Hector Mercadier
I am an advocate of efficiency. I believe that the search for efficiency will make our lives better. I strive to achieve this goal through process automation, which allows for a more efficient use of our time, and through finance, where we try to allocate capital and risk efficiently.
I am currently working as an entrepreneur and an advisor, providing project management and business analysis services.
Automation
I believe that automation enables businesses and individuals to become more efficient, spend less time on boring and trivial tasks, and allocate more time to solving complex problems.
A key insight of automation is that it doesn't significantly impacts how much work we do. Most of the quantitative improvements are compensated by qualitative improvements. The literature on this topic also leans toward this hypothesis, which I also detailed in a blog entry at a previous job.
I am working with various clients to design and implement automation softwares. If you are interested improving your internal process, your interactions with customers or clients through automation, don't hesitate to get in touch!
Finance
Market Finance 101
An introduction to Market Finance and all of its key concepts and mechanics.
Business Cycles Finance
This blog allows me to share interesting phenomenon about finance. Read my articles about Bitcoin, investment funds, negative interest rates, and many other topics.
Finance is a system of resource allocation: it allows agents to allocate capital and risks among themselves.
Hedge.lu
I created this wiki to share finance cases and stories where hedging went wrong. Some of these cases are classics, some others are more obscure. All of them are fun and have instructive take-aways!
La Révolution Pastèque
Financial litteracy is one of the key problems of our time. I founded this website with my friend Thomas in order to help people understand finance better, manage their budgets, and overall, chase financial freedom independance.
Cowcot Entreprises
I wrote this series of articles a bunch of years ago, so they start to be outdated... Plus, they are written in french. You could maybe still look at the pictures if you don't speak Lafayette's language.
Mead
Mead is an ancient alcohol made with honey, water & yeast. Though it is today mostly forgotten, Mead is a delicious beverage, which, similarly to craft beer and natural wine, will gain by being better known. It opens a wide field of taste, texture, smells, and fun! I don't sell mead, so if you ever want to taste one of my brews, you'll have to first become my friend, and second hope that I care to share a bottle with you.
Here are a few of the mead I have brewed over the last few years
- Hydrodoux: This is a sweet mead, with 8% of alcohol. It was brewed at the end of 2018, and has since had the time to age and become a delicious syrupy-like sweet alcohol. The honey strikes hard and fills your whole mouth and throat with each sip!
- Hydrorim: I initially started doing still meads. But a friend, who is also a beer brewer, suggested that I make sparkling mead, to make it more accessible to people used to beer. A lot of people expect indeed that mead would be sparkling. Well, we are now in the third iterration of Hydrorim! These meads have about 8% of alcohol, are dry and sparkling. The honey leaves a nice aftertaste, and depending on which batch you are drinking from, you can identify some woody, forest-like smells and tastes. A perfect choice to start your mead-drinking journey!
- Hydrochet: This is a Bochet, a mead made with burnt honey. Burning the honey before brewing the mead gives a caramel and nougat taste to the honey, bringing more flavours to the final brew. I often add a spice mix suggested in a XIV's century cookbook, Le ménagier de Paris, traité de morale et d'économie domestique. Bochet have a darker color than traditional mead. My Bochet have anywhere between 8% and 13% alcohol: I've not yet decided which is best, so if you have an opinion on the topic, feel free to share it with me!
If you care to check out some of my bottles and process pictures, here are some photos for you:
