Experts with the ‘X’ factor
Most, but not all, pundits are wrong, most of the time. Here’s how to spot the experts who’ve got talent…
Robin Soole, a reader of this blog, is unimpressed by financial journalism. In the following quote he added his own merciless annotations to a reply from an editor advising a reader after one of his magazine’s […]
What is the future of finance?
A big question, and I don’t have an answer… yet. But a post on the Zopa blog by it’s founder and UK chief executive James Alexander suggests one future. Zopa, like Interactive Investor, uses the Internet to help the guy who wants to help himself. He quotes the shadow chancellor, George Osbourne:
“With all these profound […]
Cockroaches and trolls
Graeme at MoneyTerms is adding more encyclopaedic definitions to his site. I suggested a few, others are topical, which makes MoneyTerms an ally in interpreting the financial pages. So, if you want to know why cov-lite financing used by private equity firms is causing concern in the City, or discover the seedy world of the […]
Correction: Taking the market’s temperature
Hi folks, There was an error in the blog I just posted. It was only there momentarily but if you use RSS, you’ll have wrong version in your reader so please come to the site to read it. This is the correct text:
Currently the 10-year world treasury yield stands at 4.6% and the MSCI world […]
Taking the market’s temperature
Rising bond yields are a bad omen for the stockmarket. But we’re not doomed yet.
Rising bond yields last week provoked another bout of paranoid punditry this week for the very good reason that the bull market in shares is fuelled in part by cheap debt. Suddenly private equity deals, takeovers and share buy backs look […]
Make way for the megacap boom
The dog-days of this bull market will be marked by a megacap boom, says Alphaville, quoting the Lex column. Here’s the logic:
The worlds 120 largest companies are 15% cheaper than the next 1,000. It didn’t used to be that way.
Big public companies have 40% less debt than their smaller peers.
If profitability declines, they’re less risky.
If […]
No rest for bad-boy activist
Investing’s answer to Alan Sugar is moving into town. Daniel Loeb is to list an activist hedge fund in London and judging by his acerbic dealings with companies in the US, we’re going to be entertained. This was his reply to a would-be employee who balked at emailing his best three investment ideas:
We find most […]
Economist joins the free Internet
The Economist has joined the free Internet. It’s front page is now a big ad., but it’s a small price to pay
Falling house prices wouldn’t trouble stockmarket
As regular readers of this blog will know, we’ve been discussing the timing of the end of this bull market. People fear it’s imminent, but the fundamentals are more reassuring.
Judging by comments like this one from Stuart, a property crash is the catalyst we fear most:
It is curious that neither Richard nor Robin [a regular […]
Stop demonizing shareholders!
The markets are not perfect and neither are the fund managers driving investment decisions nor the managers of companies seeking to maximize shareholder value, but I will take a free market any day over controlled five-year planning. A financial institution should know better.
Tom Glocer, chief executive of Reuters, on Nationwide’s new ad. campaign, which […]
