Its a shitty day in Melbourne, so with nothing better to do I decided to fire up excel, download a bit of data and see what I could learn. Anyone who has spent more than 10 minutes on this blog will realise that I am fascinated by mechanisms of generating excess return with minimal cost…
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I have been thinking about this piece I posted yesterday. The central tenet is that to admit a mistake is to undermine one’s sense of self. Thus doing so is extremely difficult for professional money managers. My thoughts have drifted to the current round of pending and proposed legal action by shareholders against various companies,…
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In an industry where power and influence are measured in dollars and cents, this may be the most exclusive club in finance: The price of admission is at least $25 million. It has no name and no board of directors but has a roster drawn from the world’s wealthiest and most successful traders. Members essentially become…
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I had made an exhaustive study of recessions so that I could form a timeless picture of an archetypal recession and then understand the difference among them. I did that for all economic and market movements and was inclined to do it for just about everything, because it helps me understand how things work. One…
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Ya reckon….yet another thing that probably got a grant when one wasn’t actually needed. Some things belong in the no shit Sherlock file…. Abstract It is widely assumed that psychopathic personality traits promote success in high-powered, competitive contexts such as financial investment. By contrast, empirical studies find that psychopathic leaders can be charming and persuasive,…
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I am currently making my way through Ray Dalio’s collection of thoughts and it is proving to be an interesting read. Dalio is an interesting individual with an interesting take on life – this obviously explains in part why his hedge fund Bridgewater has a somewhat interesting reputation for having an unusual corporate culture. What…
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Whilst driving home yesterday I had the misfortune of hearing an ambulance chaser on the radio touting for AMP shareholders to be involved in a class action over the destruction of shareholder wealth caused by the revelations in at the current Royal Commission and this prompted me to think what shareholder wealth and what destruction.…
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Always been a fan of Hugh simply because he was different….. Hugh Hendry is a rare breed: a retired hedge fund manager who has actually retired. Lately, the former manager of the Eclectica Fund, a London-based global macro outfit he ran for 15 years until shuttering it last year, spends his days unsubscribing from finance-related…
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Chalk one up for the humans. Hedge funds that use artificial intelligence and machine learning in their trading process posted the worst month on record in February, according to a Eurekahedge index that’s tracked the industry from 2011. The first equity correction in two years upended their strategies as once-reliable cross-asset correlations shifted. While computerized programs…
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