I was at a seminar a year or so ago and it was about national economic strategy. It pitted what I recall as being a fairly left wing (i.e. out of date and unworkable) approach to the economy by John Mills, with a response by George Tait Edwards championing the work of little-known Japanese economist…
I’m not one of those people who wants everything to be ‘like it was’. We should be heading eagerly into the future and making the most of it. Most people are resistant to change whereas I’ve always been an early adopter. Not everything changes for the best though, which simply means it needs changing again.…
In olden times it was considered bad form to discuss politics and religion in polite conversation. The weather was everyone’s go-to topic. I suppose it was far more likely that people would come to blows debating the abolition of slavery than how sunny it was going to be in the coming days, and whether it…
I’ve always wondered how it would work if you were to bet your arse in a wager. What would happen if you were to win? How would it pay out? Suppose you had really long odds of 150 to 1. Would they ship a whole load of arses to you? But they wouldn’t be your…
Humans are always looking for patterns, especially where they don’t exist. Where it suits their preconceptions a sample size as small as one will do very well. Their pronouncement will usually be preceded by the four words that illustrate that they have no real proof or evidence for their claim at all: “all I know…
I first went to Brazil in 2003. The exchange rate was slightly less favourable than it is today but still excellent. And everything was so cheap! I really didn’t have to look at price tags. I remember buying a beer, and a beer worked out around 19p a bottle. The barman asked me how many,…
Not altogether surprisingly, I read today in the FT that blue chip dividend cover is at a six year low. You may remember me writing in July that profit warnings had hit a six year high; well, this is the same news, just a little further along the food chain. Apparently, many of these companies…
Whenever you take a position in the market you take on risk. There is no position without risk. If you buy some shares you risk losing the capital you’ve invested. With a house you risk losing your capital, repossession if you don’t make your mortgage payments, and total loss from flood or fire unless you’re…
Denial is, as they say, not just a river in Africa. People are always in denial about all kinds of things they wish weren’t true: their partner’s not cheating, Sue Perkins is a comedian, capitalism isn’t fair and, most pertinent to this article, the UK stock market and economy aren’t failing. They are and there’s…
Over recent weeks I’ve been writing about the main markets showing weakness, and that persists. Obviously we saw a fall a few weeks ago, and it’s no secret that I’m expecting to see much bigger falls over the next six months. By and large markets ultimately fall (or rise), not because of actual reality, but…
