Grombles

The world is plunging into an extraordinary period of widespread political instability at incredible speed. Ukraine, France, South Korea, Lebanon/Gaza, plenty of turmoil in Africa and S America, and let's not forget the bonkers leader of the free world about to reappear in the White House. No-one is betting he's got a clue how to calm seismic changes from occurring - he couldn't even stop his own Capitol from being invaded by extremists. Indeed he encouraged it. Nor is anyone going to be surprised if he just adopts the pose of two of the three wise (?) monkeys covering his eyes and his ears, but continuing to spout divisive rhetoric from his uncovered and now legally protected mouth. "Not our problem"...  The USA does not occupy the planet in isolation, even if it's physical borders are unlikely to ever be threatened by an invading army other than desperate people seeking a safer life. Perhaps Trump should read the inscription on his Statue of Liberty: "G...

Having reached what is generally regarded as old age, it's getting increasingly difficult to find the right words. It's not because I don't know what to say, the trouble is finding the right words to express those thoughts when I know they exist. My vocabulary is becoming more elusive (I knew I wanted a word to express the concept of 'hidden' and that a word existed which suggested it wanted to hide, but the word 'elusive' took me a second or two to recall). I have three theories why this is the case (and by the time I've written about two of them, I will probably have forgotten the third). Theory number one is that we are bored by what we're trying to say. When we are younger, it was important that we were not only heard but that we impressed ourselves with what we were saying (or writing). Now I don't really care whether what I say makes sense, is interesting, or impresses. My brain is saying "why are you bothering to say this?" The s...

I've written several times about how risky angel investing in start-ups and early stage businesses can be. Having personally invested in about 20 such businesses over the past 10 years, I have probably had to write off at least half of them within the first couple of years - but that doesn't mean they have disappeared completely. Just that my shares are no longer worth anything. That annoys me not just because they cost me money, but because the assets I helped to create may now be earning money for someone else. It may even be illegal and I am letting them get away with it. Let me explain. When you buy shares in a company, depending on the class of shares you buy, you are probably entitled to a share of the profits it makes when the board issues what's known as a dividend. Otherwise the profit is retained in the business to be reinvested in growth. In due course, someone may offer to buy your shares for more money than you originally paid. So there are basically two ways o...

Last night I watched a one hour BBC documentary introduced by Lyse Doucet called The Darkest Days . It was aired exactly 6 months after Hamas murdered over 1,200 Israelis. The documentary was in 2 parts. Footage and interviews in Israel following the attack, then a similar amount of footage describing (in gory detail) the carnage that followed, and continues to this day, in Gaza. I was in tears.  Watching anyone in pain, whether from physical injury or grief, is difficult at the best of times. But watching children and parents suffering - that's really hard to take. After watching it, I asked myself two questions. How could presumably sane people like the Hamas gunmen (of which there were hundreds or more involved) possibly commit those horrors? And what would I have done in retaliation - especially with regard to freeing the hostages?  It's really hard for someone like me, an atheist grandfather, living comfortably in a relatively peaceful society to put myself in the shoes o...

I have been investing in start-up companies (businesses with little or no trading history) for around 20 years. Unfortunately, despite knowing a great deal about starting and selling businesses, at least half of the ones I pick eventually fail and lose me all the money I invested in them... although some of it might be recoverable as tax relief. So over the years, I've come to realise that the odds are heavily stacked against me backing a winner - typically defined as a sale of my shares, known as an exit , within 10 years, paying me at least 10 times the money I invested. To get the same result from guaranteed compound interest over 10 years, you would have to be paid a rate of about 25% - so get it right, and it's a big prize. I've managed it a couple of times, so overall have recovered most of what I've lost on the many companies who died, but it's a very high risk game. So why do so many angel investments in particular die, and why is it so hard for us to spot t...

I started writing this on New Year's Eve 2023/24. The war in Ukraine has been grinding on for nearly two years. In the past couple of days, Russia has increased its intensity of rocket attacks across the whole of Ukraine. Many of those missiles are being intercepted and as far as I can tell, not much is being damaged. Russia's hope is presumably that these attacks will sap the morale of the state as well as absorb what's left of their US supplied anti-missile resources. At some point, Ukraine's stockpiles of war materials and trained military will be depleted compared to Russia's vastly superior stockpile including more than 2,000 warplanes they have been loathe to use until Ukraine's defences are weaker, and Russia will eventually push west when it controls the skies. We can't allow that to happen for two reasons: Where will they stop, and the further west they advance, the less the citizens in the territories they occupy will be prepared to accept Russian ...