What caught my eye this week.
Everyone knows that meetings are the bane of office life. The only people who love them are the genetically bossy, the work-shy, or the lovelorn office junior who has a crush on an attendee from another department.
Anyone who gets paid to produce some kind of measurable output resents being pulled away from getting on with it. Especially when they’re being pulled away by those whose job amounts to telling them to get on with it.
Meanwhile actual bosses with actual power prefer to be somewhere else making actual decisions. Or at least enjoying a business lunch.
At best meetings are a necessary evil. At worst they’re scaffolding that helps to enable the nonsense and doublespeak that pervades modern corporations.
Presetting the agenda
The most dreadful meeting I ever sat though turned into one of those soul-destroying Kakfa-esque Hall of Mirrors.
It was worse because I liked this employer and I was early enough into the job to still believe the guff.
Titter if you like, but I was looking forward to a two-day brainstorming session to ‘reset’ our aims and ‘imagine’ the future of our division.
A senior out-of-town senior manager would even be joining us to give our conclusions the official seal.
And you know what? For the first one and a half days the meeting wasn’t bad at all. Ideas flowed with the coffee. Special boxes of doughnuts and sandwiches pepped up our energy levels. Hitherto quiet employees spoke up, and they were heard. Long-standing grievances were put on notice. And sensible – even aspirational – goals were tallied on a huge whiteboard.
But then, for the final afternoon session, things turned – to my innocent mind – surreal.
The out-of-town manager was no longer mostly listening and offering a nod or a word of facilitation.
Instead he took charge to make sure that our ideas became deliverable targets.
“So what I think we’re saying is…” he began, before listing a bunch of stuff that nobody had said at all.
Nothing much was to change – we’d apparently agreed – except that our revenue goal was up 25% and we should do more spam-style mass-marketing.
Naive numpty that I was, I couldn’t believe it. I’d been totally suckered in, and I was now dismayed.
“Don’t worry,” quipped an older hand at the team-building drink session afterwards. “They’ve done this loads of times – but nothing will come of it.”
It reminds me again why I blew up my corporate career.
Meting out the pain
Derek Thompson in The Atlantic (read via MSN) has a great piece out this week on what he calls the ‘industrial-meeting’ complex. Give it a read to feel seen for your own meeting agonies (or to feel grateful to be missing out on it.)
Thompson writes:
Altogether, the meeting-industrial complex has grown to the point that communications has eclipsed creativity as the central skill of modern work.
Last year, another Microsoft study found that the typical worker using its software spent 57% of their time ‘communicating’—that is, in meetings, email, and chat—versus 43% of their time ‘creating’ documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and the like.
Today, knowledge work is, quantitatively speaking, less about creating new things than it is about talking about those things.
I guess the one bright note is that Artificial Intelligence will find it hard to sit for hours in an excessively air-conditioned office, trying to mentally plan a summer break while two colleagues argue about who is really responsible for upgrading the office firewall, and wondering if anyone will notice if you snag that last oversized chocolate chip cookie. There might be jobs left for us yet.
Have a great weekend. Especially if you’re playing for England!
From Monevator
The Slow and Steady passive portfolio update: Q2 2024 – Monevator
Are you ready for interest rate cuts? – Monevator
From the archive-ator: ETFs vs Index Funds: what are the key differences? – Monevator
News
Note: Some links are Google search results – in PC/desktop view click through to read the article. Try privacy/incognito mode to avoid cookies. Consider subscribing to sites you visit a lot.
Staff and pupils allowed late Monday starts as England play in Euros final – Guardian
UK economy returns to growth in May, beating expectations – CNBC
‘Swiftflation’ headache for the Bank of England – This Is Money
US inflation cools again, potentially paving the way for the Fed to cut rates soon – A.P.
