Weekend Reading #156

Photo by Eléonore Kemmel on Unsplash

This is the hundred-and-fiftieth-sixth weekly edition of our newsletter, Weekend Reading, sent out on Saturday 19th February 2022.

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What we're thinking.

As the chorus of confusion gets louder, the challenge for everyone is to take a view and keep calm in the face of sizeable perturbations around the world. It is too easy to get sucked into the constant flipflopping that the media is inclined to supply: is Russia going to invade Ukraine? Or not? They are? They aren’t? Is the Fed going to hike rates fast? Or slow? Sooner, or later? Quantitative tightening? 

What is evident from the way the markets are moving is that no one is taking a firm view either way, seemingly reacting to the headlines on a day by day basis: on one hand, the tendency to “buy the dip”, ingrained in market participants’ consciousness for almost a decade now (“only paper hands sell the dips”) - and not only in the world of crypto, but stocks, too – persists, making it very hard for anyone to stand bearish when it’s been more than a decade of “up only”; on the other, the facts lie before us: inflation is high, it clearly hasn’t been transitory (UK inflation just came in +5.5% YoY for the month, although our local kebab store has raised their meal deal price from £6 to £6.50 so they’ve clearly taken a different view!), and the impact on the perceived wealth of most individuals, notwithstanding furlough/benefit payments and the lifestyle changes that have come in the past 2 years, is material. 

Milton Friedman’s famous line that “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon” comes to mind, although one would clearly question whether the solutions that we seek are to be found in the guidebooks of monetary policy. A string that is taut is easily affected by adjustments at one end; one that is loose – much less so. Likewise, we are facing inflationary pressure in a world where loose monetary policy persists, especially in the form of abundant liquidity. One can only wonder if the reality of inflation – for the boss of the kebab shop, for the everyday men and women – is less tethered to the overnight reference rate set by a central bank than we believe it to be, especially when transmission is “loose”. 

Because the risk here is that inflation, while a monetary phenomenon, is becoming a political issue. And when politicians step in, it’s about being seen to have taken action. And we’re at a precipice where the wrong actions could tip a finely balanced equilibrium into something much less pleasant. 

And the task at hand is piecing together all the news we’re seeing and going one level down to ask the question we’ve always needed to ask: “Why am I seeing this now?” 

On the other side of the world, an unfortunate (but not unexpected at all) development took place in China, where the government published guidelines to protect the service industry and provide support to merchants hit by Covid. For those interested in reading the official document (in mandarin), link is here. One of the measures described was to direct online delivery platforms to offer discounts to restaurants operating in mid-high Covid risk areas. Consequently, Meituan Dianping traded -15% in Hong Kong as of Friday’s close.  
 

What we're reading. 

This week, I found some time to make a start on “Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping our Future”. It is fascinating to read about the world's richest man and his childhood and upbringing. The background is truly a remarkable story where the personal tale of Musk’s life comes with all the trappings one associates with a great, drama-filled story. He was a freakishly bright kid who was bullied brutally at school and abused by his father. Amid these rough conditions, and the violence of apartheid South Africa, Musk still thrived academically and attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he paid his own way through school by turning his house into a club and throwing massive parties. Can't wait to get stuck into it some more. DK 
 

What we're watching.

Louis Theroux is back on our screens this week and, if you're a fan, his latest release, walking the well-trodden path of American white nationalism, is Louis back to his best. In Forbidden America, Louis goes in search of the latest incarnation of the American far right: a political movement born out of the internet and increasingly making its presence felt on the political stage. And, in typical style, he doesn't do much of the talking, simply pointing the camera in the right direction and asking enough leading questions, as his subjects portray themselves as they really are. That's the beauty of good journalism – to not tell the truth and ram it down our throats but, rather, to expose it, and there are few better in television documentary journalism than Louis for simply letting these extraordinary stories and people tell us what they believe, and what they plan to do with those beliefs. As is so often the case with these shows, they're hugely entertaining and greatly concerning. A worthwhile watch and it's nice to have Louis back doing what he does best. EJP

Half term this week for many of us, so I took the opportunity of making a day of it for the family and popped down to the local Everyman cinema to watch Universal Pictures latest edition, "Sing 2”. The star-studded line-up did not disappoint. I can see why this movie became the highest grossing animated production of 2021. Sequels can usually be a let-down, but this one certainly isn't... I would go as far as to say it's doubly as good as the first. A must watch with the family. DK 

On to the more serious stuff in the Kemp household, we indulged in Sky’s latest release, “The Fear Index”. Josh Hartnett stars in this fast four-part limited series as Dr Alex Hoffman, a technology genius who experiences a waking nightmare of the worst 24 hours of his life. He is launching VIXAL-4 to investors - an AI-driven system that exploits fear in the financial markets and operates at lightning speed to make big returns. What follows is a terrifying journey through the worst 24 hours of Alex’s life - cutting across reality, memory and paranoid fantasy, forcing him to question everything he sees with his own eyes. After more unexplained occurrences, Alex becomes convinced he’s being framed. But as secrets surface from his past, will anyone believe that he isn’t just losing his mind? DK 

The Book of Bobba Fett first dropped on Disney+ back in late December but it wasn’t until more recently on February 9th that the last of the 7 episodes in the mini-series finally concluded. With that in mind, I decided to hold myself back and wait so I could watch all over one weekend. As an avid Star Wars fan who has fond memories watching the films at home growing up (as many of you know with the original ones being “before my time”), it was difficult, especially when trying to avoid spoilers and memes, but what a show it was. It perfectly ties together many aspects and lore of the films as well as the more recent Mandalorian series that I enjoyed over lockdown. If you haven’t seen it already, it's well worth a watch and I can’t wait for the next bit of Star Wars content on either Disney+ or on the big screen. HS

What we're listening to.

Last Saturday, I had the pleasure of venturing to London’s renowned music venue, The Printworks, located in Surrey Quays in Southeast London to see Bakermat’s Circus. The Dutch DJ renowned for his catchy electronic remixes with a bit of flair courtesy of his Saxaphone accompanist made for excellent listening alongside a plethora of other interesting techno and EDM artists. It was truly saddening to hear that later this year the venue will be shut down to be converted to co-working offices and residential apartments, so if you have the chance, I urge you to go now whilst you still can. HS

I came across Dr Andrew Huberman, a neurobiologist from Stanford, on the Tim Ferris podcast last summer. He guested on Tim's show, and they chatted about optimizing sleep, enhancing performance, reducing anxiety, and how to use the body to control the mind. That's Huberman's niche – neuroscience – and working out how our brain and its connections with the organs of our body control our perceptions, our behaviours, and our health. I was delighted this week to come across a podcast that Dr Huberman does on his own, The Huberman Lab, which has a stack of episodes about how to train your brain into creating better outcomes for your body. A great episode I dug into was on goal setting and how to prime your brain (and body) to pursue the right goals in life. It was a superb listen, fascinating, educational, and useful in equal measure. And whatever it is you're pursuing – whether that's building a business or going for a run in the morning – there are a tonne of hints and tips to be harvested. EJP