Capitalism and Fake Modernity
Capitalism is a type of economy in which wealth is privatized, as individuals own the means of producing goods and earn a profit. This economic system has shown itself historically to be highly innovative,...
Stock buybacks and why we all pay for them.
We entered 2020 on the back of record-high debt burdens, geopolitical tensions, elections and a climate war. Not even 3 months in and we have an oil price war, demand shock and a supply...
The Sharpe Ratio Paradox: Why Still Invest In Venture Capital?
Sharpe ratio is a way of quantifying returns based on risk, specifically it is the average return earned in excess of the risk-free rate per unit of volatility or total risk.There are some limitations,...
Handpicked resources for the best short-term investment options of 2020
Investing is a great way to increase your net wealth. If you have saved a good amount of money by following a strict budget, proper financial planning, and using money management skills, then you...
Cash is king, more potent than we think
On March 12, 2020, on the eve of President Trump declaring COVID-19 a national emergency, the New York Times reported that something weird had happened on Wall Street as traders ran for cash. They...
Using Google Search Trends to Predict Initial Jobless Claims
For several years now, my focus has been on using alternative data of many kinds to predict macroeconomic statistics. When ran the Futures Group for the PDT Group at Morgan Stanley in the 1990’s...
How Hedge Funds Are Profiting From Your Data
The Full Extent of How Your Personal Data is Being (Mis)used You are going to the supermarket for groceries; on your shopping list, you have fruits, chocolate, and paper towels. While this is a simple...
Crisis? 3 Ways VCs Adapt
There is a global crisis going on as I write this article. It’s not the first, it won’t be the last. A lot has been written about how startups should manage themselves in a...
If Capitalism is a failure, then what is the Alternative?
In the current political sphere along its rhetorical voyage, we all can meet face to face with buzzwords such as Capitalism, socialism, liberal, or social Democracy. Those words are often within the legit context....
Libra may be the end for Facebook – Part I
In 2019, Facebook crossed a red line. The company announced the Libra project. Before digging into Libra, let’s get a very brief history lesson on Facebook. Back in the 2000’s, Mark Zuckerberg, a 23 year...
The Shift Towards Sustainable Pensions: How Plan Beneficiaries are Shaping the Future of Pension...
Many institutional investors are addressing global issues by making allocations into ‘sustainable investments’. Sustainable investing is an umbrella term referring to a spectrum of investment approaches such as ethical screening, ESG (Environmental, Social, and...
Three Simple Questions (And One Difficult One) To Ask Before Investing In A Blockchain
There has never been a better time to be learning about blockchain. Between the rate of growth amongst currencies like Bitcoin or Litecoin and the wide-reaching applications outside the financial sector, distributed ledger technologies...
Party Round? When Startups Should And Shouldn’t Take It
Party rounds, or mass syndication, is when a startup raises from multiple investors, none of which individually has a large enough stake, instead of having the traditional notion of a lead and follow investors....
Climbing the Liquidity Ladder
Big things are happening with private market liquidity. Just as the tokenization fad crashed and burned, a much bigger wave of PE secondary transactions took off on a hockey stick growth path. The successful efforts...
ESG Investing Has a Data Problem — Here’s Why That Matters
Sustainable ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) investing requires, by its very definition, a robust and sensible approach. No investment that purports to improve the world can be made without a full appreciation of historical...
Thoughts on the Long Term Winner
Today we are going to discuss how the long term survivability of a prospective crypto asset is the single best indicator of its investment quality. We will also consider capital’s role in this model...
Can Any Formula Tell You How Much Money To Save?
We are led to believe that there is a way to properly prepare for any financial disaster. But in the current (rapidly changing) economic climate, is that still true? Not too long ago I...
Quandl 2020 Alternative Data Conference
Alternative data conferences connect actors in the buy-side ecosystem to explore novel use cases as the demand for alternative data is increasingly intense. Only the largest and most sophisticated players with distinctly unique roles...
Observations on Token Derivatives – Part Two
In Part 2, we continue discussing how to use the MOVE Contract by understanding how does the buyer operate. Further, we discuss the practical results of the strategy and before we conclude, we discuss...
Could Modern Monetary Theory Save America?
I Become President For A Day To Apply Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) To The US Economy Politicians and academics are making dramatic claims about MMT. I apply it to the 2018 US economy and learn...