Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

Manuel.

Was going to question the content associations of the 2 comments in P54901.
But won't.
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It isn't the background of the Toffs, or Plebs which matters, it is whether members of either group "dissociates" itself from the responsibilities and rights of the other.

Believing (not thinking) that they have “rights”, greater than other members of society or herd, based on possession or heredity is the problem.

It doesn’t mean all in society are “equal”, but it probably means “all” in society should be shown the same considerations and also their “needs” when possible “satisfied”.

I was told when I was young, that the "wealth" of a company, was dependent on the endeavour of “workers” at “all” levels employed. (That included management and investors.)

This does not imply that there should not be differentials in reward for “responsibilities” or investment “risks”, only that the differentials should be proportional.) (What one considers proportional is the problem.

That's rubbish, Shortie.

It's an urban myth that people buy their way into Oxford. You have to pass strenuous tests and undergo an extensive interview program. And even after that, it can still be a bit of a lottery if your first choice college is out of places for your chosen subject and you have to go into the pool in the hope another college will take you in.

Osborne and Cameron both got into Oxford on merit, as did numerous politicians and prime ministers before them. Yvette Cooper, for instance, was the former president of the JCR at my son's college, but I suppose that's different because she's red?

edit: On checking, I see that Osborne was actually awarded a demyship at Magdalen. Maybe he's not as dumb as you and some of the other jokers on here would like to think.

Shortie,

I agree that many from the "elite" schools develop a protective "arrogance" and the "Masonic" type allegiances which enable them to be parachuted into positions of "authority" above their abilities.

Difficult to deal with, but one is aware of it in the "professions" and seems to be be "part" of "system" which many in the "establishment" wish to protect.

Fintech start-up helps ordinary people 'invest like Warren Buffett'

A free platform, which is giving away investment formulas based on the strategies used by multi-millionaire investors, is hoping to democratise stock market investment
From Telegraph.co.uk HERE
By Rebecca Burn-Callander, Enterprise Editor
7:50PM GMT 12 Jan 2015

Buffettology is a well-regarded stock investment strategy, used by many retail investors

Ordinary people can now invest as Warren Buffett, James Slater or Sir John Templeton do by using a free algorithm that mimics the stock-picking, buying, and selling decisions of the world’s most successful investors.

This is the claim made by husband-and-wife team Maria and Michel Jacquemai, founders of “financial Facebook” MeetInvest, who crunched the formulas used by multi-millionaire market players to allow anyone to use their principles to make money.

“We want to empower investors by giving them the same toolkits that the professionals have,” says Maria. “The financial world wants to keep this kind of information a secret but we have decided to give it away for free.”

The pair has used data that is in the public domain as the basis for their calculations. This avoids the necessity of seeking permission from the likes of Buffett, who many not want thousands of people copying his stock strategy.

Michel, who worked in asset management, hedge funds and banking for 20 years, says that he consumed every book and article written about superstar investors in order to gather enough information to create MeetInvest’s digital “gurus”.

“We found James Slater’s formula on the Telegraph,” he says, laughing. Slater wrote a tips column in the Sunday Telegraph called The Capitalist for many years.

The way MeetInvest works is straightforward: registered users choose from 12 gurus on the site, which range from the big names such as “father of value investment” Benjamin Graham, to German former investment fund manager Susan Levermann. They then choose from 20 strategies, focusing on areas such as spin-offs and exploiting judgement bias. New gurus and strategies will be added regularly: Slater is the latest addition, launching this week.

All the investment models are explained using plain English, which is crucial to the MeetInvest model. According to a study of 2,000 adults commissioned by meetInvest and undertaken by YouGov, 45pc of people find the stock market “confusing”. Some 39pc also said that they would be more likely to invest in the stock market if they had access to free and easy to understand information.

“We strip out the financial jargon,” says Maria. “The idea is to make investing as simple as possible for people that don’t have access to either the formulas or up-to-date financial information, which can only be accessed via a Bloomberg terminal.”
MeetInvest monitors and analyses real-time financial market data on 68,000 stocks worldwide each day, and users can select specific industries or territories – US biotech, for example – and then back-test their chosen algorithms on the platform all the way to January 2000 to see how much money they would have made if they’d placed the suggested trades.

The Jacquemais have invested £1m into four different “baskets” or portfolios to show the effects of the investment formulas. “We are using our own money,” says Maria. “We want to be completely transparent about whether these systems work and how much money we make.” These will be live on the site shortly.

MeetInvest can also show the effects of implementing the opposite investment strategy. In order to show the effects of these reverse algorithms, there is a basket doing just that. “We wanted to prove that performance isn’t dumb luck and the only way to do that is to try to lose money,” says Michel. “And we have shown that when you reverse the formula in that basket, that is what happens.”

Users can opt to receive daily, weekly or monthly updates on which stocks to keep and which ones to offload. To avoid paying high transaction costs, Michel advises changing portfolios monthly.

However, the CIO from a global private bank, who preferred to remain anonymous, warned: “It is not enough to rely on these formulas – you must do your own research, and you have to measure risk. If you’re right, you make money but if you’re wrong you could lose everything.” A spokesperson for JP Morgan Asset Management declined to comment on MeetInvest’s new business model or its consequences for traditional investment firms.

The Jacquemais have spent £350,000 building the platform, which now has just shy of 2,000 users. “We want to have 1m within a year,” says Maria.
The pair are in talks with several VCs about raising further start-up capital but the focus now is on new users. After that, the revenue model should become apparent, says Maria.

They hope to encourage people to return to the site by building in a social aspect. Members can chat about shared interests across 800 categories, ranging from coin-collecting to wine-investing.

