weekend notes

Hope all goes well… “Biggie’s bearish and annoying, ignored,” bellowed Biggie Too, 3rd person. “That’s how the crowd treats Biggie when these cycles get started, when stocks are still at their highs and Biggie turns bearish,” said the chief global strategist for one of Wall Street’s too-big-to-fail affairs, one of only a few such cats to call this market right. “Biggie’s bearish and they congratul

The Sun fuses 600 million tons of hydrogen into helium each second to produce the outward pressure required to offset its gravity. All stable stars live in this state of hydrostatic equilibrium. When their fuel is eventually expended, gravity prevails, and they collapse into themselves, achieving new equilibriums governed by quantum law. Small stars like our Sun become white dwarfs. Larger ones be

Hope all goes well… We fielded so many calls this week on both UST and Coinbase that we decided to publish our analysis/perspective in a market note [click here]. The synopsis: Everyone is asking us. Is stablecoin a systemic risk? No. Are assets at Coinbase secure? Yes. Digital assets are demonstrating resiliency. But market pressures also demand accelerated regulatory clarity. We see regulatory p

Anecdote: “The pandemic catapulted us into a new policy paradigm,” I said. The allocator had asked for a tight explanation of what to expect from markets, policy, politics. “Monetary policy dominance ended in the pandemic, replaced by fiscal policy dominance,” I said. “So far, monetary/fiscal have been cojoined; the Fed buying bonds to finance government deficits. This shifted us to a higher and m

Hope all goes well… “For as long as we’ve been trading, every time stocks fell hard, you knew they’d step in and cut rates,” said the CIO, describing the Fed Put. “But with the kind of inflation we’re seeing now, there’s no way the Fed can cut rates just because stocks fall,” he said. “Even if the S&P were to puke 25% in a week or two, the best you could hope for from the Fed is some kind of s

The more you think about money, the less it makes sense. That is why the topic is so alluring for the masochists amongst us, attempting to solve the unsolvable, climb the unclimbable, conquer the unconquerable. We engineer thought experiments and mental models in the hope of gaining a glimpse of some truth, the scent of something real, a money-making opportunity. Japan provides an enigma to explor

Hope all goes well… “Are you asking what allocation I think our plan should make, or what percentage of my net worth I’ve invested?” asked so many of the largest money managers in Asia and Australia that I lost count. “I’m asking what percentage of your personal wealth you have allocated to digital assets,” I would respond, clarifying, city-to-city, back-to-back meetings. Their answers ranged from

Hope all goes well… “So let me tell you how this goes,” said the senior mid-fielder to Jackson the night before the Army/Navy lacrosse game. “The first ten minutes is not lacrosse, it’s not even football, it’s just this insanely intense period with everyone trying to take one another out,” he continued, mentoring my son. “Ten minutes in, one team calls a timeout, both coaches calm everyone down, a

Mara: “Maybe write something about how full life is,” said Mara, Saturday evening. I was racing to catch a flight to Singapore after the Army/Navy game, knowing I’d be reading/writing all-night. The week had been insane, they all are these days. Markets, business, deals, family, friends. The pressure to publish, my burden, a blessing. It’s all good, great in fact. “Life won’t always be this full,