Link Mezza Plate #3
Link Dump was too negative and boring, so i’m calling these posts my Net Mezza Plate (in honor of my fellow trader Kerem Kozan of Deutsche Bank days).
- The issue of IT business estate planning. Does your business have a Godfather?
- This one I’m a big believer in. The difference between success and failure – Getting versus Taking
- Tesla electric sports car has gone into production. And it looks cool. Thanks Grant.
- A “simply life” approach. Living with Less.
NZ house prices won't see 2007 highs for 10 to 20 years
Interesting call by Bernard Hickey of Interest.co.nz (thanks Diversity for the pointer). He suggests we won’t see the highs in NZ house prices seen last year until 2018 at the earliest.
I have quite a different view on this. A big chunk of the NZ price rally in recent years was correcting a real estate arbitrage.
Currency, global wages, proximity of external money (Australia as an example) are just some of the other big factors. Real estate valuations are no-longer just about local economic factors. I have several colleagues in Australia who got involved in NZ property in the last few years. Higher Australian wages, favourable currency exchange and low airfares really changed the spread (difference in value) between buying in some Australia cities versus some beautiful places like Queenstown in New Zealand.
Good beer over some rugby chat is the icing on the NZ cake and I’ve never met a New Zealander I don’t like.
Interest.co.nz have some good viewing and reading. I really respect that they take a view. Sitting on the fence is damn boring and it hurts. That’s why markets never sit there.
Link Mezza Plate #2
- Must see video about awareness from Seth Goddin
- Extremely scary hi-tech robot from Boston Dynamics funded by the Us Department of Defense unit DARPA
- iJump have a fantastic podcast/blog in typical NZ content fashion. I love real people talking about real business topics.
Strangeness is a consequence of innovative thinking
I recently watched a TED talk by Ross Lovegrove who is an organic essentialist industrial designer. I really like his work and that of his mentor Henry Moore. Lovegrove looks up to James D.Watson and Leonardo daVinci. I recommend this TED talk if you believe that the human race would be wise to take lessons from natures fat free, essential design style (as Lovegrove puts it). One of my favourite quotes is “Strangeness is a consequence of innovative thinking”. Some of the concepts he talks about are:
- humanization of artificial light
- earth centric design
- organic aesthetics
- organic essentialism
- nature liberating form
He talked about Japan having no distinction between fine and functional art. I did not need to be convinced by this comment. I fell in love with the place on my first visit to Tokyo the super city.
And his design style:
- Make holistic forms and break them up into what you need to build the form
- Make organic things which are essential, remove the bits that aren’t needed by the design. He refers to nature drilling holes in things to remove superfluous elements and parts.
- “Fat free” is the consumer phrase he uses to describe this. Fat free design and fat free natural forms.
More can be found at Ross Lovegroves website or in his book Supernatural: The Work of Ross Lovegrove
Link Mezza Plate #1
- Jill Bolte Taylor at TED. The most important viewing you could possibly do this year. Attribution: Leah from Working Solo
- Dosh Dosh and in particular his latest article on creating a good news blog. If that’s your angle you better read this.
- The brand gap is a must read slideshow if you are developing a brand for your business. Found on slideshare.net a very good resource for premium free content.
- Piclens built a nice image viewer for websites.
- Alice.org and better still is Matheletics.com if you have kids.
- Earth Hour by WWF. Don’t forget to register and do it.
High Inflation – Don't Get Too Bearish
Inflation is bullish for stock markets longer term. Yep, those of you who remember inflation spikes of decades past might recall doubling of prices across decade periods. Stock markets doubled also, they had to, the math required it.
Stock markets aren’t alone. Your home is the biggest asset you’ll probably ever buy but for some reason incumbent conservative governments and their Fed Reserves don’t care much for affordability. While the “consumption inflation numbers” hang around 2-3% they are doing their job. Well that’s like telling a kid “don’t worry, the mixed bag of lollies are only going up 2% this year”. Meanwhile you neglect to mention that the bike (his big asset not yet purchased) is going up 10-20%. All the time you know his McDonald’s wages will never catch up to that kind of asset inflation.
Governments shrug of asset inflation as good economic management that makes people rich. That’s all well and good if you are already on board and own assets that ride the liquidity wave.
There was a saying in markets. You own two houses, you’re long. Own one, you’re square. Own none, you’re short the property market.
How many liquidity booms, housing booms, commodity booms do governments need to see before realising it ends up wrecking many lives, spoiling many dreams and leading to parents working many more hours than they spend with their kids.
Sure governments and federal reserves will testify their concerns, but at the end of the day they let these assets booms go on unabated until the next collapse proves them wrong. By then it’s the next guys problem, or some other countries fault. They just hope the history books note them down as boomtime public servant success stories.
The bulk of your spend these days is twice as much as it was in the 90′s. Sure your PC and food bills might not have grown much but look at your big spends, your home and your vehicle. The big ticket items that lead to a fat mortgage and a 60 hr work week is a lot more expensive.
Here’s the drum
Inflation is (generally speaking) very bad for socially equality
When asset inflation goes up the wealth divide grows. When consumption inflation goes up the wealthy don’t feel it but the masses do.
