We really were forging new paths and we're doing that now But the recovery category is getting bigger and stronger people understand at the time It was how do we get the everyday consumer to even grasp what we're trying to communicate right and there's so much Creativity needed in the really early stages. Yeah on just not only developing great products, but how do we build a sustainable category?


Hello and welcome back to the tea show where it's time to create thoughts. Love it We have an incredible show for you here today, but first let me introduce myself I'm Gabriel one of the tea guys one of your hosts joining me It's pokey banks one of the other tea guys and we've got a great show pocu who we got on Yes, I'm not for what Karen few who's one of the best for its mentors in Asia We got a lot from that one. We are indeed and then straight after we've got Greg Davis joining us telling us how tasting wine can lead to good Decisions pocu doesn't have a great history with that But I suppose we'll find out a little bit more in the show off to see where the correlation is we'll find out anyway It's time to trade thoughts of Karen few We're back welcome to the tea show what Karen food on Before I even get started before I can even explain how many awards she's got I touchy read it off a list starting off with the best trading guru in Singapore top popular analysts in Asia best for a market train in Asia woman of the future Southeast Asia Awards and Ranked number one in Singapore a nationwide before its trading competitions Karen three would you say is the best award and which means the most to you the best award? I would say it would be the woman of the future Southeast Asia Awards. That's a mouthful Because I Actually lost that award Lost it. I got nominated for that word. So it's like a top five, but then I Did not get the because the awards given to the first prize and that's a second prize and then I didn't get the word so that taught me to be Humble and also to constantly work on myself because Seriously, all these awards. I mean, they are great. I'm grateful for it But then it might cost me to become slightly more complacent Whereas after that I want after I lost it. I think I cried for like two days Then after that after I recover and then I stood back up, but then it it cost me to Become more motivated to improve on myself. So after that actually went back to backtesting more intensely and also reading a lot more books and then consulting a lot of Consulting my mentors and all that Whereas previously before that I was still doing those things, but I was not it was it wasn't that intense But after I lost that award, I'm like Man, maybe I'm not that good. So I kind of improve on myself and work on myself Yeah, what type of training style would you say you do and how you trade now? Right now is I don't really have heard this strategy. It's called global macro strategy I think I heard you mentioning it just now global macro strategy So basically I look at the global macro factors Then after that I focus on the various markets. So if I'm trading forex, I'm gonna look at bond market Top market for Cruz because why do a lot is in-term market analysis Because other markets, let's say bond used it is often a leading indicator for the stock market So often times not all the time, but often times when bond use move then stock market is gonna move after words Whereas for stock market, it is a leading indicator for another market like commodities market So very often times during certain periods when the stock market you turns bonds is gonna wait Sorry commodities is gonna wait for a while Then it's going to follow So I use this Intermarket analysis as a leading indicator for certain currencies Certain commodities and certain markets Okay, that was that was well explained because I think I'm following along that. So you definitely are understanding what's going on, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, you got that. I got check it out. It's very fun. It's very fun It's a fun strategy. What pairs if in forex, would you say you trade? Mainly the high yield pairs paired with the low yield pairs Because what hedge fund forex traders really do is that they also use a lot of Metcorp global metcorp trading strategy. I don't know if you know this billionaire hedge fund manager. His name is Paul Tudor Jones I don't okay. You should you should know. I think there we go He he's a billionaire hedge fund Manager and he uses global metcorp trading strategy and along with other Hedge fund measures, which I forgot the name, but he's one of the most famous ones. So you gotta check it out and What he does is that he also uses look at in-term market analysis And then you look at fundamental analysis to make train decisions So the currencies the currency pairs that I use is Aussie and Aussie and because you have a high-yield currency paired with a low-yield currency So what hedge fund forex traders do is that they use carry trading strategy So they're gonna look at the high-yield currencies paired with the low-yield currencies and they're gonna trade using carry trading strategy So carry trading is also a very popular trading strategy among hedge fund managers who trades forex So they're gonna look at Aussie and for example and right now USD yields are also very high interest rates are also very high So when it's paired with a super low-yield currency like Japanese yen It's yes negative interest rates So when you look at the interest rate differential when it's very big Then hedge fund managers are going to buy that currency and it's going to go up But when the interest rate differential decreases decreases decreases Then that currency pair is going to go down So if you just calculate the difference between the interest rates Between the two currencies you can more or less tell okay in the long term This currency is gonna go up or go down You make it sound very simple. I have to be honest I'm sure it's more complicated than that But I love the way that you're explaining it even in terms of myself who has little to no experience in trading I'm understanding what you're saying and I think that that brings me on to a topic that we heard about you in doing a bit of research before the show which was You've said or you teach things about learn trading faster. So about work smart not hard these kind of policies Can you explain a little bit more about how you teach in that manner some tips as to how you can make people learn to trade faster So for working hard we got work hard, okay? We got work hard of course that of course we all we all know that but then when it comes to working smart That's actually a faster way to learn trading and that is to find a proper mentor and not just any mentor because there are some Good mentors out there. There are some bad mentors out there when you find a good mentor Focus on that strategy and then just trade using that and it's especially effective if that mentor strategy fits your own trading personality Okay, so let's say if