weekend notes

Anecdote: Headed to DC to meet all sorts of folks, ask some questions. Like what if running the economy hot, boosting productivity through an aggressive AI buildout, pushing oil prices lower, sustaining moderate inflation, and subduing interest rates through financial repression doesn’t work out as planned? What’s the fallback at that point? And how do you make the economy boom with the existing i

Hope all goes well… “Everything on the right is the Smithsonian,” said my Uber driver, a Nigerian, proud to show me around DC on the way to Union Station, a fascinating day of meetings. “To the left are all government buildings. Beautiful buildings. But no one is back yet, which is why it is so empty on the streets,” he continued, shrugging. “They say on the radio they have opened the government a

Hope all goes well… Spent the week in Montreal, Toronto, the Great White North. And if there’s a theme that emerged, its that the massive mountains of money run by some of North America’s most sophisticated institutional investors are looking for ways to hold onto their equity longs while layering in downside protection. Makes sense. Particularly in a world with such fat left and right tails. And

Anecdote: “Where the stock market is now makes sense from the perspective of what investors are long versus what they’re short,” said Lone Star. “But the valuation gap is similar to what we saw in 1999, and even though we’re still in early innings of this AI theme, valuations are well ahead of reality,” continued one of the top performing US endowment CIOs. “The gap between growth and value assets

Anecdote: “A prince, therefore, being compelled knowingly to adopt the beast, ought to choose the fox and the lion; because the lion cannot defend himself against snares and the fox cannot defend himself against wolves. One needs, therefore, to be a fox to recognize snares and a lion to frighten wolves,” wrote Machiavelli. Teddy was home from West Point, where he is studying The Prince. “He who ha

Hope all goes well… “It should be borne in mind that there is nothing more difficult to arrange, more doubtful of success, and more dangerous to carry through than initiating changes,” wrote Machiavelli in The Prince, circa 1532. “The innovator makes enemies of all those who prospered under the old order, and only lukewarm support is forthcoming from those who would prosper under the new. Their su

Anecdote: “Misfortune is needed to plumb certain mysterious depths in the understanding of men; pressure is needed to explode the charge,” said Edmond Dantes, protagonist in The Count of Monte Cristo. “My captivity concentrated all my faculties on a single point. They had previously been dispersed, now they clashed in a narrow space; and, as you know, the clash of clouds produces electricity, elec

Hope all goes well… “I pulled an Icarus, flew too close to the sun,” said SEAL on speakerphone, headed for a surf with my oldest son, the two of them out at Camp Pendleton. “Got cocky right at the end.” Three weeks into the second phase of SEAL training, there’s a twenty-minute underwater test. Instructors rip your mask off, your air out, and beat the crap out of you, all while you’re attempting t

Hope all goes well… “When we are young, we don’t appreciate so many of the things,” said Vincent, the two of us winding our way high into the alps, his son up ahead, carrying our ropes. I had business in Switzerland and snuck back to Argentiere for the weekend to see my old friend. “Maybe we climb with our grandparents, and we think they go too slow, but so much we don’t know,” said Vincent, his l