When assessing the performance of a stock or equity portfolio, it’s essential to understand the various components that contribute to total returns. While price appreciation often takes the spotlight, dividends are often ignored or even dismissed as counterproductive for those committed to a ‘growth’ style of equity investing. Indeed, one of the most noteworthy trend…
Is JPMorgan Chase politicising banking?
JPMorgan Chase must let its shareholders consider and vote on a proposal aimed at ensuring equal treatment of the bank’s customers regardless of their political or religious beliefs, according to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s recent ruling. The SEC ruling comes amid allegations that Chase has cancelled or denied payments to accounts associated with…
Covered Call Masterclass with Euan Sinclair
Professional option traders know that whenever Euan Sinclair speaks, shut up and listen. Euan is a physics-PhD-turned-options-trading professional who’s written definitive works on options, including Option Trading, Volatility Trading, and Positional Trading. He’s a rigorous academic who writes very well even for the layman. Reading him will not just teach you about options, he will…
Don Boudreaux on Buchanan
Just listened to an excellent discussion on Buchanan’s life and ideas between Don Boudreaux and Russ Roberts. They discussed two important essays by Buchanan, ‘What should economists do?’ and ‘Natural and artifactual man’, which illuminate Buchanan’s view on human nature and choice. Some personal takeaways: Listen to the podcast here.
Book review: The Essential Adam Smith
The Essential Adam Smith by James Otteson (published 2018) is a short but insightful primer on Adam Smith and his seminal contributions to political economy. The book provides some historical details of Smith’s life and work and introduces the reader to important themes in his two-volume magnus opum, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS) and The Wealth of Nations (WN)….
Are economists just calculators?
What are economists doing? What should they be doing? And how should they go about doing their job? Economists don’t often pause and reflect on the nature of their work and the problems they deal with. We economists go about building and running models to solve ‘optimisation’ problems and even predict economic events and outcomes….