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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

Anecdote: “If you cross the river, a great empire will be destroyed,” said the Oracle, and I vaguely recalled that prophecy from some course I’d taken years ago. The Oracle had spoken these words in ancient times to Croesus, King of Lydia, who interpreted it as a sign that he should sail across the sea to attack the Persians. The prophecy was correct in a sense, but it was Lydia that was destroyed. And so I sat there

Hope all goes well… “Amazing day Dad,” said Teddy, a touch sarcastic, grimy, exhausted, FaceTime. “4:30am wake up in the woods. Tag football at dawn. They let me blow up a pile of C4 for my birthday. Blasting doors, clearing rooms with my squad. Marched up a few mountains with Ryan Gosling and 40 pounds of blanks in my pack,” he said, on a roll. “Ryan Gosling?” I asked. “That’s my machine gun,” said Teddy, eager to c

Hope all goes well… Dusted off an anecdote from 2013 for Father’s Day, about finding inspiration in the elements, strengthening our creative core (see below). Back next Sunday with full weekend notes. All the very best, E Week-in-Review: Mon: EU parliamentary elections see center right coalition hold but also far right parties perform well / Macron calls for snap elections (6/30 and 7/7) as a result in an effort to s

Anecdote: Zeus and Hera detested their son. Murderous, bloodstained, incarnate curse of mortals, wrote Homer of that child, Ares, the god of war. I looked out across the Aegean from Cape Sounion, the southernmost tip of the Attica peninsula. The ruin of the temple of Poseidon, god of the sea, still stands atop the Sounion acropolis. Nearby, the temple of Athena, goddess of wisdom and defensive warfare, is little more