Economic Rigor

Started reading Steven Pinker's book "The Better Angels of Our Nature", which is a bit of a monster. Claims that violence of all kinds has actually been decreasing. This includes all violence including sexual assault and rape. Now, this is an interesting premise, as from how the feminists speak, you would think that there is an epidemic of sexual violence currently underway in the western world. And even some crime statistics seem to indicate sexual crimes are actually increasing. So I figured, I would go to the stats and see what is happening in Australia. So the earliest ABS record I can find about experiences of sexual violence would be "Women's safety survey 1996". The other relevant release is the "Personal safety survey, 2016" which has replaced it. So they are our two bookends to determine if sexual violence has increased. First, in 1996, from the women's safety survey, the amount of women who have experienced sexual violence...

Been doing some modelling on the negative gearing changes proposed by Labor. This has caused some controversy in property investment circles due to the impact. It's funny though. On this very blog, I proposed the same policy, way back in March 2015. wonder if Chris Bowan (shadow Treasurer) is trolling my site. http://economicrigor.blogspot.com/2015/03/new-policy-option-for-government.html Anyway, lots of talk about the impact...doom and gloom etc, so I figured I would do some analysis to see what the effect was. Anyway, lets start with some assumptions. 1. House price of $1,000,000 2. Interest only loan of $800,000 at 4% 3. Rents of $600 a week 4. Occupancy of 80% 4. Rental Expences of $5000 a year 5. Other Income of Investor = $80,000 6. Effective Tax rate of investor = 27% 7. No capital appreciation for property OK. So @600 a week@80% occupancy for 52 weeks, it means that Income from housing = $24960   Interest paid = 0.04*800,000 = $32,000 a year As Inter...

Afterpay half yearly financials dropped today, and its a bit of a shocker. 1. Profits for the year dropped to a $22 million loss for the quarter (and this is the Christmas quarter) 2. Cash Flow was a stinker...$157 million loss of dollars from the Operating Cash Flow. For the half!!! If it continues, they are looking at $300 million dollars in cash loss for the year. And the book value of the business is only $340 million! 3. Had to issue more debt and more share capital to make up the difference. $160 million in share capital and $21 million in Debt. Wonder why they didn't issue more debt. 4. They sold their European E-services Business line. Odd for a company that wants to expand globally. 5. PayNow division (which is the platform, rather than the accounts receivables business) dropped by 30% That was due to the European sale. So all up, I still seem some issues with this business. Needs better results than this to get me excited. I just see a world of more capital r...

Doesn't look like it. No statistically significant reduction in rainfall since 1945.

One of the best investments I have made has been with WebJet. Bought them when they were around $3 and then sold a few at $14. Not a bad return at all when you get a four bagger! Gloss has come off them a little over the last few months, so wondering if I should rebalance my holdings in this segment. So I went to my trusty metric, the comparative advantage index and compared Webjet, Flight Centre, Helloworld and Corporate Travel Management. over the last 3 years. And we get the following So it looks like Helloworld has been travelling the best with around 144% outperformance over the ASX over 3 years. (though their profit disappointed a couple of days ago), Webjet still outperforming the ASX200 with 109% over 3 years and the dark horse of Corporate Travel Management outperforming as well at 99% (and its up around 11% today). Forget Flight Centre, at 6% over 3 years its Gooooooooooooonnnnnnnnnnn. Might need to look more at CTD and...