Charter Trust - Global Market Update

Will the big software giants eat the world? Big Five market cap. Source: The Atlantic Everyone is buzzing about the big five: Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook. Ten years ago, their combined market cap was just under $600 billion. Now it’s almost $3 trillion – a five-fold increase, or 16% per year. This was more than twice the general US market’s return, and three times to global market. This, in a nutshell, is why active portfolio […]

Can drones be used to smuggle drugs? Photo DB. Source: Wikipedia It sure looks like it. In 2015 guards rushed to break up a mob in an Ohio prison yard. When they reviewed a security tape, they saw that a drone had flown in and dropped a package containing tobacco, pot, and heroin, which the inmates were fighting over. Increasingly, drones are smuggling drugs, mobile phones, and even weapons into prisons at an alarming rate. Authorities are […]

Is geography destiny? Composite image of Earth’s biosphere. Source: NASA In 1820 – at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution – per-capita GDP in Western Europe was three times that of Africa. By 1992, it was 13 times as high, despite the catastrophic effects of two world wars on Europe When you look at a map of global economic development, two significant facts stand out: most tropical countries are poor, and most land-locked countries are poor. Many […]

“You just don’t understand.” Photo: Jeremy P Gray. Source: Jeremy P Gray Photogrophy When a spouse or close friend tells you this, pay attention. Chances are there’s something important going on. But when you’re looking at an investment and the seller says this, grab your wallet. Either they’re pulling one over on you, or the investment idea is too complicated for its own good. Over the past decade dozens of companies have maintained that their business was […]

Is this glass half full? Or half empty? Photo: Viktor Hanacek. Source: Picjumbo Sales types look out and see infinite possibilities. Accountants see the world as debits and credits, as a process to be managed. Sales-dominated organizations emphasize growth; accounting-centric firms focus on profitability. Put simply, sales brings in the dough, while accounting gets to the bottom line. Both are necessary to any successful enterprise. But there’s often a lot of conflict between the two. Sales people […]

Who was William Baumol? Source: Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economics Association William Baumol was an economist who taught for years at Princeton. He died last week at the age of 95. He had a long and productive career, writing papers and books over the course of seven decades. He is perhaps best known for his theorem on wages, Baumol’s Cost Disease, which explains why cars and computers get cheaper while haircuts and college tuition get more […]

Is history a cycle? Sine wave. Source: Constructonomics The philosopher George Santayana said that those who cannot remember history are condemned to repeat it. Mark Twain quipped that history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme. Since the financial crisis, economist Marvin Minsky’s view has become quite popular, that stability leads to excessive risk-taking, which sows the seeds for the next crisis. But this theory requires that people act against their own interest – that they become […]

Why are so many men not working? Photo: Arielle Jay. Source: Morguefile Over the past 40 years the rate at which prime-aged men participate in the labor force has fallen from 94% to 88%. That may not seem like a lot, but it’s over 7 million men who could be working, but aren’t. They’re not retired – it takes a lot of money to pay for retirement that early. Some of them are in school, but not […]

Where does bread come from? Illustration: Little Fluffy Clouds: Source: Wonderfulloaf Russ Roberts had done it again. He’s the economics professor who produced a couple of hip-hop videos a few years ago that explained macroeconomics via a rap-battle between two early 20th-century economists: Friedrich Hayek and John Maynard Keynes. So far, the YouTube videos have been downloaded almost 10 million times. He’s currently a research fellow at Stanford University. But that doesn’t mean he’s given up teaching. […]

What’s the best way to decide?   Photo: Judith Broug. Source: Morguefile We’re deciding things all the time. What time to get up, what courses to take, who to hire and fire, whether to fix up the house or sell it. Our decisions depend on our thinking. And the clearer our thoughts, the better our decisions will be. The final step in making good decisions is putting the relevant facts in place. Facts are real. They can’t […]

How does the French election figure into this crazy season? Photo: Benh Lieu Song/ Source: Wikipedeia France’s weekend’s election prompted markets to rally around the world – a development some have called, “Le Phew.” The French stock market rose by 5% – the equivalent of 1000 points on the Dow. Other markets also rallied: Germany was up 3, London 2%, even Japan rose at least 1%. There has been a global “risk-on” trade, because the most radical […]

What resources do we need to improve our decisions? Source: usafacts We all use facts to make our decisions. We also act on what we know – of ourselves and of the situation. We can look into a problem and we can seek help. Where we look and who we turn to are both resources. Encyclopedic resources are straightforward and easily accessible. They present humanity’s collective knowledge about a subject. They might answer a question like what […]

How can we improve our decision-making? Source: Quora Most of us live in “react-mode.” We’re like thermostats – the temperature goes up, and we try to cool things down. It gets a little chilly, and we turn up the heat. We don’t deliberate, we just do something because it makes us feel better. But reacting to circumstances doesn’t change the underlying situation. It just makes us a little more comfortable, for a little while. One of the […]

How can we make better choices? Photo: Colin. Source: Wikipedia Let’s face it: the world is constantly changing, and we face important decisions every day – where to live, what to do, how to show our friends and family that we care. We’ve never been so interconnected, and yet people have never felt so isolated. It’s never been easier to find out who organized the Seneca Falls Convention on women’s rights in 1848 or why the British […]

Can personal finance be fun? Photo: Melodi2. Source: Morguefile For most of us, money matters are unpleasant. They involve budget issues and trade-offs and hard choices that frustrate everyone. So we need to encourage ourselves, to set up some kind of incentive program. For example, estate planners say you should update your will every three years or so. So: think about what would be a special treat—like eating at a favorite restaurant, or going to a special […]