weekend notes

Hope all goes well… “Pre-pandemic a heavy jet cost $7k-9k an hour to charter. Now it costs $18k-$20k,” said the CIO, discussing his private economic indicators. The market remains white hot. No sign of softness. “All these guys worth $100mm got sucked into a portfolio mix with 75% illiquid investments, 25% liquid. Guys like that spend $3mm-$5mm year and make $2mm after tax. They’re slowly bleeding

Hope all goes well… Wishing you and your families a healthy, happy, and prosperous 2023. Filled with adventure, challenge, volatility, introspection too. Dusted off an anecdote from 2011 that I reflect on at the dawn of each year, in preparation for what is to come (see below). One River Digital’s Doug Wilson, who leads our credit activities, published a piece [click here] that compares boom/bust

Hope all goes well… Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah. Happy Holidays. Happy New Year. To you and your families. Resurrected one of my favorite little memories, an opening note from Christmas past… Christmas Day 2013: “Santa slipped down the chimney. Left big boot prints in the ash that spilled across our hearth. And the jolly fella stuffed stockings. Built a train set too. Sprinkled magic everywher

Anecdote: “Mao’s Great Leap Forward was intended to rapidly advance industrialization and agriculture output in China,” I said to a few of our investors. We had shifted from discussing near-term opportunities, and I turned to bigger, obscure possibilities. “They estimate 45mm died due to starvation and other causes. The economy collapsed. And I could never understand how such a thing could happen.

Hope all goes well… “No one wants to hear about markets anymore this year,” I said to Mara, my wife, editor, critic. “It’s been that sort of year. Exciting, exhausting. And at this point, people are mentally spent, I kind of am too,” I admitted. “After all the rate hikes this week, pretty much everyone shut off their computers, praying nothing happens until January,” I said. “Well then just write

Hope all goes well… Cold but clear. We arrived early, for the March On, uncertain which side to support, a family divided. Liv entered the stadium first, lost amidst West Point’s Corp of 4,500 Cadets, in tight formation, company by company, filling the field at Lincoln Financial Stadium. Jackson marched in second, one of the Naval Academy’s Brigade of 4,500 Midshipmen. The game wouldn’t start for

Hope all goes well… Dusted off a Thanksgiving anecdote from 2015 about not overthinking things (see below). See you next Sunday with full weekend notes. E Week-in-Review (expressed in YoY terms): Mon: Saudi’s deny earlier report of OPEC+ 500k bpd output hike, Beijing records 3 covid deaths over the wknd (first in over 6m) / Shijiazhuang (11m people) increases covid restrictions, Israel CB hikes 50

Anecdote: Speculative trading is hard. Almost impossible as a career. My undergraduate thesis evaluated the non-linearities of stock market rumors of takeovers. Precise words were identified from the Heard on the Street column – on microfiche. I begged the Center for Research in Security Prices for data. No data, no paper, no degree. I devoured practical finance. And Jessie Livermore’s story sober

Hope all goes well… Marcel and I were discussing what an utterly extraordinary period in market history we find ourselves in today. That led to a broader discussion on equilibria, and more specifically, how the concept of balance in markets and perhaps in all things is illusory. It was a discussion he had years ago, in his previous life, as the chief strategist for one of the greatest investors of