I want to show you what ‘mobilizing narrative support’ looks like, as measured by our revolutionary Perscient technology and as understood by someone who has spent the past 35 years studying, writing and teaching about this stuff.
If Barbara Tuchman were alive she would be adding another chapter to her classic The March of Folly.
I am fascinated to see what narratives spring forth from this sad and tragic failure to accomplish anything other than leave behind a string of broken promises.
Z.
‘‘Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other, and scarce in that; for it is true that we may give advice, but we cannot give conduct.” said another Ben
T.C.
— Ben Hunt | August 18, 2021|
With the jobs report today showing 4% year-over-year wage inflation and 0.4% month-over-month wage inflation, it seems like a good day to repost this note. Personally, I’m delighted that wages continue to rise at a rapid clip. But if you think that any of this happens in a vacuum, if you think that employers aren’t preserving their margins by raising prices more than they’re raising wages … you’re living in a fantasy world.
This is what a wage/price inflation spiral looks like.
— Ben Hunt | August 6, 2021|
So that’s where we are in our local real estate market – low demand, low supply, high price expectations – and my sense is that this is where we are in lots of markets … not just CT residential real estate. Maybe it’s just the summer doldrums, I dunno. Maybe I’m just taking my local experience as more meaningful than it is. I’d be really interested to hear if anyone is seeing or experiencing the same, either in RE or anywhere else.
Because this is how stagflation happens.
Seasonality is so tough to parse, especially against pandemic-affected seasonality, but it sure seems like inventory got legitimately bought down in Q4/Q1, after which brokers sold that experience and y-o-y % changes to drive a corresponding increase in supply.
Also no idea wtf is going on in multi-family / condo land around here, but definitely seems distinct from the single-family experience.
— Ben Hunt | July 28, 2021|
Epsilon Theory may have gotten its formal start in 2013, but the soft launch took place in 1991. That’s when my partner Ben finished his doctoral work at <lifts nose slightly> a school up in Cambridge. His work there (and his 1997 book, Getting to War) focused on how news could be used to predict the likelihood of war. It also analyzed how news was used by institutions and individuals to foment an appetite for and belief in the necessity of war, which is related to but not the same as the ability to use that news for predictions.
So yes, we were interested to read about Project Cassandra, a collaboration between German academics and military leaders to quantify the risk of conflicts using…literature. The Guardian covers it here in what I think is a very worthwhile read.
The project is really interesting. It confirms, or at least shares, many of the core principles of our Narrative Machine project. Not least among them is the recognition that oft-mined sentiment possesses a fraction of the influence of memes with subjective power that can only be identified objectively through words and phrases of meaning. Or the observation of identifiable, recurring story archetypes.
Leaving aside that we focus on different universes of creative output, our projects DO differ in one respect. The Cassandra Project appears to place great emphasis on the ability to quantify the popular and critical acclaim of a fictional literary work. For example, more popular, more viral, more well-regarded work would have different influence, which is a perfectly sensible hypothesis.
Because we focus on a larger and more frequent dataset of news, blogs, press releases and transcripts, we get to do two different things: first, instead of estimating how much of an audience has heard an idea and how much that idea has changed their minds, we can more easily observe how much a specific memetic idea has reproduced within the dataset over time.
Second, because our dataset includes items which are nominally news / non-fiction content, we can observe the extent to which explicit and implicit opinion language is being deployed, which also provides a window into the narrative-shaping efforts of Common Knowledge missionaries.
Two different approaches to a similar problem. I prefer ours, because I feel more confident saying that an idea has reproductive legs by observing how it changes the language other people use to discuss it, and because knowing some of the intentions of powerful institutions and influential individuals is an indispensable part of any effort to quantify the potential effects of narrative.
But there are absolutely features of the zeitgeist which will only manifest in the arts, in literature, and in the groanings and yearnings of those who make the songs. For that reason alone, we think the Germans have the right of it here in the way that the Scots did before. It’s a very cool project.
Let me make the songs of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws.
Andrew Fletcher, Commissioner of the Old Parliament of Scotland (1703)
— Rusty Guinn | July 8, 2021 | 12:32 pm
The politicization of inflation into a partisan “There Is No Inflation!” TM narrative by the nudgers and mandarins on the left is really depressing.
The politicization of inflation into a partisan “Biden Inflation!” TM narrative by the clowns and raccoons on the right is really depressing.
It’s really depressing because it makes it impossible for me to say anything on inflation without getting lumped into an insane partisan box. It’s an entirely constructed and false framing of the issue, and I’m just so freakin’ weary of it.
We call this political auto-tuning. We call this a political shock collar.
