Epsilon Theory In Brief
Daily short-form pieces for those without the time (or attention span) for classic Epsilon Theory notes. Look out for regular features like the subscriber mailbag and guest contributions from within the Epsilon Theory network.
If you’re like me, you’ve been put off from digging deeper into DeFi by the terrible signal-to-noise ratio of anything crypto-related on the interwebs. That’s why I found this DeFi primer (using Maker DAO as a specific example) by ET contributor and banking analyst Marc Rubinstein to be so fantastic.
The future of remote work after the pandemic ends has been a part of the zeitgeist for more than a year.
Now it IS the zeitgeist. It is also a narrative battlefield being actively conflated with a half dozen other major social and policy topics.
What is Deadly Theatre?
It’s corporate logos for Pride Month. It’s speaking gigs for Deborah Birx. It’s the cover up for Leon Black.
#BITFD
Lemonade (LMND) isn’t just an insurance company. No, no … they’re an AI Company! ™.
Plus Chamath is up to his old tricks.
I hate raccoons.
Mortgages are pretty standard fare in the world of finance, but the American version is special: it grants its user a free option to refinance if they can get a cheaper rate elsewhere.
Every lender thinks they can thrive in this market. But every lender can’t be right.
As a non-American there are many things I don’t understand about America.
Most of all though, I don’t understand the most American of products: the 30-year fixed-rate fully prepayable mortgage.
The Colonial Pipeline embarrassment will accelerate the US gov’t’s efforts to control and co-opt crypto.
Binance, Kraken, BitMEX … they’re all squarely in the wrathful gaze of the Eye of Sauron now.
Over the past four quarters, the United States has generated more wage inflation than at any point over the past 40 years.
This is not an anomaly. This is not a single quarter aberration. A wage-price inflation cycle is here.
I’m not predicting. I’m observing.
A Honda Accord cost $12,000 in 1990 and it costs $25,000 now.
A Mustang was $9,000 and now it’s $27,000.
The BLS has new car prices close to unchanged over the past 30 years.
ET contributor Brent Donnelly tries to wrap his brain around hedonic adjustments to CPI.
Our weekly digest on what we’re working on …
Including this article from the WSJ: Millions Are Unemployed. Why Can’t Companies Find Workers?
I dunno, if only there were some mechanism by which companies could entice people to work for them. Weird.
Bitcoin has been subverted by the neutering machine of Wall Street and the regulatory panopticon of the US Treasury Dept.
What remains is a constructed narrative that exists in service to Wall Street and Washington rather than in resistance.
What do investment banks do, and why are European investment banks so bad at doing it?
Great piece by new ET contributor Marc Rubinstein!
ET contributor Brent Donnelly gives a crash course in Market Profile analysis and applies it to Bitcoin since the Coinbase IPO.
Jonathan Plotkin is a longtime ET reader and brilliant cartoonist. For years he’s been sending Ben illustrations inspired by our notes and we’ve been dying…
Jonathan Plotkin is a longtime ET reader and brilliant cartoonist. For years he’s been sending Ben illustrations inspired by our notes and we’ve been dying…
When we talk about and plan for inflation in our businesses and portfolios, we are usually focused on direction and magnitude. We also usually abstract away from price volatility.
We shouldn’t.
How do we change the world? Not through corporations and political parties from the top-down, but through free-thinking citizens from the bottom-up. Not as an alienated flock, but as a cooperative pack. Not with abstractions and transactions, but with making, protecting and teaching.
Let’s gooooooo!
Three blow-ups in three months: Archegos, Greensill, and Melvin Capital.
What do they have in common? Insane leverage employed to maximize private gain while socializing potential losses.
ET contributor Brent Donnelly talks with Howard Marks about why traditional value investing is likely permanently impaired as a strategy and why Growth vs. Value is a false dichotomy. Boomshakalaka!
We’re going to Pack-source a slate of investment strategies for an inflationary world. Here are five tentpoles to organize and support that effort.