Every formula on the site can be easily exported to an Excel document, an approach that is essential to the democratisation of the market, says Michel. “When I worked in that world, I saw some disgusting practices. Friends had fund managers who charged sky-high fees to make them 3pc a year. It wasn’t fair.

“Every other sector has seen a movement away from the push economy – where we are forced to choose the products that our shoved down our throats – to a pull economy, where we say what we want, when we want it,” Michel adds, citing Netflix and Zoopla as examples of pull economics. “We want to do this in investment for the first time and create a mass wave of DIY investors.”

Here's a link to their web site: http://meetinvest.com/

I think you'll find that Osborn was given a Demyship to attend Magdalen College, Oxford University.

His 2:1 was in Modern History, and his aspirations have always been in Journalism... Just the guy for Chancellor I reckon.... lol...

Quote:

A demyship is historically a form of scholarship at Magdalen College, Oxford. Oscar Wilde, Lewis Gielgud, Lord Denning, and T. E. Lawrence were famous recipients. It is derived from demi-socii or half-fellows (being historically entitled to half the allowance awarded to Fellows). Recipients (known as demies, pronounced to rhyme with "surmise") are still admitted to the College's Foundation (in increased numbers, following recent changes to the system of scholarships) and are entitled to attend certain ceremonies and dinners. Recent demies include the historian Niall Ferguson, Kenneth Tynan and George Osborne.

When the College of St Mary Magdalen was founded in the reign of King Henry VI by William of Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester, the Founder ordained that in addition to forty senior scholars, or Fellows, there should be thirty poor scholars, commonly called Demies, of good morals and dispositions fully equipped for study. (Compare "postmasters" at Merton College, Oxford).

Hmmm?

So is this an implication that George Osborne actually came from a poor family?

If so, that and his membership of the 'elite' Bullingdon Club don't seem to equate.

Obviously, a demyship scholarship would have saved half of his fees but, if he came from an affluent family, why would he need to take it up?

Aha! Got it! The answer is just plain good old financial common sense.

Hey! We have got ourselves a Chancellor with financial common sense! Yes?

The poor ones turned into the Labour party.

Osborne is heir apparent to the Irish Baronetcy. He is descended from aristocracy.

some of you peasants really should ditch the chips - nay, logs - you carry on your shoulders
you might then find you can look and aspire upwards instead of preaching a mantra of falsely based and unwarranted jealousy and attaching tosh

Doc,

It's not related to means. They're awarded after the first year exams to the best performing students, based on performance in those exams (ie. you need to get a first).

I don't know how much Magdalen demyships are worth, but it's probably only £100 or £200. My son's scholarship paid something like £100, half of which went on the special gown that he was then entitled to wear. The idea is that it's a little extra which is intended to help you do well in your finals, based upon the early promise that you've shown. It's certainly not going to fund your passage through a 3 or 4 year course.

The point is that Osborne would have only been awarded his demyship for academic excellence, and not for anything else.

hilary (aka ermintrude) - see above

Hilary,

Many of my school friends went to Oxford and Cambridge etc..

Looking back and talking to others the intensity of academic teaching at the school I attended was far greater than the majority of other schools.

One of my grandchildren attends one of the better schools in London and again the intensity of teaching, facilities and out of hour "societies", groups are "superior", to what I would think sourceable for the majority of the country. He is very happy with the intensity, but he is advantaged now as probably he will be in future.

It seems to me a hothouse has advantages and disadvantages in that it spurts growth by its advantages and may offer protection against the outside environment, but has disadvantages when planted in the outside environment without necessary preparation and “conditioning”.

=-=-=-=-=

(Although I like Shirley Williams and understand what her “intentions” were when “Comprehensive Education” was pushed through, I think the preparation necessary for an effective system were not in place and cause of much of the failings in “school” education. (Revolution instead of evolution.)

Concentration should have been on raising standards of “Secondary schools” up to those of “Grammar schools”, with the gradual introduction of purposely built and organised comprehensive "buildings" suitable for the intended education.

See what above, Cyners?

Yeah right, course he was awarded it for academic excellence... lol

as for Poor? He’s the millionaire son of Sir Peter Osborne, 17th Baronet, who co-founded the firm of fabric and wallpapers designers Osborne & Little.

Concentration should have been on raising standards of “Secondary schools” up to those of “Grammar schools”

quite right fred, but of course it wasn't by ANY of those in power
instead, we have seen a steady dumbing down in all sorts of ways, accompanied by a widespread parental denial of responsibility - not so much among the asian and some of the other immigrant communities it must be said

=======

54914 hilary :-)

Hmmm? That MeetInvest site above has some pretty good investment tools.

Goldfinger: You might just like to take a look at some of them.

The point the toffs are missing here is that opportunities are opened up for the likes of Osbourne Camoron etc, no matter what exams or colleges they have attended.

Neither of them have ever filled in an application form or had to compose a CV (osbourne admits this) and its just DADDY who gets them a position with a fellow purple nosed boozer from the Bullingdon Club or the like.

Its very much like arranged marriages.

On the other hand the working classes have to go through inferior schools and work harder to get there places at Oxford or Cambridge colleges and then have £50 grand to pay off before even applying for a mortgage and have to tottle off down the Job Centre and all the hardship and stress that involves.

They dont walk into jobs/positions they have to fight against hundreds of others who are queing up for the same job.

Why on earth anybody votes for posh snob boys who have been given all these privileges is beyond me. They certainly have nothing in common with 95% of the population.

You could say that about the labour party gf, full of toffs.

GF,

Once again agreed!