This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them: Who eats whom? — Will robots eat us? Or will we eat robots? Both technophiles and -phobes have hungered to learn which will happen first. The answer has now arrived, in a report from a team at […]
“The emerging [hedge fund] manager who goes out and buys a fancy sports car right off the bat is someone you probably want to avoid.” – informed an article in Business Insider (Singapore), February 2016. But was the statement measurably valid? To find out Stephen Brown, Yan Lu, Sugata Ray and Melvyn Teo set up […]
If you’re interested in the role that folklore might have to play in the world of high finance and banking, may we recommend an article in the journal Folklore, Volume 124, Issue 3, 2013? Where author Robert McDowall, who holds a Law degree (LLB Hons) from University College London, and is based in the UK […]
A researcher named Fock, together with some colleagues, throws water on a financial investment practice called “candlestick analysis”: “Performance of Candlestick Analysis on Intraday Futures Data,” J. Henning Fock, et. al., Journal of Derivatives, Fall 2005, Vol. 13, No. 1: pp. 28-40. The authors write: “Many practitioners use technical trading in derivatives markets, especially futures. […]
How has the Bowler Hat featured as part of the iconography of the banking industry? For answers, turn to Jane Davison, BA (Liverpool), MA, PhD (London), FCA, FHEA, who is Professor of Accounting at the Royal Holloway, University of London. The professor’s paper on the subject ‘Icon, iconography, iconology Visual branding, banking and the case […]
What psychological / philosophical concept might serve as a way to connect these two photos – featuring pole dancers and stockbrokers? One answer, a surprising one according to authors Karina Paludan Nielsen and Kristina Stockunaite (who recently participated in the MSocSc in Social Science in Service Management programme at Copenhagen Business School) is ‘Flow’ [for […]
Exciting investment news from Zimbabwe: Every now-nearly-worthless 100-trillion Zimbabwe dollar bill might, just might, soon be worth more than 100 trillion US dollars. Eyewitness News reports: [President Robert ] Mugabe urged people who still have worthless Zimbabwe dollars not to tear them up, as they will be compensated. Central Bank chief Gideon Gono told Mugabe […]
Finance puzzles many people. This new study may make finance less puzzling, or more puzzling, or both: “Any Regulation of Risk Increases Risk,” Philip Z. Maymin [pictured here] and Zakhar G. Maymin, arXiv:1004.1670v4, April 20, 2012. The first author identifies himself as Assistant Professor of Finance and Risk Engineering at NYU-Polytechnic Institute in Brooklyn, New York. The second author […]
Lehman Brothers, a company that shared the 2010 Ig Nobel Prize in economics, has made a spectacular rise into imminent oblivion. A Reuters report in the Oman Daily Observer tells the new details: Lehman escapes bankruptcy NEW YORK — One-time financial powerhouse Lehman Brothers emerged from bankruptcy and is now a liquidating company whose main business […]
Writing with a clarity that appeals to certain accounting professors, two members of that profession tell how they discovered some sort of possible link between (A) some people being religious in certain ways; and (B) the risk of stock prices crashing for companies that technically have their corporate headquarters in the counties in which those […]