Widening the net: extending passive strategies beyond the classic market cap index fund
- 6th April 2023
Thoughts on mixing market cap and equal weighted index funds to capture shifts in market sentiment
Gently sceptical thoughts on investment and the wider world of finance – see my Medium publication The Patient Investor for more.
Quantifying human fallibility: factor investing and the enduring power of the value strategy
- 6th April 2023
Value investing works because of our chronic tendency to expect growth shares to grow forever. Do ‘smart beta’ funds allow investors to take advantage without picking stocks themselves?
John Bogle’s Platonic vision
- 29th March 2023
On the sublime simplicity of the Vanguard founder’s absolute faith in the humble index fund
Invested: How Three Centuries of Stock Market Advice Reshaped Our Money, Markets, and Minds: a review
- 15th March 2023
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
- 8th March 2023
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
- 2nd March 2023
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
- 24th February 2023
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’
- 9th February 2023
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
- 3rd February 2023
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