Dollar Down, Everything Else Up

I toyed with the title of this post for a while, and ultimately settled on the current iteration, because it reflects the battle that is being waged between the Bank of Canada and the forex markets. Simply, the Loonie is moving in one direction (up!), while the BOC would prefer that it moves in the opposite direction.

Let’s start with some context: the Canadian Dollar’s performance this year has been impressive, to say the least. 2009 is far from over, and yet the Loonie has already risen 14% against the Dollar, almost completely undoing the record 18% slide in 2008. Analysts are quick to point to the nascent Canadian economy, fading risk aversion, and the ongoing boom in commodities prices as behind the currency’s rise.

Dollar Down, Gold Up

I want to use this post to highlight the appreciation of gold in particular, against the Dollar. After a brief decline following the credit crisis, Gold has resumed its upward path. It has appreciated 15% year-over-year, and recently cracked $1,000/oz for the only the fourth time in history.

The general factors behind the price of gold are too broad and numerous to be captured in this post. In addition, many of these factors have little to do with currencies (including the Dollar), and thus don’t warrant much space on a blog devoted to forex. At the same time, conspiracy theorists, doomsday predictors, and even some mainstream economists have long argued in support of gold as a hedge against inflation (otherwise understood as currency devaluation). In fact, I am only posting about gold now is because that notion has become much more popular over the last few years, to the point where pundits have come to see the current appreciation almost solely in terms of the decline in the Dollar.

Apple allows Rhapsody music streams on iPhone

apple business has approved RealNetworks’ Rhaspsody music-streaming service for the iPhone, once again opening its doors to an iTunes competitor.

The decision announced Thursday comes a week after Apple, now the world’s top music retailer, blessed an iPhone application by music service Spotify, which for now will work only in Europe.

Netflix’s Geek Super Bowl

Finding a good movie is generally a hit or miss proposition, Reed Hastings, chief executive of Netflix, explained on Monday.

That’s a problem for Mr Hastings, whose billion dollar mail order movies rental business hinges on subscribers being progressively happier about what they watch next or risk dumping the service.

Netflix, which discovered early on that movies that were recommended generally pleased customers more than even new releases, spent a decade struggling to take the guesswork out of what to watch next and were unable to boost accuracy by 10 per cent.

Mr Hastings turned that challenge — telling customers what they want before they want it –- into a million dollar global challenge.

Regression to the mean

A manager I once knew would always use the same technique to motivate his team irrespective of the way they performed. He had come to this conclusion after many years of management.

When his production staff had a disastrous run – he would use harsh words to try and get them ‘fired’ up again. He would then see an improvement in performance in the person. However, when people in his team were doing well, he would use the same harsh technique to try and keep performance going at a high level. Not that performance did stay high – it didn’t. But he had noticed that when he used to praise team members, performance would drop. He had come to the conclusion that performance seemed to drop less when he used the same consistent critical method.

Like my blog on causation v correlation, what this had done was forgotten about the concept of . It is a common problem. It explains returns on an annual basis, why some people think homeopathy works (it doesn’t!) and why sports people who are labeled as ‘stars’ tend to have a poor subsequent season.

Don’t believe the hype - lessons for entrepreneurs seeking funding

As many regular readers of my blog will know, I am now increasingly based in Canada (at least one week a month). I love the place that I have settled in completely by accident (Halifax, Nova Scotia). I have done many speaking engagements there and recently wrote a guest column for a local newspaper.

After my feature in the newspaper, the hits on my blog went up substantially and I was contacted by many people and offered a few good deals. It seemed to prove to me the old adage about the value of PR and profile. This blog was inspired though by me reading the weekend papers – more about that later!

A good friend of mine who I have worked with for almost ten years is very private. He easily qualifies for a place on the Rich list – and yet never appears there. He confessed to me when I asked him, that he pays his accountant a lot of money to make sure he never appears on any rich list. I also learned that someone else I knew (calling them a friend would be an exaggeration) was paying their to ensure that they always appeared on the annual rich list.