The Monday Read

May disease edition

May disease (５月病) is a sense of malaise that hits children and adults in May. Presumably the excitement of new colleagues, classmates, and situations in April has worn off, the Golden Week holidays have been and gone, and life seems a lot less fun now that we have three months until any kind of summer break.

There are no public holidays in June, and only one in July. Truly, life is hard 🙂

In the ‘not hard’ column, we’ve been doing more coaching recently. If you have a personal finance problem, question, or something you need advice about, feel free to get in touch via the contact form or directly by email.

Here are this week’s links:

  1. Emerging market stocks seem cheap and unloved. Time to buy? Swedroe: Emerging Markets Need Time
  2. Mostly good news: A critical step to reduce climate change
  3. The latest Osaka housebuilding project blog post: Foundations
  4. Just say it: The Ultimate Productivity Hack is Saying No
  5. Japanese (and six other nationalities) won’t need to wait as long at the border when visiting the UK: Government expands use of ePassport gates to 7 more countries
  6. I can think of loads of these: The Difference
  7. I only hate one of these: Five Great Money Saving Tips People Hate
  8. Woah: Why your life expectancy is much longer than you think
  9. Some good points in here: Fantasizing About Retirement? Here’s How to Build a Career You Won’t Want to Quit
  10. Still struggling with this issue: Smartphones Are Toys First, Tools Second
  11. Truly world class (how is this not just a substandard knock-off of a London cab?): Toyota’s Japan Taxi becomes an expensive Olympic symbol
  12. This is great: Mitsubishi Chemical to ban employees from smoking during work hours, wherever they are
  13. Meanwhile, Japan is building coal power plants… Parts of Japan experience record high temperatures for May
  14. I think I am going to try to do this in Sendai: We’re stepping up – join us for a day to halt this climate crisis

What do you think? Anything good in there?

I also managed to read more books this week:

5 Responses

  1. I guess I would be cautious about #1—Emerging Markets Need Time.

    I can’t refute the analysis, and will keep what the author says in mind, but I wonder whether the history of emerging markets is deep enough to be forming reliable conclusions.

    As pointed out in the article, developed markets were studied back to 1950, and although that’s the point they chose, I think going back further would be almost as valid: “In their study of 22 developed market countries during the period 1950 through 2008,…”

    In describing emerging markets, the article says, “Rekenthaler chose to compare the results from the start date (1994) of the Vanguard Emerging Markets Index fund. That seems reasonable. However, we have data for the MSCI Emerging Markets Index going back to 1988.” And then a short time later, “…we only have CAPE 10 data on the emerging markets back to 1996,…” My concern is that the history for EM is not there, certainly not in the way it is for developed markets.

    Along the way, from 1996, back to 1994, and then to 1988, there just isn’t that enough history between then and now—from 23 to 31 years—to identify reliable patterns. Also, while I do understand that developed markets do change and evolve, I’d offer that emerging markets have changed even more. While there is “…data for the MSCI Emerging Markets Index going back to 1988,” I would really like to see how the BRICs (and other EM countries in today’s index) were represented at the time.

    Again, although the developed markets have evolved, I think it’s obvious the the world of EM has evolved quite a bit more. Because of that, I would be cautious—EM may indeed need more time than can be easily predicted.

  2. Regarding article 14 and the environmental protests. The leaders of Extinction Rebellion in the UK has already been exposed as trouble-makers who don’t really care about the environment. They have much bigger carbon footprints than most people. Driving big diesel polluting cars and vacationing in South East Asia. Emma Thompson their spokesperson flies first-class – which is eight times more harmful to the environment than economy.

    The organizers use dopey students to disrupt people’s every day lives. They are already planning to disrupt Heathrow with drones over the summer according to latest reports. Check out the mountains of PET bottles and other environmentally unfriendly debris left by the ‘environmental protesters’. The organizers view people who attend their events as ‘useful idiots’. Such protests damage the cause of they are supposedly promoting.

    1. They seem to be changing the political conversation though, which is much more important than any individual act. I’m becoming slightly more optimistic that we might see systemic changes sooner rather than later.

      Unless governments take massive action we won’t change the course of things.

  3. Re: #7, which step did you not want to do? Moving? Although there’s always somewhere cheaper, my guess is that Sendai already counts as pretty affordable. Seeing as how I’ve wanted to get out of Tokyo for years, that is at the top of my list–the cost savings are just a bonus. Also, having grown up with cats, I’m uncomfortable with the idea of “owning” living things (plants aside). Pets have a cushy life but don’t get the freedom to choose it generally.

    Re:#10, having a slow, low end phone that is no fun to use helped me with that a lot.

    Also, The 100 Year life looks interesting. I’ll have to check it out.

    1. Ha, ha, it was the track small spending one. I am inherently lazy and like the idea of being able to spend small amounts on whatever I want, but I’m aware that lots of small spending really does add up.

      We do okay because we save and invest first, before spending, but we might be able to further optimise things.

      Something to work on in the future.