The more you think about money, the less it makes sense. That is why the topic is so alluring for the masochists amongst us, attempting to solve the unsolvable, climb the unclimbable, conquer the unconquerable. We engineer thought experiments and mental models in the hope of gaining a glimpse of some truth, the scent of something real, a money-making opportunity. Japan provides an enigma to explore. It once had a bub

Hope all goes well… “Are you asking what allocation I think our plan should make, or what percentage of my net worth I’ve invested?” asked so many of the largest money managers in Asia and Australia that I lost count. “I’m asking what percentage of your personal wealth you have allocated to digital assets,” I would respond, clarifying, city-to-city, back-to-back meetings. Their answers ranged from 0%-20% with almost

Hope all goes well… “So let me tell you how this goes,” said the senior mid-fielder to Jackson the night before the Army/Navy lacrosse game. “The first ten minutes is not lacrosse, it’s not even football, it’s just this insanely intense period with everyone trying to take one another out,” he continued, mentoring my son. “Ten minutes in, one team calls a timeout, both coaches calm everyone down, and that’s when the l

Mara: “Maybe write something about how full life is,” said Mara, Saturday evening. I was racing to catch a flight to Singapore after the Army/Navy game, knowing I’d be reading/writing all-night. The week had been insane, they all are these days. Markets, business, deals, family, friends. The pressure to publish, my burden, a blessing. It’s all good, great in fact. “Life won’t always be this full, but right now it is,

Hope all goes well… “This old paramedic waved me away and yelled — Get me a man, someone strong, I need help immediately,” said Olivia, my 18-year-old, a certified EMT, a volunteer first-responder. “He’s the most sexist of all the guys I have to deal with. I looked him in the eye and said — Don’t worry, I got this,” continued Liv, recounting her latest 911 emergency call. “After we lifted the patient onto

Anecdote: “The hope is that these cracks will turn into chasms,” said Dr. Mitesh Patel of Imperial College, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Department of Physics. “And eventually we will see some spectacular signature that not only confirms that the Standard Model has broken down as a description of nature, but also give us a new direction to help us understand what we are seeing and what the new physics theory looks li

Hope all goes well… “My massive bias is to believe things always work out okay,” said Simplicity, walking Occam’s Razor. “But today somehow feels unique, and when I look at supply and demand in oil, grains, base metals too, there’s an undeniable tail risk here,” he said, having analyzed the fundamentals of such things over a long career. “Without a perfect North American growing season, there will be shortages, perha

No one rang the bell. No one ever does. So, we’ll never know precisely when globalization peaked, in part because it’s not exactly clear what that even means. But global trade volume as a percentage of global GDP rose inexorably throughout our lifetimes, and then topped out around 60% in 2008. We have yet to reclaim those heights. Perhaps that was the high. So much has happened in the fourteen years since, and it’s p

Hope all goes well… “The great thing about equities is that they’re not bonds,” bellowed Biggie Too, global chief strategist for one of Wall Street’s too-big-to-fail affairs. “The best thing about US stocks is that they’re not European or Asian or emerging equities,” barked Biggie. “The terrific thing about equities is that they’re nominal,” said Too, repeating the lyrics traders are chanting as stocks rise in defian

Hope all goes well… Stepped back this week, from keyboards, screens. Replaced by long quiet walks, shaking off a little case of Omicron. Always love a little distance from a subject, time to think, solitude, ideally at altitude. From each angle, every perspective, I found myself returning to something I wrote last September: The Case for Quantum Change. It provides a framework for making sense of the dramatic events