your mentor is a long-term trader and it fits your trading personality Then that just fits just right then you just focus on feeling that strategy You don't need to spend all that time googling because it's gonna Take you forever to Google and then for me last time when I first started out I know me Google, but also I go too many I told you like I told you different trading seminars and I set in in so many of those Sales pictures and seminars to the point whereby I also know how to sell So it's this idea that someone has that knowledge go to them Take it from them rather than having to do all of the hard work yourself and don't look at too many different strategies Just listen to what they're saying and if that resonates with you go down that route Easy, right? Okay. No, I definitely agree with that because like you said if you're going around on Google YouTube I feel like the internet is a big jigsaw puzzle So you're finding different pieces trying to piece together whereas if you go directly to a mentor They have the whole blueprint step-by-step and you're more likely to succeed where you got some to ask questions with or what not Yep, just follow step-by-step That's great. So then in terms of getting to where you are now there must have been lots of challenges along the way So what does your routine consist of what do people need to go through to be able to reach a position of itself?  Let's do it So yeah, it's it To be honest, you know, I walk I I'm not I'm not a morning person So I don't wake up like 6 a.m. 5 a.m. I mean you go to YouTube and you look at all these traders They'd be like I wake up at 5 a.m. 5 a.m. Do a hundred push-ups then go to gym At 5 a.m. I don't like it's the gym even open at 5 a.m.  I'm like, oh my god, it's too much for me So to be honest, I just wake up at 11 a.m. Because I live in Singapore So I treat mainly the London training session New York training session So it's like from 3 p.m. Until 9 p.m. So as long as I wake up before 3 p.m. Then it's all good But one thing I do every single day is a must for me. I don't know why I don't know whether It applies to you you I Got work out every day every day every day. Otherwise, I'm just like Man don't do anything Like swimming every day. Yeah, I agree because with trading, you know You're just sitting in your your bum on your laptop doing nothing really so it's good to get active and If you feel good, you know, you can tell poke who stays more active than I do Honestly, I've been going to the gym. Oh, yeah, I'm working on it. It's hard married life keep going in it So I got work every day and of course, you know, like basic basic things drink lots of water And learn and then also like I must I must for some reason I gotta read For one hour every single day. I Just gotta read if I don't read for one day I'm like, you know what something's missing. I'm still like I couldn't sleep and then because it's also Encourages me to improve myself every single day and it's it feels just feels good to learn something new every single day And then also right now I try to meditate, but sometimes I can't sit still So so I try to meditate for like five minutes a day But workout is the main thing I don't do. Yeah, that's as interesting. You mentioned three to nine So that's the hours for London session to New York. So then there must have been a lot of sacrifices in your life then because Three to nine p.m.  So would you say then you've had to ask let yourself and just focus? Like along your journey. Oh, yeah, I've sacrificed a lot of My time. I mean my I've sacrificed in fact my whole 20s to Just on on my craft in training because like, you know school a lot of people in my school like college They're having the parties and all that, you know that college life Probably so I didn't have that because I was just in my dorm room or in my room or in my home Just studying trading studying financial markets because I want to be super good at it I just want to be super good that will be successful at it And then also I want to prove myself I don't prove to fool by just want to prove to myself and maybe people around me That I am worth it. So I've worked really hard my 20s and didn't have a lot of parties. I Didn't never went clubbing Actually went by I went for 12 hours. Then I am like done done the markets have opened. I'm going home I'm coming from Singapore Obviously Singapore is a small country, but also quite a successful country Firstly is is trading big there. Is it quite common practice? Yeah, this because Singapore it has been rebranding itself as they call themselves like Financial hub global financial hub. So there are a lot of hedge funds set up there like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan investment banks inside and I've been to a couple of those trading floors investment banks and You should look at their trading desk. It's like 10 screens for one person. I'm like, I'm your two eyes. How do you do that? So I only treat with three screens in fact, and yes in Singapore trading is pretty common and a lot of people especially the older generation older generation they like to invest in stocks and bonds So for the older generation in Singapore, they are more conservative They like the more traditional assets. Where's for the millenials and they what do you call it a younger one? Genji Genji, right Genji. So they like the you know those crypto mean stocks You know the exciting stuff. Therefore, I still like the volatile ones. I'm like Nah, not for me. Not for you. Yep. That's crazy very different to the UK I would say we're a much more conservative country in terms of the fact that There's not a lot of people here that trade or invests. Obviously, you've got the financial district in London itself That is like in terms of the everyday person It's not so so common and in terms of your personal experience Have you seen differences like from your cultural upbringing in terms of the way that you trade or your attitude towards trading? Towards perhaps people that you know around the around the world in the UK, Europe, USA Are there differences between the way that you trade versus they trade just because of where you're from? Actually, why if you could enlighten me, why is it that people here don't really trade and invest? People here are very conservative their money lack of education around financial understanding and There's just it's a big saving Culture I think Yeah, in Singapore there's a good saving culture to in fact again the older generation they A lot of them like they prefer saving A certain group of them they prefer saving than investing and trading Where's the more of the risk taker ones they would invest in stocks Many Singapore stocks, but for Singapore stocks, you gotta buy like minimum 100 shares Which is pretty crazy Whereas for US stocks, you only need to buy minimum one share. I have a lot of The trading guru friends in Singapore even though they live in Singapore, but they invest in US stocks So they don't even touch Singapore stocks because they