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- changelog - changelog v1.15c --------------- * Random quotes in page title now added by Javascript, to prevent messy titles in search engines. Those that don't actually render the page, anyway. Not all that much going on, after one takes out United's four-nil thrashing of AC Milan, which very ironically happened at the same time as the half-a-billion-dollar Galacticos of Real Madrid were booted out before the quarter-finals... again. As career moves go, Ronaldo hasn't made the smartest one. Rooney won't be complaining too much, as he somehow bagged his seventh headed goal in a row, and ninth in ten matches. He would be a shoo-in for Best Player of the Year if he performs in the World Cup, having already tied down the Golden Forehead Award, no thanks to dodgy adverts. Nike doesn't make them like they used to, with Pepsi doing better - or even the mouse at Old Trafford. Shifting the topic, I recently realised that a number of people have asked me for my opinions on money management, directly or otherwise, and without offering the customary penny, over the last year or so; why me, I have no idea, and I somehow sense a slight disappointment at my candid revelation that I'm not doing too much in this respect.  A penny, worth 4.75 pennies? Here, I would recommend Nerds on Wall Street: Math, Machines and Wired Markets as an introductory peek into the world of stocks, for the novice. It may be tilted heavily towards algorithmic trading, but it does cover many of the basics, is written in extremely accessible language, and has a lot of pictures (not to mention word clouds). It begins with the "first big technological solution" - the roof, which allowed trading on the New York Stock Exchange to carry on through rain and snow - and continues through hand signals, chalk boards, semaphore flags, the telegraph, ticker tapes, telephone, and finally (for now) the computer, and includes the well-worn anecdote of how Rothschild used pigeons to get a jump on the market (nowadays, the advantage is measured in milliseconds, and serious traders rent space directly next to the market center servers to minimize latency, since "OMG LAGZ!1!" can mean huge losses) I will skip a host of very interesting ruminations on various forms of artificial intelligence used (e.g. data mining, genetic algorithms) and summarize the situation thus: To make money, one may either actively play the market, or passively put money in and wait. The active method is perhaps what many have in mind when they think of "investing" - buy lots of a stock, watch it go up in a matter of weeks, days or even hours, sell for a large profit, rinse and repeat. Doubtless there have been some who have made their fortunes this way, and there are certainly no shortage of experts willing to teach others to do so (though in these cases, one might wonder why they would be willing to give away their tricks for a relative pittance, instead of simply practising what they preach, an opportunity not available to teachers in more conventional fields) In reality, active funds generally don't outperform passive funds by much, if at all, and their returns are not helped by the fat slices paid to the managers. Of course, the best active funds can yield ridiculous profits, but the problem is that past performance is no indicator of future success, and in any case active fund managers have an array of methods to make their funds seem more successful than they actually are (for a rundown, see the above link). The moral then is to indulge in active trading only if one knows what one is doing (and if one has to ask, I would guess that he doesn't, though in general people are more confident of their own judgment/ability than they ought to be), and only if one can bear the risks. Otherwise, it would probably be quicker to just visit a casino. This leaves passive investing, or dumping one's money into (usually blue-chip) stocks for the long term. This is the standard logic espoused by the more prudent students of economics, and has its merits. The basic argument is that the stock market has generally risen faster than inflation over the long term, and there are plenty of stories about elderly folk who bequeathed millions, thanks to a modest initial investment in Coca-Cola or the like, compounded over many years and stock splits. Now, the problems. Firstly, what many people want is to be much richer now, or at least in the near future; passive investment cannot satisfy this need, bar a supremely-unlikely short term spike in stock prices (and one might even argue that it would not be passive investing by definition then).  