Sleeping with the enemy – should central banks adopt bitcoin?
Hands up anyone who hasn’t heard of Bitcoin. No takers of course. So far it has been a qualified failure. Its most faithful users are the wrong kind of people who use if for money laundering and criminal activities. Yet bitcoin has many good uses and there are even legitimate companies that are starting to […]
Less Algebra More Fudge Brownie – What Will Managed Investing 2.0 Look Like?
Did you see the article in the Wall Street Journal lately about how investors are pulling cash from hedge funds? Seems like their returns are lagging the stock market. Of course that’s hardly new. The era of managed investing seems to be coming to a close as index funds take over. Far better to do as […]
Are recessions contagious?
We’re in one of the longest economic expansions in history right now. So of course the forecasters are jumping off the bandwagon to predict the next recession. The only thing though: economists are tragically unsuccessful at predicting recessions. According to the IMF, in the 1990s private economists only predicted correctly 2 of 60 recessions one year in […]
High Frequency Trading Trashed by Quantum Computers?
I’m sure you’ve all heard of high-frequency trading (HFT). We now realize that HFT could actually bring down the stock market. As it is, HFT accounts for at least half of all the stock trading in the US. This isn’t to complain about HFT. It is what it is. Maybe it makes it hard for small investors. […]
What’s Your Next but One Career?
I guess you just saw that Hulk Hogan was awarded $115 million for having his sex videos publicly uploaded by Gawker? My thought on this is I wonder whether this will form the basis for a new career. Celebrity litigant? Sexpert? Another reality show? The Hulk has had a few careers so far, starting with […]
Behavioral M&A – Yahoo Needed It But Too Late Now
So what’s behavioral M&A anyhows? See here for the skinny, will tell you more below. When Marissa Mayer was appointed CEO I predicted she would fail. Right on the money (“Yahoo – Product Bling 1, Business Acumen 0”). Was the problem Ms. Mayer or something else? How about the 70 or so acquisitions she made? They cost around […]
Should exercise be compulsory?
Did you hear the latest about the benefits of exercise? Seems it reduces cancer tumors, in whole or in part (“A run a day keeps the tumor at bay”)? It was a study in mice but it looks like it will extend to us humans. As well as this the study showed yet again that […]
Gravitational Waves Reveal We’re Worth Reconnoitering
See that scientists have just discovered the existence of gravitational waves? Well, hopefully. They also announced the same discovery a couple of years ago but then retracted it (see my post “Dust on Your Lens: Gravitational Waves and Cognitive Biases”). But assuming this time it’s for real; it’s a pretty amazing feat. To wit, they detected […]
Index Investing an Even Worse Fate than Stock Picking?
By now everyone knows that stock picking doesn’t work – on average. That’s why hedge funds and the like are doing so poorly. Active investing is just about finished. In response the so-called smart money has headed into index funds and ETFs. That way you are supposed to be able to keep pace with the […]
“The Big Short” – The Real Problem with Ratings
Did you see “The Big Short”? I’m sure Bernie Sanders is having a field day, his ticket to the big job he thinks. It’s worth seeing if only to reveal the zeitgeist in 2007, a fin de siècle moment. Naturally it paints the banks and the ratings companies in the darkest of colors. So what […]