The good thing about the WorldCup, library books and change of command

The good thing about the WorldCup football is that there is nothing to watch on tv if you don't like football (like me). So that leaves plenty of time to read a good book.
Number two of my recent harvest is now also consumed. 'Flash Boys' is written in the same investigative style we know from Michael Lewis. It tells the (true) breathtaking story of Wall Street boys who come to realise that they are getting screwed by HFT's (high frequency traders) an decide to fight them. It shows that even well meant regulation is just another tool for people apt in finding loopholes to take benefit. I wonder why there no Belgians on Wall Street... we're good in finding loopholes in regulations! Maybe the Russians are just better than us (lots of HFT firms are stacked with Russian traders).
The "benefit" for HFT firms equals billions of dollars per year. With >90% of all orders placed on the stock exchanges coming from HFT's and >50% of all orders executed coming from HFTs one can rightfully wonder if this is still worthy the name of investing. Afterall they only hold shares for some microseconds and only execute an order when they can act as middle man: meaning only when they have someone to sell it from and someone else to sell it to, so they never take any risk either. The book is highly recommended except if you have some shares yourself and suffer from imsomnia, then reading the book will not help you...


With that book being finished I was strolling around my local library desparatly trying to find something else to read. And it struck me that the fate of library books are to be rejected more than chosen while owned books are read once but cherrished forever. I'm still recovering from that rare moment of insight...


On June 12, I was invited to attend the official ceremony of the change of command of one of the Belgian airforce basis. The ceremony was very impressive and the reception afterwards very well attended! As the picture below tells you I was sitting on the second row :-)

Buy a microscope, first harvest and I saw Joey

There you have it. The ECB lowered once again the interest rate so you can bet that banks will follow suit. So throw away that magnifying glass you used to look for your interest payments on your savings account and go find yourself a microscope. Before the crisis the public had no clue what "percentagepoint" meant. Now we are all too familiar. If the ECB and banks continue like this we will soon hear a new financial term "per mille". The overnight interest rate even goes into negative teritory for the first time in history. This means that when banks park cash with the ECB overnight, they have to PAY for it. If you have a savings account, do not expect any return soon (soon = years).

My former colleagues gave me a book voucher (much appreciated), and this is the first harvest.
I started off with "The theory that would not die". This book should be compulsory reading for anyone who wants to study mathematics and for anyone who hates mathematics. It reads like a "whodonnit" and shows with fascinating stories how Bayes rule helped in the cracking of the enigma code in Bletchley Park, how it helped in searches for U-boats during WWII and how it was used to locate the wreckage of AF447. Those who don't know Bayes rule here's a simple quote from the book "it's a logic for reasoning about the broad spectrum of life that lies in they grey areas between absolute truth and total uncertainty". The book also discusses who could claim the discovery of the mathemathical practice. Frankly I don't care but I did like how they described Laplace's important role in it. Wonderful reading, just wonderful.

And I saw Joey! In my blog of January 10 of this year, I mentioned the that Aurigny Air Services (the carrier operating from the Channel Islands) is considering the Dornier 228 as a replacement for their Britten Norman Trislander. As I was holidaying in Guernsey I wanted to at least get a glimpse of the Trislander (affectionately referred to as Joey by the islanders). And here you have it in final to EGJB (Guernsey airport).