with millions of dollars in ill-gotten gains but one big problem: Transferring slugs of money or carrying suitcases of cash will raise eyebrows. You need to “launder” the dough — make the dirty money appear to be the proceeds of legitimate enterprise. Then it can be spent anywhere in the world…
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One of the problems with trading is that it is awash with various pieces of wisdom and mythology that dont stand up to scrutiny. I try as much as possible to run an evidence based life and when I dont understand something or I hear something that is a bit off the stock standard piece…
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It looks like the hedge-fund equivalent of a hostage video. James Cordier, in a dark suit, cuff links and expensive-looking watch, sits in a brown leather chair and stares into a camera, his hands folded in front of him. Then he delivers the bad news. His voice near-breaking at times, the hedge fund manager employs…
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The appalling performance of hedge funds continues. I have taken the yearly data for the HFR Equity Hedge Fund database converted it to the value of $1 invested and compared it to the S&P500 Total Return Index.
* Recent research suggests that a sedentary lifestyle–one without exercise–is more harmful to our health than smoking, diabetes, or high blood pressure. The lack of aerobic fitness is a larger risk factor for mortality than having many medical conditions that we regard as necessary to treat. * Poor posture, such as sitting hunched over a screen for…
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