Anyone who works in finance will sense, at least at first, the pressure to pretend to know more than he does.
Bank of Japan emerging as big Japanese stock buyer [H/T Will] (LINK)It’s not just that people who pick stocks, or predict the future price of oil and gold, or select targets for corporate acquisitions, or persuade happy, well-run private companies to go public don’t know what they are talking about: what they pretend to know is unknowable. Much of what Wall Street sells is less like engineering than like a forecasting service for a coin-flipping contest -- except that no one mistakes a coin-flipping contest for a game of skill. To succeed in this environment you must believe, or at least pretend to believe, that you are an expert in matters where no expertise is possible. I’m not sure it’s any easier to be a total fraud on Wall Street than in any other occupation, but on Wall Street you will be paid a lot more to forget your uneasy feelings.
The BOJ tends to make 10 billion yen to 20 billion yen worth of purchases when stock prices fall in the morning. The bank has not made any purchases so far in September because the market has been rallying.
Related book: Australia: Boom to Bust: The Great Australian Credit & Property BubbleDemystifying Venture Capital Economics [H/T @trengriffin] (Part 1, Part 2)
Related book: The Lean StartupAnthony Bourdain Has Become The Future Of Cable News, And He Couldn't Care Less [H/T @trengriffin] (LINK)
Mark Buchanan: Is the Internet messing up our economies? (LINK)
I just published a short essay reviewing the amazing book Who Owns the Future? by Jaron Lanier. It is published as part of a new business collection over at Medium.com, where I'll be writing with a number of other business and finance writers. First two paragraphs below. I really encourage everyone to buy and read this book. It's changed my entire perspective on the Internet and how it is affecting our economic lives: