Musings

The ability to propagate a viewpoint at scale – changing the shape of the playing field – is new in financial markets, and it is a big deal.

“Soft” assets like brand and software are typically (but not always) created by investing through the income statement where the investment in the assets is expensed rather than capitalised as an intangible asset. This concept is widespread in investing and well understood. What I find really interesting is how this plays out in the explicit …

I’ve been pretty busy lately on a couple of projects. As always, inspiration strikes at the strangest of times and I have been assembling some thoughts on the challenges faced by growing businesses, from the perspective of an investor who has followed a couple of reasonably large ones like Nearmap and Xero through their many …

I have a friend who is starting a funds management business. I joked with him that, in order to market to investors, he should say that he is a long-only value investor that believes in Warren Buffet, only holds high quality stocks for the long term, real money is made in the holding, lower prices …

An interesting discussion I heard recently was “how can we enhance an organisation’s ability to hit its targets”?  The natural response is to ask “how do you hit a target” and the answer of course is that you can’t. You can’t go out and hit a target because the target (sales, in this case) is a …

I recently read a letter from Edelweiss Holdings that has both prompted some new thoughts and sharpened up some old thoughts about a crucial concept in finance – ownership. The whole letter is worth a read, but this quote in particular threw bare some implicit assumptions that I had largely taken at face value: “A …

Following the surprise appearance of an article in AFR this morning about the results of a lawsuit against my web host, Dreamscape, and the law firm that represented me, BTLawyers Brisbane, I thought readers might be interested in a brief timeline of events. Mid-last year I began writing a series of posts about Henry Morgan (ASX:HML), Benjamin Hornigold …

One of the best things about investing is that you will draw on virtually all of your skills, knowledge, and experience at one point or another. I studied narratives at school, formally, as an academic pursuit. It sounds dry, and it kinda was, but it’s proven to be valuable in highly unusual ways. Try deconstructing a …

Six months ago I was asked to explain what a synthetic CDO was.  Well pal, the sky is blue because bankers in Wall Street…. I sort of did my best and drew a few diagrams and we got about halfway there and came to a halt. I understand roughly how a synthetic CDO works, I …

I have recently been reading through well-known investing blogs like Bronte Capital (John Hempton) and Bristlemouth (Forager/Steve Johnson) from their beginnings in 2008 or so. They are very good. I read Hempton’s in its entirety a few years ago and I would recommend his earlier posts as an excellent crash course in how the truck …

In another lifetime, I was a labourer at a scrap metal yard. And when I was there, I met a bloke we’ll call ‘Dave’.  I’ve always wanted to write about him but have never quite had the platform or the context. Now I do, and a little piece of Dave will be immortal forever. He …