Irregular Update
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and has been left here
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Sydney Time
Copyright © Ric Einstein 2009
Welcome to this week's Irregular Update.
At last there was some good feedback/comments on
the
James Hackers Story that was first posted a few weeks ago. I normally don't
post readers comments here, but one of them really is worth sharing will all
readers. Adam Catford (in part) wrote "Investing is
essentially the purchase of an asset with the intention of participating in the
profit (read dividends, rent, interest etc) of the venture.
Speculation (gambling) is buying an asset in the HOPE that the
price will rise (or fall if shorting!).
Any asset that CANNOT produce a regular income – wine, art, and blackjack is
speculation, not investment and should be referred to as such.
BTW – long term statistics show over time Business (shares) outperforms property
which outperforms fixed interest investments. The share market simply
facilitates the transfer of wealth from the impatient and irrational to the
patient and rational. Someone has been buying up these shares at massive
discounts – and guess who will do very nicely thank you? Not the retirees who
have just transferred their super to a cash account!! (Warren Buffett who
invested $5B in to Goldman Sachs at the bottom of the market….) "
Last weeks article Interesting Times which went into the likelihood of a new Australian wine grape glut, did receive feedback. Over the last week there have been conflicting stories in the press about Australia's situation in the global wine world One article talked about the possible/likely surge in Oz wine exports due to the falling Australian dollar. Another ignores this factor and talks about the global crisis impact on our export sales. Interesting times indeed.
Brian Miller, a regular email correspondent, who sends me a load of useful wine information, and well as links to interesting vinous stuff, sent me an email saying, "I wish some economics whiz would do a seasonally-adjusted analysis of Grange. When Grange was $10 a bottle, was the average weekly wage ... $20? Was petrol ... 17 cents a litre?
Anders Ousback once bought a bottle of Vintage Port from the year of his birth.
It cost him half a week's wages. He cellared it for 20 years, by which time it
was worth ... half his week's wages."
Food for thought indeed!
This weeks article, "What Price Information?"
examines the radical transformation of the availability of wine information
since I first became interested in wine. If you were a guy, "the net" was
something used to land fish, and if you were a gal, it was something to keep
your hair rollers in place overnight. In those days, if you wanted information
about a particular wine, you waited for "the" magazine to come out, or for a
once a year book release. Or perish the thought, you tasted it yourself and made
up your own mind, but I digress. The explosion of wine information on the
internet is a dual edged sword. The professional wine scribes have had to
innovate, change and adapt to survive. But will they survive against all the
free information when they have to charge? This story looks at the progression
of wine information and examines what these guys are up against. It can be found
here.
A few new Tasting Notes have also been added this week. They can be found here.
The News section is back to normal this week. Stories of possible interest include...
-
Bordeaux, on-trade, threatened by financial fall-out
-
Researchers unlock genetic code for wine yeast
-
Creative plumbing puts wine on tap
-
Red wine may be a cancer protector
-
White wine also given a heart tick
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Australian wine makers buoyed by lower dollar
-
Global financial woes could put squeeze on wine exports
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Bad times predicted for SA wine industry
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Wine Industry Worries About the Economy
Those stories and more can be found here.
This weeks wine quote. "A bottle of wine contains
more philosophy than all the books in the world" - Louis Pasteur
Until next time .... Cheers Ric
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Copyright © Ric Einstein 2008