An Introduction to Global Financial Markets — Stephen Valdez

Nov 17

Posted by Ken in Economics

51bpmqm1qjl_sl160_If you’re looking for a really comprehensive background to the financial markets, I really recommend ‘An Introduction to Global Financial Markets’ by Stephen Valdez. It’s not too technical and is great as a beginner text - anyone studying a science or engineering degree should havde no problem following it.

The book covers:

  • the background of banking and central banks,
  • commercial banking, investment banking,
  • the securities markets: money and bond markets, stock exchanges, hedge funds and private equity firms
  • foreign exchange and trade finance
  • the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU)
  • Derivatives: traded options, financial futures and other derivatives
  • Insurance
  • India, China and other key trends in the sector

Highly readable; easily usable as an introductory textbook. Strongly recommended.

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The Queens Official Birthday

Jun 13

Posted by Ken in Uncategorized

We went to Trooping the Colour at Buckingham Palace today for the Queen’s Official Birthday and saw the Queen leaving Buckingham Palace.

Trooping the Colour, London 2009

Interestingly enough, it isn’t the queen’s real birthday though.

Trooping the Colour, London 2009

See all pictures

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European and Local Elections Tomorrow

Jun 3

Posted by Ken in Uncategorized

eu
Creative Commons License photo: loop_oh

European and local elections are tomorrow - please make sure you vote! The strength of our democracy is built upon participation and it’s your chance to have a say. It’s quite shocking just how low the turnout for European elections typically are, especially as over the last few years power has been moving from Westminster to Brussels - the European Constitution/Lisbon treaty being one example.

I think it’s especially important that people vote because the EU elections work on proportional representation which means it’s a lot easier for smaller, minority views to get represented.

Now, many people have told me that they aren’t interested in politics at all - they don’t know who to vote for. I recommend taking a short 5 minute test over at Euprofiler.eu. It takes only 5 minutes - answer a couple of questions and it’ll tell you how the views of the major parties align with your views.

Is it independent?
The EU Profiler is an academic project, unaffiliated with any party, candidate, government or branch of the EU. It has been entirely funded by the three consortium institutions - the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies (RCAS), part of the European University Institute (EUI); Kieskompas and the NCCR Democracy (University of Zurich/Zentrum für Demokratie Aarau)/Politools network.
The tool was designed in such a way as to allow complete impartiality. Information was gathered by respected experts in European politics and at no point were political parties in a position to influence the composition of either the tool itself or the information provided by it.

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Atheists “not fully human” says Cardinal Cormack Murphy-O’Connor

May 15

Posted by Ken in Science

Some shocking comments from the Archbishop of Westminster. If atheists aren’t human, what are they? Animals?

Via Derren Brown.

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Strange Physics Phenomenon (Diffraction?)

May 11

Posted by Ken in Science

I saw something quite odd this morning and I can’t quite explain it. When I woke up, there was what appeared to be a diffraction pattern projected on my wall, resulting from a small gap between the curtains (a single-slit diffraction pattern). But as far as I understand, single slit diffraction only occurs when the slit width is roughly the same order of magnitude as the wavelength of light.

Strange Phenomenon

In addition to that:

  • the light source is reflected sunlight (which should consist of lots of different wavelengths) from the building opposite
  • it was hard to see a whether the different bands had different intensities
  • there were two bands which were red (why?)
  • too many bands to be a diffraction pattern? Given the wall is probably ~5m from the window, the angle between each “slit” is actually tiny.

Strange Phenomenon 2 Strange Phenomenon 3

Here’s the curtain & slit:
Strange Phenomenon 4

If anyone could shed any light on this, it’d be appreciated :)

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Does free will really exist?

May 9

Posted by Ken in Science

The right way
Creative Commons License photo: Un ragazzo chiamato Bi

There is a fascinating article over at Wired, “Brain Scanners Can See Your Decisions Before You Make Them”. It seems like researchers can predict people’s decisions seven seconds before they were even aware they made them.

It’s an interesting article and food for thought. As far as I know, science doesn’t really give us much evidence that free will does exist. At the level of physics, everything is generally deterministic. Of course, you get down to the quantum level and determinism doesn’t really exist there: but that’s randomness rather than free will. If free will was a quantum phenomenon, we would expect it to be totally random.

