I remember as a child walking out of the movie Tron and thinking "I love anything to do with the future". Movies like Tron, War Games and Star Wars were the seeding inspiration around my life as a product builder in financial markets and more recently in web applications. What’s really interesting is how Apple [...]
Systemic Monopolies are a problem I have long thought exists in our less than ideal form of capitalism. We think of traditional monopolies as being about a business having some unique advantage or forming some sort of cartel to dominate a market. While most economies have mechanisms to prevent this they equally create what I [...]
Wotnews.com.au the news arm of Wotif.com has posted the 3 big stories of 2008 according to various CEOs, Gov and Industry leaders. My three were: The Death of Capitalism (as we know it) A defining year in financial markets with the emergence of a new species of company that will cause the re-writing of so [...]
Who’s at fault in the financial crisis? I hate witch hunts, they always seem to burn the wrong person in the end. However I must say that I can’t disagree with restricting payouts to people leaving sinking ships. One party who needs to be held more accountable are the Federal Reserves. For at least a [...]
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Stop feeding the bears cry the Zookeepers!!! When regulators ban short selling do they have a legal liability to the mum’s and dad’s, fund managers and traders who lose money from this almost instant change in regulated markets? I’d love to see what some of the big legal firms think on this. (Update: Just read [...]
American tax payers are about to start bearing the burden of bad credit bets placed by big banks and insurance companies. I have been more than amazed by the events in the US in recent weeks during the financial crisis. Creating a pseudo guarantee structure for big American companies like AIG is just pure protectionism. [...]
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At the moment the emu is exactly the write emblem for Australia, I just wish the kangaroo would kick it’s head out of the sand. There wasn’t any substantial attention to tech in the 2020 summit from what I can tell/read (someone please give me hope for our country and tell me I’m wrong). Australia’s [...]
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Donkey prices are going through the roof. A good mate on the trading desk at Deutsche Bank I worked with sent me a hilarious news snippet (in a nervous laughter kind of way). For those who are wondering if there is inflation: the Turkish newspaper Zaman reported the price of donkeys in Yozgat district in [...]
Twitter the nuclear option Stilgherrian points to a great read. I particularly loved this quote describing the potency of Twitter….”This newest of new things has only just started to rise up and flex its muscles. The street, ever watchful, will find new uses for it, uses that corporations, governments and institutions of every stripe will [...]
Interesting call by Bernard Hickey of Interest.co.nz (thanks Diversity for the pointer). He suggests we won’t see the highs in NZ house prices seen last year until 2018 at the earliest. I have quite a different view on this. A big chunk of the NZ price rally in recent years was correcting a real estate [...]
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Inflation is bullish for stock markets longer term. Yep, those of you who remember inflation spikes of decades past might recall doubling of prices across decade periods. Stock markets doubled also, they had to, the math required it. Stock markets aren’t alone. Your home is the biggest asset you’ll probably ever buy but for some [...]
Beijing Olympics opens on the auspicious 08/08/08. 162 million internet users. China’s average income is US$2k p/a. 2/3 rds of its power is from coal. You can’t resell Skype in china. China is half of the global demand growth in metals. Is a single party planned economy. They invented ice cream in 2000BC. A milk [...]
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Scott Rossenberg points to a very interesting article in The Antlantic. In a nutshell China has a huge trade surplus undistributed to its people. A lot of it sits in US, UK and Australian government bonds. China is very sensible doing this for their economy in order to prevent inflation. It is an onerous balancing [...]
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This is funny in a nervous laughter kind of way. Here Comes Another Bubble – The Richter Scales
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If you are in a room with 100 people representing the buying power of the global economy only 1 or 2 of them are Australians. I realised how small we were when I stood in a Tokyo train station. This photo isn’t in rush hour – it was too hard to take. Humanity in your [...]
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I can’t put trading advice on my blog because I am employed by an investment bank. However, here’s someone else’s tip that is very true. “If you don’t know who you are and what you do, the stock market is an expensive place to find out.” Adam Smith
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