Ban football, not video games
Lots of people (especially American politicians like Hillary Clinton) are worried about the effects of violent video games, despite the complete lack of evidence that there is any effect. Perhaps the regular calls for restrictions on children’s exposure to corrupting material should instead focus on team games, now that there is evidence that watching American Football makes people violent. (more…)
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Psst! Want to buy an illegal book?
Would you like to buy a book that breaks British Law? Whose authors could go to jail? The printed version has sold out, but you can still buy a PDF copy of Glorifying Terrorism, a collection of science fiction short stories. There are reviews at David Langford’s Ansible Link and The Guardian.
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Beyond capitalism?
This blog post by an academic economist raises a question that I am convinced we can already see part of the answer to. Industries that have a negligible marginal cost of production (media, software, etc.) demand a different economic system. (more…)
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The gospel according to neo-conservatives
Here is my attempt to bring the Bible into line with modern values. I am particularly trying to help neo-conservatives and neo-liberals who have an exceptionally hard time in reconciling what they know to be right with Jesus’s old fashioned ideas.
Good ratio, bad ratio
I recently added a page on the naked PE to Money Terms. A post in response to this by Richard Beddard (thanks to whom I came across the ratio in the first place) lead me to a clearer description of why it is good — and why the PEG is bad. (more…)
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How to make customers buy
Suppose customer A buys a product combination X + Y, and hires B to install the product for them. Suppose you are the vendor of Z and had hoped the customer would buy X + Z. It looks like you have lost the deal: but someone came up with an ingenious solution. (more…)
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Wisdom of crowds does not apply to stock picking
I have, over the last few weeks, read a few different articles about “social stock picking” which aims to apply the “wisdom of crowds” to stock picking. This is neither new, nor a good idea. (more…)
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Moneyterms RSS feed
Rather than keep posting repetitive “what’s new on Moneyterms” posts here, I have added an RSS feed of the latest additions to Moneyterms, it can be added to any feed reader, to Firefox as a live bookmark, etc. The latest additions to Moneyterms are also now shown on the home page of this site, at the bottom of the side bar.
CAPM: wrong but useful
I previously wrote a defence of CAPM in reply to this post. Even given that the empirical empirical evidence shows that high beta portfolios do not generate higher returns, the beta is still useful for investors. (more…)
Forget index tracking
I have been leaning towards passive investment for sometime, but I had not seen any evidence or argument that helped decide whether tracker funds or buy and hold mechanical strategies were better. Thanks to the Behavioural Investing blog I found this illuminating paper.
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