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

Swung by the Dakota, back in 1988, to visit a buddy. Met his doorman. A wounded man, gentle, sad, tragic. You see, one afternoon in 1980 a fan approached, asked when Lennon would return. The doorman dropped a hint. Then watched the guy cross 72nd street, to wait quietly, patiently. John arrived, the fella drew a gun, and did the unimaginable, shooting Lennon dead. Anyhow, I often visit the spot, considering gunshots

Wow man, it’s hard to know what to think. Don’t ya think? Syria’s pencil-necked dictator’s blasting women and children with chemicals. So say Israeli’s. Hagel says so too. And Assad sent the NY Times pictures of bearded Al Qaeda rebels, warning American’s to be careful what we wish for. Naturally, I just wish we’d all shave and make up. I also wish we weren’t so easily manipulated. But alas, we’re human. Anyhow, Merk

“Can you believe how universally despised this guy is?” asked the CIO, not waiting for a reply. “CNBC, Republicans, Democrats, economists, strategists, nearly everyone hates him,” he continued. “His biggest supporters are at best ambivalent, and it goes down from there.” You see, we were discussing central bankers. “Maybe ten people in the world understand central banking, and by the way, most of them are not running

Hope all goes well. “Can I tell you my fantasy?” he asked, over his fifth gin and tonic. And with five empty glasses before me, I nodded, preferring simple gestures to sloppy slurs. You see, we’d been exchanging war stories. And he, being one of North America’s biggest investors, has fought for decades. Winning more often than not, but always enduring the kind of stress few fellas can bear. “I wanna tattoo ‘John Thom