weekend notes

Hope all goes well… The principal is a germophobe and instructed her 400 8th graders to “clean their sweaty, filthy hands” with disinfectant wipes before shaking hers on stage. The graduation ceremony’s low point was the 14yr old male soloist, hitting peak puberty, voice cracking, uncontrollable. Poor fella. Olivia teetered across the stage in her newly purchased platforms, narrowly avoiding a fac

Hope all goes well… “How many do you think will hatch Daddy?” asked Charlie, buckled in the back seat. He’d discovered a prehistoric snapping turtle laying eggs in our yard. We collected all 27, placed them in an incubator. “Not sure little man, depends on how many were fertilized.” He nodded, processed. “So how exactly do turtles fertilize eggs?” he asked. And seeing an early opportunity to put o

Hope all goes well… Every so often I depart from the usual weekend notes format to share a particularly thought-provoking piece of our internal research. Today’s is titled, “Considerations on Rising Inflation” [click here to view the thought piece]. Lindsay Politi authored it. She spent the first 15yrs of her career building a $10bln TIPS business for Wellington where she was a consistent top quin

Hope all goes well… “Dad, you won’t believe what just happened!” cried Charlie, running into the house, finding me writing, in need of an opening paragraph. “Two hawks were fighting in the sky and one dropped a huge frog that landed right at our feet!” Mara and I had kicked them all out of the house. “It had a dislocated shoulder, so we put him in the pond, but then his heart stopped. He was proba

Hope all goes well… Dusted off an anecdote about the point of this ride (see below). Back next Sunday with full weekend notes. Week-in-Review (expressed in YoY terms): Mon: China/US announce trade war détente,   Japanese exports +5.7 to +7.8% (imports +6.5 to +5.9%), Iran rejects 12 new US demands for new nuclear treaty, Turkish lira -2% (10yr bonds +35bps to 15.00%), Italy’s Five Star and League

Hope all goes well… “Teddy was talking in his sleep again,” said Charlie, stumbling into the kitchen, eyes bloodshot. “He kept saying, ‘That was such a great idea, I should’ve done it.’” I felt Teddy’s pain, haunted by that same recurring nightmare; the unavoidable consequence of 28yrs trading markets. “But I didn’t want to wake him up even though my mouth was really dry, and figured if I got a dr

Hope all goes well… “It’s no longer the case that the US will simply just protect us. Rather, Europe needs to take its fate into its own hands, that’s the task of the future,” said Chancellor Merkel. “Washington has lost vigor, and because of it, in the long term, influence,” said Jean-Claude Junker. “It is dangerous and devastating that the US is challenging the WTO’s fundamental guiding pr

Hope all goes well… “What are you going to focus on in today’s game?” I asked. “Driving hard to the inside, picking my spots, making goals,” answered Jackson. He was behind the wheel, a full license just months away now. “What are your coaches telling you to focus on?” I asked. “Driving hard to the inside, picking my spots, making goals,” he said, smiling. “I feel like I’ve been too tentative the

Hope all goes well… “His legacy is more than the beautiful works of art that hang on walls across the world,” said the priest. Paul’s wife Tamie sat up front, his children, grandchildren. We filled the pews. Our lives unfinished works, his influence touching each in untold ways. “And that is not to diminish his substantial contribution to the art world.” The church was 12th century, lost in time,