Man versus stock picking machine
There are still some jobs computers can’t do says Mark Thoma of Economist’s View. The Mechanical Turk was a chess machine that toured around Europe and America trouncing all-comers, including Napoleon and Benjamin Franklin. But the Turk was a hoax. The technology didn’t exist in 1854, the year of the its destruction, let alone in […]
Finance, the Universe and Everything
You’ve heard of Wikipedia? It’s an online encyclopedia written and edited by you, and me, and anybody else who clicks on the edit button on one of it’s 1.6m pages. Curiously, despite doubts that a process that resembles anarchy could ever beget a publication comparable to the Encyclopædia Britannica, that’s precisely what’s happened.
Now an American […]
Try India, says analyst/blogger
As I close a fairly slim week on the blog, it’s a pleasure to introduce another British investing Blogger. He’s Graeme Pietersz, an analyst who moved to Sri Lanka after the dot.com bust and went it alone as an analyst and writer. He took some time out from blogging to write Money Terms, a kind […]
Adam who?
A new take, on some old news. Edward Elgar is being retired from the £20 note and Adam Smith, the father of economics, is replacing him. According to City A.M. today, 77% of City workers had not heard of Adam Smith. The newspaper didn’t report how many had heard of Edward Elgar.
The Adam Smith Institute […]
Win a copy of Ken Fisher’s ‘The Only Three Questions that Count’
If you’ve been reading our blog, you’ll know I’m a fan of Ken Fisher, and his book The Only Three Questions that Count. Publisher, Wiley, have five to give away. All you have to do to win a copy is send me a link to a website you like, run by an investor or group […]
Top 1000 finance blogs, PE revisited, investor bashing, collywobbles etc.
Flogging the week: The best of the financial blogs…
ValueWiki has a list of the Top 100 finance blogs. Depending on how you measure it, we are No. 5, or No. 74. I know which method I prefer, but I fear our Alexa page rank (which puts us at no 5) is inflated by association with […]
How important is the City?
I was reminded of Guy Fraser-Sampson’s claim that discouraging private equity could knock 1% off UK GDP when I saw this map:
Source: Worldmapper © Copyright 2006 SASI Group (University of Sheffield) and Mark Newman (University of Michigan)
It’s the world, but not as we know it. Normally the area of a territory on a map […]
The Great Texas Wind Rush
Companies you might like to watch and ideas you might like to consider
One thing there is plenty of in Texas is decommissioned oil platforms. Wind Energy Systems (WEST) was set up in 2004 by Harold Schoeffler and Herman Schellstede. Schoeffler runs a Cadillac dealership and Schellstede spent four decades as an oil rig man. Their […]
SkySails: big kites
Companies you might like to watch and ideas you might like to consider
In our globalised world, 90% of goods are transported by sea. According to recent industry and academic research emissions from shipping are double those of aviation, and as trade expands there is an expected rise of 75% in 15 years. There is much […]
The truth about private equity
Tuesday-to-Tuesday, headlines have been dominated by falling stock prices around the world but I detect signs of change. In the daily torrent that is Alphaville, the FT’s City Blog, were two stories yesterday that remind me of what used to make the front pages all of about a week ago; Private equity mega-deals. Blackstone, a […]
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