Investors see through Brown’s blather
So the Chancellor stole David Cameron’s thunder with headline grabbing cuts in income and corporation tax. Judging by the spike in the FTSE during the speech, as soon as traders heard the words ‘tax’ and ‘cut’ they shouted ‘buy’.
As the dust settles, the real world, where the bad news is buried in the detail, is [...]
Have your say on Budget Day
What’s in store at 12.30 today? Stupified by too many of Gordon Brown’s ten previous speeches (and frankly a little agnostic on policy) I’ve turned to a couple of this blog’s erudite correspondents, Angela Frith and Steve Oakley, and selected bloggers of the World, or at least the UK, for their expectations. After the speech, [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Anti-Spam Challenge/Response
Have added a different Challenge Plugin to reduce the levels of spam from automated scripts. A math question will form part of the comments form. Have tested several times to check it works, which I’m not convinced the last plug in did.
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