Ode to Joye

Turning on the broken record that is Sky Business on the weekend, I found the forth repeat of Your Money, Your Call, hosted by that pommy guy whose head rivals Karl Pilkington’s in terms of spherical shape.

With two minutes to go, his panel, suitably attired in loud shirt and tie, were asked for their final piece of advice.

The one in the more garish shirt/tie combo offered the following, and I’m paraphrasing, “don’t listen to the scaremongering, if you want to buy, get into the market ASAP.”

What is it about those involved in real estate, that they can’t restrain themselves?

I only bring this up because late on Friday we found out the Grand Poobah of Rismark, Chris Joye, was offering a $100 million dollar bet to GMO’s Jeremy Grantham, on the direction of Australian house prices.

The bet is the latest installment in a long-running war of words between Joye in Sydney and Grantham--though Grantham is yet to directly go after his rival down under.

"If you actually have any conviction regarding your predictions about the 'time-bomb' that is Australia's A$3.5 trillion housing market, we would ask that you put your money where you mouth is," Joye said.

Firstly, long-running war of words? Would Grantham even know, or care, who Chris Joye is? Chris Joye is probably as irrelevant to Jeremy Grantham, as I am irrelevant to Chris Joye. When was the last time anyone heard Jeremy Grantham address, or even reference Chris Joye? This has long been a one way conversation, with Joye relying on idiot journalists to build a narrative on his behalf.

Secondly, can you think of any respected investment house that would be goaded into a public prop bet? Given that reputation, reliability and stability are paramount when money managers communicate with the public, why does Joye think Grantham would participate in this circus sideshow?

A Keen-Robertson bet about walking up a mountain will be pointed out, with Robertson working for Macquarie at the time, but are those two really the public face of anything?

Sure this works out as publicity for Joye and his housing index, which is the key aim in this bet, but is this the publicity Joye really wants? Joye seems to be a little too excitable over Jeremy Grantham, so much so, that despite what some monkeys are saying, Joye hasn’t painted Grantham into a corner - Joye has painted Joye into a corner.

Prop bets are how you publicise energy drinks and poker tournaments, not investment indexes. Such tomfoolery can only devalue yourself and your product, especially if you’re looking to be taken seriously.

If we’re to consider the next step here, we could soon find a Rismark jumping castle set up in Martin Place to promote the ‘RP Data-Rismark Australian Capital Cities Dwelling Price Index.’

“Kids can jump and have fun, while Mum and Dad learn how to hedge against falling house prices!”

As First National CEO, Ray Ellis found out, sometimes it pays to understand the value of an appropriate communications strategy. Figure one out, Chris, or at least pay someone to figure it out.