Professor Glen Arnold

In the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2007-08 Soros provided explanations for the housing crash. But more than that, he pointed out that the housing problem was but a part of a much larger and more broadly based super-bubble that started in the early 1980s.  The lessons learned in that period may help us […]

The first two case studies (Conglomerate and REITs bubbles) are examples of the use of equity leverage – see last week’s newsletters).  The international banking crisis, on the other hand, was caused by debt leverage.  This case study is particularly useful today because we currently have the sight of massive fiscal and monetary stimuli creating […]

REITS, also called mortgage trusts, were subject to special tax provision in America: if they distributed more than 95% of their income, they can do so free of income tax. This was largely unexploited until 1969 when they really started to take off. Recognising the boom/bust potential, in February 1970 Soros published a research report […]

The conglomerate boom of the 1960s was the first time Soros systematically put into practice his theory. Managements of high technology defence companies feared a slowdown in sales after the Vietnam War, e.g., Textron, LTV and Teledyne.  They used their highly priced shares to buy other companies. By purchasing companies on relatively low price-earnings ratios […]

We may be seeing bubbles blowing up in some equity markets right now. Others may follow. We need to be able to read the signs of both the blow-up and any potential crash.  George Soros’s reflexivity model can help. Soros sees bubbles as consisting of two components: (i) a trend based on reality (ii) a […]

To understand George Soros’s trading triumphs you need to develop a deep understanding of reflexivity.  I attempt in this newsletter to explain it: We first look at the key assumptions behind the opposing but generally accepted paradigm of classical economics. Second, I’ll discuss the theory behind reflexivity, Classical economics The Enlightenment view of the world […]

George Soros’s ideas are enlightening for today’s investors in a time when we may well experience in the next few months moving from near-equilibrium to far-from-equilibrium in some industries, companies, economies and markets.  This newsletter looks at the period when Soros was fine-tuning his ideas and putting them into practice, not least in betting against the […]

The early experiences of his life were very important in leading Soros away from conventional thinking about the formation of prices, political structures or other human constructs and towards a new theory of the world in which the act of humans trying to understand and respond with action to the fundamentals they see can cause […]

I think some markets are moving into phases that can be usefully described by George Soros’s models of how societies and markets function. It will be helpful to me, and I hope to you, to be reminded how markets can move from being in “near-to-equilibrium” to a state of “far-from-disequilibrium”. It will become increasingly important […]

When Covid first struck I took a cautious approach, turning many of my investments into cash.  Then the massive fiscal, monetary and, later, the vaccine stimuli came to the fore and I turned buyer. Here is a list of all the shares I’ve bought and written about on ADVFN in the Covid period. I’ve been […]