Episode 7: Envirosuite, ooh Media and Rocket Lab

Big technological and structural shifts tend to hide in plain sight. When they do finally draw some attention, they tend to look like exaggerated hype. And most of the time that is exactly what they are. Even when a genuine shift is underway, progress feels painfully slow. The promise is always a touch out of reach. Something shinier shows up, […]

If you could fold a piece of paper just 42 times, it’d be thick enough to touch the moon. Fold it 52 times further and it’d reach across the entire observable universe.  Exponentials break your brain, and thinking in those terms doesn’t come naturally. Still, most investors tend to get it, at least as it applies to compound returns. But there are […]

When people talk about capital, they tend to mean stuff: factories, patents, cash, code. Things you can count, stick in a spreadsheet, and list on a balance sheet. But that misses the point. The real magic of capital isn’t in the owning. It’s in the doing. Hernando de Soto, the Peruvian economist and author, put it brilliantly in The Mystery […]

Is there more pain to come?

I recently watched a talk by Patrick Honohan, Ireland’s central bank governor through the depths of the GFC. He was reflecting on the country’s property and banking collapse of 2009, and no surprise, it got my inner perma-bear twitching. But this isn’t about to turn into some Chicken Little rant about the similarities with Australia’s housing market. Actually, there are […]

Spreadsheets are a great tool, but they tend to offer a level of certainty that’s often not justified. We’re taught to believe that more data and more intricate calculations lead to better decisions, but that’s a myth rather convincingly debunked by researchers Green and Armstrong. In their paper, “Simple versus complex forecasting: The evidence,” they showed that when it comes […]

January 2019 Although the start of a new calendar year doesn’t really hold any special significance for investors, the relative dearth of corporate news makes it as good a time as any to reflect on your investments. And, if necessary, undertake a bit of course-correction. The fact is, no mater how carefully you build your portfolio, it will inexorably evolve […]

While most tech stocks have been busy carving out fresh record highs in 2019, kiwi payments platform PushPay (ASX:PPH) has failed to elicit the same enthusiasm from investors. Although shares have climbed around 20% higher so far this year, they remain below their 2018 high and are hovering at levels first reached in late 2017. So, what’s going on? The […]