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Anecdote: Markets always move for a reason. Those of us who have been doing this for a long time often say the reason is always the same: prices rally when there are more buyers than sellers, and vice versa. But that’s not exactly true. For every buy-order that is executed in a marketplace, there is a matching sell-order. What is true is that if buyers are more eager to buy than sellers are to sell, prices rise until

Hope all goes well… “Any bodies floating to the surface yet?” I asked the team, all of us on an investment call, discussing markets, the relentless selling in crypto. “How about the basis, any signs of funding stress bubbling up, leverage unwinds?” I asked. And for sure, there is speculation of forced selling, mostly during US trading hours. But until a Bloomberg headline hits, with confirmation that a specific firm

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 immigration policies?

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 again, but it must ta

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 it was good to hear

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 is why people are c

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 has always acted in on

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 support is lukewarm &#

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, electricity produces lig

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 to work your way thro