Essays

Gently sceptical thoughts on investment and the wider world of finance – see my Medium publication The Patient Investor for more.

Invested: How Three Centuries of Stock Market Advice Reshaped Our Money, Markets, and Minds: a review

A fascinating new book shows how financial writers have nurtured — and exploited —investors’ perennial hopes of windfall gains

The central banks and the view from nowhere

Reflections on our expectations that those who are part of the system should be able to control the system

Interrogating finance: applying the Socratic method to the markets

Thoughts on how the forensic mode of enquiry employed by Socrates on the streets of classical Athens can inform better decision making today

Reconsidering risk: restoring the classic distinction between what can be measured and what can’t

Reflections on John Kay and Mervyn King’s forensic examination of the old idea of ‘radical uncertainty’

On power and insecurity: a portrait of Crassus, ‘the first tycoon’

Peter Stothard’s portrait of the Roman financier Marcus Licinius Crassus is a study in the insecurities that attend great wealth, then and now

Hume’s humility: coming to terms with the limits of what we can know

A visit to Edinburgh prompts reflections on a philosopher whose insight into the limits of knowledge would have made him a rather good observer of the financial world

The Intelligent Fund Investor: a sceptic’s guide to investment

Joe Wiggins’ new book is an enlightening guide to how the stories we tell about markets can be harmful to investors

The Poets’ Guide to Economics

John Ramsden’s new book takes an engaging look at what poets from Daniel Defoe to Ezra Pound have had to say about ‘the dismal science’

Simple But Not Easy: a second edition of a cult investment classic

A new edition of Richard Oldfield’s popular guide to investment continues to fly the flag for active management and the value style