Investing tools & techniques

Are We All “Natural Born Leaders”?

Leadership Photo

Leadership illustration by Freepik

Nowadays the LinkedIn & Co are filled with leadership posts. If you keep scrolling, you’ll get the impression I get: everybody is a tiger/tigress, even if they don’t have claws. Even if they look like innocent kitties or Easter bunnies. Everybody is a potential marathon runner, even if they don’t even pace 200 meter a day. Everybody can run the Government, Apple or any type of a machine that has a crew. Anybody can wake up one day and leave the family, the faithful dog or the unfaithful cat behind – and simply go on a world-round tour in a shabby boat, purchased on Amazon. Anybody can build an online shop like Amazon, start by selling cryptocurrencies and end by selling boats for the a.m. mentioned use.

(Here I should probably take a break and quote Virgin Branson by saying that “anybody can be a millionaire if they start as a billionaire and launch an airline company”).Read More »Are We All “Natural Born Leaders”?

Global Technology Shares – Reckoning Still Approaching?

One year ago, doitinvest.com opinionated that a retreat on the technology shared prices was coming. Now in 2020 the technology shares marched to new heights. The tech-heavy Nasdaq index increased with almost 25% year-on-year, leaving critics scratching their heads. So where did we and other analysts get it wrong?

In my view, there were several factors in play:

** The macro environment changes

The technology advances did not only increased productivity in many sectors, it also entrenched and legitimized many players. FANG companies are now an implicit part of many companies’ strategies and operations. Most services companies are now seeing cloud operations as a must-have.Read More »Global Technology Shares – Reckoning Still Approaching?

N26 Cards Great, Except…

N26 is a great online challenger bank. Probably the greatest on the DACH space. Yet, you can smell it is trying hard to catch the likes of Revolut or Monzo. So hard, that they are starting to do some small silly errors.

I decided to give it a try – all started good – card arrived far before the deadline (3 days instead of advertised 14). Read More »N26 Cards Great, Except…

Are Italy’s Stocks Worth Investing Now?

Just look at the news – Italy is not so sunny anymore: its public debt is >120% of the GDP (double the EU maximum) and its coalition government plans to borrow 1,6% of the GDP this year. On top of it, the bad news keep coming: a Genova bridge collapsed in August, putting Atlantia S.p.a., the (privatized) builder, under an immense pressure (shares dropped >35% after the news). Fitch downgraded Italy’s economic outlook from “stable” to “negative” at the beginning of September.

But are these bad news as dramatic as they might seem? At Friday’s closing (Oct. 5th, 2018), the FTSE Italia All-Share index stayed relatively stable at 22,455. Read More »Are Italy’s Stocks Worth Investing Now?

Post-modern Controlling vs Classical Financial Controlling

When it comes to financial controlling, many CEOs and even CFOs mention that it is boring. After all, controlling rotates around themes such as financials reliability and accuracy, predictability of the forecasting, solid safeguards in place, sound accounting, compliance. And immediately after this, the same senior leaders can be heard saying: “well, this way it should also stay”. Nobody’s hiring a controller to be creative and change the accounting standards, right?
Yet, when you browse through the job descriptions (and through the magazine interviews), the set of skills required looks different. Besides a long list of standard attributes (as per below), the differentiating factors ask for a different story. Many employers list (even in their performance reviews) required attributes such as:
– critical view on the business
– (being a) sparring partner for the CEO/business leader (maybe a hats down to characters such as Dr. Watson)
– change agent, especially for the local ERPs
– strong communication skills … and the list goes onRead More »Post-modern Controlling vs Classical Financial Controlling