Hope all goes well… Dusted off an anecdote from 2017 about the sound of silence (see below). Back in a couple weeks with full wknd notes. All the very best, E  Week-in-Review: Mon: Fed’s Daly voices support for gradual easing – rejects idea of 50bp cut in Sept / Kashkari says open to Sept cut, Blinken says Netanyahu accepts latest Gaza ceasefire proposal / next step is for Hamas to agree, Ukraine seeks ‘bu

Hope all goes well… Dusted off an anecdote written in the early weeks of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, about managing extreme uncertainty, processing rapid change, searching for opportunity (see below). Back again in September with full wknd notes. All the very best, E  Week-in-Review: Mon: Fed’s Bowman signals she may not support a Sept cut, Ukrainian forces invade Russian territory – forcing mass evacuations f

Hope all goes well… Historic round-trip in markets, with an explosive move up in implied volatility followed by a move down at a speed and scale quite unlike anything we’ve seen. Not exactly the kind of activity one would expect to see so close to all-time highs in equity markets. It’s the kind of odd market behavior I suspect we look back on in the quarters to come, as having been the start of something very importa

Hope all goes well… Dusted off an anecdote published shortly before the Feb 2018 collapse of ETFs that allowed investors to sell volatility in an explicit way (see below). Whether they want to admit it, or fully appreciate it, all investors who own equity, private equity, credit, leveraged loans, real estate, etc., are implicitly short volatility (and long stability). As bull markets extend, the ravenous sell volatil

Hope all goes well… Dusted off a David Bowie anecdote from 2023 about great artists (see below). How they help us imagine our many possible futures, and we then collectively conjure one from the nothingness. So many possible new worlds are taking shape; AI, crypto, domestic politics, geopolitics. A thrilling time to be alive, invest. I take July/Aug off from writing, to do more reading, recharge. Hoping the same for

Hope all goes well… Dusted off an anecdote from 2016 about the importance of combining loosely related things, triangulating, blending ideas, philosophies, techniques. I wrote it when Jackson, my oldest son, was playing football and lacrosse as a high school freshman. And now it’s Charlie’s turn, my youngest, who just finished a Navy lacrosse camp and is on to freshman football pre-season. I take July/Aug off from wr

Hope all goes well… Dusted off an anecdote from 2013 about taking reckless risks. A harrowing story from my early years in the Chicago commodity pits. When you’re highly overleveraged with big positions and praying to manage your drawdowns with tight stops, the one risk you can’t mitigate is a big market gap, which of course is the tail risk that is growing quarter by quarter as the pod shops proliferate. I take July

Hope all goes well… Milky Way overhead, vivid, alive, headlamps snaking their way up the mountain, rock, ice, snow. Summited the Grand Teton on Sunday with Mara, our kids, their friends, young pilots, Marines, guides, fifteen of us. Memories returned, of my early climbing days, before them all, what a journey it has been. Dusted off an old anecdote from one of those ascents in the French Alps (see below). I take July

Anecdote: “Guess what I set as my platoon’s motto?” Asked my daughter Liv, 20, eyes electric, home from a month of field training exercises, Chinooks, mortars, leading her team through the wild. I’d never seen her quite so happy, at ease, comfortable, confident. Throughout high school Liv was too eager to take charge, which naturally produced the opposite effect. She had a touch of Hillary Clinton, highly competent,

Hope all goes well… “The guy said he was exhausted, couldn’t go on, so I had him hand me his M240,” said Kara, 20, Minnesota, distance runner, my daughter’s roommate. She and Liv had returned from field training exercises, having led their platoons for weeks. “I’m 64 inches and he was 74, but I needed to make the point, so I slung it over my shoulder and kept up the hill.” He followed. “I came up to another who stopp