Weekend reading: DIY Saturday edition

An uncommonly candid response from the head of a fin-tech startup in part 7 of that NY Times feature:

“we are creating a very small number of high-paying jobs in return for destroying a very large number of fairly high-paying jobs, and the net-net to society, absent some sort of policy intervention or new industry that no one’s thought of yet to employ all those people, is a net loss”

Looking forward to the links, thanks. Obviously, the European question is the big focus at the moment. I am always on the lookout for interesting and well written opinion on both cases and I found a great piece by the brilliant Anthony Hilton in Thursday’s Evening Standard:
http://www.standard.co.uk/comment/comment/anthony-hilton-stay-or-go-the-lack-of-solid-facts-means-it-s-all-a-leap-of-faith-a3189151.html
I do still love poetry, Peter Redgrove and Angela Carter are favourite modern English poets. Was hooked from the moment my dad read Rudyard Kipling to me as a child and gave me a copy of Crow by Ted Hughes. My mother read us Rabindranath Tagore but would have to stop at certain points as her eyes would be filled with tears, so moved was she. I think the biggest mistake in poetry publication is that it is published in anthology format. Poetry impacts more when presented visually embedded in or flanked by prose or art. Verbally, of course, there are even more creative formats like rap, song and recital. Will have a peek at Memorial, thanks.

Education isn’t my speciality so I wouldn’t make detailed proposals.

However, I do know what skills the high technology industry needs, and they are rather hard to find as STEM subjects are regarded as difficult so tend to be dropped rather early in favour of interpretive dance and music.

But there again, if they aren’t going to have the skills for productive work, perhaps putting on a bit of a song and dance will cheer them up!

The pace of innovation is accelerating massively, particularly in semiconductors, robotics, AI and medicine, and even space has been given the kick start that only truly private industry can provide.

Japan lost its way for many reasons. It’s actually quite interesting to make a trip that includes Japan, Taiwan, Korea and China – the similarities and contrasts are striking.

Seeing Hon Hai making a bid for Sharp shows how things have changed.

The first page is amazing. Performance of 50 years! http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2015ltr.pdf

@Gregory. Yeah a year-on-year gain of almost 21% is quite staggering. Maybe ol’ Warren has a DeLorean that can hit 88mph!

@MyRichFuture – I’m sure:)

@Neverland: Which rather undermines your own point. History has shown us that the rate of innovation continues to increase; perhaps you could learn a few lessons from it.

Kurzweil is a brilliant guy in many ways, but he’s a typical old man in others – wanting to live forever by freezing his head, FFS. The way to survive death is not to die in the first place, once the state of mind is lost it’s wishful thinking. Nobody’s located the bootstrap code in the brain yet

Moore’s law appears to be in trouble now, which could rain on his parade, though I guess massive networking could give workarounds.

MMMs blog earns $400k per year. 75% of the way through the article I’d been annoyed at reading the previous 73% or so and then up that popped. Paid off, I didn’t read the remaining 25%.

The stalling of Moore’s Law will be compensated by re-writing code to be massively parallel. Massively parallel supercomputing is the the 20 year career I want to retire out of now.

I did like the M Moustache piece. I think anyone who’s obsessed over $10 savings while earning $400k does have a mental health issue, its pushing frugality into miserliness. His wife might be happy with him, but I wonder how he educates his kid on the value of money. Making an issue of $20 contributions to his home-schooled, introverted kid’s social life does not sound good. He says he’s stashing away the huge sums, but will he be able to take the mental wrench to actually cough up a college fund, or is the kid destined for Community College, as he can cycle there.

I’ve been to Longmont, I do like the image of the meetups, big tippers all

Money corrupts, and while MM’s optimising crusade is good for the environment, all power to his elbow, he is no longer retired, he’s running a crusade. Hopefully he will use his millions to extend his charitable work, but it will be interesting to see how he will spend money to persuade others not to.

Gadgetmind:

I hadn’t really thought AI was something to consider in the next 50 years but this 2-part article was quite eye-opening, and seems like a (very) comprehensive view of the issues that we could be facing in our lifetimes.

http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-1.html

So we know MMM blog generated 400k in 2015

That seems like a good return on effort, especially as he rarely writes any articles any more.

So why does MV only generate a pittance? Is it because it only generates a fraction of the traffic or is it something to do with the type of ads?

Or could it be that it is more lucrative than is let on? Does it get divvied up between authors though?

Hi to everybody. I have found your blog in my search for portfolio construction. Im in the process of constructing the equity side of the portfolio and have come up with a 60% global and 40% UK allocation. I would appreciate any comments from your readers on my selection. Great blog with a lively readership.

