• Alternatives,  Economy,  Life

    The Machines Are Coming

    Reading Time: 2 Minutes G’day all! I was having dinner with my long-time chum DeeSee this week and we reminisced a lot about our high school days. He has an upcoming class reunion to mark 15 years since graduation. FIFTEEN! Makes me friggin’ old just thinking about it. During our convo, we talked about how much change has occurred since. As a financial journalist, DeeSee has the perfect bird’s eye view of the trends and topics going on in the world today. One of the biggest change we discussed, is the rise of the machines. Now, as much as you might have enjoyed Arnie and Sarah Connor and Skynet, you’d…

  • Economy

    Yield Curve Inversion

    Reading Time: 3 Minutes Strewth, WHAT a shitty week that was. Made a TON of mistakes at work (some forced, some unforced) and it doesn’t help when I’m dealing with probably the most arrogant, demanding and obnoxious client in a LONG time. Still, moments like these I come back to the tried and tested adage for myself, which is – when I’m 80 will I remember this time? The answer I’ve decided, is a resounding NO. WHEW. Now that’s off me chest, let’s move on shall we? What’s down with the yield curve? We also heard this week the big bruhaha about something called “yield curve inversion”, which set off a…

  • Life

    World Happiness Report 2019

    Reading Time: 2 Minutes Sorry guys but gotta make this one short and snappy today, chiefly because we’ve got a couple of friends over for dinner and we are GROSSLY unprepared. But that’s why UberEats exist right? Right. Anyway, before they come, I thought I’d share this pretty cool report I found surfing the inter-webs. It’s the World Happiness Report 2019 which highlights which countries’ citizens are the “happiest”. The survey, conducted by Gallup, uses a three-year rolling average of survey responses around six factors: GDP per capita; social support; life expectancy; freedom to make life choices; generosity; and corruption levels. And no surprises here with the Scandinavians all well…

  • Life,  Real Estate

    I’m Back!

    Reading Time: 2 Minutes What’s up everyone! Sorry, sorry – I know I’ve been neglecting this blog a little bit, but things have been a bit TOO much these days. Some of you are aware of what’s going on in our personal lives, and I won’t dwell on it here. However strictly financially speaking – I’ve done a LOT in the last few days. You see, despite the reinforcement that finance and numbers and FIRE are not the be all, end all in recent weeks (believe me, family and health are), I still think it’s important to not let that area slide. So like any good boy scout, I’ve been…

  • Alternatives,  Life

    4 Lessons of Instagram and Investing

    Reading Time: 3 Minutes So this week, we received news that Instagram is rolling out an experiment to see what happens when it hides the number of likes on photos and other posts. It affects users in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Ireland, Italy, Japan and New Zealand. Canada has just finished its trial. No longer will the number of “likes” be shown, rather it will be replaced by one user name and “others”. Under this new system, you can see how many likes your posts get, but your followers won’t be able to – unless they click into the post and count individually… but who would? I would imagine that there…