weekend notes

Anecdote: “Lights go on and the rats still scatter,” grunted Bulldog, one of the great trading talents. “That tells you bulls remain too scared. Bad news hits the tape, they scramble for safety, puking longs, buying puts,” he growled. “That’s not how markets make a top. Major highs happen after everyone’s turned into an idiot, leveraged limit long into some kind of Madoff ponzi investment thesis t

Hope all goes well… “It’s just chaos,” said Jackson to the reporter. “That’s the only way I can describe it,” continued my oldest. “The first couple of minutes of it, it’s not lacrosse, I wouldn’t describe it that way.” A matchup between Navy and Army is a game unlike any other, the greatest of American rivalries. “I think it’s just mayhem,” he said, three previous battles with Army under his belt

Anecdote: “Came into the year with my team expecting 50 basis points of rate cuts and with the market pricing 125,” said Lone Star, a Top-5 best performing US endowment CIO. “Now the market has priced out 2-3 rate cuts, yet stocks have gone straight up, so something interesting is happening,” he said. “The equity market is sniffing out AI.” I had swung through Texas, taking the temperature. “Earni

Hope all goes well… “Coach said nothing in the locker room about today’s win,” said Jackson, showered up, back in uniform, welt on his neck. It was Navy men’s lacrosse 3rd consecutive win, tied for 1st in the Patriot League ranking. Next Saturday Navy faces Army at West Point. “Coach just told us to expect the most intense week of practice of this season and said we would learn every last thing ab

Hope all goes well… Dusted off an anecdote from 2018 about the profound changes that had only just started to reshape America and therefore the world. Those trends continue to manifest. Back next Sunday with full wknd notes. All the very best, E Week-in-Review: Mon: PBOC sets stronger than exp fixing – pushing against recent renminbi weakness, Japan MOF’s Kanda blames speculators for recent weakne

Hope all goes well… Spring Break arrived. Mara and I met the kids up in the mountains. Dusted off an anecdote from 2018 about trading, investing, and the illusion of certainty. Back after Easter with full wknd notes. All the very best, E Week-in-Review: Mon: Nikkei reports BOJ will end NIRP and YCC at today’s meeting, add’l Ukraine drone strikes on Russian oil refineries pushes oil above recent ra

Anecdote: “China’s inward turn will still allow for years of 2-4% growth,” said the CIO from HK. “Each year the Party will forecast better times ahead. They’ll say we’re weaning ourselves off bad habits.” Perpetual propaganda. “What’s interesting is that countries across Asia are now waking up to this problem and becoming more dynamic,” he said. “Having tried everything else for 35yrs of stagnatio

Hope all goes well… “Unless it’s a one-point game I tune out the score,” said Jackson, taking off his lacrosse jersey, angry welts all over. I’d asked what he was thinking at the end of the first quarter, with #7 ranked John’s Hopkins ahead of Navy 6-1. The battle looked lost at that moment; the ESPN announcers had written them off. “Maybe I should be more aware, maybe it’s a weakness, but I stay

Anecdote: “The last time the debt as a share of GDP was this large was in 1945-1946, at the end of World War II,” wrote Daniel Wilson and Brigid Meisenbacherat from the Economic Research Department at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. I was grinding through my stack, piled high with white papers. “Over the following three decades, the debt-to-GDP ratio steadily fell, reaching roughly 25%