Four-day week campaign to launch pilot looking at flexible working – Guardian
Big London office buildings proving almost impossible to sell [Search result] – FT
Number of millionaires to soar globally but plunge in the UK, research finds – CNBC
Labour’s housing plans will use land twice the size of Milton Keynes – Guardian
Softbank acquires UK chipmaker Graphcore – TechCrunch
The world’s poor have gotten richer – Axios
The lifecycle of market champions [A few weeks old, I missed it] – Bridgewater
LSE in peril mini-special
Thatcher’s mistake – Prospect
London stock market rules shaken up to try to stop firms moving overseas… – Guardian
…but the initiative is not universally popular – Sky
Products and services
Mortgage competition heats up as rate decision looms – BBC
Nine ways to protect your savings from smartphone thieves – Be Clever With Your Cash
Sign-up to Trading 212 via our affiliate link to claim your free share and cashback. T&Cs apply – Trading 212
Barclays launches £175 current account switching offer – Which
Can the boom in dinosaur fossils survive? [Search result] – FT
Open an account with low-cost platform InvestEngine via our link and get up to £50 when you invest at least £100 (T&Cs apply. Capital at risk) – InvestEngine
Should you pay £650 for the Amex Platinum Credit Card? – Which
How to negotiate your car insurance – Which
Is Amazon Prime Day any good? – Be Clever With Your Cash
Homes to watch sport from, in pictures – Guardian
Comment and opinion
Follow Harry Dent at your peril – Think Advisor
How bonds became a serious investment choice again [Search result] – FT
Boreout at work and life – Life after the Daily Grind
Inside the Bank of England’s gold vaults with Idris Elba [Video] – W.G.C. via YouTube
How the ‘single tax’ can break financial resilience [Search result] – FT
Over decades global stock markets have got less risky, more rewarding – Morningstar
The overlooked risk of regret in retirement [Podcast] – Humans Vs Retirement
The capital gaze – Money With Katie
Looking different – Humble Dollar
In search of the elusive neutral interest rate [Nerdy] – CFA Institute
Passive index investing in the dock mini-special
Are index funds a bubble? – JL Collins
GMO: Passive investing’s impact has been overblown, but it’s not negligible – Institutional Investor
Passive investors and the AI bubble [Search result] – FT
Naughty corner: Active antics
The US stock market’s internal agonies have reached epic proportions – Sherwood
Stock splits and stupidity – Arcadian
Here’s what Mt. Gox repayments mean for Bitcoin markets – Axios
Bill Ackman wants to monetise his X account to the tune of $25bn – Sherwood
The easiest way to replicate a multi-factor hedge fund is with cash – Finominal
How stocks became the #1 game in America – Bloomberg [h/t Abnormal Returns]
It’s time for the Fed to cut rates – Claudia Sahm
Kindle book bargains
The Hidden Half by Michael Blastland – £0.99 on Kindle
How to Own the World by Andrew Craig – £0.99 on Kindle
Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss – £0.99 on Kindle
Bejiing Rules: China’s Quest for Global Influence by Bethany Allen – £0.99 on Kindle
Environmental factors
Wind is now generating more energy in the US than coal – Sherwood
Trophy killings spark fierce battle over the future of ‘super tusker’ elephants… – Guardian
…even as Pablo Escabar’s abandoned hippos wreak havoc in Colombia – Smithsonian
Polluters provide higher returns than non-polluters – Alpha Architect
Indonesia and US seal $35m debt swap to protect coral reefs – Reuters
Attention wild swimmers! Researchers want to study your poo – Sky News
Urgent action required to prevent a micro-plastic crisis – Guardian
Robot overlord roundup
DeepMind paper proposes 10x more computation without 10x more compute [Research] – PDF
Pop Culture [or, the AI Emperor has no clothes] – Ed Zitron
I’ll have my AI email your AI – Six Colours
The AI summer – Benedict Evans
Off our beat
Technocratic Southgate has become a reckless adventurer [“Phil Foden’s on fire…”] – Guardian
Why India will become a superpower [Search result] – FT
Digital déjà vu – Of Dollars and Data
Why has it been so wet and rainy in the UK? – BBC
“The kidnapping I can’t escape”– New York Times [h/t Abnormal Returns]
Massive spike in tourists has European cities fuming – Sherwood
Wimbledon leaves $100m on the table – HuddleUp
We’re in a new era of survey science – Slate
How one Rich House Poor House millionaire made her money – The Sun
Young men are swinging hard right in South Korea – Politico
This is why you don’t want to tell yourself stories – Ryan Holiday
“I needed to experience life in a coastal town to realise my mistake” – Next Avenue
And finally…
“If your feet are in two buckets and the average temperature of the water is 90 degrees, you’re probably fine—unless one bucket is at 35 and the other is at 145 degrees. On average, you’re fine. Based on variation, though, you’re miserable.”