Inflation is good for stock markets longer term
If it costs us twice as much to get things done then it costs a business twice as much also. If you want to build a business you will be paying asset plus consumption inflation prices. Thus, a built business must go up in value (risk adjusted) to create parity with starting one from scratch. Yes, this is way too simplistic (leaving sectors etc aside) but it highlights this historic market fact. Just ask Buffet if you don’t believe me.
I thought I’d write this because there are a lot of bears around and I realised many of them have never seen a recession. Sure stocks will and can remain depressed for some time but inflation will at some point drag them substantially higher, beyond what you would expect, crazy prices.
Kids Fight Night
For a while there our kids were fighting a lot and sometimes it would crescendo with a fight over something stupid like toothpaste sharing just before bed. Yep, fluoride, a really stupid thing to fight over. So I hit the net, the books, and even a few Super Nanny episodes to work out this fighting thing. I initially put it down to natural behaviour. After all my brother and I fought as kids so it somehow feels normal.
We’ll we changed a lot last month and noticed dramatic changes.
No1. Improver was less TV. I’m convinced the TV is more bad than good for kids. I never would have beleived the difference it makes. Since we cut it back to a show a day there has been an incredible difference. Better attention span. Obviously more outdoor play, more sport, more puzzles, drawing, cubby building etc. Good old stuff I remember doing back in the X-Gen days of bad and free TV.
Here’s my scribble from my search on sibling rivalry over recent months. Don’t take anything as gospel, I noted things down, can’t remember where and when the source was (apologies). *The ones with a asterisk are ones I worked out myself through experience of having a 2,5 and 7 year old.
Sibling Rivalry Causes
- Position in the family. The oldest has more work to do/help with. Worry and responsibility.
- Son is jealous of a sister because father is more gentle with her.
- Daughter might wish she could do boy things with Dad.*
- Personality traits – mood, disposition etc.
- Evolving needs – toddlers claiming toys, asserting themselves.
Never
- Give into the “its not fair” guilt pedalling.
- Argue in front of the kids, they watch how we resolve disagreements.
- Compare one to the other in a verbal benchmarking exercise.*
- Create situations that cause guilt or worse still pedal guilt to get my way with the kids.*
- Interfere if they can settle differences themselves.
- Take sides.
- Put focus on figuring out who is too blame.
- Let them think it should always be fair and equal. Life isn’t.
Always
- Ignore the teasing.
- Tell the teaser that enough is enough when it gets there.
- Have a system for distributing privileges/gifts etc.
- Separate kids until they are calm if they have been fighting.
- Try to set up a win-win to resolve conflict.
- Have rules – no swearing, no yelling, no door slamming. Get their ideas on the rules.
- Quality time for each kid, one on one.
- Acknowledge appropriate vs bad behaviour on a 10:1 ratio.
Got anymore let me know, keen to swap notes with other parents. When it comes to parenting I’m still in the mailroom.
Creating Systems Creates Results
I’m intrigued by the whole area of applying natural world systems to the business world. This area has fascinated me since I went on my first Nature excursion at nine years of age to the bushland at City Beach (Perth, Australia). We learnt about termite nest construction. Despite being young I understood that the ants were following a pattern or system to create this amazing structure.
Many years later I learn’t that the Ants have a genetic design using chemicals, scents and behaviour that is systematic.
Humans are a little different though. Burdened with self awareness we are given creative license to ignore genetic impulses and adopt all kinds of knowledge and ideas. Some for the better and some for the worse. One of these is the idea that we need to accumulate lots of knowledge. This Idea Virus or Meme has been a two edged sword for humankind for centuries. Would we have moved ahead a lot more if we applied more knowledge and hunted a little less for it? I often wonder.
So often we accumulate knowledge and it never enters a realm in which it is actioned. Systems can create this outcome for you. This isn’t any special insight I have. Most reading this know this too well but sometimes our blind-spots are right in front of us. Well I found one the other day.
When I get up in the morning I make myself a Coffee, grind the beans, etc. It’s a ritual. This gets my mind buzzing and by the time I’m on my way to work my mind is back racing with ideas and plans. Some come and go quicker than I can write them down or commit to memory. Anyway I had been losing count of the amount of times I would think, “Damn I gotta blog that.”
I had no system in place to deal with this and my blog was left underused more due to my vaporised ideas and busy day than lack of enthusiasm.
Anyway, I got a notebook and am jotting things down to remind me. Yes I know that is very X-gen, I should be more Y-gen but something about writing seems to commit better to my brain. I think its because you read it, do something physical and have thought about it. 3 checkins to my brain.
Well, with the system in place here’s the first blog post result.
Flooded Datafiles
We have heard from our contacts that flooding in Mackay (Australia) recently caused accounting practices and businesses a major data recovery problem due to software based accounting files being lost in the floods. Obviously anyone using SaaS accounting (Software-as-a-Service online accounting) would have escaped the pain that data loss can cause a business.
Our Saasu.com data centre retains client data well clear of flood zones and data centres floors and entrances are purposely raised for localised flooding protection from burst water mains and other problems that can occur.
Datafiles for old style accounting software are only as good as your last backup. If you haven’t backed up recently here’s a knock knock reminder. Else, change to online accounting and other online services and outsource that task!
