Category: Companies

Boeings Don’t Fix Broke – They Just Switch to Performative Art!

So, Boeing has screwed up yet again. The secret? Don’t aim to fix the particular problem – find a totally new solution. Quality Job No. 11 Boeaing is one of the worlds bellwethers in reliability, quality and admirability. Or it was. Now it’s not. Is there any way of unbreaking something that is irretrievably broken […]

Is Google the Next GE?

I guess you’ve been seeing the reports that both the US and Europe are going all-out to nail Google and other tech companies for anti-trust violations. I wonder how Google will cope. That depends a lot on the character of its CEO, Sundar Pichai. A recent article by Rob Copeland in the Wall Street Journal referred to him as a “nice […]

Is organizational culture over-hyped?

If you’re in HR, or you’re the CEO of an organization, chances are that you talk a lot about your “unique” organizational culture. It’s also a favorite of academics. Definitely politically correct. But even the promoters of organizational culture don’t exactly know what it means – see for example this article, direct from the PC […]

Would Trump be a Billionaire without his Inheritance?

Is this the elephant in the room? Trump’s frequent allusions to his vast wealth and to how smart he is sounds awfully like the rich son who inherited it all but wants to convince everyone else – and himself – that really he did it all himself. So I thought I would do an analysis […]

An Inconvenient Truth – Alpha Financial Styles Beget Ginormous Returns

Apologies to Al Gore for another inconvenient truth. There’s been a lot of talk about alpha these days, but not just about investments. Trump, Putin – alpha is definitely in vogue. As in alpha male. Like Tarzan. Does that tell us something about the investing world? Yep it does. Check out my book The Three Financial […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]