don't really it doesn't really move So that's not enough for TT to profit from it Yeah, do you focus on events that happen in Asia news events and what not or do you look outside of Global global especially the G20 currencies that I trade and Right now. What are you looking at? What kind of things are grabbing your attention either Singapore specific or globally when it comes to trading? mainly looking still looking at the same few currencies that I trade or ZN because the youths because Investors are expecting that the Fed is going to increase rates for the slightly slightly a little bit more So what happens is that the high yield pair with the low yields? They are going to benefit from from Fat what the Fed is going to okay even though next year the interest rates much might be cut down Okay, so next year a lot of people are saying that it's going to be a risk of more of a risk of environment But for now, I'm just looking at mainly the Aussie dollar Aussie and New Zealand yen because New Zealand has a high youth to then Canadian yen because when Canadian yen most is going to affect all prices and then when all prices moves and it's going up right now when all prices move is going to affect Canadian yen too. So a lot of times I will look at oil and Then when I see that all is moving I will go to Canadian yen and make a trade So it's like it's kind of like other markets giving you a free trading signal So you don't need to rely on any trading rules to give you any trading signals So you let to use lots of confluences lots of correlations and one correlation to make sure okay That's that trade pound yen and gold and gold. I'm there so they think it's a new corroborate So sometimes when pound yen is going up, okay, I'm looking for shorts on go to you know, it's good Actually pound is a high you can see right now again when it's paired with yen So it's a good currency to carry trade to yeah lots of volatility And it but it's quite volatile. Yeah Live tips on the podcast straight after this poke is going to be straight online Make some changes to his trading attitudes and policies or that kind of stuff Yeah, definitely either. What about looking forward to the future? So 2024 Any things that are already Exciting you scaring you things you want to stay away from things you are ready to buy Or do you not look that far? Because I'm still sticking to the fact that next year is going to be a risk off So what you what put I might do if it really does happen is to short those high you pair of low youths Because when it's risk off means that people are very scared to take risks So this means that the high you pair with the low youths are going to go down So then all prices are going to go down and then all the risk markets the stock market the oil market The certain commonities and New Zealand yen Canadian yen all these are going to go down So the good thing about currencies is that you can short the market And yeah, pretty much it just short the risk markets and that's What I'm looking for right now. What's your favorite thing about trading?  There's no Manager to answer to to let you know what should do But then the downside of it is of course you not become as disciplined as compared to if you have a boss But one of the good things is the time freedom that you have if you want to go all day you go If you want to take a break you just take a break if you work hard From morning until nighttime you just go at it. So that's the good thing and also For training just for me just for me It encourages me to Learn every single day Encourages me to learn every single day and also every single day The financial markets gives you a different thing So it's not that boring every day is the same task every day is different So that's what I like about it the time freedom and also the variation of the things that you do Yeah, I mean with the rise of AI You know and even the use of hedge funds using that do you think that affects or trading any saw or do you make use of AI? Trader animal using the bot. Yeah, you can you can actually use AI in many different ways The first one is of course everybody right now. I'm sure you're using this to chat GBT Yeah, you've seen that you can use that to generate creating ideas Creating ideas you can use that to summarize a financial article. Let's say you have a long Worthy financial article and you don't want to read it a financial report and you don't want to read it Just tell charge BT to summarize everything for you But when you are a stock trader investor, what you can take advantage of is Companies that are implementing more AI into their operations. So let's say for example Microsoft Google Apple and Some other major big tech companies. They're implementing a lot of machine learning Into the operations. So as they integrate more and more AI into the operations, then their stock price is going to Go up and benefit from it and someone for these companies I've looked at the financials. It is very healthy very good to hold long-term. Of course It's not investment advice, but then it's very good to invest and hold long-term Because they're constantly updating themselves and at the same time, they have good cash flow and at the same time They have good reputation and branding. So it's like the perfect companies to bind Karen, thank you so much for sharing everything with us today That was pretty impressive and now straight over to Felicity Hannah who's gonna talk to us about the latest financial trending topics Cheers Gabriel. Hi, Poki. It's never a quiet week and once again, there's a huge amount to talk about I'm gonna take a look at why the dollar has been dominating But why some analysts don't expect that to last plus we keep hearing that AI is the future and Undoubtedly it's gonna transform our economies and our working lives in many ways So why are so many AI-centered tech stocks down over the last few years? I'll be taking a look at that and also at exactly what the World Bank has said about its worries over Asia Like I said, lots to talk about Let's start with the story of the very strong dollar. The greenback has dominated Almost every other major currency this year and that's despite many analysts predicting it was going to weaken Now we talked last time about the latest moves from the Fed leaving rates unchanged at a $20,000 high and since then the central bank has hinted again that rates will need to stay high to bring down inflation Plus there's also an expectation that there might be another hike on the way this year and that kind of high-rate environment can be very attractive to overseas capital and it generally increases a currency's value But the global picture isn't just about a strong dollar The US economy has been quite resilient despite hikes in interest rates But if you look to Europe and to China, it's been more disappointing there And that's definitely been reflected in their currencies The Euro is now at its lowest level against the dollar so far this year Nearly 105 and it fell 3% against the dollar in the