Man vs Money: Everyday economics explained

by Stewart Cowley

Economics expert Stewart Cowley distils the complexities of modern-day money and our relationship with it, explaining how you can use economics to your advantage and that understanding economics can improve your life.

Along the way you will discover how the statistics that govern our world are based on guesswork, why stock markets are like a wandering drunken man, what you need to live like a millionaire, and why cooking has made man the dominant species on the planet. 

Where is all the money?  How does a country go bust?  Should I get paid in Bitcoin? Wherever you go, whatever you do, however you live your life, money plays a role. Getting it, keeping it, and making more out of it has been one of man’s major preoccupations for the past five thousand years. From buying a sandwich to earning a wage, going on holiday to playing the lottery, how money and economics governs our world is fascinating. And it’s just about to get more curious; the arrival of modern banking, crowd funding, investments at the touch of a smartphone, and virtual currencies means, for many of us, it is even more complex. 

Genres: Economics, Nonfiction, Finance, Business

208 pages, Paperback

First published September 15, 2016

About the author

Stewart^^Cowley has been working in financial markets since 1987. He is one of a handful of people to have ever held a triple-A rating by Standard & Poor’s and was awarded the prestigious Gold Medal for long-term investment performance by FE Trustnet. He has also been one of the UK’s most visible fund managers, having written for the New Statesman, the Sunday Telegraph and Citywire. He has made frequent appearances on BBC TV and radio and Sky News. His previous books, Man vs Money and Man vs Big Data, have both been bestsellers.

Reviews

[Caroline]

This book has all the attributes of an 'economics made simple' primer - big typeface, thick pages, and wonderful naive drawings by Joe Lyward.... and I understood nearly all of the words.

BUT - but, but but .... I didn't understand much of the economics.

I am someone who has been dabbling around with this subject for about five or six months now, and my ignorance is still appalling. I don't know whether it is my small ageing brain, a lifetime spent with no interest in money whatsoever, or just the general difficulty of the subject - but I am finding it hard to find toe holes on the rockface. My real bête noir is quantitative easing, but there are loads of other things which get me flustered too.

Whilst the author seems more than qualified to write this book, it hasn't been well edited. I found odd comparisons using a mix of pounds sterling and US dollars, and in another instance a mistake between the facts given and an accompanying diagram. These hiccups do not instil confidence.

Herewith the main chapters of this book, and my response to them.

A brief history of economics
Short, good and I completely understood it.

Compound interest
Knew about this already, and its importance was clearly explained.

Bonds
A big learning project for me, especially with my dreadful grasp of numbers. I will read and re-read my notes on this quite a lot more. I had no idea how big the bond market was in most western societies (much bigger than regular bank lending or stocks and shares.) Herewith my copious revision notes, mostly taken straight from the book.

The top 25 developed nations have government debts (as bonds) of over $33 trillion each, and it is rising every day.

Since 2000 interest rates have declined to astonishingly low levels This is bad for savers, any of whom are old people living off their savings......so instead of putting their money in savings, they turn to the bond markets.

Now for a teensy bit of math:

Say you buy a bond for $100 at 5%, which pays annually. The bond would be worth $105 one year later.
Now, imagine the central bank increases interest rates to 7%....this means that market interest rates will rise too.
Therefore no-one would want to buy your 5% bond at $100 because they could now get 7% out on the market.
Therefore if you want to sell your bond you would have to adjust the selling price down, to compensate for the new market interest rate.
As a result your bond would only be worth $98.13 to the buyer, rather than the $100 you originally paid for it. If you were forced to sell today you would make a loss.

Now, lets imagine the opposite:

Some terrible economic news has been announced, and the central bank reduces interest rates to 3%.
You now own a bond paying an interest rate that is higher than what is on offer in the market.

If you were to sell now the buyer would have to compensate you with a price higher than the original $100. You bond would now be worth $101.94.
The fixed coupon rate is higher than what's available on the market, and you can now sell your bond and make a profit.

The new market rate is called the "yield".

INTEREST RATE MARKETS AND BONDS

Using bonds, you can buy and hold a bond to maturity, or you can trade the interest rate markets, guessing the direction of interest rates, and make money this way. This is the essence of bond trading.

ANOTHER MATHEMATICAL RULE ABOUT BONDS.

The longer the maturity of a bond, the more its price moves when yields change.

Say you bought a 30-year maturity bond with a 5% coupon (interest rate).
Yields then fall from 5% to 3%
The price of the bond would rise from $100 to just over $139.
If yields rose to 7%, the price of the bond would fall to nearly $75.

So.......

