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Hope all goes well. Teddy (6) just couldn’t decide, “A real live Red‐Tail Hawk, or a real magic wand that can turn real trees into real coconuts.” Olivia (8) announced all she wants from Santa is, “To end all wars forever.” Jackson (10), without the slightest hesitation, replied in a demeaning bark, “Well then there’d be too many people.” Which naturally started a war. Charlie (2) cried without quite knowing why. I r

Hope all goes well. Spent my last trip of ’11. Considering ’12. In NYC. Focused on Europe. Debating. Weighting. Probabilities, possibilities. You know, everyone expects ’12 to be just as hard as ’11. Maybe harder. Perhaps. No doubt ’12 will be fascinating, filled with questions, enigmas, conflicts, opportunities too. Betcha my grandkids study ’12 in college. But I’m ahead of myself. Right now, we got big questions to

Hope all goes well. Woke at 4am. Snuck out. With Mara. Two tiny creatures. Lying on a little planet. Hurling silently through the infinite. Watching our moon. Slip into Earth’s shadow. In awe. And there it was again. Glowing. That f’in color. Red. Just seems to be everywhere these days. Mercifully, it’s the last full lunar eclipse for 3yrs. We’re back in black. Bringing Mara to NYC this wk. Work and play. Overall: Se

Hope all goes well. How’d my trip go? Great. Thanks. Weather report? Switzerland: Sunny & warm outside, dark & cold inside. Why? Inflation, deflation, ice ages, dark ages, they’re scared. Sweden: Dark & cold outside, sunny & warm inside. Why? They weathered their ’92 collapse, got leaner, now run surpluses, dodged the Euro too. But they’re cautious, knowing well the road ahead for Europe. Overall: 5‐4

Hope all goes well. What a mess. Traders step away from their screens for just a couple days and look what happens. Worst Thanksgiving wk for the S&P since 1932. It’s been three yrs in a row where this wk’s seen more than just a few gobblers slaughtered. So much for Black Friday. I’m off to Zurich for a UBS macro panel. Then Stockholm. I was last there in ’93, right after Sweden’s economic system collapsed, and t

Hope all goes well. A friend died. It was one of the few things he never warned me about ‐ but I hear he saw it coming. Richard Medley channeled information from central bankers, finance ministers, defense secretary’s, senators, (presidents too), to Macro’s most famous mangers. I’d never paid him a dime, we just had fun. Exchanging Sunday emails, competing to craft the sickest joke. Then last wk, outta nowhere, he se

Hope all goes well. Mara left me. For a wk. Went to some Ashram. Immersed in nature. Away from screens. To unplug. Recharge. Connect. So I had our 4 kids. Tasked with playing Mr. Mom. Which meant I imported my Mom. And with that problem solved, zipped back to work. The Yin to Mara’s Yang. Immersed in mkts. And screens. Plugged in. Overall: We missed our best chance. To shift course. On Tuesday. Asteroid YU55 slipped

Hope all goes well. November. A fresh start. New beginning. Every day is of course. Most men just forget that — but not the Greeks. They live in the moment. Unbound by yesterday’s commitments, and debts. Announced a referendum. Then cancelled it. Day-to-day their mood’ll change. The outcome won’t. No one’s getting repaid. Mario Draghi turned the page on a stubbornly hawkish ECB. Cut rates his 3rd day on the job

Hope all goes well. My son Jackson rode shotgun. On a narrow dirt road. And heading into a sharp turn warned, “Slow down a car’s coming.” He was right. After the narrow miss, all puffed up, he announced, “I predicted the future.” At least one of us did this wk. Yeah, prognosticating ain’t easy. It’s humbling too. But it’s our job. Plus we marry good risk/reward trade structures to those predictions. And stay discipli

Hope all goes well. Busy wk here. Went through the portfolio with a stiff rake. Cleaned up. Of course, we’d cut out the real rot over the past 6wks. But what few twigs remained, we gathered and burned. Then as hopes rose (and shorts squeezed) in anticipation of Europe’s latest grand plan we added a Global Contraction theme to the portfolio. You see, despite the excitement about a European Spring, and even some green