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Weekend reading: First that, now this

Posted By The Investor On In Other sites | 80 Comments

The first to die was Protesilaus
A focused man who hurried to darkness
With forty black ships leaving the land behind
Men sailed with him from those flower-lit cliffs
Where the grass gives growth to everything
Pyrasus Iton Pteleus Antron
He died in mid-air jumping to be first ashore
There was his house half-built
His wife rushed out clawing her face
Pordacus his altogether less impressive brother
Took over command but that was long ago
He’s been in the black earth dead now for thousands of years

Like a wind-murmur
Begins a rumour of waves
One long note getting louder
The water breathes a deep sigh
Like a land-ripple
When the west wind runs through a field
Wishing and searching
Nothing to be found
The corn-stalks shake their green heads

Like a wind-murmur
Begins a rumour of waves
One long note getting louder
The water breathes a deep sigh
Like a land-ripple
When the west wind runs through a field
Wishing and searching
Nothing to be found
The corn-stalks shake their green heads

– From Memorial [2], by Alice Oswald

Given my views about what drove Brexit, it’ll be no surprise to hear I thought Trump would probably win. Surely everyone by now understands there are bigger themes at work? If you still want to argue, I presume you’re on-board with them.

Please don’t tell me it’s all about economic inequality. See the exit polls in the links below. Trump voter average incomes skew higher than Clinton’s.

(Also, for the umpteenth time, you personally might have voted for UK sovereignty. Fine, I respect that. But that wasn’t why your side won the referendum.)

I know some loyal readers hate these political asides. Unfortunately for them I want to speak out more than I want to keep them happy. Please skip to the links below for vanilla personal finance.

Sure, my hope is populism starts to recede as this pressure valve is released. That the extreme end of liberal thinking looks up from its personal political navel and re-engages with wider concerns. That Trump moderates in the White House. That the checks and balances work.  That things don’t turn out as badly as they can do once his sort of rhetoric is legitimized.

But if so, it won’t be because people who were appalled by it all just bury their heads, hold their tongues, and shrug.

It will be partly because they shouted it down, however modest their platform.

For now, regime change is in the air. Politically and in the markets.

Have a good weekend.

Hail President-Elect Trump

“Our suspicion: the civilizing forces that make rich countries rich are quite fragile.

The big economic worry about a Trump presidency therefore isn’t that it might kick inflation up a notch or reduce manufacturing productivity by limiting import competition.

The thing to be worried about is that the elevation of a man who doesn’t seem to respect some of the most basic values of an open society could contribute to the corrosion of America’s institutions.

The impact might be subtle at first, and could even be masked by a period of strong growth thanks to fiscal profligacy. But eventually we would all end up much poorer than we otherwise would have been.”

– Subscriber-only content, FT Alphaville [3]

From the blogs

Making good use of the things that we find…

Passive investing

Active investing

Other articles

Product of the week: After the sudden spike in bond yields, could the long march down in fixed-rate mortgages come to an end soon? For now TSB [59] has dropped the rate on its five-year fix to a new low of 1.89%. You need to be looking to remortgage with 40% or more equity in your home, and the £995 fee means HSBC’s [60] 1.99% fee-free rate remains slightly cheaper all-in.

Mainstream media money

Some links are Google search results – in PC/desktop view these enable you to click through to read the piece without being a paid subscriber of that site.1 [61]

Passive investing

Active investing

A word from a broker

Other stuff worth reading

Book of the week: Passive investing guru Larry Swedroe did a few interviews this week for his recently published The Complete Guide to Factor-Based Investing [75]. Have you read it? Give us a quick review below! Swedroe’s tome is subtitled ‘The way smart money invests today’, so please don’t be humble…

Like these links? Subscribe [76] to get them every week!

  1. Note some articles can only be accessed through the search results if you’re using PC/desktop view (from mobile/tablet view they bring up the firewall/subscription page). To circumvent, switch your mobile browser to use the desktop view. On Chrome for Android: press the menu button followed by “Request Desktop Site”. [↩ [80]]