weekend notes

Hope all goes well. Jetted off to Mississippi. A proud farming town. Entered a home. One of my partners stood tall, surrounded by his clan. Their patriarch lay flat, at peace. Walked down the line, paying respect. Got to Perry. Hugged. Lost my words, he did too. And our eyes couldn’t quite meet, or things woulda gotten real wet. Been a rainy mth. Glad to flip the calendar. I turn 45 Tues. Yeah, th

Hope all goes well. Got things real wrong. Feels good to get it out in the open. No joke. Light is nature’s great disinfectant. Started Sept with a big bet: the Euro would fall versus Emerging Market FX. Check out a chart of Brazil’s Real (fell over 20% in Sept). OMFG. Anyhow, trading markets for over 20yrs conditions you to flee fast (and structure well). ’Cause if you live to fight another day,

Hope all goes well. It was one of those wks. Raining. Pooring. At home. At work. Yeah, that’s Life. What happened? Well, for many mths the 2/20 crowd’s been streaming through theatre turnstiles in Rio, Tijuana, Jakarta, Moscow, Mumbai, you name it – they just love foreign action films (we do too). Anyhow, some prankster musta yelled, “Fire!” Or even worse, “Grease Fire!” And all hell broke l

Hope all goes well. Stormed through NY. The headwind we once faced has shifted; felt a breeze at my back. I’m real grateful. Met many old friends, new ones too. Consensus across my 20 meetings? Mkts are pricing bad economic/political news and they’re gonna get it (for a long time), but banking systems ain’t gonna freeze-up like’08-’09, ’cause central banks got good playbooks, but Obanke is r

Hope all goes well. Whew. Flipped the calendar. What is it about August? That month always sucks. Time to sell some shit. ‘Cause, well, it’s almost October. Overall: What an ungodly mess. Yup. Scientists warned we’ve hit the tipping point. 22,000 pieces of man-made junk orbit Earth at 17,500 mph. Colliding, exploding, multiplying. That chain reaction destroys satellites, and so on, and

Hope all goes well. School started. Walked Teddy home. He’s 6, no front teeth,“Daddy, when I’m grown up, in High School, I’m getting a Guinea Pig with a Mohawk, a kitty too, ’cause you’ll be too old to say no.” He may be right. I’ll be 56, Steve Jobs’ age. So what the hell, I think we’ll get a little pussy now, with any luck he’ll eat the Pig. Overall: Emcee knocked frantically, “Ben, dammit, Bern

Hope all goes well. I haven’t had a proper vacation for yrs. Sometimes you just need to be told to take a break. We get another mth or two like this and ya know, Frankfurt, Paris, London, and DC politicos may shut mkts for a little time-out. I got my beach chair dusted off, reading list picked out – just in case. Overall: Hey bro, keep your head down. Kaboom! Oooh, there goes another one. Ka

Hope all goes well. What a freakin’ circus. Spotlights swung wildly. Skinny little Obama, shouldering a $15trln economy, stood frozen high on the wire, looking right, left, but mostly down. Far below, Bernanke frantically inflated his leaky whoopee cushion (not a single trampoline remains). Some Fed clowns threw dung at Ben’s promise of 0% rates though mid-2013 (7-3 vote, most contentious since 19

Hope all goes well. Snuck up to our family homestead in NorCal. It’s a farm. The kinda place you go to chill when things are real good, or hole-up when things get real bad. Tempting as it is to stock it with shot-guns, Jack Daniels and baked beans, we’re pretty calm. No one ever built a fortune by succumbing to panic. But no doubt, gears of change are in motion, exciting times lay ahead, big oppor