– Seth Godin, We Are All Weird
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Lot of talk this week about Property, Planning, Interest Rates etc etc
I listened to the recent Many Happy Returns Podcast this week ( was wondering if you would add it this weekend?) which is also about property.
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/many-happy-returns/id1604785417?i=1000661739096
And this statement jumped out at me-
“And my favorite stat is if you compare things in real terms and look at house prices today, it hasn’t moved for two decades. So if you inflation adjust, there’s been no increase in house prices in the UK on average for 20 years.
I get the feeling people just aren’t going to believe that stat, though, you know, because the media always says, you know, prices go up, they’re unaffordable and they are unaffordable for a lot of people. How haven’t they risen faster than inflation?”
If it’s true ( I expect it probably is), how does the last 20 years investing in diversified tracker funds compare?
I have been mulling it over this week and am really interested in a comparison using the same comparative metrics ( if that is the correct way to explain it?)
Apologies for hogging the weekend reading conversation with an early question that is only loosly connected to the links above.
I strongly believe removing the physical restrictions on meetings (travel, room availability, and diary availability) since the move to Teams and hybrid working has vastly increased the ceiling on a Parkinson’s Law of useless meetings.
Meeting mavens aren’t that new. In my penultimate year at work over a decide ago I was at the desk of one such type as he arranged a meeting, and he did a high five and little jig as he had blocked out the last free slot. I walked back and asked myself WTF did I just witness and what was it’s meaning?
The remote meeting method then was the interminable telephone conference meeting, plus side is you could do other things without people noticing, downside you had to keep half an ear out for your name.
I think AI had a bright future pretending to be WFH droids while they do something more useful with their time, like video gaming 😉
@ct — A friend stayed with me for a week or so between house moves in 2022 and I couldn’t believe her Covid-era job schedule. I kid you not, her overseas-based bosses scheduled 5-6 hours of meetings a day! She’d become habituated to it during the lockdown reconfigurations but I was gobsmacked.
Worse, she then had to find an extra 2-3 hours at nights (or the weekend) to get her actual work done.
Already labeled a troublemaker for unrelated reasons (another story in its own right) she felt too junior/precarious to speak up about it all.
“Leave” you might say (and I did) but she never got the chance as she was downsized as the company not-surprisingly barrelled towards oblivion. (It was listed on a foreign exchange and its share price drop was a vertiginous as my alertness levels would have been by the third Zoom of the day…)
@Fi-firefighter. Yep you’re right, I don’t believe that stat. Of course if your measure of inflation had only 1 component, house prices, then in that case they wouldn’t rise faster than inflation. A measure against earnings might be the way to go.
On meetings, one disadvantage is that you have to be in the same room as people you might not all like or respect, and have to listen to them !
The worst case is inadequate managers who really can’t make a difference but need to have an effect so call meetings and demand progress reports.
This is why FIRE is essential for so many people. Job insecurity, pervasive politics, unreasonable targets and deadlines, 24/7 communication overload. There are a few companies that are positive exceptions; they usually get acquired by Private Equity and turned into the above.
Even if I wanted to do this into my sixties, I’d have neither the stamina nor the required naive gullibility.
