The Rise and Fall of Nokia
This is a classic how do you f#%k that up story. It is quite remarkable how devastating hubris and an inability to adapt to a changing world can destroy a company that had a world leading position.
What Is The Difference Between a Tulip and AI
The answer to this is fairly simple. One put an end to the 17th-century Dutch dream of being a global power, and the other may bankrupt staggering numbers of individuals. What prompted this little piece and the accompanying infographic was a quote I heard from a company CEO that his token costs (the cost for…
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The Music Explosion Of 1978
A bit of Sunday nostalgia for all the old farts. The only point I would make is my belief that Boston are the only band whose debut album was effectively their greatest hits album
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1929 – History Always Repeats
I am currently making my way through Andrew Ross Sorkin’s excellent 1929, a day-by-day account of the events leading up to the 1929 crash. As you would expect, the book is full of big characters who are full of themselves. One aspect of human psychology has always been that bull markets convince people that they…
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The Scale of China
If you look up small, rooted backwaters whose politicians think we are more important than we are in the dictionary, you will find Australia. If you look up a global behemoth with 4000 years of history, you will discover China. I really don’t think people, particularly right-wing politicians, understand the significance of the changes that…
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The Law of Unintended Consequences Strikes Again
Economists love to tell each other stories about perverse incentives. The “cobra effect” is a favourite. It describes an attempt by the British Raj to rid Delhi of its cobras by paying a bounty for each cobra skin, thus encouraging a thriving cobra-farming industry. The cobra story is probably an urban myth — or a…
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Buried by the Wall Street Crash
Two of the greatest economists who ever lived, Irving Fisher and John Maynard Keynes, thought they could predict the future and make a killing on the stock market. Both of them failed to see the Wall Street crash, the greatest market disaster of the age – and arguably, of any age. Yet having made the…
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My Quest to Find the Owner of a Mysterious WWII Japanese Sword
The sword was suspended in the basement rafters with a message from 1945 still secured to its fittings. My grandfather and I were sitting one floor above it at his kitchen table when an email arrived. It was 9:17 A.M. on Christmas Day in 2021, the Chicago weather too mild, the ground too much of…
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Empire of Numbers – Fibonacci
Traders for decades have tried to use Fibonacci numbers to predict where markets will go. Sadly like most things to do with trading, they are completely unaware of their history.
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