@Tim G…thanks for the link – I think MMM has the right of the whole magic card debate

@Rhino, re. MMM

There is an interesting parallel between the luctrativeness of the MMM blog and MSE/Martin Lewis

(try this google search: Martin Lewis, the Money Saving Expert, talks to Lucy Kellaway or http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/53bd0dd4-7cea-11e5-98fb-5a6d4728f74e.html)

Basically the two conclusions that could be drawn are:

– the “audience” in personal finance is in practical budgeting tips (rarely featured in Monevator)

– the “money” in personal finance blogging is in affiliate marketing (again not something practised in Monevator)

@TI … Fidelity regularly features on quidco… Could be click through opportunities with the platforms ?

I’m not up for P2P otherwise I’d click through you…looking forward to the article and I will try and resist the temptation to slag it off in the comments before reading ;0)

At the end af the weekend here it is a good article from Meb Faber about Ranking Global Stock Markets On Valuationhttp://mebfaber.com/2016/02/25/ranking-global-stock-markets-on-valuation/
P.S. I hate monday and working.

@mathmo

I agree with respect to financial samurai. I have been a long time follower of the website and even the ‘newsletter’. But I got a distinct impression about a year or two ago that he (rightly or wrongly) is on a bit of an ego trip (for whatever reaaon) and certainly pushing very hard to monetise his website (which I have found to be at the expense of any substance).

(Sorry, TI, I know you don’t like us bagging on people. But hopefully you understand from where I’m coming from as a long time reader 🙂 )

@JohnG – It hadn’t escaped my attention either that the FI blogosphere is awash with motivational puff pieces. They are the pretty much the staple diet. Some do it better than others, but once you’ve read one, you’ve read them all to a large extent.

Thats what strikes me as being the slight injustice faced by MV. It focuses on creating what I would call ‘real’ content. In as much as it covers real actionable details that you have to know before you can do sensible stuff with your money. And yet this doesn’t seem to generate revenue.

It is slightly confusing in that MSE delivers real content*, albeit on a different area of PF, and that has been recognised as extremely valuable.

* i.e. say I want to know exactly which supplier to get my gas from at the lowest cost I go to MSE and it tells me the answer – as opposed to MSE telling me how wonderful it is to buy gas at low prices and just leaving it at that..

@neverland

I don’t think it is in the same ballpark although the site has clearly grown in popularity over the past few years.

@the rhino

Isn’t that a shame though? Generally speaking (and with much hand waving) the average person saves far too little and invests even less. As great as MSE has been, there is basically no investment section which is a tremendous short-coming.

Some may counter by saying that the FCA rules make this grey area (what is/isn’t advise) to which I would counter: isn’t the FCA’s role to help investors/consumers? Surely having easily accessible and helpful information on the top PF would help? (P.s. I long ago gave up pushing MSE and Martin to try and include even very basic investment information).

@elef – yes, I think you’re right, it is a shame.

I wonder though, whether the trend we are seeing with much of the fiscal responsibility being pushed back from the employing company on to the shoulders of the individual (lack of job security, disappearance of DB pensions etc.etc.) could means a boom in the market for the sort of info MV delivers?

In much the same way that *no-one* switched utility suppliers 20 years ago (was it even possible?), maybe 20 years forward everyone will be clued up on cheap brokers and how to administer their own pension and all the rest..

people will chuckle nostalgically about the times when people stopped by MSE to save a few quid on car insurance (it doesn’t exist now that cars drive themselves) when there was 100s of grand on the table to be picked up by reading MV, and they will be envious that the site has just been bought out by myvanguardshop.com for 11 billion.

It could be that there is a market out there for MV that doesn’t quite know its a market yet?

I suppose the great appeal of FI is that it is a unifying measure of all this stuff. There are different proponents of course. Like the churches of any religion.

Want to know if investing better makes you more money? Look at how close you are to FI.
Want to know if cutting down on a daily Starbucks makes a difference? Look at how close you are to FI.
Want to know if regular saving makes a difference? Look at how it gets you closer to FI.

There might be particular flavours banging their drum: the Moustachians saying that it really doesn’t matter how you earn it or invest it as long as you don’t spend it. There are the MSE’ers (having dealt with them professionally, I refrain from referring to how they were named at the client I was serving at the time) – give us a deal, tell us the tricks, take a little slice off every pie and look at the crumbs adding up. There are the fundamentalists who focus purely on the FI objective – TEA’s very name implies goal-focus. There are the brokers and analysts looking geekily at chartism and investment (TRB), and the career advisers telling us how to make more at (a different) work by doing less (Tim Ferris anyone?). There are those who want to tell us about life when money no longer matters and how we should live the good life (Aristotle, other more recent bloggers). All of these are helpful in heading towards FI.