Up in the very long term only (Source: stockcharts.com) Continuing on this point, the long term can be, like, very long. Refer to the historical data for the Dow Jones Industrial Average. While it is true that the average has historically risen, there have been long periods where it has stayed stagnant, for example the seventeen years from 1966 to 1983, where it hovered about 1000. Pity then the poor sensible investor who bought in in 1966, and saw his holdings eaten away by inflation (to put things in perspective, things cost about three times as much in 1983 as they did in 1966) Of course, the next seventeen years would bring superb returns (vindicating modern-day Josephs) as the average broke 10000 - even accounting for inflation, the investor would have easily quadrupled his investment, and even if the gains were diluted over the full 34 years, the returns are still attractive. However, the problem is that the investor may be forced to sell at a loss midway through, if he needs the cash. The market is not a particularly forgiving creature. One might then wonder, why not invest long-term in just the best stocks, and not the market as a whole? The answer is, yes, one would be a happy camper if one picked Google at its IPO, but not if one held on to General Motors (around US$50 a share as far back as 1980, but pennies today), or any of a host of promising-but-now-bust Internet startups. And one final observation: While passive investing (almost always) delivers in the long (enough) term, its potential is of course limited by the investor's available funds - a couple hundred dollars a month is better than nothing, and if things go well, could translate into an "annuity" of a thousand dollars a month (in real purchasing power) by retirement. Not very little, but not all that much either. In other words, if one starts with a molehill, don't expect any remotely safe investment strategy to transform it into a mountain, even given decades. To make significantly more, one has to either have very good information and analysis (which it appears that many are happy to think they have, but few actually do), or be willing to gamble on risky calls. Pick your poison, then.  What a buddy is for The hamster update: Mr. Fish has gotten smarter, and waiting for him to settle on the food dish, so he can be grabbed, no longer works. Additionally, he will now scratch himself preemptively, before racing to take cover behind a rather more static Mr. Ham, who makes for a passable sandbag, and who allows himself to be wedged in the unlikeliest of corners. Mr. Ham is a significantly friendlier character, who has begun to let himself be hand-fed, after overcoming a worrying spot of balding, which has happily fixed itself. It should be noted that if one observes hamsters for long enough, one might chance upon them executing some truly impressive feats; few believe me when I insist that the first Mr. Ham waved a sunflower seed around in one paw (it might have got caught on his claw or something), and now, I wonder how many will accept that the second Mr. Ham kicked a crumb of food out of the cage, which is seriously harder than it sounds. It must also be mentioned that their combined productivity has been exemplary: together, they have achieved 43275 revolutions of the running ball on the right, and 31199 on the left, or a total of 74474, and that's not even including the far more popular running wheel on the base level of the cage; if this does not seem like much, consider that it is the best part of 27km, or well over a kilometre a day so far. Jack Neo's indiscretions are likewise hard to ignore, having saturated the local media for a couple of weeks. Martial infidelity is the in-thing among public figures nowadays, and having a case crop up in Singapore is only to be expected, but Jack Neo of all people? I would have expected a dashing young star, if anybody, to get himself mired in this, but on reflection, famous directors tend to have their share of muses. What might be lost here is that monogamy as the ideal seems to be a relatively recent concept, with the vast majority of societies abetting polygamy to some extent (see also this). Perhaps even more surprising is that the major religions generally aren't against it either, at least if they are honest and keep to their ancient writings rather than re-interpreting willy-nilly (though Mark Twain did hold up "No man can serve two masters" as an injunction against polygamy) Friedman and Sailer's argument that polygamy actually benefits women more than men appeared implausible until the logic was presented, along with the completely politically-incorrect assertion that polygamy would improve a population as a whole (which makes sense if one accepts that certain gifts are at least partially heritable). Of course, having a mass of angry young men with no realistic prospects of finding a mate milling around isn't the best recipe for social stability... Back to the original issue, all this does not absolve Mr. Neo of failing to live up to his social contract, but even accounting for the fact that he is a public figure, I feel that too much has been made of the issue - his wife was certainly the biggest victim here, and if she has forgiven him, there really isn't that much more to be said. The pretend punting tally's now at $1984.50/$2200 after United laboured to dispatch Wolves (a few days before they absolutely destroyed the mighty Milan, go figure). For today: $100 on Manchester City to beat Sunderland (at 2.00) Next: A Little Knowledge
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