WSJ: Are Investors More or Less Willing to Take on Risk After a Big Money Loss?

By SIMON CONSTABLE

After a big financial loss, are people going to be more or less willing to take a big risk?


For years, two seemingly contradictory theories have come down on either side of that question. A new analysis, however, suggests that perhaps there is no contradiction after all. The right answer, this analysis suggests, is: It depends.


To back up, on one side of this debate has been the theory that a previous loss can lead to increased risk taking. “A person who hasn’t made peace with his losses is likely to accept gambles that would be unacceptable to him otherwise,” psychologist Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel laureate, and Amos Tversky wrote in a 1979 paper. Read more here.

John Batchelor Show: Peter Thiel, Economics

By SIMON CONSTABLE

Recent appearance on the John Batchelor Show discussing Peter Thiel, investing, economics.

TheStreet: How Wells Fargo Scam May Shake the Wheels Off the Banking Industry

By SIMON CONSTABLE

A spectacular scam in which employees of Wells Fargo  (WFC)  opened unauthorized customer accounts in order to earn bigger bonuses may shake the wheels off not only the bank's legendary stagecoach, but the entire industry.

The fate of the 160-year-old company itself is of only secondary interest to me, however. Many other businesses have weathered comparable scandals and bounced back relatively painlessly.

The real problem is that the malfeasance at the bank may lead to the entire industry being relegated further into a minor economic role. Read more here.

Forbes Video: Is A Market Crash Imminent?

By SIMON CONSTABLE

When stocks fail to pull back in quite a while, then investors should start to get worried about whether the gains are sustainable.

In the rawest terms, the question is this: Are we headed for a crash? Will be see a repeat of 1987 when stocks plunged around the world in minutes? Will we see a slower slide like that after the tech bubble of the late 1990s? You get the idea.

Watch, listen, and learn in this video.

TheStreet: Below Zero -- The Negative Interest Rates Campaign You May Have Missed

By SIMON CONSTABLE

If you think your bank savings earn a measly return now, just wait: It could get even worse.

A coordinated campaign to make negative interest rates a reality in America just got launched -- at least, it looks that way. (See other stories in the Below Zero series for a thorough explanation of negative interest rates and the implications.) Read more here.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Forbes: How To Succeed Like Moby

By SIMON CONSTABLE

It might be hard to imagine Moby as anything other than an uber-famous artist, musician, and DJ. But once upon a time he lived in a disused factory in Connecticut, paying the guards $50 a month to look the other way. In the big scheme of things, that wasn’t so long ago — 1989.

That’s basically where Moby’s recently published book, Poreclain, starts. It then moves location to New York in the early 1990s, a time and place with which I am well acquainted. But that’s not why this book caught my eye. Read more here.

By Uncensored Interview (Flickr) [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Forbes Video: Are Investors Too Sleepy?

By SIMON CONSTABLE

With many things in life, when we get complacent we tend to mess up. The same is true for investors.

Currently, there hasn’t been a major pullback in the markets for a while. The turmoil following Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, and the slide in the first few weeks of the year, now both look like distant memories. Yet despite that general lack of volatility, attitudes towards stocks haven’t become ultra cautious.

Edward Dempsey chief investment officer at Pension Partners, explains his thoughts on the matter in this video.