There have been a bunch of articles out in the last week about the rise of the machines driving fund managers out of business. The headline is way more exciting that the details though. The detail is that computers are making fund managers more efficient.

Asset manager GMO / James Montier hit on a lot of the themes near to my heart with a recent piece on secular stagnation and the rise of populism:

No market goes up in a straight line, and so the US stock market was due a pull back at some stage. The question that you have to ask at this point is whether this is a typical market retreat following a 4 month almost straight line rise or is it something more sinister?

Yesterday we had a long look at solar and battery power and how they affect the electricity sector. Today we extend the battery analysis to the oil sector and look at electric cars. “It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.” Mark Twain ...

Fossil fuels have a limited time as viable sources of energy. And I’m not talking about saving the planet or carbon taxes, simply economics. Coal, gas, oil, all have economics based on a “scarcity curve” – the more we use them, the deeper we need to dig to find more and more expensive they become ...

Interesting article out yesterday revealing the largesse local developers are now showering brokers and spruikers real estate advisers (I hesitate to call them financial advisers for obvious reasons) with to help move unsold stock from upcoming off the plan apartment developments.

Goldman Sachs offers this chart on central bank independence:

As covered today by Leith over at MacroBusiness here and here, today's ABS release confirms what most of us suspect, that wage growth in the long term is looking pretty bleak. Therefore it might be pertinent to think about how this outlook might affect you.

Fund results out today from S&P are not good for active fund managers:

Snapchat is listing shortly, probably early March. It's a unicorn, a start-up with a valuation over $1b. It's going to be valued at lots (USD25b?), and it loses money, which makes it hard to value. In the end, it's a lottery ticket.