Now that I am well and truly back in the office, a belated happy New Year to you and best wishes for 2024! Whenever I am on holidays, as I was in January in Canada, I invariably slip into my alter ego role of philosopher. That said you might be expecting me to write [...]

Making predictions about the future based on past trends is fraught with danger. What lies ahead is rarely a straight-line extrapolation of historical data. Rather, the path to the future bobs and weaves and zigs and zags as unforeseeable factors almost always intervene. This is why managed investment schemes warn investors that “past performance [...]

Marriages and mortgages have something in common - they are both “death pledges”. In a non-secular marriage ceremony, each partner vows to stay with the other ‘until death do us part’. Home buyers who execute a mortgage also commit to a “death pledge”, but not in a literal sense. To explain this, we need [...]

There’s no escaping the fact that one day we are all going to die. While I don’t wake up every morning thinking about my inevitable demise, I do have plans in place to ensure my wishes are carried out when I am no longer here. The Australian Securities and Investments Commission estimates that nearly [...]

Elvis is alive, the Earth is flat and the Moon walks were a hoax. We humans cling to myths even when they are patently false. Our natural gullibility sees us embrace almost any invented story, no matter how unreal. As a Doubting Thomas, I am a natural sceptic. For me, reported sightings of Elvis [...]

There are many ways to increase productivity and build a united team in your business. Having fun at work is one way to achieve these goals. During COVID, many staff worked remotely, and many have still not returned full time to the office and that may be the case for a long time to [...]