From the intro it sounds like you’ve enjoyed the recent BBC radio 4 Orwell Vs Kafka series as much as I have. The 1984 series was fantastic but now expired, the Kafka ones might still be available. Amazing how the writing can be interpreted for work, religion and society. Must keep positive though, the corporate telescreen demands my devotion for a few more years.
@KISS — I totally missed that (though I did recently rewatch 1984 on Netflix, and was listening to collapse of the Kafka-era Austro-Hungarian Empire on The Rest is History…)
A prior role in my workplace saw me spend sometimes as much as 6 hours out of a 7 hour day in meetings. As each meeting resulted in a set of action points for yours truly, there was often almost no time to do them, never mind prep for future meetings. I would sometimes work diligently into the late hours trying to complete everything – only for the carousel start up again the next day. Eventually, I realised that a team member I managed was having far more fun – both being more productive with less stress while still having time for pranks, plus they were earning about £2K less than me. So I moved sideways out of that role pretty sharpish.
Pointless meetings, boreout and what is the point of generative AI anyway? – I feel seen 🙂
Hi,
just to point out a spelling mistake in the name of the country, Colombia. Shouldn’t be spelt with a ‘u’.
Otherwise I love everything!
@Mr Optimistic @Fi-Firefighter Yes, it’s true. The average real UK house price hasn’t increased for 20 years:
https://www.nationwidehousepriceindex.co.uk/resources/f/uk-data-series (see the UK House Prices Adjusted for Inflation spreadsheet).
Real house prices haven’t increased over the last 20 years because they were already insanely high in 2004 (after the BOE cut interest rates to 3% and as banks handed out NINJA loans to anyone with a pulse). Unfortunately, the fact that they’ve stayed flat in real terms for 20 years means that houses are still insanely expensive today.
That means we could easily see another 20 years with zero real house price growth, especially if Labour achieves its dream of building three million new homes over the next ten years and if interest rates stay in the 3-5% range rather than the last decade’s 0-1% range.
Cheers @TI – very much agree with the Thompson article – we see vastly more collaboration than actual contribution among clients!
Additional Product link for you (apologies if it’s been previously flagged). Freetrade are offering 1% cash back on SIPP transfers: https://freetrade.io/sipp-transfer-offer-2024
Is it just me or does the cnbc article about millionaires which mention the median wealth level declining due to higher inequality
and the axios article about the poor getting less poor and citing declining inequality directly contradict each other?
@ John Kingham thanks for the clarification, your explanation makes sense.
So if you were to use the last 40 years (for example) it would be different?
And in realation to the value of funds, over similar time frames, how do they compare in general.
Apologies if these are dumbass questions, I’m just trying to underatand what the real rates of return / value is between the two assest classes.
Only posting to second the comment of Dave #11. I’ll give Monevator the benefit of the doubt that it’s simply a typo, rather than the really annoying habit of many English speakers in confusing this South American country with some part of North America.
Slightly feel the need here to spell out Michael Green’s actual point, because such a poor job (despite a great many words between then) is done by each of the JL Collins’ (“Are Index Funds In A Bubble”) article, by the underlying Harpers’ (“What Goes Up”) article, which it references; and also (but not quite as badly) by the Institutional Investor (GMO) piece (“Passive Investing’s Impact Has Been Overblown, But It’s Not Negligible”). [NB: I couldn’t access the FT article. Maybe it does a better job than the others].
I’m no believer in Green’s argument, but I do think his actual point, and the research he relies upon, does bear some proper analysis and direct refutation (if that’s what the evidence shows), and not just the same woolly anecdotal PF journalism, with yet more tired ‘active’ v ‘passive’ page fillers.
So, to summarise, Green estimates that when an incremental dollar is put to work with an active manager, it has an average effect on aggregate market capitalisation of $2.50. The multiplier occurs because the number of shares available is smaller than the total number of shares outstanding, and a buyer must often pay a premium to induce a shareholder to sell. However, Green estimates that when a passive fund receives an additional dollar, the automatic decision to maintain balance by buying in proportion to market capitalisation results in an increase in market cap of more than $17.
