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Entrepreneurship – Advising in the age of AI
Advisor, AI is coming for your job. Are you ready ?
As an investment advisor, along many other advisory focused professionals around the world (including lawyers, strategy and IT advisory…), I watch the rise of AI with deep interest and concern. What should I do ? How can I react and survive the upcoming wave ? Is there a wave in the first place ? If so when will it hit me ?
Very legitimate questions. Let’s stay coolheaded about it, and answer those questions.
Continue reading Entrepreneurship – Advising in the age of AI
Entrepreneurship – The leap of faith
You are going to do it, your life project is ready. Here are just a few modest thoughts for you before you jump into the unknown.
This is my story, but this is not only my story.
This is somehow about finance, but this not only about finance.
This is somehow about entrepreneurship, but this is also about many different projects you might aspire to, not only creating your own company.
It is about everybody.
Many of us start a happily ever after career and think it will last forever. But no, there is a growing uncertainty and relentless life satisfaction questioning that might appear something like ten years into one’s professional life, and which makes everything change. There is a point where everyone might start wondering :
” What the hell am I still doing here? ”
And I guess 2020 probably made this even more vivid for many of us.
Many things can spark this life-changing thought. It can be strong or very diffuse. It can appear after just a few years or way later. But it is one that will change your life, professional or personal, once and for all.
Like Néo in The Matrix, when asked which pill you want to swallow, you might have a life-defining moment in your life. It is no small decision. And you know it. Here are some modest advice on how to make that choice, and how to get prepared for it.
So, will you go down the rabbit hole ? And how ?
Monopoly ! The investor’s way
How sound investing can help you mercilessly crush your kids at board games.
Once again my kids lead me into thinking at investment in a very uncommon way.
I was playing, a few weeks ago, Monopoly with my 8 years old son. It is amazing how this game still lives on. I was not planning on any preconceived strategy neither grand life lessons to my son. I was just playing. Relaxed. Cool.
But I am a nerd, and while I did not really cared to win, I did amuse myself in trying to “master” the game. To be able to win or lose if I wanted to (the later been useful as a parent). So I started over-rationalizing things. Planning and computing odds.
And it stunned me all the sudden.
All the sound investing principles I profess to my clients and use for myself are actually quite useful in this game too ! Sweet.
So let’s try to apply them, and master monopoly !
Private Equity for dummies – A case study
An short example is worth more than a long lecture. Here is a real life example of what an investor can really expect from private equity, and why it does matter.
This, is a hot topic. Indeed was I recently contacted multiple times by clients who were “proposed” private equity investments by their private bankers.
They were all promised highly attractive returns ( “Internal Rate of Return” ) and were drawn to it. It was fun, sexy investing. They just wanted confirmation, validation, they were going to do it.
But still… they all noticed the same diffuse smoke in the air, forming a hazy screen of complex figures and arguments, and they could not find its source. Something was not right and they did not know what.
They all received the same advice from me :
Don’t. Just don’t.
I want to explain why. But I will try do it the less boring way I can, which is still far from being fun, I will use a real world example.
So here a real world case of a private equity fund. And here is why it is “not as good as it looks like”, and why anyone interested in finance should be aware of this.
Hopes & Probabilities
In investment, as with all economic decisions, we must often pick between hopes and probabilities. The asset management industry uses this to trick us, here is how.
Recently, my older son told me a joke. It was simple and naive. It seemed innocent. It was not.
Toto the boy is playing cards with his grand-mother. After a few turns when he keeps winning, he is busted cheating by his grandmother.
– You are cheating Toto !
– Indeed I am !
– This is unacceptable ! Do you know what happens to cheaters in real life Toto ! ?
– Ummm yes… they win !
This simple joke, albeit deeply cynical, is actually pretty representative of what sadly happens in the grown-up world, on a regular basis. Cheaters often win. Misrepresentation often win. And even liars, often win.
In my very specific field, investment, this behavior is actually widespread, consciously or not. Part of the industry is, with very different degrees of awareness and gravity, “cheating” to win the money game…
How ?
I won’t need to work ! The story of an investment trap
Seeking to live solely on investment returns is both a big fantasy and a big mistake. Avoid it at all cost.
“This guy retired at 35 with this amazing and safe investment strategy. Want to know how? Click here”
Biggest financial clickbait. I see it regularly, and you probably do too. It usually features a very handsome young man/woman on a yacht, clearly not working for his/her living, and having a load of money anyway.
Beside the obvious scams that those ads are not hiding very well, the underlying message, the biggest investment myth ever, stay strong. This myth can be expressed by this sentence :
“By investing correctly, you can easily earn enough money to stop working, and your life will be wonderful”.
A lot of websites, including some that are not scammers but true believers, advise how to make it, how to get a life where you will never ever have to fake liking your boss or your client again. What a relief !
As you can read this promise is twofold : it promises you that “you can easily earn enough money to stop working” AND it promise you that “your life will be wonderful” if you do.
Both promises are untrue. Do not believe them.
Let’s get into those one by one…
Continue reading I won’t need to work ! The story of an investment trap
Oil n’ Tech – A naive history
Some industries are rooted in exploration, discoveries and deceptions. Here is the story of two of them.
Today I want to talk about two industries that seem to have no relation whatsoever. First of all, their birth is one century apart. Oil history emerged at the end of the 19th century, “Technology” at the end of the 20th.
The first one is deeply rooted in exploration, land and hardcore industry. It is physical, heavy, it has a dark n’ dirty product that can only be found deep in secluded grounds or under mountains of ocean water.
The second is made out of thin air, its value relying ultimately in its intellectual property. It is a service industry created in clean, whitewashed, cosy atmospheres of startup open spaces.
I want to talk about oil.
I want to talk about technology.
Birth of Alpha & K
Creation of the first French fiduciary & evidence-based financial advisor
Dear readers,
A little personal message today. Just today.
I am very happy to announce the creation of a the first fiduciary financial advisor in France, Alpha & K. We are launching this company today with my partner and friend Philippe Maupas. And I just want to present it quickly to you…
What about your mother ?
Financial analysis education became too analytical and de-humanized. It needs to get back to more balanced, human, basics.
3 years ago, as every year for 8 years now, I volunteered as a “mentor” in a student financial analysis contest known as the “CFA Research Challenge”. During the French final, one of the student team was confronted with a very harsh and deep-meaning question about investment, a question they did not expect, a question they should have been taught about.
It was memorable because, while anecdotic at the time, it reached to something bigger, a problem that undermine the way young investment professionals (and some older) relate to their job. A question about the meaning of it.