Too many cooks spoil the broth. Investment committees don’t work. In fact, I have yet to see an executive committee in any industry. Committee’s are good in an oversight role but in an executive role they tend to fail. If the committee moves forward it is on groupthink. If there is not groupthink, there is

Today on Channel News Asia, Pearl Forss writes about an emerging dual economy in Singapore. http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/251935/1/.html It makes for some very interesting reading. Having spent 2004 – 2006 in Singapore, I have seen first hand the effects referred to in the article. The article basically reports that: There is a dual economy. A domestically focused

A quick comment here. The prices of luxury Swiss watches languished in the early to mid 1990s. That was when I started collecting, small and unimportant pieces, mind. Stainless steel sport watches, divers watches, some classic three hand watches. The later part of the 1990s saw a renaissance for the Swiss watch industry. Companies who

One time I was with a colleague in Japan interviewing managers. My colleague Patrick knew his way around Tokyo, well, somewhat, so we only spent 25% of the time lost instead of the usual 50%. This was early 2006 when Japanese hedge funds were facing a particularly horrible time. The January and February losses on

A word about alpha and betas in investment returns The Math In mathematics, half the problem is giving things names. The investment management industry has borrowed a naïve model, applied it to very complicated problems and then expect to make sense of the results. What is alpha and what are betas? The terms alpha and