Business

We do show that there is a predictive effect which is quite consistent over time! In our paper we report an 86% accuracy in predicting the up and down movements in the Dow Jones three or four days out. The question is how you turn that into a money making strategy. It could be- for example- that you lose ALL your money in that other 14%!

Unknown.

There's a huge amount of corruption in some of these countries, but when you have traceability and transparency that's been pushed through consumer and shareholder pressure into global value-chains, it can act as an antidote to the corruption which may exist in the market.

Unknown.

We manage risk by lending into the value-chain where we are able to leverage the non-financial-assets of the corporation that's buying from these communities and agricultural businesses. By having off-take agreements, we have guaranteed demand for the underlying product and, therefore, bankable cash-flows.

Unknown.

We are unapologetically at the high-risk, low-return sweet-spot of agricultural finance. We choose to address geographies and sectors where there are real market failures or at least deep market imperfections.

Unknown.

They are opening seventeen distribution centres. I've never seen a company open more than two or three at a time and this company is opening seventeen! The valuation is very stretched, but the business advantages are, in my opinion, mind-boggling.

Unknown.

I've been doing this a long time and have very rarely seen a company with sustainable competitive advantage like Amazon has. They have a very low cost of capital, they are very efficient, and the government provide an additional advantage in that the transactions are not tax.

Unknown.

For the iPad it's game over in terms of market-share… Apple has won! It's a preposterously cheap stock… The applications for the iPhone and the iPad are just growing every day. I think these things are going to be ubiquitous…

Unknown.

I think Groupon was preposterously overpriced, and Zynga was moderately overpriced. The principal problem with Groupon, in my opinion, is that they have a bad business model. It basically eats by selling their customers crack cocaine- telling them to cut their prices 50% for a selected number of people. If you do that enough? You wont have a business.

Unknown.

I think Apple is preposterously undervalued. Apple has this mind-boggling margin structure, phenomenal consumer brand, and is accumulating mountains of cash. I joked on television that they should lever up and buy Greece! They have something like 7x cash-flow.

Unknown.

I've worked with many entrepreneurs and billionaires and I see the same trend over and over again. What they want is someone to manage the liquid side of their portfolio, and they want to take a huge chunk out and use it as their risk capital on things they know and can control. The money didn't just drop-in… it arrived through creation and building! These individuals are always going to be about growth….

If you look historically at the historical contours of wealth- it's primarily created through private ownership. That's always been the case- and I believe it always be. Having said that…. the lines begin to get blurred when you start to look at places like Latin America and Mexico where the state-owned enterprises are dominated by individuals- like a Carlos Slim, for example…. or if you look at state-owned assets being privatised in a place like Russia where former KGB agents are now industrial capitalists.

That's the reason why I tend to say that B2B brand stands for "Boring to Boring" branding. Today, people fundamentally believe that business to business branding has to be incredibly serious… My view is that you should infuse a little bit of emotion into it.

Leading Brand Expert, Author & Neuromarketing Researcher

The brand must not only convince prospective customers and draw them to the brand but also be deeply believed in by the employees and other stakeholders of the company. We say that for the brand to work, employees must live the brand promise.

Father of Modern Marketing & Prolific Management Author

Think of "branding" as burning in a name on an animal such as a cow so that the cow's owner would be known. This protects the owner in the event that the animal is stolen. But we can use the name "branding" whenever anyone affixes their name to something that is available for sale.

Father of Modern Marketing & Prolific Management Author

A brand is really an emotional connection you have with a product or service. It's so emotional in fact that you become fairly irrational in the way you try to justify why you're using it. If you split our brain into a rational and irrational side…. a brand is what is operating at the irrational side.

Leading Brand Expert, Author & Neuromarketing Researcher

Most risk managers on Wall St, and practically all staff members in institutions like the Fed, IMF and elsewhere do not understand the statistical properties of risk. I think the notion that the time-series of market moves in large complex markets is not a normal distribution has largely sunk-in.

Currency expert & author on financial threats to national security