third quarter Europe, of course, is exposed to higher oil prices and some analysts even think that if oil was going to go down some analysts even think that if oil climbs well above $100 a barrel up around the 110 mark we might see Euro dollar parity again I don't know if you remember when that happened last year, it was the first time in two decades Now Britain hasn't fared much better, Stirling had a bad September against the dollar and against the Euro giving its weakest performance since December last year And that's despite some positive news that was revised official data showing that actually the economy performed better than we thought over Covid But the Bank of England held interest rates in September and for now at least Stirling is still at a six month low against the dollar Now I don't know about UT guys, but it's very easy for me to get excited about AI What it might mean for businesses, how it might change the workplace What it might mean for our day-to-day lives In fact, just a few days ago, JP Morgan's Jamie Dimmond told Bloomberg TV that people's children could live to 100, not get cancer and probably work three and a half days a week all because of AI And that sounds undeniably pretty good And a lot of people clearly agree with him It feels like every week we talk about how AI might end up doing a lot of the work that we currently need humans for Yet despite the excitement we saw some of the biggest AI-related stocks fall last month That included the chip company NVIDIA, Microsoft, IBM In fact, the largest tech stocks, the so-called Magnificent 7 which is Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, NVIDIA, Tesla and Meta They could all be said to have had a pretty shaky quarter But Goldman Sachs strategists have argued that there could be strong earning results coming soon And that's why they say that right now these stocks could be seen not as disappointing, but as cheap Right, let's talk about the World Bank and its worries about Asia It's predicting the most sluggish economic growth for the area since the late 1960s, so about half a century It's downgraded its expectations for growth in East Asia and the Pacific to 5% this year It had been predicting 5.1% just back in the spring and you can probably guess the reason It's fallout from that slowdown in China In fact, if you look ahead to next year it's predicting 4.4% growth for the world's second largest economy and that's lower than the country's target of 5% And remember, this is China, even 5% would be quite low And it's the same headwinds we've already been talking about on the last episode It's within the Chinese economy rising household debt, falling retail sales and exports and concerns about the wider impact of that ongoing real estate crisis Poku Gabriel, I think we're going to be talking about the Chinese economy more and more over the coming weeks But in the meantime, that's it from me, back to UT guys in the studio Thank you very much Felicity for sharing the latest financial news And now to our next guest of the show, Greg Davis Welcome, thank you I'm going to give you a quick intro because I think it's worth it just because of your background So let's kick it off with you, our head of behavioural finance at Oxford Risk Correct You have PhD studies in behavioural finance and academic affiliations and you started the first ever behavioural finance team at Barclays in 2006 Yeah, I remember that year well, I was 9 But more importantly, we said in the intro that you were going to talk to us a little bit about the link as to why wine tasting and drinking wine can lead to good decisions Now Poku is very confused about that because he's only ever experienced the opposite and why normally leads to bad decisions Are you happy to elaborate a little bit on that statement? I can, I mean well, obviously drinking a little bit of wine is going to improve your decision making full stop, right, yeah, get rid of the inhibitions, etc But the real thing here is wine tasting, if you look at professional wine tasters what they're trying to do every single time is make an accurate assessment of what's in the glass in front of them and it's exceptionally difficult to do, much like investing you want to make an accurate assessment of whether this thing is the one that you're going to buy it's the thing that's going to go up So in wine tasting it's very difficult to do, partly because the more we drink the more our perceptions get skewed, etc, etc and it turns out that in almost every form of decision making psychologically we humans display the same sort of biases and errors and that means the way to fix it is very similar to what professional wine tasters will do when they're tasting wine the sort of techniques and procedures they use to become better wine tasters are very close parallels to the same sort of techniques that we should all be using if we want to become better investors So the link seems very tenuous at first but it's definitely there Okay, I'm getting closer, I think we're on the way there You have to share some of those specific things, so you said there are some specific skills that wine tasters use that you could quite easily cross straight over into investing Well, it's more the message that's crossing over So let me give you an example If you want to taste a wine and get it accurate One of the main things that you want to know is what is the acid level in this wine So you taste it, you swirl it around, you spit it out, whatever I don't generally do that bit of it You taste it and you go, this wine feels acidic to me But is it medium-high? Is it medium-medium-high? Objectively, where's that level of acidity? And if you've already tasted five or six wines it's very difficult to really know because your perceptions are biased, your starting point is different So you need to put in place a rule that effectively removes your emotional self from the decision and gives you a measure that is much more accurate Now, you'll like this because the measure that you will use to test an acidity is known in the trade as the dribble test My brain is a very biased subjective assessor of how much acidity is in a wine But if I taste it and I swallow it and then I tip my head forward and I see how long it takes me to dribble my salivary glands are in fact a very objective, accurate measure of the acidity levels in wine So what we're trying to do is to replace a vague, emotionally led subjective assessment of something and replace it with a rule that we can use And the same is true in investing If you ask yourself the question, do I like this asset? It's completely the wrong question to ask because we're skewed by, oh and I like their products I like their CEOs, you know, nice looking fellow We end up making decisions based on this completely subjective, biased holistic assessment What we need to ask is, can I break this thing down? Can I find the dribble test for investing? I look at the accounts, it gives me measurable numbers that I can then use to make an assessment And so