Sunday, 31 May 2015

27,000 risk managers at Lehman?

16:15 Posted by The Thalesians (@thalesians) No comments
This September, it will be seven years since Lehman Brothers collapsed, triggering the financial crisis. I was working at Lehman at the time. Hence, it's an episode that I'll probably be thinking about for many years to come. I've gone over the subject on several occasions both in my blog (Lehman...

Saturday, 23 May 2015

Rembrandt selfies or selfie sticks?

09:26 Posted by The Thalesians (@thalesians) No comments
Wandering through the city of Amsterdam over the past few days, it was difficult not to appreciate the grandeur of the past, and to make comparisons between the past and the present. It can sometimes be tempting to think that the old times were truly better. Where once a "selfie" was an evocative...

Saturday, 16 May 2015

Seeing something in nothing

19:32 Posted by The Thalesians (@thalesians) No comments
My brain has been constantly whirring over the past day or so, desperate to find an idea for a blog article. The problem is that my brain is invariably focused on topics for a blog, which have nothing to do with finance like burgers. Yes, I could write about burgers and somehow skew the end of the...

Sunday, 10 May 2015

Expecting a holiday from general elections?

09:21 Posted by The Thalesians (@thalesians) No comments
The notion of forming expectations seems ingrained into our psyche. It is crucial, because without having expectations decisions become purely random exercises. Expectations give us a guideline, however imperfect, to judge both the state of the present and future. Take for example, when you go on...

Saturday, 2 May 2015

Discomfort zone

16:23 Posted by The Thalesians (@thalesians) No comments
The phrase "leaving your comfort zone" is the most cliched of cliches (I tried to use clichiest - but my word processor refuses to acknowledge the existence of that word). Perhaps a more apt description, would be what follows from this, namely reaching a discomfort zone. Essentially any sort of change...