“Investment ideas can spread like epidemics.” Robert Shiller in his Nobel Lecture “Speculative Asset Markets” 2013 Bob Shiller’s Nobel winning contribution was the observation that asset markets generally are too volatile relative to theoretical methods for pricing securities. The panicked reaction to Coronavirus 2019 (Covid19) seems no exception. I have regularly been asked what Covid19’s […]
Paul Singer, the billionaire activist investor, just announced that his Elliot Investment Fund has taken a 20% stake in Masayoshi Son’s Softbank Ventures. Activist investors make a living out of forcing efficiencies on inefficiently run companies. Softbank is a legend in VC-land, yet it trades at a 50% discount to NAV. Masayoshi Son is a […]
As the WuHanFlu pandemic rapidly takes grip, it is worth recounting the SARS crisis of 2002… The first I heard about SARS was when a taxi driver picked me up with his car door windows completely open. I congratulated him on his appreciation of the climate and rejection of air conditioning which tends to be […]
Social reformers, religious zealots, the politically correct, the politically active, tree huggers, the elitists and a host of other individuals with non-libertarian attitudes have difficulty accepting cold, hard, facts. Rather than acknowledging society as it is and trying to explain why it is that way, these people want to change it. Positivism, on the other […]
ARAMCO, the Saudi Arabian oil company, issued stock at a USD1.7 trillion valuation last week and promptly traded up 18% to top USD2trillion. This was in line with the Saudi government’s initial valuation expectations. This result was achieved essentially by direct listing. I say this since the cap raise was a miniscule 1.5% of market […]
Swinging in Saudi Arabia ARAMCO officially listed yesterday. The Saudi owned company is the world’s largest oil producer, world’s largest company … the world’s largest many things. It has played a political role, a diplomatic role and a world economic role for many years as the ‘Swing Producer’ in the oil markets. Swing producers have […]
Many traders and portfolio managers began their careers on the Cash desk. This is a place where you can learn the markets without getting into too much trouble. Cash is variously defined as fixed income securities with maturities ranging from 91 days for the most secure portfolios out to 397 days for portfolios with slightly […]
“We have security concerns with this initiative ” is every IT department’s Ace of trump’s for effectively stopping any project in its tracks. No board of directors will dare challenge said “security concerns ” since their personal liability is too great to risk it. Those of us old enough to remember the Y2K soap opera […]
The Cuba Libre (Rum and Coke) became the symbol of Cuban independence during the Spanish-American war. What will symbolise the take-no-prisoners war about to erupt between Facebook and the world’s Central Banks over Libra? I recently attended a meeting of senior Central Bank and Academic researchers in Singapore. The discussion quickly focused on the effectiveness […]
There is less than 2 hours until voting finishes in the Australian federal election. My money v mischief theory is difficult to determine a winner. The Labor party is a clear leader in the money category, promising everybody everything…but my suspicion is that mischief will decide this election… The current global trend is to protest […]