what transfers from wine tasting to investing isn't specifically the dribble test But it's the series of techniques that you use to become better and more accurate in wine has very direct parallels to the sets of techniques that you should use as an investor to become better and more accurate I can already see us both going to buy our next investments and then leaning forward and seeing how we start drilling You're like, no, that is not the takeaway But it's probably quite amusing for a YouTube video or something like that Definitely, wine tasting, I think that's a good date I can take it and go and then I probably will mention so Yes, that's very interesting to hear So then, meeting on from that Wait, would you say then, in terms of investing that's helped you make a clearer decision in terms of looking direct like, you know, factors and complexes to make the right decision When we make decisions, whether it's wine or investing and we make them from scratch in the heat of the moment we're letting our emotions in and we are responding to all sorts of things in the environment that are not in fact relevant to whether this is a good investment or not And so what we want to do is almost take our emotional self out of the decision-making process and particularly if markets are volatile and turbulent, right? You're what you think, I've got to make a decision now You, in that emotionally charged situation, is the worst possible decision-maker you can be So what you want to do for yourself is in times when you have the space, you have the bandwidth, cognitively and emotionally you start to write for yourself a set of rules that you can use to govern your investing So that when the moment of stress comes, when the moment of crisis comes you don't have to think, what am I going to do from scratch You go to the rules that you've already established ahead of time that says in times of stress, this is how I want to behave, this is the process I want to follow And those rules initially can be very vague, but if you do it year after year what you should be doing as an investor is going how can I incrementally sharpen up my set of rules that I follow every single time I make a decision And I'll just give one example of those rules So every decision, if you want it to be a good decision needs a pause point If you make a decision in your head, in your gut and you immediately hit return however your trade goes live, I hit return you have not given yourself any space for reflection So every single decision to improve the quality of your decision is a very simple thing build a pause point in, and that may be something as simple as I decide what I want to do, I make sure that I get up I make myself a cup of coffee and I sit down and then if I still want to push return, I can push return But for big decisions it might be I will not actually make this investment decision until I've slept on it overnight So the size of your pause point depends on how much money is at stake what your level of competence is in that decision, etc But if you don't have a pause point you're missing out psychologically on the simplest single thing that can improve every decision that you make It's so funny you say that because the same rules when I speak about personal finance online there's another, pretty much a mirror of that when you tell people about making large purchases Obviously a large purchase could be an investment but quite often the rule that personal finance educators will say is the 30 day rule or the 24 hour rule you're going to apply something that probably a bit outside of your budget don't act on your gut, give it a period of time and come back and make sure that the same you in a different scenario is going to make that same decision and it's funny how that translates again across into obviously similar field but different yet again Decision making is decision making the end goal is different but the psychology is often the same the fact that we are human, biased, fallible and all we need to do is go what can I put in place to overcome those fallibilities by the way, I use that on my kids a lot they go into a shop and I want that now and I've discovered that if you don't want to come across as the harsh parents and you say well, maybe you can have it but in order for you to get it you have to come to me in two days time and tell me that's a thing that you still want you'd be astonished, 99% of things kids say they want in a shop at the time they never ever refer to it again and I think that's true of us as well in a shop, most shops are theatre they are there to separate you from your money and the same is true of online shopping so just having that porous point go I'm not going to deny myself this thing I want to have I'm just going to deny it to myself for 48 hours and if the end of the 48 hours is still important to me go for it you'll save yourself a lot of money what do you say are some beginner tips we've all looked into your investment constitution so it'll be nice to hear what you have to say I think a lot of people avoid investing for the wrong reasons and often it's because they're fearful it looks complicated, it looks... what if I get it wrong so there's a real for many people a huge emotional burden to getting invested and I would say for most people the biggest behavioural cost most reliable behavioural cost to investing is actually not what they do when they invest we can solve some of that with the investing rules and investing constitution but the biggest cost for most people is they leave too much of their available savings doing nothing in a bank account year after year after year and that is enormously costly because even if I take that person and I put them in a completely tediously boring moderate risk passive ETF asset allocation that's blind sell no engagement whatsoever over time that moderate risk portfolio should be expected to earn above what you would get in a bank account roughly in the region of 4-5% per year if I'm leaving 4-5% per year on the sidelines because I'm emotionally uncomfortable is a phenomenally expensive way of getting to sleep better at night and people are doing it all around the world the amount of money sitting doing nothing we all should have some money sitting doing nothing we need an emergency buffer that's the thing that buys us the ticket to take the risk but people are sitting with huge amounts of cash earning nothing year after year after year so the first thing I would say is create your safety buffer simple rules like 4 months of expenditure but make sure you've got something to fall back on that buys you the ticket to take risk the rest get it going put it into the markets and the reason why people are so behaviourally or emotionally anti some of it is just procrastination I just don't get round to it but for a lot of people it's fear it's fear that if I put my money into the markets and the markets turn down tomorrow I've failed and I'll just keep it in the bank account and you hear these positions well the