The occasional baiting of Michael Fish over his famous weather forecasting error in 1987 has happened again. Andy Haldane, the Chief Economist of the Bank of England, recently issued a bit of a ‘mea culpa’ when he said that the…
2016 Investment Review – Valuations Top Trump
Not a black swan One professional adviser publication produced a review of the year with a picture of a black swan on the front. It’s a clear reference to the results of the UK referendum and US election. Except…
Risky business
Health and safety – Dangerous things conkers? Whilst walking this weekend in the pretty town of Wansford, Northants, I managed to slip on a couple of conkers. It reminded me of the story that, due to health and safety fears,…
Gold Medal Birthday – 23 March
Gold Medal Birthday Bonanza. Among all the headline grabbing Olympic statistics from the past two weeks, you can’t have missed this one. GB’s four most successful male Olympians were all born 23 March. Amazing isn’t it? Sir Steve Redgrave, Sir…
Missing the high notes – the 500 euro note (again)
The 500 euro note has a habit of going missing. This blog draws heavily on the original, but also looks at the latest report from the Luxembourg Central Bank. In June I highlighted a Europol (European Police Office) report…
Pokemon Go – Gotta Blog About Em All
Pokemon deja vu The second coming of over one hundred catchable Pokemon as a phone app has created a lot of excitement. And ‘Pokemon Go’ has sent the blogosphere into full hyperbolic overdrive. I have to admit that even I’ve…
Brexit – Welcome to Poundland
Letter to The Times, 24th June 2016 ‘Sir, It is now surely unthinkable that we can continue to call our country the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The only thing uniting us is our currency. Perhaps Poundland…
Interest Rates: The Power of Negative Thinking 2
Stressed Out While the main media is consumed with the economics of Bremain versus Brexit, I am going to return to the topic of ‘negative interest rates’. It’s important to understand that, whatever the outcome of the referendum, that…
Interest Rates: The Power of Negative Thinking
A Song For Europe A long time ago in a bar far, far away (Yokohama actually) a former colleague introduced me to a song called ‘The cow kicked Nelly in the belly in the barn’. The attraction of the song,…
Taking Notes – 500 Euro Banknotes
Why the ECB has decided to stop issuing the 500 euro banknote by the end of 2018 Lost between the Panama Papers revelations and this week’s anti-corruption summit in London was the news that the European Central Bank (ECB)…
This blog is about making better financial decisions and to explain how to do that I concentrate on these overlapping areas – understanding risk, financial products and decision-making by governments, firms and individuals.
I really do try to keep it as light-hearted as possible, but with some parts of finance you just have to try to get the information down on the page in the most meaningful way. The good news is, I will warn you of the heavier topics in advance and rather than bog a post down with equations and numbers, I’ll provide those separately if you want them. This to me seems a far better approach than writing technical articles that will turn off the intended audience.
The original 'plugin' I used to provide the Facebook and Google+ 'like' buttons for each post was incompatible with the security certificate I’ve added to the site. So, I have eventually found another, but the original ‘likes’ no longer show on earlier posts. Which is a shame, but these examples will give you a flavour of the overall blog.
Most popular - A Major 25 Year Anniversary, The Wrong Trousers
Understanding risk - It's a Small World - Part Two, 'What's the chance of that happening?'
Financial products - Are CoCos Nuts?
Decision making - Making Your Mind Up
Chris