It’s the go-to move of incumbents in a two-party system with high-peaked bimodal electorate preferences. THIS is why there are no successful centrist politicians. THIS is why there are no stable centrist policies. THIS is why we can’t have nice things.
THIS is why I believe that top-down societal change is impossible, but instead must emerge from the bottom-up through an authentic social movement of Make/Protect/Teach.
Watch from a distance if you like, but when you’re ready … join us.
— Ben Hunt | July 2, 2021 | 11:09 am
The cure for the cancer of gun culture and police culture is not to be found in reform laws around guns and police, but in reform ideas around culture, ideas that create a new dimension of American society that rejects LARPing and LARPers alike.
Inflation
What made Bitcoin special is nearly lost, and what remains is a false and constructed narrative that exists in service to Wall Street and Washington rather than in resistance.
The Bitcoin narrative must be renewed. And that will change everything.
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Crypto
Recent Notes
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I want to show you what ‘mobilizing narrative support’ looks like, as measured by our revolutionary Perscient technology and as understood by someone who has spent the past 35 years studying, writing and teaching about this stuff.
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You’re not a racist.
So don’t let racists use your story to fuel theirs.
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In this episode of The Intentional Investor, Matt Zeigler sits down with Andrew Cohen, a former market maker at Bernie Madoff’s firm whose life took a dramatic turn when the largest Ponzi scheme in history unraveled. But this isn’t just a story about scandal—it’s about resilience, reinvention, and redefining success on your own terms.
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The death of risk happened with a whimper, not a bang. Not because the market blew up, but because of an icy truth: safe havens ain’t safe.
If you don’t trust the meaning of risk-free, you can’t trust the meaning of risk, and we have built everything on the meaning of risk.
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In this captivating episode of The Intentional Investor, Matt Zeigler sits down with Kris Abdelmessih, the mind behind Moontower. From his immigrant family upbringing in New Jersey to becoming a seasoned market maker who covered virtually every trading pit imaginable, Kris shares his fascinating journey through the financial world. Learn how key mentors, family influences, and pivotal life moments shaped his path from trading floors to becoming a respected financial writer.
Our True Enemy Has Yet to Reveal Himself
It’s not the tariffs. It’s not the recession. These are just the catalysts through which the true enemy shows himself.
The true enemy is the over-financialization of the US Treasury market, and its catalyst is the diminishment of the full faith and credit of the United States.
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Locker Room Talk
Who’s to blame when a chosen son is drafted 144th overall?
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We’ve Tried Nothing and We’re All Out of Ideas
When you’re defending the indefensible, you have to create a symbol powerful enough to keep the masses in line.
“I voted for this” is one of the few capable of sustaining support for policy this extreme.
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Join Matt Zeigler on The Intentional Investor podcast as he interviews Daryl Fairweather, Chief Economist at Redfin and author of the new book “Hate the Game: Economic Cheat Codes for Life, Love, and Work.” In this engaging conversation, Daryl shares her journey from MIT to the University of Chicago, her experiences navigating corporate America, and how she applies economic principles to everyday life decisions. With her unique background spanning academia, tech, and real estate, Daryl offers fascinating insights on using economic frameworks to understand human behavior and make better decisions.
Do you know Bryan Moore? Host of the Active Advisor podcast at Harbor Capital, former trading floor veteran who’s built ETF desks from scratch at major firms like Morgan Stanley, RBC, and WisdomTree, and one of the most thoughtful voices on how active ETFs are reshaping the investment landscape.
If not, allow me to introduce you. Bryan has spent over two decades in the trenches of financial markets – from trading futures in the Chicago pits to building international ETF operations to educating institutional clients about the evolution from passive indexing to smart beta to active management. I wanted to connect with him because he embodies something I value deeply: the ability to synthesize complex market knowledge with genuine curiosity about human behavior and psychology.
Our conversation is LIVE now on the Epsilon Theory YouTube Channel (and this Cultish Creative Playlist). Listen and you’ll hear how a colorblind kid from Virginia who joined the military became one of the most connected voices in ETF education, why he drives in silence to cultivate quiet thinking time, and his legendary Vatican trade story.’
Read more at cultishcreative.com
Jared Dillian came on Just Press Record to discuss his excellent new book, Rule 62: Meditations on Success and Spirituality – and he surprised me with this statement:
“You can teach pretty much anything in writing, except for two things: voice and imagination. You either have it or you don’t.”
But what if you don’t realize if you have it or not yet?
I’m only asking because I’ve felt this way before. More than once. In more than one domain too (I remember feeling this with writing music and writing words, very distinctly!).
So what is voice?