weekend notes

Hope all goes well… “President Biden Issues Executive Order on Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence,” announced the White House homepage in large, bold font [here]. It’s a rather weak name for such an important order, probably the product of a committee, or some first-year McKinsey consultant. So, I asked GPT-4 for a new name, perhaps biblical, playing on the theme of Eve and the

Anecdote: The Chrysler Building sparkled in the distance, a magnificent Art Deco skyscraper, completed in 1930, the Great Depression unfolding. They paid $2.5mm for the land back then, the value of money erodes through time. Most things do. Chrysler is now Stellantis, a conglomerate, the world’s 4th largest automaker. Its market cap is $57bln. I was standing high in the GM Building, on the corner

Hope all goes well… “Elon is a genius bro,” said my Uber driver, who rents a Tesla from Hertz for $360/wk, drives 7-days straight, saves $100/wk in gas, earns as much as a Harvard grad back when they could still get Wall Street jobs. “GM makes a new car with better range, and Elon’s like – I’ll double that bro.” I smiled. “I’m a risk taker. I made dumb mistakes. Lost big. But now I study, ta

Anecdote: The Saudi desert lay far below, hidden, the dark of night. We would soon pass comfortably between Gaza and Ukraine, conflicts, flashpoints, then across Europe, the Atlantic, home. I’d set out in early August to travel hard, explore, hunt. It had been such a boring summer, the kind of lull often followed by more exciting markets; a time to be moving, listening. Abu Dhabi and Dubai are on

Hope all goes well… “You on the 2am Emirates flight?” asked the American. “I flew in on Emirates, but I’m headed home on United,” I replied. “I only fly Emirates and Etihad in the Middle East. Lost a friend in 9-11 and I don’t know, ever since I find myself making these little decisions, it’s probably stupid, it’s such a miniscule risk,” he said. My flight into Dubai went directly over Tehran. And

Anecdote: Somewhere far below, deep within a nameless mountain, enrichment tubes were spinning at 1,500 revolutions per second. We had just passed Tehran. From 39,000 feet, the rugged, dry terrain extended beyond the horizon. On the flight map to our west lay Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut, centuries of rich history, plagued by devastating wars. They say the conflict between the Sunni and Shia goes bac

Hope all goes well… “I think I can unite the conference,” said Rep. Jim Jordan, headed into the vote. “I think I can go tell the country what we’re doing and why it matters to them,” continued the Ohio congressman, the first Chairman of the Freedom Caucus, formed in 2015 by conservatives and Tea Party members. Jordan hopes to become House Speaker following McCarthy’s ouster on Oct 5. The absence o

Anecdote: “We need options, so we’re doing the work to ensure we can operate no matter what may unfold,” he said, Hong Kong far below, Kowloon across the shrinking harbor. “All our people, millions of them, day to day economic life, we must ensure we can function in any scenario.” It was an unusually clear day for late September, typhoon season. The pollution was light, extending our view so that

Hope all goes well… I take August mostly off. But with such profound changes unfolding across the world, and the end of the Fed’s rate cycle approaching, I hit the road to hunt. Asia, Middle East, UK, East Coast, West Coast. Most markets are back to pricing a world not unlike what once was, equities, inflation markets too. But interest rates have moved in earnest, with the world awash in debts, de