Month: December 2016

Tuesday 20th December 2016

In this issue of Money Truths….

• The drive to digital….
• On the Venezuelan front….
• All quiet on the British front….
• 2017: Going mobile – The War on Cash hots-up….

The drive to digital….

India’s drive towards digital payments is proving to be anything but painless….

Last month we reported on how the Indian government (giving just 4-hours-notice of its intentions) removed 500 and 1000 rupee notes (the highest denomination notes) from circulation – rendering 86% of the cash in the Indian economy worthless at a stroke.

The government took the extraordinary step because it wants to flush black-economy cash out into the light.

Indians can change the old high-denomination notes they hold into new notes – but if they can’t prove they’ve paid the tax on their cash holdings, they expose themselves to liabilities and stiff fines….

All over the country large queues of people snake around banks and ATM machines as man-on-the-street Indians scramble to exchange billions-worth of high-value notes….

Government mints are failing to keep pace with demand for new currency. There is a dearth of cash. Nobody has much of it to spend. Banknotes have become a precious commodity. And what cash people do have, they are holding on to.… Click here to read more

Tuesday, 13th December 2016

In this issue of Money Truths….

• In search of a certain world….
• Shocks at every turn….
• Nobody knows what will happen next….
• Cast-iron confidence….
• The Uncertainty Index…..

In search of a certain world….

Markets don’t like uncertainty. It’s a bit of a cliché….

When allocating capital, investors like to feel a sense of confidence about what will happen next, which way things will go, how things will pan out and how that will impact on their holdings.

But the truth is that nobody knows what will happen next or which way things will go – be it up, down, sideways or backwards. Not for sure.

Nobody can be certain. Not about the future. The future is unknowable. It unfolds its own way – and it doesn’t pay mind to what we think should happen.

There are no certainties. Confidence in future outcomes is often false…. misplaced…. delusional. But investors like to feel that confidence anyway. They like the illusion of certainty….

No investor wants to feel like he is gambling his hard-won wealth on the spin of a wheel. He wants to invest in order – not chaos. He wants to feel his judgment has value – that he isn’t relying on blind chance.… Click here to read more

Tuesday 6th December 2016

In this issue of Money Truths….

• There’s nothing wrong with Binary Options….
• The big problem is the volume of shark traders….
• Multiple ways of separating you from your money….
• Only in America….
• Play it safe – observe the red flags….

There’s nothing wrong with Binary Options….

Last week I broke the ice on binary options – a type of ‘investment’ that has recently surged in popularity. If you missed that, catch-up here….

Binary option investments involve betting on whether financial assets – such as share prices, currencies or commodities – will rise or fall over a specific period.

At heart, binary options are a straightforward-enough proposition. There’s nothing wrong with binary options in and of themselves.

These one-way-or-another bets appeal to traders – professional and amateur – who have strong views on which way the price of a specific asset will go and who want to profit from their opinion in the marketplace.

The results are not rigged. The proposition is what it is. The outcomes are there for all to see. The price of the asset being traded either goes up or down over the set-period. If you call it right, you win a set amount.… Click here to read more