Hope all goes well… Zipped out to Wyoming for Christmas with Mara and our crew, their girlfriends, boyfriend, a few others in tow. Bringing in the new year at altitude, the Tetons. Dusted off an anecdote from 2016 about the wonderful places that shape us, and we them. The value of roaming. Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, to you and your crew. E Week-in-Review: Mon: China’s 30-year bond yields fall below 2% for first

Hope all goes well… Army’s helicopters crossed the 50-yard line slow and low. Thump, thump, thump. The stadium went wild. Eight thousand Naval Academy and West Point cadets. Navy’s jets tore the sky in two, the sound of freedom. The crowd roared. I had flown to DC directly from Abu Dhabi, our family together again, an increasingly rare event, friends too. The Army/Navy football game is a day everyone should experienc

Anecdote: “I tried to help Charlie understand the importance of choosing his own path,” said Jackson, my oldest. We were walking, talking, high in the Tetons this past July. “I encouraged him to keep an open mind, watch us, collect information. By the time Charlie makes his choice, I’ll have been a Marine for nearly four years. Liv and Teddy will be off to the Army too. And none of us really know what’s ahead.” Two y

Anecdote: Old photos of decrepit dhows, empty sand bars, pearl divers seared by the sun, smiling, hung in the lobby. Reminders of a simple past, slow, humble, modest in the extreme. The elevators lifted us from that foundation high above the desert. Glass, marble, steel, quiet offices reserved to discuss a matter of the utmost importance. Identifying opportunities, compounding the nation’s vast wealth. The building’s

Hope all goes well… “Opposition fighters in Syria, in an unprecedented move, have totally taken over numerous cities, in a highly coordinated offensive, and are now on the outskirts of Damascus, obviously preparing to make a very big move toward taking out Assad,” wrote Trump on Truth Social, providing a taste of what’s to come in foreign policy. He made America’s position clear: “Syria is a mess, but is not our frie

Hope all goes well… Dusted off an anecdote about time and money from 2016 (see below), back when the western world seemed stuck in secular stagnation. Before Brexit, Trump, trade wars, Covid, government stimmies, runaway deficits, inflation, war in Ukraine, the Middle East, the Cold War with China. Back before AI, Nvidia, the IRA, US equity outperformance, America’s swing back to Trump. All signs of an imbalanced glo

Anecdote: “Here’s the challenge for this group,” I said to our investment and solutions teams in late-2023, all of us around the big table, crowdsourcing. “For years, investors asked us to combine our strategies into a portfolio they could allocate to and forget.” We never have. “It’s now time.”  They nodded. “Use any combination of our existing strategies. Include equity beta. It must be highly liquid, it shoul

Hope all goes well…  “We’re going to decide whether we are going to grow our way out of this debt burden or not,” said Scott Bessent, one of the great macro thinkers, investors, strategists, on Nov 4th. “And I think we can. Through deregulation, energy independence and dominance in the US, and a growth mindset,” continued Trump’s nominee for Treasury Secretary. “I feel very strongly that this is the last chance

Anecdote: “I’d been invited to a dinner with senior Russian officials,” I told a CIO on Friday, sitting in DC, sharing a story from London in 1992. I was a Lehman prop trader back then, and the West was in a nasty recession that felt inescapable, they often do. The savings and loan crisis had taken its toll. London cabbies talked of the need for another World War to pull us out of our latest civilizational tailspin.

Hope all goes well… “This is quite a blue town,” said the CIO in DC. I had asked him about the post-election vibe. “Most of the city is kind of mourning, and a narrower group is euphoric.” We were discussing the profound change that has already begun to unfold post-election. The range of unorthodox and anti-establishment presidential appointments, the many possible consequences, economic, military, geopolitical. DOGE