stock market is just like a casino in a sense that's true in the short term the stock market is a bit like a casino but here's the thing if you go into a casino every day and play the roulette table day after day after day for years you're going to lose you're going to come out down because the odds are stacked in the house's favour in investing it's the opposite if you go and invest and you stay invested day after day after day after day you're going to win you are the house and people don't get this they think if I'm investing I'm on the negative side of that in the bank account that's when you're playing against the house and you're going to lose for sure there's inflation, there's all sorts and I just told people when people feel like they're investing some people feel like they're losing their money but no, you're transferring your wealth to another asset it's not as if IA money is gone and you spend it on something tangible it's an interesting illustration of that so imagine someone inherits some money some distant relative dies leaves you a chunk of money and think about one of two scenarios one is, so they have a stock portfolio and in the first scenario that stock portfolio, the executives of the will they sell everything, they turn it into cash and they give you cash in the second scenario they go, well we're not going to do that we're just going to transfer all of the actual investments to your account the same person in the same situation but what they've just been given is two different starting portfolios I guarantee that 10 years down the line those two people will have very different returns because the person who's given the portfolio of stocks goes, oh I'll just stick with that the person who's given the cash has to go through the emotional turmoil of reinvesting all of that cash and it's very difficult for people to do to even translate that to even someone that's not interested in investing I think the stats came out recently that the amount of money that's still today sitting in accounts in the UK earning less than a percent is astronomical when within seconds you can find an account today paying four and a half five percent easy access and like you said that's four percent, five percent that you're sleeping on within action and we're not even talking about investing here we're talking about a saving, secure account things that people are used to just because like you mentioned being passive and lack of action but overall I think that you've left people with good enough knowledge to hopefully take that leap especially if they're a beginner to understand what they're missing out on on the table as well as a bunch of other stuff that we spoke throughout the episode so I want to just say thank you on behalf of myself and Poku I've learned a lot for sure especially with behavioural finance how it affects investments psychology is a big thing in trading whatever strategy you have that isn't even up to 20% it's more about your risk management changing the trades and after so definitely behavioural finance is a big big topic when it comes to trading cheers, thank you for your time, I appreciate it absolutely pleasure Poku, what a show an unbelievable second show I mean we've been here for two episodes now I'm so excited for what's to come yeah for the season ahead a lot of knowledge soaked in and a lot that needs to be applied on later on 100% when I said selfishly that I'm looking forward to this show to taking knowledge like to you know increasing my own knowledge I didn't realise it was going to be this rapid and this quick but what was your favourite part particularly from Karen, I want to know what you learnt yeah nah, just understanding that you know she went for her own Charles and Tribulations you know taking her own sacrifices to get to where she is I mean also understanding that looking at interest rates and yields for different pairs and currencies can help you understand and take trade ideas that I've learnt which I'll go away and my plan learn but looking back to you would you learn a lot from Greg the behavioural finance leader yeah there was so much from Greg I think the one thing that I'm going to pick up upon and that I'm going to apply to my own life with these ideas of applying investing rules so he was speaking specifically about removing emotion and having a set of rules regardless of what was going on that you will live by so in the markets volatile when it's not volatile you'll do the same thing every single time to make sure that your decision making is as strong as possible and I think one of those few rules that I'm going to definitely apply is this idea of just waiting he said go for a cup of coffee or give yourself 24 hours just that pause before you make a decision especially with investment that's going to be one of my rules I'll let you know the other ones when we come back in a few weeks but now let's take a look forward at the next episode do you want to give a little sneak preview yeah yeah starting off we've got Jason Sen who is a veteran trader with 35 years of experience who also worked in the London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange in the 80s and 90s so a lot of industry knowledge will come from that I'm excited for that one and then straight after we've got Hailey Quinn who is an internationally recognised dating coach I believe she has one of the biggest if not the biggest dating coaching company in the world so Poku ready to put on a nice shirt maybe wear some aftershave you're going to learn a few things right definitely and it'll be nice to see the link between money and day in how that works because we can't figure that out right now for ourselves can we the dating world is a treacherous place I'm married so I'm not getting involved in this conversation I wish I wish anyways guys in two weeks we'll be here again we'll be time to trade thoughts sweet you


This weekend we feature part of a talk that the great Dr. Robert Higgs recently gave here at the Mises Institute during our Mises University week. I'm sure Bob needs little introduction to most of you. He's a longtime Libertarian stalwart and of course the author of The Great Crisis in Leviathan. He's been a longtime senior fellow here at the Mises Institute. His talk was entitled War and the Growth of Government. We're going to excerpt it here. It's really a poignant speech about how war creates a ratchet effect and how all crises, whether manufactured by government or otherwise, create a ratcheting effect that causes growth in the size and the scope and the power of the state. Now this talk is actually a little bit bittersweet because Bob and his wife have decided and who can blame them that they're going to be leaving the United States and it may well be the last talk that Bob gives here at the Mises Institute. So if you like Bob Higgs and if you're interested in the topic of how war causes the federal government to become larger and more powerful, be sure to tune into this poignant speech by Dr. Bob Higgs. Have