All Epsilon Theory Content
Everything we have published at Epsilon Theory since 2013, an archive of more than 1,000 evergreen notes.
Market outcomes are always overdetermined, which is a $10 word that means if you added up all of the likely causes and their likely percentage contribution to the outcome you would get a number way above 100%.
Nowhere is this more true than the price of oil.
Everyone has a plan until they get hit in the mouth. – Mike Tyson My long-term strategy turned into a 12-hour strategy. – “Survivor” contestant…
Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of few; and number not…
People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don’t realize how hard it is to put up with all the…
The strong do what they can, while the weak suffer what they must. — Thucydides, “The History of the Peloponnesian War” (395 BC) Global growth…
Everything under the sun is in chaos. The situation is excellent. – Mao Zedong (1893 – 1976) Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown. – Chinatown (1974)…
I’ll have a new full-length Epsilon Theory note out early next week (“Going Gray”), but wanted to pass along two background points. First, a replay…
Take your instinct by the reinsYou’d better best to rearrangeWhat we want and what we needHas been confused, been confused– REM, “Finest Worksong” (1987) The…
Two items for the mid-week. First, an invitation to attend a Salient Webinar I’ll be presenting next Thursday, September 18th at 2pm ET, titled: “The Game…
– Actual conversation as I left a client meeting with a Salient colleague last Friday and we checked our phones… Colleague: Wow, looks like the…
If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. ― Confucius, “The Analects of Confucius” (551 – 479 BC)…
Something on the lighter side from Epsilon Theory today, as summer winds downs here in the last week of August. Most of us have seen videos galore…
You know what I’ve noticed? Nobody panics when things go “according to plan”. Even if the plan is horrifying. If, tomorrow, I tell the press…
From an Epsilon Theory perspective, the scariest, most market risk-creating event of the past 48 hours had nothing to do with Iraq, nothing to do…
I shared a dark suspicion that the life we were leading was a lost cause, that we were all actors, kidding ourselves along on a…
You think you’re alone until you realize you’re in it. Now fear is here to stay. Love is here for a visit. – Elvis Costello,…
[Jeremiah and Bear Claw hunt elk] Jeremiah: Wind’s right, but he’ll just run soon as we step out of these trees. Bear Claw: Trick to…
“He’s dreaming now,” said Tweedledee, “and what do you think he’s dreaming about?” Alice said, “Nobody can guess that.” “Why, about you!” Tweedledee exclaimed, clapping…
There were no donkeys in Guizhou until an eccentric took one there by boat; but finding no use for it he set it loose in…
Today, however, the Chinese State faces two existential threats, each stemming from or accelerated by the Great Recession and Western policy responses to that crisis of market confidence.
First, QE and other “emergency” Western monetary policies of the past five years threaten the grand political unification of Deng Xiaoping from without.
Second, massive wealth inequality and concentration driven largely by those same monetary policies threaten it from within.