weekend notes

Hope all goes well… Dusted off an anecdote from 2024 about the best career advice one of my closest friends ever received (see below). I take late summer off from writing. Making more space for family, reading, wandering. Wishing the same for you. All the very best, Eric Week-in-Review: Mon: Trump extends China tariff another 90 days. Trump names EJ Antoni to lead Bureau of Labor Statistics, succe

Hope all goes well… Dusted off an anecdote about the mysterious nature of markets, physics, quantum entanglement. I take late summer off from writing. Making more space for family, reading, wandering. Wishing the same for you. All the very best, Eric Week-in-Review: Mon: US durable goods orders -9.4% (-9.3%e), factory orders -4.8% as exp. South Korea CPI 2.1% as exp. Turkey CPI 33.52% (34.10%e). T

Hope all goes well… Dusted off a piece I wrote in January 2021 titled The Case for Digital Assets (see below). I figured back then that it would probably take a decade or so to integrate blockchain technologies into the foundation of global finance. We seem to be tracking. And the process should accelerate with the regulatory changes now underway – the infrastructure race is on, starting wit

Hope all goes well… “You go ahead at your training pace, I’ll carry on at mine,” I said to Charlie, my youngest, now taller than me, the two of us headed up the mountain, the trail straight, insanely steep, a 1,500-foot climb. “You’re going to smoke me buddy, wait at the top.” And off he went at what seemed like a run, an eager 16-year-old’s pace, leaving me to my thoughts, so many questions, hear

Anecdote: “First half of the ruck went fast,” said Teddy, final day of Air Assault School, known as the toughest ten days in the army. Roughly half the cadets fail. On the last day of Air Assault, you must march 12-miles in less than 3hrs, carrying 40lbs of gear. “Then out of nowhere, I cramped up. I was well ahead of time and kept going, punching my legs to loosen up.” A pace car with paramedics

Hope all goes well… An unexpected joy of having kids in the Academies is getting to know their friends, living their extraordinary lives. Of his class of 150 at BUDS, 30 survived Hell Week. He texted us a picture of the top of his raw head, the hair worn away. Someone’s got to carry the boats. “We were marching through sand, delirious, the guy in front of me wasn’t carrying his weight, he’d been l

Anecdote: Back in the days of box cutters and cavemen, a terrorist attempted to light an explosive hidden in the sole of his shoe. His fellow passengers tackled him. And for 20yrs, Americans have removed our footwear in airport screening. The TSA just removed that requirement, our technology has caught up, finally. I was talking to the CIO about a rather dark, high-conviction investment theme. Tec

Hope all goes well… I vaguely remember what happened after the stock market closed on Liberation Day. Traders sold whatever they could, S&P 500 futures, Bitcoin too, which they drilled down to around 82,300. And then when Trump bombed Iran on that random weekend not so long ago, markets were all closed except for Bitcoin, which they slammed down to 98,250. I suppose that the boys who bought ba

Hope all goes well… Dusted off an anecdote from 2017 about raising kids, and life (see below). Wishing you all a very happy 4th of July long weekend. Back next Sunday with full weekend notes. E Week-in-Review: Mon: US Chicago PMI 40.4 (43.0e). UK GDP 1.3% as exp. Germany CPI 2.0% (2.2%e). Italy CPI 1.7% (1.8%e). Poland CPI 4.1% (4.0%e). The EU is willing to accept Trump’s 10% universal tariff but