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It’s a pleasure to announce that I will be syndicating out blog-posts to the website of the great new London-focused magazine CurioCity . CurioCity was started by Matthew Lloyd and Henry Elliot in early 2010, originally as an informal handmade pamphlet to distribute to friends and family. Back then, a group of us wrote articles and put together the first issue in Henry’s lounge in Kennington. It’s come a long way since then, and the first professionally printed version is now being stocked in iconic London outlets such as Foyles and Rough Trade . The website has now been set up to provide a regular flow of high quality pieces centered on London, suggesting ideas for experiences that are fun, educational, and that encourage a deeper engagement with the city. Urban adventures in financial landscapes My main focus is going to be ‘ Financial Psychogeography ’. ‘ Psychogeography ’ is a word that means different things to different people, but I’m taking it to refer to: the exploration of c...

There’s a troubling question in my mind whenever I’m in Berkeley Square: It’s the mystery of why I can’t find any good coffee here. It’s mysterious precisely because this square is the centre of the world’s largest concentration of hedge funds , and that kind of means the average person walking here commands a salary larger than…well, everyone else in the whole world. So where’s the good coffee? BERKELEY SQUARE, MAYFAIR Have you ever wondered what a hedge fund is? I mean, I can tell you that a hedge fund is a company registered in the Cayman Islands, and that people around the world put money into it, and then it uses that money as collateral to borrow a bunch more money, and uses that to bet on various things like company shares, commodities, bonds, and derivatives… But does that really tell you what a hedge fund is? To know what a hedge fund is, you should try run your hand over the golden plaques on the doors around Berkeley Square. The names seem un...