Where are the journalists/researchers addressing this specific point please? 🙁
This is Green’s actual point. At the moment, JL Collins, Harpers, Institutional Investor and GMO seem to be missing his point.
The relevant research to date on this can be found on SSRN under the Inelastic Markets Hypothesis.
FWIW Green does not advocate going active over passive.
In fact, as far as I can tell he thinks that although the inelasticity and guaranteed/ price insensitive buy pressure of passive means equity indexing will eventually become a sort of bubble one should still go all in on passive tracking the S&P 500 (maybe even with some leverage in his view!); because that inelasticity means it’s basically just becoming a huge unstoppable juggernaut until (and if) it crashes, which is likely going to be at a very much higher index level than now.
Indeed, it’s more or less a prediction or byproduct of the Inelastic Market Hypothesis that P/E ratios will absolutely skyrocket when passive share gets to 80% or so.
So, as an Green is an active manager, this is very much what US attorneys call ‘testimony against interest’.
In other words he’s saying something like, ‘don’t invest in price sensitive active managers like me, because it’s become impossible for us to win. Instead pile into passive, because there’s no alternative – but do just remember that the inelasticity is driving the price and at some point that inelasticity will snap’ (or something similar).
Now I don’t actually agree with Green, but I do think that it’s only fair to spell out what he’s actually arguing here, and that the Inelastic Market Hypothesis probably bears much more research.
Ok.. I’ve finally managed to get past the FT paywall by downloading and using Firefox Focus set to block all cookies, but to allow JavaScript, and then going in by the Google search result link, as itself linked to in the weekend reading list above.
What a palaver.
I’ve also now read and downloaded GMO’s report referenced in the Institutional Investor article.
And they’re both pretty reasonable introductory stabs at the issue, although neither really grapples much with Green’s specific arguement/claim.
They’re certainly a lot better though than the comment/word salad article from JL Collins and the Harpers’ piece which it refers to.
I’m coming down on this issue more or less with the FT.
Things are probably OK with the passive model going into the future, but it’s something that I’ve low confidence in.
And Green probably isn’t onto something here but, if he is actually right in the end, then it’s got massive implications; so some independent researchers should look at this in detail from every angle, really test the evidence critically, and then model the absolute hell out of it. That’s the only way, I think, to become more confident here.
@Dave #11 and @Scott #16
This inhabitant of Londres in Inglaterra doesn’t know whether to be more outraged that English speakers spell a country named after Columbus with, you know, a ‘u’, or that South Americans don’t seem to know that his surname in Spanish was Colón. Poor old Christoforo.
I’ve been in classic meetings including the series where the chairman was completely unaware of what he’d said in an earlier meeting – leaving us to think it was all a waste of time.
Then there are the managers who think they know better than the top expert in the world on some (small) subject – the guy who put in the work and has seen the facts first hand.
And the manager who asks you to do what’s against the objectives he’s set you. You can mention the objectives and say his answer is no.
80/20 rule applies to much of my career. 80% of my time is spent on pointless teams calls or doing work about work. 20% of my time on actual work. It’s a big reason I’d like to FIRE.
I have however come to think that the work about work aspect is the actual job. People who are good at this do markedly better in the corporate workplace. Once I became competent at my job I focused on being really good at what I previously though was superfluous. If you want to maximise your earnings it’s much better to focus on that part, although it’s pretty offensive to my principles.
#18Delta Hedge
To read ft, copy link text, clear history, paste text and then bonk Google search result.
Works for investors chronocl as well.
To read telegraph.co.uk
Clear history
Click headline, then switch of data quick.. or on pc just hit esc button soon as you click title. Works most times.
@Fi-Firefighter #15 > [house prices] last 40 years (for example) it would be different?
Yes. That would set us at 1984. In 1989 I was stupid enough to buy a house at 5*earnings.
