Weekend Reading #54
Photo by Jonathan Simcoe on Unsplash
This is the fifty-fourth weekly edition of our newsletter, Weekend Reading, sent out on Saturday 8th February.
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What we're doing.
Over the past few weeks here at Three Body Capital, there has been an intense focus on documentation. It comes with the territory when you’re launching a fund, a trading platform and a deal network. Let’s face it – drafting, reviewing and signing off docs is a chore, but it is an essential part of the financial services business and something we take extremely seriously. We are very happy to say that the bulk of the heavy lifting has been done, and we are almost ready to conclude this part of the process.
After a year of being in business, our trading platform is up and running. Our private deal platform is about to launch. And our hedge fund will soon follow. If you’re a professional investor, we should talk.
What we're reading.
We’re following the evolution of the Coronavirus with interest as well as some trepidation. We don’t trust the statistics, we don’t trust the media to report it accurately, and we sure as heck have no real assurance that it is contained. The narrative changes every day. Perhaps it’s symptomatic of the world we live in that none of us has any idea about what information we can rely on? Aside from the human tragedy, from a political perspective it’s fascinating to watch what is unfolding. It’s the type of disaster that leads many to speculate whether it’s a seminal event for the party (there have been many of these, apparently). We have no idea, but we have monitored with fascination the tragic story of doctor, Li Wenliang. Li was the whistleblower who warned of the virus on 30th December 2019. He was told by police to “stop making false comments”. Sadly, Li died of the virus this week after being infected while treating patients. Chinese social media platform WeChat has lit up with tributes to him in what seems to be criticism of the government in the most censored media landscape on earth.
“The passive movement has spawned its antithesis. Institutional investors are rushing headlong into private markets, especially into venture capital, private equity and private debt. The signs are everywhere. A large and growing share of assets allocated by big pension funds, endowments and sovereign-wealth funds is going into private markets.” So says The Economist. If you're interested in the rise of private markets (we certainly are), this is a must read.
We also enjoyed this piece from Li Jin a16z. More than a decade ago, Wired editor Kevin Kelly wrote a prophetic essay called “1,000 True Fans”, predicting that the internet would allow creatives and entrepreneurs to make a living from their passions. He argued that creators need only engage a modest base of “true fans” to the tune of $100 per fan, per year. Jin suggests taking this idea further. He reckons that the global adoption of influencer platforms like Facebook and YouTube has shifted the threshold for success. We now live in the ear of “100 True Fans” paying $1,000 a year. In other words, it’s now possible to make more money off fewer fans.
As much as we love learning from smart writers of nonfiction, this week we’ve been trying to exercise our right brains by switching off from the usual articles and podcasts, and focusing on fiction in hardback form. Books we’ve enjoyed include:
The House Of Silk – the first book to be officially endorsed by the Conan Doyle Estate, this adds to the unofficial Sherlock Holmes canon in fun and surprising ways. Going into this, we were sceptical that another author – even one as talented as Anthony Horowitz – could deliver. It was nice to be proven wrong.
A Confederacy of Dunces – a picaresque novel by American novelist John Kennedy Toole. When published in 1980 the book became a cult classic, then later, a mainstream success, earning Toole a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1981. It would never have been published if Toole's mother had not found a smeared carbon copy of the manuscript left in the house following his suicide at 31. She was persistent and tried several different publishers, to no avail. The moral of the story is that there is nothing and nobody more powerful than a mother on a mission.
Stranger To Nothing – a wonderful collection of poems by the late Philip Levine. We don’t read tonnes of poetry, despite the fact it’s a literary form that’s incredibly well adapted to the frenetic pace of modern life. This book reminded us of what we’re missing, and contains perhaps our all-time favourite poem, The Simple Truth:
“Some things you know all your life.
They are so simple and true
they must be said without elegance, meter and rhyme,
they must be laid on the table beside the salt shaker,
the glass of water, the absence of light gathering
in the shadows of picture frames, they must be
naked and alone, they must stand for themselves.”
Which begs the question, what is your truth? What have you known all your life, that has not changed, and will not change? “The simple truth” is different for all of us.
What we're watching.
Big news! Curb Your Enthusiasm is back with a tenth season! For those of you who haven't come across this show, it is required viewing. “Curb” (as it’s affectionately known by its army of fans) is an American comedy TV series created by Larry David, who stars as a fictionalised version of himself. The show follows Larry in his life as a semi-retired television writer and producer in LA. The cool thing about it is that each episode is only lightly scripted – dialogue is improvised by the actors (a technique known as "retroscripting"). Curb revels in the minutiae of daily social life, and each episode revolves around Larry’s catastrophic faux pas and inability to conform to social conventions. It’s painful to watch at times – and all the more brilliant for it.
We were a bit confused when tuning into Top Boy. This show has been around for yonks, and yet it seems so rich from a cinematic perspective. That’s because it’s been rebooted by Netflix, with a massive budget. Some of the actors in this show are unbelievably talented, and the setup is brilliantly simple and effective – two seasoned drug dealers return to the gritty streets of London, but their pursuit of money and power is threatened by a young and ruthless hustler. It really does lift the lid on gangster culture in London, which is both gripping and unsettling in equal measure.
We need to plan a summer trip to this place. The Wave is an inland-surfing venue where everyone can surf on consistent waves every day of the year. It's the first destination of its kind in England and it's Wavegarden technology provides over 1,000 waves an hour. One hour here provides as many rideable waves as eight hours in the sea. The fact that none of us can actually surf is a mere detail!