A day behind the news Talk about the wrong weekend to be struggling with upgrading wordpress. Turns out, we have all that is bad about governments around Africa, the worst bits of South America’s corrupt politicians and distinct flavours of mob-era Russia rotting from the head. I missed this story until this evening. The Sunday…
This is a continuation ofa post considering the relevance of an individual investment product development position to a career in actuarial consulting. An old contact mailed me a couple of days ago asking my view on two possible actuarial positions. He was interested in whether either would be suitable preparation for a consulting or actuarial…
Was watching CNN last week, and heard that at least one major US airline, South West, has been making significant use of hedging to manage their fuel costs. Many other US airlines have not been hedging significantly. Another article mentioned that Lufthansa hedged around 83% of their fuel requirements for this year. Air France-KLM hedged…
Heading off to a Solvency II conference in Prague this evening. QIS 4 is hot news at the moment, and the conference is going to cover many of the details and requirements of the exercise. Large European multinationals have spent enormous effort on the 4 QIS exercises. The data requirements alone are huge. Somehow CEIOPS…
I’ve just finished watching the successful landing of NASA and JPL’s Phoenix lander on Mars. Previous success rate for landing on Mars was less than 50%. Not great odds by any stretch. Interesting that not only is the Phoenix lander made extensively out of the technology of the failed previous attempt (Mars Polar Lander) but the result of several review boards, and the Phoenix project team’s own review of…
Credit and economic risk collide when it comes to debt issued by Eskom. The damage is exacerbated by serious operational and medium-term management issues. Ensuring reliable supplies of raw materials should be a top priortity, but hasn’t been. Moody’s is considering a multi-notch downgrade of Eskom’s foreign and local currency issues. Eskom’s debt is not…
Nationwide Airlines is on the ground. A series of business and operational problems met the global economy of skyrocketing avgas prices and left them insolvent by R172m (assets of R46m less liabilities of R218m). They’ve also left friends of mine stranded in South Africa after a trip from Ireland for another friend’s wedding (congratulations Kay and…
Behavioural finance is no longer a “new idea”. It has entered mainstream finance education through CFA, Business Schools, even actuarial exams (ST5 for UK and South African actuaries). Some of the biggest lessons revolve around how bad we as a species are at making decisions in the face of uncertainty. Emotional biases, overconfidence, loss aversion,…
