weekend notes

Hope all goes well… “We’re hopeful it will land in a place where it won’t harm anyone,” said Lloyd Austin. “Hopefully in the ocean, or someplace like that,” added the US Defense Secretary, drifting off, thinking about Elon Musk’s Saturday Night Live debut like everyone else, and Dogecoin’s recent 1,000% stratospheric rise in anticipation of tonight’s show. And somewhere high above, China’s 18-ton

How this inflation plays out will be different from anything that has come before it. It is always so. Naturally, some aspects will resemble the past. This inflation will inevitably be volatile, such periods of price changes typically are. And in the early stages, nearly everyone will persuade themselves that it is transitory. In the late stages, those same people will conclude that it is permanen

Hope all goes well… “No one has really traded inflation,” bellowed Biggie Too, chief global strategist for one of Wall Street’s mightiest Too Big To Fail affairs. “We don’t know the psychological impact on macro policy and the markets of a genuine inflation.” Behind Biggie, so many screens, flashing futures. “Copper, iron ore, tin, steel,” barked Biggie. “Lumber, corn, soybeans,” he said, lifting

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

“By shining light on this, we’ll draw people’s focus,” said Marcel, my head of research. “More accurate electricity generation and consumption data will naturally come to us – you’ll see. And with clean data, industry will push for faster progress.” His idea was sparked when I shared info from my network about a Brazilian company that pioneered private carbon-offset-credit tokenization. We w

Hope all goes well… “What happened with Dogecoin Dad?” asked Jackson on FaceTime. I smiled. Dogecoin jumped from $0.06 to $0.47 – a 7.8x weekly jump to a $60bln+ market cap. “It’s totally insane,” he said Friday night, back from lacrosse practice, sitting down to study, life as a plebe. “Are your buddies trading crypto now?” I asked. “One supposedly made a million on Dogecoin with his stimul

“Mastering others is strength,” wrote Lao Tzu in 500 BC, “Mastering yourself is true power.” So much has changed in the centuries since, while we have not, which is why such insights are eternal. Much is now written of modern China’s mastery over its citizens. No doubt this is true. And Beijing’s dominance is often seen as a source of strength. Combined with the nation’s ambition, hard work, and s

Hope all goes well… “We took some kind of weird personality test at school,” said Teddy, riding shotgun, not quite 16. “Let me guess, it confirmed you’re seriously boring,” I said – that’s how we roll. “Nope. Much worse. It asked all these questions, then gave a summary of who you are. And I was like, holy crap, that is exactly who I am,” he said, amazed. “Well, you wear your emotions on you

Hope all goes well… Dusted off an anecdote from 2016 that explores the meaning of money. It is worth considering after a quarter in which the US dollar declined by more than 50% versus the dominant digital assets and the S&P 500 closed at an all-time high (see below). See you next Sunday with full weekend notes. All the best, E Week-in-Review (expressed in YoY terms): Mon: Ever Given refloated