a great weekend. We could say, as some statisticians have, well it's just a correlation. Yeah, war and the growth of the government have tended to go together, but it's just a correlation. So what? Maybe it's an accident. Maybe it's a coincidence. Where's your statistical test? Well, what I want to do today mainly is show you the logic of why it's not just a coincidence. It's not just an accident. There's a logic built in to the way the government responds to national emergency. And I'm going to focus today particularly on the most important national emergency which is war. When the government undertakes to prosecute a large-scale war, and that's important. If it attacks some tropical island, this kind of analysis is beside the point. Or if it already has a gigantic military apparatus in place and it decides to attack Serbia, you're looking at a different case there. It'll just conduct that war out of inventory as it were. But if we're looking at a war that requires substantial diversion of resources as the world wars did for all their belligerent powers, and certainly did for the United States because it had hardly any military to speak of when these wars began, then the government needs to divert many resources away from their current uses, the civilian uses, into uses that will assist the government in prosecuting the war effectively. So how can the government engineer that reallocation of resources? Well, the first thing the government could do was explain to the people, so we've got a situation here ladies and gentlemen, we're at war, we're at war for good reason, the wolf is at the door, we must ward him off, and so in order to do that we have to have your assistance. So we need you to donate resources sufficient to allow us to defend the country in the way that we've decided is best defended. If the Treasury's door is open, please leave your donations. Now, that's not what it does because even the densest politician knows that nobody will come and drop off money at the Treasury. But there is one way in which the government gets a little bit of response to this sort of appeal, and that is it always appeals to men and nowadays to women as well, join the armed forces. It always says, you know, that we need to recruit a much larger number of people for the Army and the Navy. So come down and sign up, become a soldier or sailor. And sometimes adventurous and ignorant young men will respond to those appeals and they'll go down thinking they're going to prove their manhood or do something else to satisfy their friends and relatives. And they'll go down and enlist, and that happened during all the wars to some extent. But it was never nearly enough to provide the government with the size army it needed to be effective in the war it wanted to prosecute. Just a trickle of men came down after the United States declared war in World War I. In World War II, the government actually started drafting men long before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, so it didn't even wait to see that opening the door to the forts would elicit enough men to come in and volunteer their services. So this whole idea of people's unwillingness to donate their resources to the government's prosecution of the war is completely typical. Now, I want you to pause here right now. This seems like such an obvious point that you're probably saying, why is this guy going on belaboring this obvious point? And I'm doing it because there's a deeper point at play here. Suppose you lived in a town or a village that came under attack from some enemy. Your family members were being killed, your friends. Shells were exploding here and there. Would you go to the defense of the community? Well, some people might not, but many people would. Many people would. You don't have to tell people to defend themselves against marauders. You don't need to concoct a big story about the threat to national security. When people are under attack, they defend themselves as best they can. And sometimes they do a pretty damn good job. There are historians who argue, for example, that in the Revolutionary War, the only effective military action the North American colonists mounted was basically guerrilla action.  But some of these guerrilla forces were pretty good. They would run out and attack the British, and then they'd just disappear into the forest. But the point was you didn't have to draft these guys. They were militiamen. They were people who belonged to their communities and defending their communities was what ordinary people expected to do and did. When the government has to undertake a lot of coercive measures to prosecute a war, what you're seeing is evidence that it's not just going to war against the alleged enemy. It's going to war against the people themselves, the people the government purports to be protecting. Because the very first thing it's doing to provide this alleged protection is violating their rights. Drafting them as military slaves, taking their money in new taxes, taking land away from the military facilities. These are attacks on the people's rights. If the people wanted to provide these resources to the government for war, it would hand them over. You wouldn't have to coerce them. So the point is governments go to war both on the military front and on the home front. They go together. And it's the government's attack on the home front that creates such a hazard. Because that's where the people lose their liberties during the war. And because the ratchet effects never get all of them back when the war is over. That's why war over time is the health of the state. It keeps providing the state with more and more power and the people with less and less liberty. Okay, donations aren't working. So how's the government going to fight the war? Well, it's going to have to pay for resources. Where does it get the money? It raises taxes. It puts taxes up to higher rates. It imposes new kinds of taxes. It taxes people who weren't being taxed before. Goods that weren't being taxed before. And when it does that, people don't just roll over and say, oh well, got to pay more taxes. That's life. They try to evade these taxes. They try to avoid them. They try to rearrange their affairs so they won't be subject to such great takings. And so the government's now got a problem. This, by the way, is an example of the Misesian theory of intervention. That's a theory that says when the government undertakes to do something by intervening in the private society or economy, it creates feedback effects. And as it were, our problems that the government must then solve in a second stage. And the same thing happens at the second stage. So then there's a third stage. And this was something James Madison actually wrote about in The Federalists when he said that each legislative interference is but the cause of succeeding ones, each one proceeding from the one that came before it. So this is not an Isaac Newton style observation. You don't have to have keen intelligence to see this. The