Month

Anecdote: “You Americans generally do not understand the Chinese,” said the CIO from Asia, visiting us in Connecticut. “And we Chinese generally do not understand Americans,” she continued, a unique thinker, independent, aggressive, blunt. “And this is where I hunt for opportunities, in these kinds of misunderstandings,” she said, our teams brainstorming, looking for ways to work together more closely. “Do you think

Hope all goes well… “When regulators accept transfers of these congressional responsibilities, they not only drift outside their designated lanes, but they also remove the incentive for Congress to pursue legislative solutions,” wrote Jay Clayton and Gary Cohn in a New York Times opinion piece titled The Microsoft-Activision Mess Is a Blow to American Sovereignty [read here]. “Why go through the messy legislative pro

Hope all goes well… “Had this flashback of when I had just started playing, the old grass field in Santa Barbara,” said Jackson, my oldest. “And now I’m here. It just seems kind of surreal that I made it to this place, this team, this game, national television, all of it,” he said, on a high, electric. The Army/Navy lacrosse game was just 18hrs away. Army ranked 8th in the nation, Navy buried deep below, but with thi

Anecdote: “Credit started tightening six to nine months ago,” said the developer, a close friend, entrepreneur, with large residential projects across the nation. “It started with the money center banks,” he continued. “This pushed us to regional banks for our latest projects, but then SVB happened.” The market froze. “The lender for our latest 30-story project in a tier-one city backed out, so we scrambled, and spok

Anecdote: “Why are we so often our own worst enemies?” I asked myself. I didn’t bother asking GPT4, it couldn’t possibly give me the real answer. We feed these large language models everything we’ve ever learned, which is why they tell us what we already know. And this question remains as deep a mystery as any in the universe. I first started to appreciate it as a young trader. The profession requires one to make fre

Hope all goes well… “Prepare yourself Teddy, you have an extremely tough year ahead,” said Jackson, my oldest, serious, his Plebe year at Navy far in the rearview. Teddy was euphoric, his appointment to West Point confirmed. But celebration time was evidently over. It lasted five minutes. “Jackson is right, but you can definitely do this,” said Liv, still living through the trauma of her first year at Army. Mara sigh

Hope all goes well… Snuck out to the Tetons with the kids for a little spring skiing. Altitude. Dusted off one of my favorite climbing anecdotes, about risks, managing them. Training. Luck too. See below. Back next Sunday with full wknd notes. Week-in-Review: Mon: OPEC+ cuts oil production 1.16m bpd unexpectedly, Israel CB hiked 25bps (as exp), ECB’s Holzmann says a 50bp hike is still on the cards, Fed’s Bullard says

Anecdote: “In ten years, when we look back at this remarkable period, what will we wish we had started building today?” I asked our investment team. We carve out time each week with no structure, to see what fills the space. One River had just celebrated its 10-year anniversary with seven volatility-trading and trend-following strategies, alpha strategies, bespoke diversifying solutions, and over $3bln in institution

Hope all goes well… “I saw this video of Elon a long time ago, talking about SpaceX [here]. And all these space pioneers were really bashing SpaceX and Elon too. And he was visibly very hurt by that and said these guys were heroes of mine and I wish they would see how hard we’re trying,” said Sam Altman, under increasing scrutiny for his life’s work. He’s the Founder/CEO of OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT4. “I definitely