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Buy low, sell high
Posted on: December 1, 2008
With the official cash rate set to fall even further later this week, shares become relatively appealing when compared with other financial instruments, such as bonds and term deposits.
The old adage of ‘buy low, sell high’ seems fitting, given the battering shares the world over have taken in the past while. The NZX and Dow Jones industrial averages, for example, are both down around a quarter from their respective values six months ago.
But just when is the market ‘low’?
I don’t know! If I did, I’m sure I’d be a lot wealthier than I am. However, I thought it would be useful to write a blog entry to stimulate discussion and debate on what TVHE readers are picking for the sharemarket:
- Is now a good time to buy?
- What industries/companies would you consider investing it?
- What factors are influencing your decisions to invest, or not?
I look forward to hearing our readers’ views on the current state of the sharemarket.
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The DomPost contained an article on the potential for metering Wellington’s water supply. The question is asked: should Wellingtonians pay for their water? This issue is a hot topic, having been discussed at Kiwiblog, Infometrics and TVHE earlier this year.
Historically, water has been provided for by the various Wellington councils out of rates. Water is not currently metered, which implies that regardless of how much water each household takes, their rates do not vary. This arrangement has led many to believe water is in some way ‘free’, as they are not forced to pay for their specific usage and the cost is embodied in rates which cover many council services across many households. With water use of 400 litres per person per day in Wellington, relative to the national average of 160 litres, it appears water users here are not internalising the cost of their water usage.
Current arrangements do not allow for the pricing of scarcity. Read the rest of this entry »
The previous Labour government bestowed a legacy upon NZ that included the first ever review of broadcasting regulations.
Essentially the question being asked in this review is: does the current market situation warrant government intervention?
Today National released their corrections policy, which would allow the private sector to tender for the management of prisons.
Although not a completely ‘new’ concept for New Zealand (Auckland Central Remand Prison was privately run under the last National Government) it nonetheless raises the issue of when is it appropriate for such services to be ‘contracted out’ rather than provided ‘in-house’ by the government.
Hart, Schleifer and Vishny’s “The Proper Scope of Government: Theory and Application to Prisons” asks the question when should a government provide a service in-house, and when should it contract out provision? (Anyone interested in the full article may be able to locate it here).
The authors’ develop a model for asset ownership (in this instance a prison), which can be owned by the private sector, who contract back to the government, or alternatively can be owned outright by the government.
The central finding of the paper is that the private sector has relatively stronger, but seemingly contradictory, incentives to both reduce costs (driven by a profit motive, which comes at the expense of quality) and increase quality (to get a higher price from the government, who is an ongoing buyer of the service). In this instance the quality of a prison entails order in the prison, amenities that prisoners receive and rehabilitation.
Read the rest of this entry »
Yesterday, the ACT party released their tax policy (further discussion also over at Kiwiblog)
Some key points from ACT’s taxation policy include:
- restricting future increases in Government expenditure to inflation and population growth
- eventual personal tax rates of 12.5% up to $20,000 and 15% above $20,000
- eventual company tax rate of 15%
- eventual GST rate of 10%
Tax distorts behaviour. The concept of the ‘excess burden of taxation’ is the economic loss that society suffers as the result of a tax, over and above the revenue it collects. Distortions occur because people or firms change their behaviour in order to reduce the amount of tax they must pay, which results in deadweight loss from taxation.
ISCR have just launched New Zealand’s first prediction market.
Who’s going to be the next Prime Minister – Helen or John? Will the price of petrol be $3 a litre by Christmas? Will Winston be sacked before election day?
These are some of the questions Kiwis may find themselves backing their opinions on with iPredict – http://www.iPredict.co.nz – New Zealand’s first real money online prediction market, which launches tomorrow (9 September).
The online marketplace enables users to trade on their predictions on a broad range of future political and business events that pay real money if their prediction comes true.
Established as a research tool by Victoria University of Wellington and think tank ISCR, iPredict harnesses the wisdom of crowds via the Internet to predict future outcomes and has a strong focus on helping companies, government agencies and academics with research. …
Mr Burgess says that iPredict is like a simple stock exchange, trading real money.
“How it works is that contracts pay $1 if an event comes true – nothing otherwise – and the price these contracts trade for is the prediction. For example, you could have a contract that pays $1 if Helen Clark is the next Prime Minister, and pays nothing otherwise. If that contract trades for 60 cents, then the market’s prediction is a 60% probability that Helen Clark will stay on as Prime Minister.”
Mr Burgess says that prediction markets are the gold standard for forecasting.
“Traders on prediction markets combine information from polls, expert commentary and any other source to produce a prediction that is more accurate than any available alternative,” Mr Burgess says.
“Prediction markets work because they ask traders to put their money where their mouths are, so it pays to be honest, objective, and even do a little homework.” …
Anybody can browse iPredict and see the predictions for free by going to http://www.iPredict.co.nz but traders have to be 18 years and older to set up an account. Accounts are free to set up and people can start trading with as little as $5.
Get some money on your account and get predicting.
Goonix
The recent Sonny Bill Williams saga has brought into light the issue of salary caps in competitive sport. After fleeing the Australian NRL for French Rugby Union, SBW made the claim, among many other bizarre excuses, that the NRL’s salary cap was anti-competitive, in that it prevented players from earning their full-potential.
Does SBW have a valid point?
The curse of human capital
Posted on: April 10, 2008
Consider the ‘traditional’ capitalist (envisage the Monopoly™ man). This capitalist owns the means of production, such as a factory, or piece of machinery, a building, or piece of land. The capitalist uses their means of production to extract economic profit.
Times are changing. As we move towards a service based economy, like all other developed countries, increasingly the means of production take the form of human capital. Human capital is the capital that is built up within an individual, for example through education, on the job training and everyday work. The holder of human capital is herein referred to as the ‘modern’ capitalist (envisage a slimmer, more refined Monopoly™ person, possible black, possibly Asian, possibly a woman, possibly trans-gender – we don’t discriminate).
Human capital is the foundation of professional service firms, ranging from the glamorous, such as private sector economic consulting firms, to the pedestrian, such as lawyers and accountants.
But this trend towards human capital accumulation brings us to what I term the curse of human capital. Read the rest of this entry »
In Nazi Germany, women were rewarded for having children. An estimated three million women ‘won’ a medal for having four or more children in 1939. Other incentives provided to women to encourage mass reproduction included marriage loans, tax allowances and health services.
In Labour-led New Zealand, women are rewarded for having children. The Working for Families scheme is “designed to help make it easier to work and raise a family” through paying extra money to those that have at least three children.
The in-work tax credit pays up to $60 a week for families with three children and up to an extra $15 a week for each additional child. The Working for Families scheme also offers an accommodation supplement and help with childcare costs.
Hitler offered his scheme to build up the Third Reich. A large population was critical to his vision of an Aryan super-state.
Arguably, Helen Clark is not as interested in an Aryan super-state. So why are she and her government so keen on giving reproduction rewards?
agnitio
cpworthington
dant03
goonix
metrosideros
rauparaha
Robbie Allan
stevedoogue
Matt Nolan
The visible hand in economics 
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