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“Should have seen it coming, but we’re scientists,” he said. “The first study estimated America faced a 70 gigawatt deficit by 2030 to meet new commercial real-estate needs.” Seven years later they estimated a 30 gigawatt surplus – a 100 gigawatt swing. “Landlords are earth’s cheapest people and have long time horizons. They’re introducing energy-saving efficiencies in old buildings faster than they build new o

“Netscape and all the internet stuff went crazy between 1996 and 1998,” said the CIO. “But extrapolating those trends ad infinitum was insanity and ended with Pets.com.” Investors look for patterns, when they find one they apply it to everything. The process is reflexive; as a pattern repeats, it becomes more widely recognized, thus driving new investment flows to profit from it, which amplifies the trend, and reinfo

“What were you guys talking about?” asked Jackson, as we left the office. My 13yr old had swung by after practice, waiting for a ride home. Instead of answering directly, I asked him what he thought our investment team had been discussing. “You were all trying to figure something out, and it seemed like you kind of did, but it also seemed like you kind of didn’t.” He wasn’t wrong. And sensing an opportunity to explai

“Two BMWs pull up at a traffic light,” he said. “The black person says the white man got rich because of Apartheid. The white man says the black person must be a corrupt civil servant.” He’d flown in from Johannesburg. A freedom fighter turned policy-maker. “They both might be completely wrong, but when the standard stereotype is that everyone who gets ahead does so by underhanded means, it becomes acceptable to get

“Imagine there are two human beings in the world; my father and myself,” he said. “Dad owns a $10mm house, he’s retired with 10yrs to live and needs $1mm per year to pay the bills.” Which apparently marks the poverty line in Greenwich. “So Dad needs to sell the house to me. But there’s a problem; I only make $50k a year.” Of course there’s a way to intermediate that; a third party can lend the son $10mm at 0.1% inter

“The paradox, of course, is that anyone driven by insecurity and fear of failure who figures out its horrors then has to overcome the greatest fear of all,” he wrote, in response to last Sunday’s anecdote on insecurity, fear, drive, greatness. “Which is that overcoming a fear of failure might – you never know – be the equivalent of Superman uncovering Kryptonite,” continued the CIO, maintaining a delicate

“The key is to bring out in people the things they don’t realize make them great,” he said. We’d been seated together at one of those dinners, filled with unique folks. And this one spent his career building some of Wall Street’s top performing teams. “Nearly everyone is scared of being really good. They don’t want to fly so high that they get lost. It’s a very rare person who gets right after it, knows they’ve got i

“This is not just a problem for the Fed,” said Consigliere, back in DC from a never-ending global tour. “The same problem is faced by the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, SNB, Riksbank, Norges Bank, HKMA, MAS, and even the PBOC now.” Following the global financial crisis the Fed adopted two objectives; maintaining economic stability (strong growth, full employment and 2% inflation), and financial stability (avoid

“What is trading about?” asked Yoda, high in the Rockies. “It is not about figuring out market direction,” continued the market’s biggest S&P 500 local. “Trading is about breaking things down. A market moves up or down. Are you comfortable fading that direction, or are you not? Hmmm? Has the market rallied on good news, or the opposite? Was there big volume? Do correlations support the move? Are they changing?” Y

“But in fact, Chase is so good at everything he does that sometimes it can be rather annoying,” said Ryan, laughing, blushing, betraying deep admiration for his teammate. Speaking more to himself, than to our clients; providing a genuine glimpse. We were sitting in the Blue Room, a tranquil space. Discussing our firm, our process, how we communicate, triangulate, collaborate. And the client asked for a description of