If you can anticipate the movement of yields, you can make (or lose) money, by trading in and out of bonds as yields rise and fall.

The lower the yield, the larger the price movement when yields change.

LOW INTEREST RATES

Even before the 2008 crash the world was on a journey to lower and lower interest rates and bond yields.

Reasons given.....
Globalization
Increased competition
Technology
The decline in global inflation
The emergence of China

From the mid-1990s bond yields in general declined by one third - from about 6% to 4% across the bond markets.
In 2008 short term interest rates were slashed to zero.
And banks began the policy of quantitative easing.
This was intended to drive down long-term borrowing rates.
People were encouraged to take their savings out of the banks and grab the higher income from the bond market - while they lasted.
Globally, money flooded into bond mutual funds.
It was a rational response to an irrational world.
In just over 6 years the bond markets rose in size by 50%
Yields were driven down and investors were driven into the bond markets - because their income had all but evaporated.

BUT

Bonds had turned into something incredibly risky.
If bond yields rose at any point in the future, prices would plummet in a way never seen before.

eg.
A 30-year maturity bond yielding 2% (cost $100)
If yields rose to 4% then the price would drop to $65. This is a 35% loss.
Compare this to when the starting yield was 5%. An identical rise of 2% would only cause a 25% loss.

The lower the starting point when yields rise, the bigger the loss. Bonds are therefore now quite risky.

The world is stuffed with bonds.

eg.
Workplace pension funds.
Savings with the phrases "balanced" or "target return"
Your bank's reserves
The general public.

(The general public gets hold of bonds in the UK via the collective scheme OEICS - Open-ended investment companies)

This allows investors to pool their money into funds that they can buy and sell on a daily basis.

THE THREE RULES OF BOND INVESTING

1. If yields fall bond prices rise, and vice versa.

2. The longer the maturity of the bond, the more its price moves up or down when yields change.

3. The lower the yield (Caroline - or market interest rate I think), the larger the price movements when yields change.

eg
1% = low = big price movements when yields change.
10% = high = smaller price movements when markets change.

Banks
Understood this fairly well, though could have done with some more elaboration.


The markets
Pure gobbledegook to me, but then I suspect that is the nature of markets. Not an easy subject to write about.

Bitcoin
Surprisingly easy to understand the general process, even though I couldn't grasp the mechanics of how it works. It is more like a commodity than a form of money. You might decide to stash bitcoins instead of gold for instance, though the market is hugely more volatile. Like gold it is 'mined, although in this instance the mining is done on a computer, and only a finite number of bitcoins is ever going to be produced.


Government finances (eg countries going bust)
A very interesting chapter indeed. Whilst levels of national debt can sound scary, it is actually our ability to pay off the interest on our debt which is every bit as relevant. There may be countries with far less debt than the US, but whose ability to pay off the interest rates on their debt is far worse, and they will be in a lot more trouble. Herewith some countries who have reneged on their debts since the 1980s.
Argentina
Mexico
Nigeria
Russia
Vietnam.

And herewith a chart of the Debt to GDP ratio of various countries. A good level of GDP means you are likely to be able to pay off the interest rate on your debt. Japan stands out not only for having the highest level debt to GDP, but for the fact most of its debt is owed to Japanese people, (presumably via bonds), so it's kind of a home debt, and some would argue, for this reason less serious.




Millionaires
Oh yawn, the most boring chapter in the book. Who cares about boring old millionaires, or billionaires.... Pfffffft.

Quantitative Easing
Oh sob, sob, sob, yet again, in spite of all the reading I have done on this topic, I barely understood a word. Honestly, I could weep.

Derivatives
More investing gobbledegook. For me it sounds like wild betting on the different directions that various markets will take in the future. But I may well have got that wrong, as I didn't understand this chapter.
What I did understand is that derivatives are massive. If we roughly compare the different levels of finances......

Bitcoin.................................................................(No figure given, but small compared to the rest.)

Gold......................................................................$8 trillion

Cash.......................................................................$29 trillion

Stocks....................................................................$70 trillion

All the money in the world.................................$80 trillion
(What does the author mean by this?)

Global Debt.......................................................... $199 trillion

Derivatives....................................................$1.2 quadrillion

So, there we are. Derivatives are a very, very big chunk of world finances.

I am not giving this book any stars. I think that for someone with just a bit better grip on economics than me, it could be an excellent read. Economics is a complex subject, and I thought the book was well laid out. It takes the reader on a journey in such a way that things slot together sensibly, and I think that is an achievement. I also learnt several new things - especially about bonds and national debt - so all in all it was time well spent. Another positive is that the book was published in 2016, so it's right up to date.


