Month

“Wasabi Abe?” asked Ben, answering his bat phone, in a groggy growl, at 2 AM. “I’ll tell you wasabi,” slurred Japan’s Prime Minister from his smoky situation room, hysterical. “Nikkei down 7.3%, that’s wasabi!” screamed Abe into his mobile, waking Mrs Bernanke. “Gimme the phone,” ordered Anna, taking charge. “So wasabi Abe?” she asked, annoyed by the Prime Minister’s incessant late-night booty calls. “Ah, konnichiwa

Hope all goes well. Swung through NYC. Without a moment to myself. The Big Apple’s booming. Cranes are swinging. Clubs thumping. And of all the stories that swirled, the one that made the biggest impression, was the one I never heard. You see it’s May. And not a single person told me that they sold. And went away. With their prodigious piles of paper profits. To play. Overall: “Wasabi Abe?” asked Ben, answering his b

Grabbed all four. The dog too. Packed up, headed to the water. Real early. And as my clowns spilled out, tumbling across the sand, a smile slipped. You see, like most everyone, I want the best for our little ones. Especially my own. And here in Cali, they got it good. But I spent my early years in NYC, getting schooled at PS 158. And later, worked on the Street. Trained to look over my shoulder. To avoid the madness

Holy Smokes! Even Pope Francis is getting in on the action. Which I guess makes sense, after all, he’s Argentinian, schooled in inflation. Plus he’s in Italy, and Romans been shaving coins since Caesar. Of course, Draghi was born in Rome too. And loves a close shave. Anyhow, with a swipe of the pen, Francis consecrated 800 Christian martyrs as Saints. Roughly 10,000 Saints had been recognized since 450AD. Each requir

Hope all goes well. “Please tell me you’ve stayed long,” I said to the CIO. A brilliant, humble fella, who made a fortune on Wall Street, left the past behind, and moved West. “You can’t talk about something like this as much as I have and not be long,” he replied. You see, we discuss science, technology, robotics, the looming transformation, the coming revolution, winners, losers – and he’s loved this stock fo

Hope all goes well. “I really don’t know how a rational person can make this much money,” said one of Greenwich’s biggest managers, hung-over. You see he’s been long Nikkei and short Yen all year, uninterrupted. In monster size. Balancing the fight-or-flight instinct, with a trader’s need-for-greed. “I think the only way to do this is to have enough in the bank that you don’t care anymore — and you need to drin

Back when I was real smart, I was such a moron. Then I discovered my inner moron, and feel much smarter now. You see, in every cycle, there’s a time for white papers, and a time for comic books. The problem is, most fellas read comics when they ought to study white papers. And vice versa. Anyhow, US stocks hit new highs, as PhD’s repeated dire warnings. But the Fed printed another $20bln this wk. In the past, 7yrs in

“What’s up?” I asked, dressed in my frat-boy finest. “Makin’ shoes,” he answered, perfectly assembled, in designer-distressed. And I smiled, nodded, “Yeah, me too.” It’s our ritual greeting. Saturday mornings we man the sidelines, watching our sons play lax. Talking trends; last season, today, tomorrow. We’re Right Coast boys who turned Left, building young firms, with piles of miles. Crisscrossing continents. Scribb

Hope all goes well. “I don’t want us to delude ourselves,” he answered. “I’m old enough now to know how this is going to ultimately play out,” continued the philosopher. And I laughed, ’cause I’d asked about markets and he’d answered about life. “But in a world of activist central banks, every day’s a new adventure,” said the top performing CIO for many yrs running. “And today, it’s not that important to have a view,

Look! Up in the sky. It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s Bertrand Piccard. Superman. He lifted off from Silicon Valley. Circled over San Fran, symbolically bound for DC. Wide-eyed children looked up, inspired, as his magnificent Solar Impulse flew overhead, silently. You see, it’s fueled by Man’s most powerful energy source: Imagination. And runs on Earth’s most abundant fuel: Solar Energy. The delicate plane’s a Swiss c