However on an evolutionary point of view, the perception of free will is probably something that would be selected for. After all, if you don’t believe in free will and people’s autonomy to make their own decisions, you can no longer hold people accountable for the things they do and the decisions they make. That’d totally undermine the whole system of law and order in our society today.

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The Cost of Milk

May 7

Posted by Ken in Economics

No 296!.....I am NOT a Number..lol..:O)
Creative Commons License photo: law_keven

Everybody knows that it costs 45p for a pint of milk - wherever you are in the country or whichever supermarket you go to. No supermarket dares to increase the price of milk: it makes them look expensive. Nor will they dare to reduce the price to look cheaper than the rivals - they know that the other supermarkets will price cuts of their own. If all the supermarkets cut the price of milk, none of them gain any customers but they all make less money. So in essence, the price of a pint of milk is “fixed” at 45p.

Sainsbury’s 1% Milk

As someone with a bit of a background in economics, it’s absolutely fascinating seeing how companies deal with restrictions such as these. As a supermarket, how can you reduce the price of your milk without reducing your profitability? How do you design a pricing scheme that allows you to be competitive at pricing milk without starting a price war?

Sainsbury’s have dealt with this problem by introducing 1% fat milk (orange label). The qualitative difference between this milk and semi-skimmed is virtually zero. Yet 4 pints of this milk costs just £1 (25p a pint).

How does this arrangement help Sainsbury’s?

  • First off, most people will continue buying the same milk that we’re used to. We notice when the price of milk changes, but it’s something that we buy on such a routine basis we would never compare the prices of different types of milk. So most people will continue to pay 45p for a pint of milk - no profit lost for Sainsburys.
  • The only people who are likely to notice that you can get a new type of milk for 25p per pint are people such as students who do look after the pennies. But then, students don’t typically buy 4 pints of milk a week. If this offer can encourage students who normally consume 2 pints of milk @ 90p to now buy 4 pints @ £1, there’s additional profit in there for Sainsburys. Not to mention sales of complementary goods such as cornflakes would go up.
  • Rival supermarkets won’t respond by cutting their own milk to 25p. The reason being that the “headline milk price” at Sainsbury’s is still 45p. This way, Sainsbury’s avoids a price war.

This stuff could easily be a textbook example for price targeting and game theory with regards to how monopolistic companies set prices.

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Martha Jones Axed from Doctor Who?

May 4

Posted by Ken in Television

According to The Sun, Freema Agyeman (Martha Jones) has been axed from Doctor Who for weak performances in later episodes.

DOCTOR Who actress Freema Agyeman has been axed from the next series, The Sun can reveal.

…

And they are planning a storyline where the Doctor, played by David Tennant, will lose her and travel through the universe searching for her.

The decision to dump Freema comes as a bolt from the blue after her performance for the first couple of episodes was praised.

Make of this what you will; remembering The Sun was also the source of the rumour that David Tennant was leaving Doctor Who.

Now, there have already been some hints Martha isn’t a proper assistant… you’ve seen how they’ve mentioned shes just tagging along for the ride, and in todays episode he asked some other woman to join him. But anyway, it’s all speculation.

Good news though: Captain Jack is back in the 11th episode! 

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4oD/Sky By Broadband/BBC iPlayer Problems

May 4

Posted by Ken in Television

I just wanted to make a post about the on-demand television services which have recently become popular in the UK. Channel 4’s 4oD service has been heavily publicised over the past few weeks, Sky By Broadband is being promoted to Sky Viewers, and the BBC and ITV are soon set to launch their own on-demand services.

These services use P2P (peer to peer technology), similar to BitTorrent. Be careful when you use these services if you are on a capped broadband service, because as well as downloading the files from other people, you’ll also be uploading to others. If your internet becomes very slow, and pages suddenly time out, this is why! Upload capacity tends to be very low on ADSL so if you’re trading files or several people are trying to access the internet at once, upload capacity may be shared so thinly that there isn’t even enough bandwidth to handshake, etc.

The problem I’ve been having is a slow startup. The computer loads fine, but the Start Menu/Taskbar displays a hourglass for absolutely ages after startup. It turns out that 4oD had installed a KService application from Kontiki which was presumably trying to connect to other people to trade my files. So the loadup time went from about 5 seconds to 2 minutes or so.  

