You can't always get what you want in FX

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards once wrote "you can't always get what you want". They later noted "but if you try sometime you find, you get what you need". I am too young to remember this song being released, although, perhaps for some of you reading, the year in question, 1969, represented the...

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Burgers & implementing trading strategies

It has been a (light hearted) challenge of mine to find if there is a link between trading strategies and burgers, which are probably the best invention involving sliced bread. At long last, I found some inspiration at Mr. Hyde's National Burger Day inspired burger festival, which recently took...

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Lenses, Bart Simpson & Gatsby

The Simpsons is perhaps the most famous cartoon of our age, featuring Homer, Marge, Lisa and Bart Simpson as a dysfunction family from Springfield. During this month, FXX are screening every episode (see Forbes: Every 'Simpsons' Ever: Is FXX Using Netflix's Business Model On Cable? 21 Aug...

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Janet Jackson Hole

I am probably not the first person to note that firstly, Janet Yellen and Janet Jackson share a first name and secondly, that Janet (Yellen) is speaking at Jackson Hole. Hence, the juxtaposition of the three words Janet, Jackson and Hole, provides a suitably confusing headline to this article. The...

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History binds and tears apart

The recollection of facts might seem like the overriding objective of history, to the causal observer, such as myself. My world is coloured by maths and markets, an inevitability given my education was in the world of maths and my entire professional career has been in currency markets. To some extent, history's objective is this. However, even for someone quite removed from being a historian such...

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The changing soul of a city

It's close to midnight. I really shouldn't be writing something at this hour. Yet, despite this, words seem intent on leaving my brain via my fingers, tapping away on this keyboard into a screen, music in the background, supposedly to inspire, but more likely to distract. Looking from my window I see the lights from the City of London and other parts of the town reverberating against a clear sky,...

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Traders carve their imprint on capital

Life is carved from time, as a carpenter carves his designs on wood. In the same way, traders carve their imprint on capital. In Dublin and Ireland more broadly, the financial crisis and the failed banks have carved their imprint upon the land. During my recent visit, it was difficult to ignore the recent wave of construction projects, some finished, some unfinished, usually emblazoned with shiny...

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New York is the finest factory for human ingenuity

As long as human breaths have been taken, the human imagination has waltzed its way to the future. A place which epitomizes what can be built through imagination is the city of New York. Each time I approach New York and see the shadow of the Manhattan skyline punctuated by the Empire State Building,...

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