I left London in 1988 because I couldn’t see how I could buy a house, and recall sinking many pints of ESB in the Broadcasting House Bar to drown out people drone on about how much they had made on houses. Before getting on my bike to cycle up the Western Avenue to do battle with the back slugs invading my rented bedsit.
I left London and perpetrated the single worst financial mistake of my entire life buying a house in 1989, letting go of a decent amount of money, about 20k in 1997 (about 50k now) when I moved, paying down the negative equity one sodding month on another for years. At least I had saved a 20% deposit, all down the toilet of Britain’s favourite asset class. Monevator has a trace of inflation-adjusted UK house prices from 1984 here.
The problem with the remote meeting culture is that suppliers try to apply it to members of the public. I was going to engage a firm of solicitors in Dublin. I’m in the North East. They couldn’t seem to get that I didn’t have Teams and when I installed it I couldn’t get it to work. But the company policy was to hold all such encounters by Teams. We just used the phone in the end
@ real house prices
I was fantasising the other day whether Indexation would be re-introduced when Labour equalise tax rates for income and gains.
It turns out a BTL I bought in 2006 has moved about the same as the House price index and gained around 75% or a £110k. It seems a bit harsh to pay £26k tax on zero real gain!
I looked at house price gain from 1998-2024 and priced currently 4x v 1.75 for 2004. The magic purchase period seems to be pre 1999.
Median earnings over the same period looks a tad weak – £18k to £35k for ‘99 to ‘23.
Is the return of indexation a possibility to incentivise all these cash poor landlords to sell up?
Just a comment based on a few of the articles
Next Avenue – Wow, humans can be stupendously dumb and their own biggest barriers to happiness/financial good sense.
Stock splits – Wow, humans can be dumb but I guess this kinda is an illustration of my belief that the efficient market hypothesis doesn’t really exist because of dumb/lazy money.
Six Colours on AI – I think we intuitively know how much this is happening due to every business and their dog jumping on the AI gold rush wagon. Obviously the sellers of the picks and shovels will make the most.
I can see it’s great for some folk who can outsource their jobs to AI and wait for their employers/clients to catch up. So great for Coast FIRE. I’m seriously wondering how much I should start dabbling and if I can turn out something I can monetise in RE years for the window it works. Trouble is that window feels pretty short.
@ real house prices
May be worth noting that Nationwide uses RPI as the inflation measure. RPI is a discredited approach that typically over-states inflation by about 1% PA.
However – and irrespective of the index used – cgt without taper relief is IMO just another stealth tax!
@A1 Cam…stealth tax
It’s interesting to compare with the house I sold in 2005 to buy the one in 2006 above.
Bought in ‘98 sold late ‘05 and its value increased x2.7 – the profit was around £100k BUT the CGT was around £2k. We lived in it for a couple of years then let it. The allowances and offsets were so much more generous then.
@Boltt (#28):
That is quite an eye-catching difference on tax paid on nominally similar gain.
However, not quite an apples vs apples comparison; e.g. ’98 purchase would have had some pro-rated primary residence relief and some form of exempt period at end of your ownership too.
Nevertheless, IMO the message is pretty clear: for some time taxes have been getting worse and this direction of travel will not change any time soon!
@Rosario
“I have however come to think that the work about work aspect is the actual job. People who are good at this do markedly better in the corporate workplace.”
A great observation and one I am in complete agreement with.
@Sarah
“Pointless meetings, boreout and what is the point of generative AI anyway? – I feel seen ”
Same here!
Interesting to see some of these themes discussed here as I am in the midst of dealing with my own corporate drudgery angst combined with boreout and wondering what the hell to do about it. When the economy feels based on bullsh*t jobs and pointless products polluting the environment but the people who get ahead are the ones that play along with the whole circus what is one to do?
Passive index investing in the dock mini-special update: Michael Green speaks to Barry Ritholtz on Bloomberg here:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/audio/2024-08-15/masters-in-business-mike-greene-podcast