Perspectives
Bits vs Bytes
May, 2021
From the early 1900s until about 2010, the largest companies in the world were dominated by those operating in the tangible world of bits. Most of these companies developed products and services that were in the domain of chemical engineering (Oil & Gas majors, pharmaceuticals) or mechanical/electrical engineering (Toyota, General Electric, AT&T, IBM). However, in […]
Managing Portfolio Risks
May, 2021
Any functioning market is comprised of two groups: willing buyers and willing sellers. That might seem an obvious point but the complexity behind the apparently obvious has sustained decades of academic research and Nobel prizes awarded. Information asymmetry is always a problem; the chap selling you that car always knows more about it than you […]
On Inflation, Again
May, 2021
Equity markets have been volatile this week. Many have put this down to investors becoming concerned with increasing worries about higher inflation and how this will impact interest rates in the future. We do not buy into this narrative. We believe much of the current commentary around inflation is misplaced, as it fails to distinguish […]
Napoleon, Money, & Bitcoin
May, 2021
It was the 200th anniversary this week of the lonely death on the British possession of St Helena of that great scourge of Europe, the man that the Duke of Wellington described as the best general, “In this age, in past ages, in any age,” Napoleon. We tend to look at history through the eyes […]
Hidden Value
April, 2021
Since the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, technology companies have been the best performing companies in both developing and developed markets. At least that has been the narrative. A more accurate analysis of what has happened reveals something perhaps less interesting because it is quite obvious. The companies that have performed well over the last […]
Covid has not gone away
April, 2021
Since the turn of this century, the global economy has become more and more interconnected: be it in the manufacture of goods, the influence of the world wide web on the instant information flow from one location to another, or indeed the ability to provide services to clients from offshore locations such as India. With […]
A Tale of Risk
April, 2021
In 1973, Shirley Bassey wrote the timeless piece “Diamonds are Forever”. Diamonds can indeed survive harsh conditions through the aeons because their unique properties make them one of the hardest materials on the planet. In many ways, excessive leverage is the polar opposite of diamonds because it is fragile and given enough time, it will […]
Stimulus: In defence of American leadership?
April, 2021
It was Adam Smith who remarked that, “there is a lot of ruin in a country.” Economies build a great deal of wealth over time and are, perhaps, more resilient than we sometimes think, particularly in the middle of a crisis such as the global pandemic. This is most evident in the US. At the […]
Hidden Growth
March, 2021
In 1892, the Holborn Viaduct power station in London became the first of its kind in the world. The location of the now defunct plant is coincidentally just a short walk from our offices. The plant supplied electricity to nearby streetlights and private residences. It used coal to drive a steam turbine which drove a […]
On Inflation
March, 2021
Much has been written about how prices of goods and services will respond to the sheer colossal scale of stimulus injected into the world economy by central banks and governments, all with the best intentions of staving off an economic collapse which would hurt livelihoods now and well into the future. We would suggest that […]