To say that government debt levels are high is nothing new. Even before Covid-19 hit, despite years of austerity, debt levels were already extremely elevated. But after the fiscal damage of Covid-19, debt as a percentage of GDP has now reached extraordinary levels that, when viewed from a long-term historical perspective, are jaw-dropping. Take the…
‘A lot of people die fighting tyranny. The least I can do is vote against it’. Carl Icahn. Capital markets have been wonderful inventions. Freed from self-interest and patronage, they allow Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’ to unemotionally allocate scarce capital around the economy – investing where it will be most productively used. Society as a…
Be careful what you wish for. There was a time when most Brits would have given anything to have something other than Brexit dominate the news. For several years, in both the run-up to the referendum in 2016 and its aftermath, it felt to many like no other subject got a look in. Nobody would…
“OK boomer” You probably recognise the phrase. Among some Millennials, Generation Zers and maybe even Gen Alphas, it’s the verbal equivalent of an eye-roll. A way for young people to breezily dismiss the attitudes and opinions of Baby Boomers who they disagree with (or with whom they disagree, depending on the generation reading this article)….
The ability of countries to support their economies today turns on fiscal practices that were set well before this crisis. Even before the arrival of Covid-19, there were few topics as polarising in politics and economics as the size and rectitude of government debt levels around the world. In the face of the ‘once in…
January 2020 – twelve years after the start of financial crisis – marked an important milestone for Australian investors. The ASX 200 index finally crossed 6749, and in the process, passed its previous peak set in October 2007. It may have taken more than a decade, but Australia’s largest listed companies had finally recovered all…
It’s no secret that ‘value’ based investment strategies have generally underperformed absolute market returns throughout the current bull-market, with this underperformance being particularly acute over the past three years. Importantly however, the underperformance of value as a style has not been driven by a failure of value investing to deliver on what it sets out…
Sadly, investors lost one of their greatest advocates last week, Jack Bogle, the founder of Vanguard and a pioneer of the index investing movement passed way. Jack’s legacy will be that he created a practical real-world application for a well-established academic idea. The efficient market hypothesis holds that the current price of an asset should…
We know that humans have been infatuated with gambling for as long as we have records. Some of the earliest games of chance were forms of a dice game that used the squarish knucklebone of hoofed animals. These bones have been found at archaeological digs all over the world, showing that we used this precursor…
My first boss and mentor always knew when it was going to rain. He would stand up from his desk, stretch an aching leg, and declare that a thunderstorm was coming. He could “feel it in his bones.” Today the received wisdom in the market, especially from investors with a little grey hair and barometric…
