Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can’t Lose
What to DO when Things Fall Apart. How to make your way in a fallen world, where the electorate is polarized, the market is monolithic, and everyone seems to have lost their damn minds.
It’s not an Answer. It’s a Process.
Notes from the Diamond #2: Until the Truth Comes Out
Part 2 of a multi-part series that seeks to enhance readers’ deployment of both human and financial capital through the exploration of parallels between money management and professional baseball.
Things Fall Apart (Part 1)
Part 1 of a three-part series on what it means to have a polarized electorate and a monolithic market. Today’s note: the Age of Ridiculousness and the decline and fall of the American Empire.
Things Fall Apart (Part 2)
Part 2 of a three-part series on what it means to have a polarized electorate and a monolithic market. Today’s note: How do things fall apart in a monolithic market? Not with a bang but a whimper.
Deadly. Holy. Rough. Immediate.
It’s hard to be larger than life in a smaller than life world. It’s hard to be authentic in your art without being artificial. Good theatre does just that. We’re hoping to do the same in Epsilon Theory.
There is a huge gap in the narrative and language used to describe private equity and hedge funds. Even when it is correct, it calls for caution in our discussions and decision-making.
The Ben Sasse cartoon does not match the Ben Sasse life, and that’s a politically existential problem here in the widening gyre.
The thing is, Butch, right now you got ability. But painful as it may be, ability don’t last. You came close but you never made it. And if you were gonna make it, you would have made it before now.
Two emails from soldiers, both asking questions that I can’t answer alone. We need a pack.
Sometimes the meanings of words change. Sometimes that doesn’t mean anything. Sometimes it does.
A brief selection of stories from my daily news routine that made me wonder: “Why am I reading this now?”
When it comes to robo-advisors, there is a wide gulf between common knowledge within the industry and without. I’m not sure what that means yet, but it means something.
The growing strength and coherence of Narrative Machine visualizations show the creation of powerful common knowledge around inflation, where everyone knows that everyone knows that inflation is rearing its very ugly head.
Westworld (1973) “Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is …
Your time horizon is not infinite. Your institution’s time horizon is not infinite.
The purpose of meme and narrative is getting us to sit down and shut up. In the investment committee room, no kind of meme does this more effectively – and more counterproductively, than the risk meme.
Your autonomy of mind and spirit cannot be taken away by the State, the Oligarchy or the Mob. But you can give it away. Don’t.
il Giornale (August 3, 2012) I wrote “Finest Worksong” in September, 2014 (reprinted below). Here’s the money quote: At some point in the not so distant future there will be an anti-Euro realigning election in Italy. And that will wake the Red King. And here’s the money chart that is driving all of this. Source: Bloomberg …
Responding to a reader query about the relationship between risk and return, and whether its theoretical foundation is still solid.
A cat may look on a king, ye know! — Proverbs and Epigrams of John Heywood (1562) Ben’s note: I wrote The Red King in July of 2014. Then and now, there is only one question that matters for what happens in Europe – does Mario Draghi postpone the inevitable day of reckoning over the politically …
Hieronymus Bosch, “The Conjurer” (between 1496 – 1520) On October 4, 2018, Bloomberg BusinessWeek published a story claiming that Chinese hackers were able to “infiltrate America’s top companies” by planting a spy microchip “not much bigger than a grain of rice” on the motherboards of Supermicro servers. The word “attack” is used 30 times in …
Whenever something is surprisingly geometric, it’s probably a good idea to take a step back and ask why. And even when we find some supporting truths, it’s a good idea to keep asking.
Behold, the Walmartization of Advice. It will lead to better outcomes for many investors. AND it will lead to worse outcomes for some.
The Russians managed their surveillance state with banal thugs. We’re building our own surveillance state in America and throughout the West, managed not by thugs but by our own version of banal evil – the douche bro.
We’ve reached a new height (depth, really) of what I call “mirror engagement” on social media. If you don’t see yourself in the Missionary you follow, you get mad. How dare you not reflect my views!