I can’t really be bothered with the frugalism. Sure – I get a little surprised each year at how much I’m spending, but I like good wine and fast cars too much to drink my own sweat while cycling to work in my grandfather’s hand-me-down hair-shirt. And I love a deal, but I also value my time just a little too much to clip coupons all day long. I enjoy the mathematical rigour available on investment thinking but I can’t be bothered to apply it to daily budgeting (like St Augustine, I know I should one day — watch this space for my adventures with iPhone budgets).

MV is quite specific in its offer: motivation for the arm-chair investor (and a bloody good weekly round up of the best of the rest). Feel like a nice little place to engage. I hope the advertisers realise it too one day. Well done TI.

I wonder how I even first came across this website…. I definitely recollect it was a link from elsewhere in regards to a round up of investing in the UK but for the life of me I cannot remember where.

Firstly, I’d like to state how much I appreciate this site and what a superb job TI and his chums have done in maintaining the standard of the articles and moderating the comments over the years. I personally have learnt so much and profited from the information provided.

I enjoy the cut and thrust of the comments and the mostly temperate and respectful tone. (The posters in general are far less irritating than some of those on the Archer’s Mustardland blog!) Yeah, I know that there are a couple of hot buttons which wind people up on here but TI does too and only presses them a few times a year. (Not much discussion on here about the EU referendum or have I missed it?)

@Rhino, @TI,
I doubt that this blog in its current form could ever have a huge audience simply because it’s far too cerebral and, as someone commented, does not satisfy the desire for instant gratification and a fast buck which is so widespread.

The lack of job security, demise of defined benefit pension schemes, student debt and sky-high house prices and growing inequality together means that only a small and diminishing minority will have the means to save and invest.

So far as the pace of technological change is concerned, I’d say so far as the impact on the person in the street is concerned (rather than what goes on under the bonnet), it has definitely slowed during my sixty-plus years. We’ve seen the demise of Concorde and supersonic air travel. Have a look at the spaceref review of ‘The Last Man on the Moon’. It took only 12 years from the launch of the first Sputnik to the first manned lunar landing. Yes, we have smart phones, the internet and central heating but the last 50 years have seen nothing like the visible technological changes in everyday life that I expected to see when I was at school. I remember arguing with a dear late school friend that if, in the 1960’s, we’d been able to step into a time machine and visit a high street in the 2010’s, we’d be astonished how little had changed.

@Mathmo,
Liked your observations about the different tendencies within the FI community and I tend to agree with your take on frugalism. I’ll take the low hanging fruit but won’t spend hours chasing pennies even though as a retired old buffer, I have the time to do so. I do a very quick hassle/benefit analysis. Don’t drive but do like dining out well and good wine!

@TI

It looks like we are all agreed on how valuable Monevator is. Personally speaking the benefit must be in the thousands (saved fees, time in the market, investing insight etc.) I’ll happily buy you a few beers if I see you at Lars’ event (thanks for that as well). I know a few beers doesn’t quite make it up, but I’m heading for FI you know…

Hi TI,

I’m not so sure you’re right that people see your site as the starter course in the FI/investing buffet & then move on to the ‘heftier’ courses at the all you can eat free events 🙂

I am only one experience, but though I only started self-educating at a serious pace ~3 years ago when I first found your site, I still check out the weekend’s reads every week – which ensures I keep an eye on any new articles too. As events [budgets for example] change the investment landscape, there’s always a need for new material, so the site can be kept fresh. Not having to do the due diligence myself saves time massively, & the commenters’ experiences with their investments is useful first-hand knowledge if you’re too scared to try something out yourself.

Maybe the issue of earnings is less a problem with the content per se & more how you’re found – for example I stumbled on your site when googling ‘compound interest calculator’. So maybe there’s a way of even just slightly tweaking search optimisation parameters [inexpensively] to produce a significant improvement.

I am no spring chicken as an investor, but still needed your site to work out [to my horror] my pension was on a closet tracker. [yes, the shame, I’ll never admit it in public] Since then, ~2.5 years ago, it’s risen in value, even now with the recent volatility by 50% – now I know that the rising tide of QE lifted all boats over much of that period, but I think that’s still impressive.

So given that, have you thought of approaching appropriate entities to do deals on the basis of this site being an educational tool? I wish I’d seen it in school, failing that, at Varsity, then when I started working, then when I bought my home, started a penson etc., etc., – effectively before all important financial milestones in life – is better than nothing. Even if I’d clocked it a couple of years before I did, I’d then have caught the whole of the QE wave …..& my pension would have doubled with the boost of that prime time for sure. {& I’d be sleeping better now 🙂 }