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 […]
We need the Interplanetary Monetary Fund now!
So finally SpaceX made it and soft-landed its booster rocket. An epochal achievement. And Bezos’ Blue Origin did much the same although on a lower orbit. So now the race is on. Next it will be the Russians, Chinese, Japanese, maybe even the North Koreans, God forbid. It’s now obvious that we have pretty much […]
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 […]
“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 […]
Can we create irrational AI?
Did you notice that an AI program from Google just beat a top human player at Go? It’s a big deal; the chess problem was solved years ago but Go was still a challenge. So now that problem has fallen, AI has got to go to the next step. What will that be I wonder? The […]
Mother Knows Best – Leadership is Innate in Women, Learned In Men
Did you see that Angela Merkel, German Chancellor, just got Time’s Person of the Year? She’s the only Western leader who can deal with Putin. She’s really the leader of “united” Europe which has the combined heft of the US. So she certainly deserves it. Definitely in the same class as Margaret Thatcher and Golda Meir. […]
Blockchain – A Revolutionary New Way to Stop Corruption in its Tracks, Everywhere!
You’ve probably heard of bitcoins, which are now, once again a hot topic. A US company (Coinbase) has just started up the first bitcoin credit card in the US, so I guess if it has a piece of plastic behind it, it must be good. But bitcoin is getting to be old hat these days. The really […]
Tinderizing Leadership
I guess you’ve heard of Tinder? New Age dating app: see photo, swipe left for reject, right to accept. You’re on. Major sensation amongst singles. Tinder recently announced big news. In future it will have a special space to list your job and education. Yep, never had it before. I guess that’s why it has had the reputation […]
Are Narcissistic, Uncaring People the Most Successful Leaders?
I just saw the Alex Gibney’s documentary about Steve Jobs, “Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine”. It’s more true to the man than Danny Boyle’s “Steve Jobs”, also showing now. I’ve already showed my hand in my blog post on the 2013 film “Jobs”: “Can a Narcissistic Bully be a Good Leader? So what’s […]