Thinks About Things

The subject of this post says it all. I did the piece of work below for an interview at Hawkpoint Wealth Management. The key of this subject is to predict large economic movements of supply of money that will impact inflation. In a nutshell, inflation is driven by the ‘volume’ of money that exists in an economy. Let me illustrate:

• because banks are failing and the economy is in recession, the government decided to pump ‘liquidity’ to kick start the economy
• the extra liquidity means that is there is more ‘cash’ in the economy than the latter actually produces (imagine if everybody in the UK received a 30% pay rise for the same amount of work produced)
• in turn, the increase in cash, decreases the value of the money and prices increase.. here you go: inflation!

Because of this quantitative easing (QE), there is no doubt that there WILL be inflation (some is kinda good) the question is HOW MUCH and WHEN. Well, that, in turns, depends on (1) how quickly the banks (principal recipient of QE) release the cash in the economy and (2) how quickly the UK economy grows to absorb that extra cash. A way round this is, of course, if the extra cash leaves the country

Now, the latest quarterly figures of the economy show an increase in trade deficit, which, on its own, means nothing. A trade deficit means that the country is importing more than it is exporting… i.e. not a great way to kick start the economy… imagine that instead of producing more ’stuff’, we just buy it from someone else… all the while more and more cash is being poured in the economy, see a problem there?

So, what can we do? well, have a look at the presentation

Is Inflation Going To Be A Problem ?

Spelling mistakes are an encumbrance everywhere: whether in daily life, printed media or, as is very common nowadays, on corporate websites. A professional corporation should have – by definition -  a high standard of quality in everything they do (i.e. they should not screw up and big things and especially not on small things).

Now, take a corporation like Heartwood Wealth Management. The company (as its name suggests) is a wealth management company whose purpose is to manage investment portfolios for high net worth individuals (HNWI). Of all the HNWI I have met, one common denominator to them is: they are picky, especially with what they do with their money. This is quite understandable: they worked very hard (or not) to get their wealth and they want to make sure they don’t (excuse my expression) “piss it down the sink”. They would therefore seek out a company like Heartwood who has a demonstrated reputation for excellence and portfolio management. Of course, if I were to give my family wealth to a company, I would probably dig a little deeper and that’s where the cracks on that shiny armor appear: spelling mistakes. If my wealth manager cannot spell simple words, how can you be sure that the orders it will pass on your behalf are correct or that your portfolio has grown by 10% and not 1.0% in that quarterly report…

So into the heart of the subject now, here are the spelling mistakes I have come across on the Heartwood website:

- soltuions

- targetting

You can find many more on this website and other websites such as Newton’s (look for Feburary) and even larger corporations such as Barclays (search: compatability).

In conclusion, there is no excuse for these spelling mistakes, they look cheap and are very easy to spot and cheap to mend (there are many tools that will scan your whole website for them), so get cracking, and correct them all !!

I am part of the core team who organised the StartupWeekend in Paris. In all honesty, I was unsure how the event was going to turn out and, having been there since Saturday, I have to say: it’s amazing!

The teams that formed around ideas/problems/needs are just amazing!! They didn’t know each other on Friday evening when they arrived and they are now working together till 5am, having breakfast, debating on business plans…

The only downside to the event has been the lack of sponsorship from lots of early stage Venture Capital firms. We have and thank Sun, Orange, Mappy, Orkos, Altaïde, Metaboli, Planet-Work and La Cantine but all the venture capital firms that we contacted were not interested. I am failing to understand why, since hunting for new businesses and investing in them is their job – if I am mistaken, please correct me.

I can only find two explanations for this phenomenon: either the guys working in these VC firms are not passionate about VC to spend the weekend with entrepreneurs, in which case perhaps you should give me your job; or, the firms don’t have any money to invest, which is a poor argument sincewe asked for €500 upwards AND a lot of our sponsors and members of the jury paid for the entry ticket themselves – so back to point 1.

Despite this lack of enthusiasm from the financial world, the companies and ideas generated there are amazing and I invite you all to check out the live company presentation feed on Sunday evening (I will post the URL here and on twitter/facebook).