by The Investor
on January 9, 2010
A good start to the year here on Monevator, from my point of view at least. Lots of readers kindly chimed in on my 2010 blog goals, and I stuck to the first of them, posting four more times this week on a wider range of money-related matters: technology investing, Shopify, snow and pay, and hedge funds.
I’ve still to nail those shorter posts, though!
Continuing the good vibe theme, my post of the week is from the Psy-Fi blog, where Timmar considers happiness and its relationship to wealth (via his customary detour into behavioural finance…)
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by The Investor
on January 8, 2010
When you’ve got ridiculous amounts of money, the usual rules of wealth go out of the Georgian windows.
If hedge fund manager Michael Platt wants to buy himself a waxwork gorilla nailed to a wooden cross, who am I to argue? I suspect the Micawber principle still applies.
Platt, 41, is the co-founder of BlueCrest Capital Management, a London-based hedge fund group with over $16 billion under management. Its main fund rose 41% and earned over $400 million in fees in the year to October 2009.
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by The Investor
on January 7, 2010
This week saw the launch of a big money competition from Shopify, a leading online store vendor.
The American entrant who sets up the new Shopify store that achieves the greatest turnover within any two-month period over the next six months will win $100,000.
Full details here.
Sadly, the rest of us around the world (even Canadians!) aren’t eligible for the cash prize.
But we can still claim the moral high ground by beating our Colonial cousins. We can also access the tutorials and forums that Shopify is running.
And, of course, we can make money!
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by The Investor
on January 6, 2010
While life goes on in Canada and Siberia under drifts, Britain has been crippled by snow. Again.
London is cloaked by a smog of emissions and the hot air of millions of rat-racers, so the snow hasn’t got a hope of sticking – the view from my window is of a metropolis sprinkled with dandruff, not of gridlock.
But with many major roads blocked in the suburbs and trains marooned, lots of commuters have heeded police warnings not to travel to work due to snow. And with over 30% of schools closed, many who could dig their way to their office are instead watching Teletubbies and making snowmen with their kids.
So far, so no big deal. We don’t get snow often, so we shouldn’t spend billions on snowmobiles and fleets of gritters. And those ‘snow costs billions to the UK economy’ figures are always spurious, since they don’t consider the tangible benefit to millions of a day spent free from office politics!
What is shocking though is that some employers are docking pay if staff can’t get to work, or encouraging them to take the day off as holiday.
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