I solved this by running disabling the KService application from automatically starting in the Services icon of the Control Panel. To the best of my knowledge, Channel 4, Sky and BBC all use the Kontiki application.

Hope this helps someone :) 

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3rd Stargate Series: “Stargate Universe”

May 4

Posted by Ken in Television

Gateworld reports that the third series of Stargate has the working title "Stargate Universe" and that it will deal with the ninth chevron.

Gateworld: 

The new series has been conceived to be "a completely separate, third entity," Cooper said in an interview — "much more so than Atlantis was. Atlantis was much more of a spin-off seires of SG-1 and was sort of born out of SG-1."

Like many of the producers ideas, Cooper said, the idea for Stargate Universe was originally conceived as a stand-alone movie. "When we originally were sitting around talking about this we were trying to come up with ideas for a Stargate feature — not an SG-1 feature or an Atlantis feature, but a feature that would fit into the Stargate franchise that we feel we have created," Cooper said. "We were thinking, ‘How do we create a third arm to the franchise that is very connective and that fans will feel is born out of the material that has come before, but at the same time is very much something that stands alone?’

What We Know

  • Targeted for early 2008
  • Ninth Chevron plays big role in series
  • Will be separate from SG-1 and Atlantis, rather than spin-offs.
  • Will be gate-based rather than ship-based
  • Will be set in the present; will not be a prequel or a sequel
  • Will relate to existing mythology but will have separate storylines
  • Will have a team on adventures (presumably a team from Earth)

The Name

My first reaction when I saw the name "Stargate Universe" was really of shock. It’s a terrible name, almost something you’d expect from a children’s television programme. It doesn’t really seem to capture any of the magic but it is only a working title so may change. 

The Ninth Chevron 

We know that the show will involve the 9th chevron. It has been hotly debated amongst fans of what this chevron does. 

We know that most gate addresses use 7 chevrons. The 8th chevron is used to add an extra distance calculation like a area dialing code; it was required to travel to Atlantis and the Asgard galaxy. The name "Universe" implies that the show will perhaps be set in a much larger area than SG-1 which is set in the Milky Way, and Atlantis which is set in the Pegasus galaxy. The 9th chevron perhaps will add yet another distance calculation - like an international dialing code.

Some have suggested the 9th chevron could account for time or parallel universes. The first is unlikely, as the show is set in the present, and the producers of Stargate have made it quite clear that they don’t want to dabble with time travel, causality.

The second is a possibility. We know that the idea for Stargate Universe originally was for a movie. It’s quite easy to imagine a movie which is set in a parallel universe. However, there is already a quantum mirror to travel between universes. Effects such as the entropic cascade failure have already been established. And the title of the series is Universe, singular, not Universes.

My bet would be on the 9th chevron being an additional distance calculation. 

Mythology 

We also know that the show ties into existing mythology. So the chances are, the Ancients will come into it somehow. The whole Ancients storyline has been done in Atlantis and the Ori have been done to death and finished in SG-1. It’s hard to imagine a series which will be able to relate to the Ancients again, without having it tie in to existing story lines in SG1/Atlantis. 

Stargate also has a lot of mythology about the Goa’uld, but as far as we’re concerned they’ve been finished off. But it’s possible there could still be Goa’uld around, who have perhaps worked out how to use the ninth chevron, and escape to another galaxy. Then again, coming back to the Goa’uld could make a very, very tedious TV show. 

Movie Tie-In?

The original plan was for one of the SG-1 movies to "dovetail" into the third series. We know of two SG-1 movies at the moment:

The Ark of Truth, where SG-1 travels to the Ori home galaxy in an attempt to stop their onslaught.

Continuum, where the timeline has been altered, meaning the Stargate programme never existed.

It is unlikely a movie could be spun from Continuum. In some ways, it would provide a reset button and allow us to go back to the mythology of the original movie. This is unlikely, and certainly discovering the ninth chevron when the Stargate programme doesn’t even exist. Then again, if the ninth chevron travels between universes…

More likely, a third series could be launched from The Ark of Truth. There would be opportunities for tie-ins with the Ancients storyline, and presumably the Ori will be destroyed, leaving a whole galaxy to be explored.

Just Speculation

Of course, we know very little about the third series, and it’s all speculation.

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