Note: after nearly 4 years of blogging on an almost weekly basis, I will be taking a break for a month or two. The plan is to recharge, work on other personal priorities and perhaps even explore some new content/ideas for the blog upon my return to it. In the meanwhile, readers will likely be grateful […]

I recently re-read Not Fade Away, which is Peter Barton’s biography/memoir (it was co-written with Laurence Shames). The book was first recommended to me a few years ago by a friend and I like to revisit it from time to time. Peter had a fascinating life and career, which included working closely with John Malone […]

This week’s readings/links: Jonathan Ruffer: Investment review (June 2020). Oliver Hughes: The CEO of Tinkoff Bank on how to build a profitable digital bank. Ben Cleary: Don’t fight the Fed, buy commodities instead. Michael Sonnenfeldt: Investing during the pandemic; what should I do with my money considering all of the volatility & uncertainty today? Better Mousetrap […]

This week’s reading/links: Interview with Luis von Ahn: Founder of reCAPTCHA and Duolingo. This is well worth a listen. Luis von Ahn is an associate professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon. He was also one of the pioneers of crowdsourcing and used it in a unique way to build the business model for both his […]

This week’s readings/links: MS Investment Management: Myth busting, popular delusions, and the variant perception. This is a good read. It’s an excerpt from a talk given by Michael Mauboussin to the Greenwich Roundtable earlier this year. He addresses four myths (“popular delusions”) and offers a variant perception on each: Concerns about the impact of short-termism, without […]

This week’s readings/links: In gold we trust: 2020 report (the extended version). Ronald-Peter Stöferle and Mark Valek’s annual publication covering the state of global financial markets, monetary dynamics and their influence on gold price developments. There is also a compact version of the report available from their website. Charley Ellis: Why active investing is still a loser’s […]

This week’s readings/links: The coming disruption: Scott Galloway predicts a handful of elite cyborg universities will soon monopolize higher education. Interesting read; deliberately provocative for sure, but I think he is directionally right in terms of some of his arguments and predictions. While different models can and will coexist, some existing ones will certainly need […]

This week’s readings/links: Are buybacks good for long-term shareholder value?: Evidence from buybacks around the world. I have only fuzzy memories of discussing the nature and persistence of buyback anomalies during a finance class back when I was at business school. If I recall correctly, the existing literature at the time was focused only on […]

This week’s readings/links include Platinum Asset Management on their bear market playbook, Cheah Cheng Hye’s webinar on the investment impacts of COVID-19, a UxC interview with Galymzhan Pirmatov (the CEO of NAC Kazatomprom), Paul Tudor Jones & Lorenzo Giorgianni on the great monetary inflation, and the World Gold Council on gold demand trends for Q1 […]

This week’s readings/links include a conversation with Savio Kwan, Alibaba’s ex-President and COO, on navigating through SARS, Eli Binder on the work behind the Luckin Coffee short, David Webb on COVID-19 and where we go from here, Greg Miller on how tanker stocks could emerge as a COVID-19 relapse hedge, Adam Grant on the benefit […]