Joe Lyward

[Vanya Prodanova · Rating 3 out of 5]

Кратка и любопитна книжка. Определено понаучих някои нови неща, предимно в насоката, че всички сме много сериозно прецакани и колкото повече научаваш за световната икономика, толкова повече осъзнаваш, че всички живеем върху плаващи пясъци и няма нищо сигурно в тоя живот и няма как да се спасиш, за съжаление, защото всичко е свързано и щом си живо същество си част от цялата мизерия, независимо колко не ти се иска. :/

Това настрана, останах с впечатлението, че книгата трябва да е "лесносмиляема" за обикновения човек, но нещо не я почувствах така. На моменти четох някои абзаци по два-три пъти и пак не схващах. Е, поне си припомних колко мразя уравнения и формули. Не мога да преценя дали проблемът беше в мен или като цяло можеше нещата да бъдат обяснени една идея още по-лесно, но каквото - такова.

Другото интересно е осъзнаването колко различна е икономическата и банкова реалност в България сравнимо с навсякъде другаде. Ние може би имаме шанс да оцелеем при световен колапс (всъщност вече сме оцелявали, хехе), просто защото са такива лешояди всички в българското правителство и банкова система, че няма накъде повече. :Р

[Yohanes Saputra · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's hard to review this book. Some parts was eye-opening, some was boring, and some was highly obscure you would need an investment dictionary to get through (the derivatives chapter). But overall it was good, it's not "okay" or even great. It just delivers.

EDIT: I give it a two star. The writing style sometimes can be boring.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even though the book has 220 pages, the size of the font and the number of empty pages makes it an easy read. I finished it in about 2-3 hours, with some breaks. It's a very, very basic introduction to economics and finance ("money") that despite using some terminology that a normal person wouldn't use, it explains it in a way that anyone could understand. Of course, it's not gonna be the equivalent of an Econ 101 course, but for what it's trying to be, it has definitely succeded. I had a lot of fun with it.

[Kashyap Uppuluri · Rating 3 out of 5]

A simply complex book

I liked the ideas presented in the book & would recommend it anyway who is interested in understanding about money. Just be aware that the topics covered here would require a lot of supplemental reading to truly grasp.

[Leen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Easy to read and understand for someone with very limited knowledge of economics like me. It helped me to gain confidence again to keep working on my business ideas.

[Stuart Haining · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting and funny, what more do you need in an economics book?

[Shahnaz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Summary dari seluruh pelajaran ekonomi, of which luxury of learning it, i was deprived.

[Jas Phạm · Rating 4 out of 5]

Một quyển sách hài hước, bích chi nhưng dễ hiểu cho những đứa không ưa tài chính và số má

[Quỳnh Ngọc Xuân Nguyễn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mình đọc bản Tiếng Việt của quyền này "Tiền quả thật phiền". Với người không chuyên về kinh tế thì mình cảm thấy hiểu được 60% quyển sách. Từ những danh mục mà quyển sách đưa ra, mình có cái nhìn tổng quát về những sản phẩm tài chính.

[Adham EA · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant book with easy examples .

[Ana Ivan Karamazov · Rating 3 out of 5]

I finished reading this book (on Oct 14, 2020) I like this book but the parts in this books are not explained in greater depth. Like the explanations about derivatives and gini index were really new to me so I had to search on Google and YouTube. But other than that, the parts about stocks and bonds, I already knew them so it's not a problem. The lesson about GDP was fun. I learn many things from this book even though the examples are kinda hard for me sometimes, coz it's kinda complicated math (to me) but overall sometimes the author uses simple math like he uses muffins to explain about GDP. It's only 200 pages so it's really good for you who wants to have a crash course about fundamentals of money or more like basic economic lessons. I'd give this book 3.8 out of 5

[Deeps George · Rating 3 out of 5]

A simple book to understand the concepts of the economy , market and financial instruments . The book tries to remove the boredom of the subject but some areas need more explanation . A relaxing read to get a hang of the world of finance which at times seems complicated to the common man.

[Evan Mixon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall interesting read. Bought this on a whim at the airport years ago, so by that context pretty insightful. Some of the later chapters are quite dry (derivatives), but all in all well written and informative.

Very quick read as well given use of charts, page breaks, etc.

[Alfiero Santarelli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cool one. It really gave me some good, practical understanding of modern economics and finance. Also made me feel like reading more.

[Siti Ismarini · Rating 4 out of 5]

Explaining the complex world of money with very simple words!

[Haziq Hakimi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not bad, not good, just average perhaps. Good for people looking to read a perspective on modern finance and economics and technical explanations