Anecdote: “No clubs, no hobbies, no fraternities, no athletics…how do you network?” the head trader asked, miffed. Welcome to Wall Street 1990s – I was not an obvious fit. Driven by curiosity. I had just finished careful study of FX intervention tools as a signal to markets. Really careful. Nuanced tools never worked. Traders demanded bluntness – rate hikes always came next. “So…you see things in FX intervention to p

Hope all goes well…Marcel Kasumovich, our Head of Research, is writing wknd notes this week with a thematic focus on Quantum Change in the monetary system. Today’s system arrived at its ‘equilibrium’ by accident, not design. Won’t last. Can’t last. Pressure builds gradually. We’re all FX traders now. Overall: “There is no ex-ante limit to that [Transmission Protection Instrument] programme,” said ECB President Lagard

Anecdote: “Marcel,” his voice so distinctive, a charming, gentle accent. “It’s the beginning…please…let’s find…as they say…the next weakest link. Okay, bye-bye.” It’s Feb 2007, subprime just tanked. At that point in my career, I had mostly solved solvable problems –it’s a safe way of thinking. He was asking me to think through something with no verifiable solution but a verifiable outcome: The weakest link. New Centu

Hope all goes well…. Just made it back from the Middle Teton with Jackson and his buddies. No better way to spend time with people than to share adventures. Marcel Kasumovich, our Head of Research, is writing wknd notes for the rest of July. Marcel is a truly special human being, one of the top five minds I’ve encountered in all my travels, filled with wonderful market stories, life lessons, and sporting a few scars

Anecdote: “Cognitive psychologists call it recency bias – a built-in mental tendency to exaggerate the significance of recent events and experiences while slighting those further back in time,” Gideon Rose offered in explaining the seemingly invisible fraying of living standards. “The fault lies not in our algorithms but ourselves.” It creeps into all aspects of our lives, our thinking, and most certainly our i

Hope all goes well…. Zipping out to Wyoming for a big climb with Jackson and his buddies. Marcel Kasumovich, our Head of Research, is writing wknd notes for the rest of July. Marcel is a truly special human being, one of the top five minds I’ve encountered in all my travels, filled with wonderful market stories, life lessons, and sporting a few scars like all of us who dare reach. A wise soul. A talented communicator

Hope all goes well…. “I got this Dad,” she said, duffel packed, ready. “I know you do Liv – you got this – but what’s going through your head?” I asked, a final father-daughter check in. “It feels like when we went skydiving. I knew it was coming. Then we put on our parachutes, and got in the plane, and went higher and higher. I looked down but it still wasn’t real. Then the door opened, they pushed us ou

Hope all goes well… Dropping Liv off at West Point tomorrow to start her great adventure. Making the most of our days before Beast (that’s what Cadets call summer boot camp). Then I head to Wyoming in July to climb mountains with Jackson and his brothers from Navy. Time is short. Presents an opportunity to hand wknd notes off to Marcel Kasumovich, our Head of Research, for the month of July. He’s a truly special huma

Hope all goes well… Dusted off an anecdote from 2015 about proprietary trading, risk taking (see below). The age of leveraged carry and buy-and-hold investors is behind us. Back to basics. One River Digital’s team published a piece on the distressed opportunities unfolding across the bitcoin mining industry and the parallels with commodity cycle downturns [click here]. Week-in-Review (expressed in YoY terms): Mon: WS

Anecdote: “Everyone who dies out there dies of confusion,” wrote Laurence Gonzales in Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why. The book explores what separates survivors from the others. Those who die when lost in the wilderness often do so spontaneously, for no clear medical reason. Disorientation is psychologically devastating for those unable to adjust rapidly. Children are often better suited than adults. “If