Anecdote: “I’m going to tell you about the worst day of my life,” said the Master Sergeant, an Army Ranger, enlisted at 17 years old, three Iraq/Afghanistan tours under his belt, standing on stage. My son Teddy and his four thousand fellow cadets hanging on every word. “I’m lying in hospital, and the WiFi didn’t work, so I got no legs, and now I got no WiFi?” he said, the hall erupted. Master Sergeant was there to di

Hope all goes well… Interstate 15. Headed north from Salt Lake to Wyoming. A truck stop in Idaho. Poverty, poor education, meth, opioids, lack of opportunity, hopelessness, who knows. Walking human wrecks. The old store manager mostly deaf. A kind kid with dead eyes relayed my order, yelling into her ear. Hi skinny arms, homemade tattoos, blurry blue ink. The same thing you see in northeast Vermont, rural New Hampshi

Hope all goes well… Dusted off an anecdote from 2014 about life’s ten superpowers (see below). Enjoy President’s Day weekend. Back next Sunday with full wknd notes. All the very best, E Week-in-Review: Mon: Chinese Lunar New Year holiday begins = quiet markets, ECB’s Panetta says the reversal of policy is fast approaching, RBNZ gov Orr pushed back against recent bank calls for more hikes, Moody’s downgrades Israel /

Anecdote: “This is a thinking job,” said Lone Star. “It’s not a doing job,” continued one of America’s best-performing endowment CIOs. “It’s a job for people who pull on strings to see where they lead.” I smiled. “We screen for people with a natural curiosity and an interest in puzzles,” he explained. “Because, this game is a puzzle that’s always changing.” When I started One River in 2013, Lone Star had taken the re

Hope all goes well… “You were recruited as an offensive midfielder?” asked the reporter, yesterday’s post-game interview, Navy lacrosse had just beaten Hofstra 16-8. “I was,” answered Jackson, face paint dripping down his cheeks. “And did you resist being moved to defensive midfield?” probed the reporter, because of course, offensive midfielders generally consider a move to defense to be demeaning. “I didn’t see much

“Some get away with it longer than others,” said Yoda, high in the Rockies. “But sooner or later we all face adversity. And that’s when you find out.” I sat quietly, patient, my mentor. “That’s when we explore what’s important, how to get back on track. And if we’ve been truly tested, that track may not be the same path as before,” he said. “The way to handle our greatest challenges is to invert them, see them as exp

Hope all goes well… “We’ve been looking for the enemy for some time now,” read the quote below an eerie photograph of young men, huddled tightly on a field, the fog thick, two floodlights high above. “We’ve finally found him.” It was an Instagram post for Navy Lacrosse. “We’re surrounded.” The photograph was from Monday’s practice, wet, cold, dark. “That simplifies things.” They chose a fitting quote, from the Marine

Anecdote: “Did you get your math right,” I asked Patrick. He had just sent me his whitepaper for comments. Like pretty much everyone at our firm, he’s smarter than I am. And by the time something like this gets to me, it has inevitably been heavily vetted. “Yeah, that was my reaction when I first saw the results of the analysis. I ran it a few times. Same results. Then I gave it to the quant team, the risk team too.

Hope all goes well… “If you don’t get hurt, a kid your age should live to 100. And with medical advances, you might live way longer,” I told my oldest, four years ago. He was 18 and had just made a nine-year commitment, it was sinking in. “It’s true that nine years is 50% of your life so far, but it’ll be small fraction of your lifetime,” I said. He nodded, a literal kid, linear. “Decisions early in life manifest in

Anecdote: “The game of speculation is the most uniformly fascinating game in the world. But it is not a game for the stupid, the mentally lazy, the person of inferior emotional balance, or the get-rich-quick adventurer – they will die poor,” said Jesse Livermore, the speculator made famous by Edwin Lefevre’s Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, 1923. It was the first and best book I’ve read on speculation. Liverm