Risk and Incentive

I was a bit startled last night while watching a very recent interview of the Kaiser, Karl Lagerfeld..

He casually commented out of the blue that social occasions like cocktail receptions were fewer and fewer these days; almost non-existent really.

The industrialist's son,
'Kaiser' Karl Lagerfeld,
still relevant.

Well, there still are a small number of product presentations and corporate functions and top shareholders' meetings that centre around some kind of catered event starting 'not before 1 p.m.' - as the standard demands for a cocktail reception. But he may be quite right when it comes to the non-business gatherings of the well-heeled social set. Hey, who are these 'well-heeled' folk, anyway, nowadays? I'm sure I don't know...

But Karl has provided me with a scrap of incentive to go down one particular prospective road at least that doesn't look to me to be totally adventureless from the get-go, as most other things are becoming these days: entirely forgettable, dull, thoroughly boring.

Indeed I was also rather taken aback by my own response to a sudden and largely unexpected turn-around in one of my own business ventures. Filled with almost countless ideas while ever I had to stick a lot of things onto the back-burner from lack of a decent budget, as soon as the prospects of having to hand, another round of 'meaningful' moneys (has been a good long while between those...) I found myself suddenly utterly devoid of those thrilling ideas that I usually can generate from simply out of my own head, and found too that I was able to see almost nothing exciting going on around me anywhere else either. Perhaps it was the shock of having money again. It's done something to me perceptions, I think.

Spending, money – just plain spending it when you have it – is one thing but it is a very lazy thing. And it's not what I only desire to do, personally. I like to see and hear the ideas and ventures of other people, especially of those really bright kinds of people who are intensely interesting because of their intellects as much as any other attribute.

Coffee and News - a thing no more...

I remember when my own parents would attend cocktail parties – or what used to be termed cocktail receptions. You might not believe it now but back in those days people didn't simply just turn up when invited to these kinds of things, but they had this remarkable capacity to bring something of themselves that was new and different each time they went to something as swish as a genuine cocktail party. It was like they seemed to prepare to attend. Nowadays things are far less socially ornate, you might say.

Yet there is also a certain risk aversive attitude that has crept into the whole world of the affairs of humans. And a very bad thing it is too.

Actually I believe I need to begin pointing out a few of the incentives for the taking of risk. There is of course as you all know, an art to the taking of risk. And if you get out of the habit of risk taking, pretty soon you forget about all of the necessary methodology.

I intend the next few posts here to deal with present-day risk taking, incentives, and serious methodologies that work, as opposed to the folklore spewed out by stockbrokers and others who are only running promotions for their own fairly weak and contrived 'investment' products.