I always park on the fourth floor. Whenever I leave my car at the Cape Town airport, I always leave it on the fourth floor, right at the top of the parkade. I think you should too, but I hope you don’t. The police park several blue and white cars and grizzly blue-lighted bakkies on…
Are you outraged at the proposed increase in electricity prices from Eskom? If you are, you’re not alone. 88% of readers polled in a News24 poll were “outraged” at the increase. The problem is that all this outrage is irrelevant at best, and dangerously distracting at worst. Why price is the wrong thing to worry…
This post is a little different from usual. It concerns VBA macros for MS Excel. Writing macros is quite easy, but writing efficient macros that run in an acceptable time requires a few tweaks. Commonly known tweaks include turning off screen updating (see the code below for an example of how this works) and then…
The Automobile Associate seems to think someone should care what their view on petrol prices is. photo credit: Daquella manera Taxes on fuel are like other taxes – a way of financing government expenditure and a distortion of an otherwise free market. The difference is that the free market does not price in externalities such…
Socially responsible investing, according to wikipedia, “describes an investment strategy which seeks to maximize both financial returns and social good.” This typically includes not investing in tobacco, breweries, defence contractors, gaming companies, those with poor environmental records or operations in countries known for human rights abuses and so on. There are clear similarities with many of…
Profit margins are being squeezed by decreased spending power of consumers. That is true, but it is also not the full story. Competitive pressures, buyer and supplier power dictate sustainable margins in the medium to long term. photo credit: abooth202 Fin24.com has a story this morning around Shoprite’s results and pricing strategy going forward. The…
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is an unfortunately necessary part of driving traffic to discover a website. Good content is necessary but not sufficient. Why SEO is necessary A large percentage of web traffic is directed by search engines. After all, this is how Google has become the giant company that it is. I tried to…
Back-testing proponents proudly show the empirical base of their approach. No parametric fitting or theoretical assumptions here. “We use the actual history of the markets to assess our risk and define our strategies.” However, the debate that typically comes up is: Back-testing over which period? Do we include the dotcom bubble and burst? What about…
