Reading Time: 4 minutes The end of the year is a great time for reflection, the end of the decade, is the sort of milestone that only comes around a handful of times in our adult life and is special indeed. This is a rare chance – if we choose to take it – to look back, reflect on … More The Days are Long but the Years are Short – How to Reflect on a Decade
Reading Time: 4 minutes What if I told you that this evening you’d get an audience with some of the greatest founders, money managers, authors, researchers and Nobel prizewinners of all time in our industry? People like Robert Shiller, Rob Arnott, Michael Mauboissin, Ben Inker, Rajiv Jain, Cliff Asness, Ray Dalio and even Jack Bogle? You’d be pretty happy … More The 10 Best FinPod Episodes of 2019
Reading Time: 2 minutes I’ve often said that thoughtful disagreement is one of the most underrated skills. We know we should do it, but we don’t know how, and worse, we’re heavily wired against it through ego and confirmation bias. I listened to this great conversation between Ray Dalio and Reid Hoffman, which contained a ton of useful tips … More Practical tips for thoughtful disagreement
Reading Time: 5 minutes Bad communication is like a tax we all collect from each other continuously, every year, and every day. What can you remember from that hour long presentation you heard this morning? Can you name three real takeaways that have stuck from all the time you spent in meetings and presentations last week? Let’s face it … More 3 Rare Skills That Make Presentations Clear and Memorable
Reading Time: 5 minutes I started off with the idea of writing a blog on the worst habits of investors. And whether we’re talking individual investors or institutions it’s not hard to quickly come up with a long list of bad habits that have eaten away at returns (Ben Carlson already did a pretty good job of this here … More The 5 worst habits of the investment industry
Reading Time: 2 minutes “Investing is the perfect example of a complex problem with no known solution. There are no secrets.” – Nick Magguili (Of Dollars and Data) So what really matters most in the volatile, uncertain and ambiguous environment of investing? Better models? Research? Skilled managers? Access to deals? These things can and do matter, and fortunes have … More The Four Most Important Things in Investing
Reading Time: < 1 minute A common – and apt – acronym for today’s world, and particularly the domain of investing derives from the military – VUCA. “VUCA is an acronym – first used in 1987, drawing on the leadership theories of Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus – to describe or to reflect on the volatility, uncertainty, complexityand ambiguity of … More The World is VULCAN not VUCA
Reading Time: < 1 minute Disagreeing well: it’s easy to disagree badly (and agree badly), and we all know the truism that different viewpoints is good, but harnessing dissenting views in practice is so much harder than you think Managing meetings effectively: many companies would baulk at an expense of several £’000, but routinely allow such sums to be wasted … More Underrated Skills
Reading Time: < 1 minute Quite big news out last week on the future of RPI, in DB pensions-land, amid everything else that’s going on. I’ve seen a variety of conflicting takes on the announcement, but clearly has implications for DB schemes. Here is a helpful reminder of some of the recent background context on the long-running issues with RPI. … More RPI surprises
Reading Time: < 1 minute A fantastic piece by the great Morgan Housel. Four reasons why complexity sells – Working through complexity feels like real work, while simplicity feels like an easy walk (too easy?) Length superficially signals effort and thoughtfulness (flawed thinking that is not challenged often enough) Things you don’t understand create a mystique around people who do … More Why Complexity Sells
