Nine of the Fathom team (myself included) recently spent the best part of a week at Brantrake House in the Lake District, discussing our strategy (after the COVID-induced pause) for Fathom USA. We spent a day at High Ground Farm on Birker Moor where we learned how to move a huge pile of wood, how to get in the way while the professionals (the wonderful John and Gaby) sheared and sorted sheep, and how to yell incoherently before jumping off
Tired of paying extortionate exchange commission on foreign currency when you go on holiday? Annoyed that there is nothing you can do about it? Read on to understand how and why the Bureau de Change does it to us. It might help ease the pain. Changing money is the ultimate holiday challenge. What currency do they use there? And how many of those can I get for £1? Where to change it? How much to change? What if I don’t
One of my favourite black-and-white movies is the 1946 classic It’s a Wonderful Life. It is probably just the monetary economist in me, but I particularly like the scene with the bank run on Bailey Bros Building and Loan Association. With just his honeymoon money left, George Bailey reasons with the depositors to temper their withdrawal demands, kissing Miss Davis when she asks for just $17.50! At the end of the day, the bank has $2 left and he and
As I sat in the poorly insulated shed at the bottom of my garden that I use as a home office, on Tuesday of this week — the hottest day ever recorded in the UK, when temperatures exceeded 40°C in parts of the country — I was reminded of my colleague’s blog from 24 June. Andrew (the other Andrew, not me) wrote about the perceived impact on individual levels of productivity across the company of one particularly warm Friday, when
Thank Fathom it’s Friday! No doubt, our regular readers eagerly await this blog as a watershed moment in their working week. I can hear the sound of pens dropping, keyboards stopping mid-sentence and the occasional gasp of excitement punctuating the silence of the open-plan office as the weekly TFIF email drops in your inboxes. At Fathom, sending off TFIF also coincides with the beginning of ‘beer o’clock’, our customary post-work Friday drinks. To us, TFIF represents the joint celebration of
As children in the early noughties, my brothers and I would take any opportunity to relentlessly petition our parents to buy us a pack of Pokémon cards. We would offer deals such as promising to clean our rooms, or argue (with absolute honesty of course) that our friends’ parents were buying them hundreds of cards and they couldn’t possibly want us to be left out! Whichever method we chose, it rarely worked. Now that I'm older I can only laugh
Emerald-green grass and pristine, light-coloured outfits are the hallmarks of the Wimbledon championships, commonly known as just ‘Wimbledon’ — the world’s oldest and most prestigious tennis tournament. For most, the experience would be incomplete without indulging (at some expense) in a bowl of juicy red strawberries and clotted cream. For wealthy tennis fans seeking an investment, however, Wimbledon offers an even juicier opportunity to splash out. That opportunity is not a bond, nor a stock, nor a ticket, nor even
Last week was hot; the mercury touched 31°C on Friday. That doesn’t happen too often in the UK. You might think that would be cause for celebration, but no — not in Britain. In Britain, it was too hot. Yep, that’s right — if there’s a reason to complain about the weather, we’ll find it… I asked my colleagues what impact they thought Friday’s weather had on their productivity. There were a variety of responses ranging from -20% to +10%
“QE…works in practice but it doesn’t work in theory” Ben Bernanke If you ask people what Quantitative Easing does, you’ll get a list of answers as large as the Fed’s balance sheet. For many, it seems, the purchase of assets by central banks can be used to explain whatever their bugbear happens to be. Inequality? Overvalued stock markets? Inflation? Elevated house prices? Currency wars? Actual wars? Commodity price rises? At different points, all of the above have been pointed to
“My only regret in life is that I didn’t drink enough Champagne.” – John Maynard Keynes Last weekend I celebrated a special birthday (yes, one with a zero on the end, but no, I’m not 50). As a treat, I decided to indulge: take my wife and one-year old daughter to Champagne; rent a luxurious villa with friends; visit a number of Champagne houses in a rented Tesla; spend a night at a super fancy chateau and buy (and drink)