Misesian theory of intervention is sort of obvious to anyone who's sort of followed the news or learned some history. That's how government operates. It intervenes, creates a problem, deals with the problem. So here it intervenes by taxing people more. It encounters tax avoidance and evasion. So it's got to deal with the avoidance and evasion. It's got to hire more tax collectors, more agents at the IRS, more FBI agents to go investigate people for criminal acts connected with tax evasion and avoidance and so on and on. And when it does that, it creates effects that it has to deal with and so forth. So it can't just simply raise taxes at any level it wants and get the resources it wants. In fact, in all the major wars, the government covered the bulk of its expenses by borrowing money. Now borrowing is easier because you're not really threatening the lenders. You're trying to induce the lenders. You're saying, give us your money and we'll pay you interest on your loan and at some dates in the future, which we stipulate, we'll repay your principal amount. So you'll get something out of this, just like any lender gets something out of lending money. So the government resorts to a lot of borrowing to pay for wars. And when it does that, it's flooding the bond market with a lot of new bonds, driving their prices down and therefore driving the effective yield on those securities up. You see if there's a bond with a face value of $100 and it promises every year to pay $5 interest, okay, that's a 5% yield. But if there's so many bonds floating around out there seeking buyers, these bonds will only fetch $50, then $5 a year in interest is a 10% yield. So the effective yield gets higher and higher as the government tries to borrow more and more and the higher it gets, the greater discouragement it is to the government's borrowing. It makes the borrowing more expensive, less effective in serving the government's purposes. So there's that kind of reaction. How can it deal with that reaction? Well, in the world wars, the government used the new central bank, the Federal Reserve System. And the Fed came right into the rescue by using monetary policies of lending or buying securities in the open market, which created very easy credit conditions, especially for commercial banks. And they in turn were able to make easier loans to their borrowers. And so the whole economy was getting pumped up thanks to the Fed with effusions of credit spreading out throughout the system. But one place it spread to was increasing the demand for government securities, which is the whole idea, the whole idea. Not just some pleasant side effect for the government, that's why this was done to finance the government's war. So the Fed rides to the rescue and besides pumping up credit right and left, it imposes interest rate controls and in some cases capital market controls because there are still other effects when you start intervening in the financial markets on a large scale. So we've got more intervention triggered by intervention. So the government gets money by taxing or borrowing. It goes out and makes purchases. But if this is a big war, it's making purchases of certain items on a large scale. And when it does that, the effect of increasing demand is to increase the prices of these items. And as they get more and more expensive, it puts the government in a bigger and bigger bind. How is it going to pay for all the stuff it wants when each unit is getting more expensive? So it's got to deal with that. So it deals with that by killing the messenger. The messenger is the rising prices. It's telling the government these items you want are getting dearer. Their opportunity cost is rising. And you can't have them voluntarily from sellers unless you pay a higher price to get them. But when the government imposes price controls, as it did on a selective scale in World War I and on a comprehensive scale in World War II, it kills the messenger. It says things aren't really dearer. They're not more expensive because we've got a law that says you can't make them more expensive. Well, if you think through what really goes on in the economy, that doesn't really change anything real. That's like saying if I rigged the thermometer, I'd change how hot it is in here. It wouldn't. It doesn't change the fact that the government is trying to snatch higher and higher-valued goods away from people who aren't willing to sell them except at higher prices. But they can't sell at higher prices because the government has made that unlawful. And in many cases in the World Wars, the government simply didn't even fool with price controls. It simply passed laws giving itself the power to take resources or to set priorities or make allocations of materials in such a way that it would be able to get what it wanted for the war mobilization, either for itself or for its private contractors. Now, when you do that, there are still compliance problems. Every time the government puts into effect a new regulation, a new control, a new allocation, there are people who find it in their interest to violate that regulation, to cheat on those controls, and so forth. And the government then has to deal with that with enforcement efforts. Now, notice every time it deals with one of these negative feedback effects, it's sending out coercive agents. It's trying to squash people who are reacting negatively to what it's doing. The final form of transferring resources is to just take them to, for example, draft men into the armed forces by conscription and send them a letter. It says, greetings. That's what they used to say. That's greetings. Your old Uncle Sam is sending you greetings. Greetings. You are to report, and they'd tell you where to report on a certain date. They might even give you a week or two to get there. And if you didn't report as ordered, you became what was popularly known as a draft dodger, and that meant that you had the option, the other option the government gave you. If you didn't want to report, you could actually go to prison. Since that was not a good option for most people, the great majority of people just showed up as ordered rather than go to prison. But not all of them. In World War I, the evasion rate was actually pretty high. It was about 11 percent of all the people ordered to submit to the draft. They just melted away somewhere. And of course, some of them were eventually tracked down, but in 1918, it was harder to track down people than it is now. There was no national security agency. But in World War II, there was much less draft evasion and avoidance, any of that. And the people who chose to go to prison instead of submitting to the draft were mostly members of the Jehovah's Witnesses, whose religion told them, don't put man ahead of God. All Christians, all Muslims, believe that, right? We should put God above man. But when you have to walk the walk, it's different. And very few Christians chose to walk the walk of peace. When the government sent them the notice that said report for war.