blippy's blog 2024
Blog for 2024
December
WHERE ARE THE CUSTOMERS' YACHTS: "What is the primary purpose of a business enterprise? ... So give yourself a real good mark if you know that a business should make money, but only if you really know that." p62
MARKET TOP. BlackRock has said the global economy has exited the cycle of ‘boom and bust’ due to a fundamental shift driven by the emergence of “mega forces” including artificial intelligence technologies. [Contrast Gordon Brown saying in March 2000: "Boom and bust is at an end, says Brown. Gordon Brown claimed to have eradicated boom-but by forecasting robust outlook for economic growth"]
November
RAINER ZITELMANN. "Donald Trump ... [is] not a free market guy ... he always thinks a little bit like where I tell the people ... what they have to do." "He admire ... Putin or maybe even ... Kim [Jong Un], who he thinks that they are strong, but I don't believe that Putin is strong. He's not strong. Putin is a loser with atomic weapons."
FASCISM DEFINED. Women, dogs, and even Gandhi, have been labelled fascists in the past. George Orwell attempts to answer the question "What is Fascism?"
NASSIM TALEB. So these global causes: poverty (particularly children’s), the environment, justice for some minority trampled upon by colonial powers, or some unknown yet gender that will be persecuted; these global causes are now the last refuge of the scoundrel advertising virtue.
May
BIG DATA
1. There is no 14″ shoes in a shop
2. Customer needs, but does not find 14″ shoes
3. Customer does not buy 14″ shoes, because there are none
4. Analyse shows no 14″ shoes are sold
5. Company decides there is no interest in 14″ shoes
6. No 14″ shoes are produced
7. Customer buys duct tape to fix his old boots.
8. Market analyse shows increase in duct tape sales
9. Duct tape salesmen get rise in their salary.
ROGER SCRUTON. If you start thinking about politics in an intellectual way, you are likely to be on the left. Because that provides a systematic solution, an answer to the questions, puts it all in a system, and also gives you a rather dignified and self-congratulatory place in the system. But once you started thinking, if you think a bit harder and longer about it, you’ll move back to what you would have been had you never thought at all.
Mar
FIDELITY wanted to understand which investors were beating the market and performing the best. ... After looking at the performance of its customers from 2003 to 2013, Fidelity found that the customers with the best stock returns were either dead or inactive. That is, these investors had 1) died, 2) had their assets frozen, or 3) simply forgot they owned stocks!
BULL MARKETS do not broaden with age: they narrow. The current bull market began in 2009, when shares rose indiscriminately. After 2014 emerging markets stopped rising. Then the US took the lead. Then the technology sector in the US. Then just the big-hitting FAANGs. The idea that in the late stages of a bull market investors can make gains or protect themselves by switching into the stocks that have lagged flies in the face of history.
LIBERALS believe that indiscriminateness is a moral imperative. That the only way to be moral is to not discriminate between right and wrong, good and evil, better and worse, truth and lies because your act of discrimination – discriminating between these things might just be a reflection of your personal discrimination, your bigotries.
INTERVENTIONALISTS warned about overpopulation in the 1960s, predicted global cooling and peak oil in the 1970s, lauded the Soviet economic model in the early 1980s, and feared the Japanese had adopted a superior industrial policy model in the late 1980s. Alan Greesnpan was a social climber above all.
ROBERT KIRBY, former portfolio manager at Capital Group, talked about the stellar performance of a buy-and-hold investor.
Feb
STUDENT LOANS are guaranteed debt, so universities can just keep raising fees. Students graduate with loans of $30-40k.
RUSSIA started its full-scale invasion of Ukraine two years ago (Feb 24). Aside from the human tragedy, the rebuild cost alone is now estimated to have reached almost half a trillion dollars, or 2.8 times Ukraine's annual economic output. Western governments have provided $100 billion - $60 billion in military aid and $40 billion in budgetary help - a year since the invasion.