Hope all goes well… “I think I can unite the conference,” said Rep. Jim Jordan, headed into the vote. “I think I can go tell the country what we’re doing and why it matters to them,” continued the Ohio congressman, the first Chairman of the Freedom Caucus, formed in 2015 by conservatives and Tea Party members. Jordan hopes to become House Speaker following McCarthy’s ouster on Oct 5. The absence of leadership in Amer

Anecdote: “We need options, so we’re doing the work to ensure we can operate no matter what may unfold,” he said, Hong Kong far below, Kowloon across the shrinking harbor. “All our people, millions of them, day to day economic life, we must ensure we can function in any scenario.” It was an unusually clear day for late September, typhoon season. The pollution was light, extending our view so that in my decades of tra

Hope all goes well… I take August mostly off. But with such profound changes unfolding across the world, and the end of the Fed’s rate cycle approaching, I hit the road to hunt. Asia, Middle East, UK, East Coast, West Coast. Most markets are back to pricing a world not unlike what once was, equities, inflation markets too. But interest rates have moved in earnest, with the world awash in debts, deficits, entitlement

Hope all goes well… Spent the week in Hong Kong, twelve hours ahead, but somehow running behind. I’ll have more to share about my time there in next week’s note. But for today, I’ve dusted off an anecdote from 2019 about running down mountains with my youngest. The magic of moving your body to clear your mind, lift your soul. And Hotel California. All the best, Eric Week-in-Review: Mon: Fed speakers hawkish / ECB spe

“It was humbling, sobering,” said my oldest. We had started the conversation talking about an incident in his final game of last year’s season. He’d lost his cool and got a non-releasable penalty after an opposing player blindsided his teammate. You can never lose your cool, and he doesn’t, yet he had. It is how we learn. Our conversation turned to Gettysburg. The Academy sends eighty team captains and company comman

Hope all goes well… Twenty-five years ago today, two Nobel laureate economists and a famous bond trader received a $3.65bln bailout from fourteen financial institutions at the behest of the Federal Reserve. LTCM had delivered a 21% net return in its first year. 43% in the second. 41% in the third. Greed, hubris, leverage, illiquidity, and lack of imagination led to the inevitable. A year later, Japan cut rates to zer

Anecdote: “I love to walk new board members through our history,” said the CIO, the two of us discussing unique challenges facing endowed institutions in the decade ahead. “Between 1965 and 1975 the endowment lost approximately 85% of its real purchasing power,” he said. “A decade or more of outstanding investment returns had left the endowment flush in the mid-1960s, and the leaders had expanded its forward commitme

Hope all goes well… “Tesla and SpaceX factories have a great vibe,” tweeted Elon Musk, Detroit’s autoworkers and owners on a collision course. “We encourage playing music and having some fun. Very important for people to look forward to coming to work!” continued the world’s richest man, his $271bln net worth nearly twice the combined market capitalization of General Motors ($47bln), Ford ($50bln), and Stellantis ($6

Anecdote: “Conceptually it’s very easy,” said the CIO. “Practically it’s very hard,” he continued. A lovely winter day in August, the world upside down. We were discussing dynamic asset allocation, which for them consists of adjusting one’s portfolio to lean against powerful market trends. “It is the part of our investment program that our peers are most interested in discussing.” He leads a sovereign wealth fund wit

Hope all goes well… “If I could give you a definitive explanation for the phenomenon, I’d either be in line for a Nobel Prize or I’d be a liar,” he said. It was a good answer. I’d asked the candidate to explain quantum entanglement, it has always fascinated me. He’d spent over a decade studying quantum physics, string theory. “The mathematics that we use to describe our work in the quantum field is magnificent. But t