Dear Mr. Jacob Zuma

Did you notice that The President of the United States happens to be a black guy?

That is right. I am playing the race card in the first sentence of this open letter to you and now that it's out of the way, I can get right to the crux of the matter, hopefully, without being labelled a racist.

Spaar: 'n Riemtelegraaf

As dit nie vir Allan Gray was nie, het ek ook nie geweet dat Julie Spaar-maand in Suid-Afrika is nie. Blykbaar, is daar ook iets soos die Suid Afrikaanse Spaar Instituut. Dit is egter te verstane dat die Oktoberfest meer betekenis het as Bewahrenzeit as jy na die syfers kyk.

Suid-Afrika Spaar Nie

In 'n onlangse uitgawe van GrayIssue, skryf Rob Formby van Allan Gray Bate Bestuurders dat die spaarkoers van die land op 'n all-time low is.

Hoe meer verdien word, hoe minder gespaar word.

The Greater Depression

What new research is showing us

This week I received an interesting e-mail from Chris Botha of Stanlib Asset Managers. It was an astonishing chart that compare the World Industrial Output between the Great Depression of 1929 and our current state of affairs that started in April 2008.

I simply could not believe the similarities and set out to search for the source.

The authors of this chart turns out to be Barry Eichengreen, Professor of Economics and Political Science at the University of California (also a senior policy adviser at the IMF) and Kevin H. O'Rourke, Professor of Economics at the Trinity College in Dublin.

The Hot Hand Fallacy

And how asset managers may mislead you.

Can you predict on which side the coin will fall looking at the following sequence: Heads (H) or Tails (T)

HHH TTT HHH TT?

or

HTH TTH THH TH?

Most people may erroneously believe that the coin in the first sequence will land on tails. This is a very wrong assumption. The fact is that it appears as a sequence, but is actually just as random as the second sequence. Even more important is to realise that most people will perceive casual regularity of this sort as ‘n sequence of events.