Tuesday , 16 December 2025

Recent Posts

Shorting the euro is an outdated strategy

  Michael Hasenstab, the star bond investor, says he’s betting against the euro as a “hedge against populism.” This, however, is a narrative that’s going out of fashion; it won’t define the euro’s performance this year. In the summer of 2014, Hasenstab defended his Templeton Global Bond Fund’s investment in Ukrainian bonds by saying, “What we liked was that everyone …

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Death of the shoe salesman, finally

  Another storied occupation is on its way out and the replacement is neither robots nor foreign workers. We’re witnessing the death of the shoe salesman. Macy’s recently said it would convert more shoe departments to an “open sell” format, where customers serve themselves from stacks of boxes. J.C. Penney is experimenting with the format. It’s the way sales have …

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The dystopian future of price discrimination

  Have you ever been to a bazaar, where a hawker offers something at a special price, “just for you?” The world of online retail is getting ready to take the practice to a whole new level — and it doesn’t take much speculation to see how things could go terribly wrong. Let’s start offline. There are tons of rules …

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