Weekend Reading #261

This is the two-hundred-and-sixty-first weekly edition of our newsletter, Weekend Reading, sent out on Saturday 30th March 2024

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What we're thinking.

Another fairly quiet week on markets with the most obvious moves coming in gold, telegraphing that the cat is out of the bag with respect to inflation and the Fed’s perceived lack of interest in taming it. So on another note, this week saw the passing of one of human kind’s greatest minds. Nobel Prize winner, Daniel Kahneman, passed away at age 90 and left his mark on the world more than he could ever have imagined. His book, Thinking, Fast and Slow quite literally changed my life. It opened a vista into the human brain and into decision making that was just mesmerising. It sits on my desk every day, and I often find myself paging through it. It is the only book I’ve ever read where I’ve done this. May his memory be a blessing. And if you haven't, read his books, listen to his talks and learn. DC 

What we're doing. 

As the British weather slowly starts to warm up, it approaches the time of year when golf once again starts to become pleasant to play. The weekend just gone, I played my first 18 hole of the year at Woldingham Golf Club in Surrey...and surprisingly, it went pretty well! Located close to Caterham and just inside the M25, it was easy to get to being just a 35 minute drive from me. Overall it was a very forgiving course for a terrible player like myself given the wide fairways and lack of water features. Nevertheless it looks the part and was fun to go around and it’s actually part of a group of golf clubs which includes Westerham Golf Club in Kent as well as the Surrey National Course meaning I’ll have to give those a try next time! HS 

I spent the past week in Jakarta for meetings, and in the process explored even further beyond our usual haunts of Plaza Indonesia and Pacific Place/SCBD, venturing into South Jakarta to areas like Blok M and Pejaten, situated slightly off the traffic jams that jakarta is legendary for. It’s not anywhere close to having a “village” feel, certainly nothing like Bali, but it’s a reminder that the mega skyscrapers that in recent years have become characteristic of the Central Jakarta skyline are the exception, not the norm. Townhouses converted into clubs, bars and restaurants make for a very different look and feel of the city that the usual splash and dash itinerary of meetings misses.

The standout venue we visited for an afternoon meeting is a brand new restaurant and members club in Blok M called The Circle (thecirclejkt.com) 2 floors of public dining space, and 5 floors of private members rooms available for meetings and functions. On the 7th floor (technically the 6th because 4th is skipped in the numbering - bad luck!) is a whiskey bar serving whiskies belonging to the owner, which he’d collected over the past few decades. We spotted on the shelves whiskies dating back to the late 1970s - no idea if there was anything older, and I’m no whiskey lover unfortunately, though I can imagine there are many others who would love a taste of those old bottles.

This time I also had the benefit of the kind offer from a friend to let me stay in a spare room in his apartment in Senopati, located just behind the SCBD area. Again, while Jakarta is known for its traffic and generally thought to be pedestrian unfriendly, the SCBD area has been so well developed that it’s actually pedestrian friendly now. And wandering down the rows of houses (mansions, really, given their size) behind Jln Senopati, owned by the business elite of Indonesia, there is no question that the amount of wealth being generated in the country is much greater than popularly perceived. One way or another, the country’s on an uptrend with the wind in its sails, and I’d almost wager that we’re still closer to the beginning than the end of Indonesia’s emergence as an economic powerhouse. EL

What we're reading.

This is a great article about Guy Ritchie, one of my favourite directors. I’ve recently been watching The Gentleman, his series I wrote about a few weeks back. But most stuff of his is brilliant. Its edgy and fun to watch. Funny to think he was once married to Madonna. 

An interesting ETF launched this week, which I know little about. But promisingly it is an ETF of a number of private businesses. The biggest weighting is Spacex (35%) but it also has Stripe, Epic games, Open AI and some other really promising and even already well-known companies. It’s worth following as a barometer. More than that would require far more digging. DC 

What we're watching.

Steven Spielberg, apart his many career achievements in film is also the founder in 1994 of the Shoah (Holocaust) Foundation. The foundation’s visual history contains 54,399 audiovisual testimonies of Holocaust witnesses. Most of them were recorded by USC Shoah Foundation between 1994 and 2001.  This clip recently filmed, shows Spielberg speaking about the importance of combatting antisemitism and hatred all round and that usually when antisemitism rises, it portends far greater societal upheaval to come. DC 

What we're listening to.

This week’s Forward Guidance pod featured the great uber-bear, Russel Napier, who gave his views on where we are referring to China. He sees a large devaluation of the currency coming at some point. When? He doesn't know. But his logic and commentary are certainly worth throwing into the mix. 

Two of my favourites combined to discuss the wellbeing of today’s kids. Bari Weiss interviewed Jonathan Haidt, whose work on social media and its effects on kids’ mental health and development is now finally being widely heralded. This is a must listen for everyone. It’s sad now that despite the obvious conclusions from all the research the barrier from removing kids from this poison is their own parents who quite simply lack the gumption to be strong for their own children. This is backed up by my own conversations with friend, none of whom want to be the “bad” parent in the class. As Haidt says, this is a coordination problem. Yet this stuff is worse than cigarettes. As this becomes more obvious to the mainstream, the conversation will shift but lets just hope it isnt too late for this generation kids – which some call now a lost generation or even “generation stupid”. DC 

Halo is probably THE gaming franchise that made the Xbox a viable player in the console gaming market, and as all long-lived gaming franchises go, an entire extended universe of lore begins to grow from the core story. Halo is somewhat of an exception in that the game franchise was launched with an accompanying set of novels - whether that contributed to its success, allowing players to further immerse themselves in the storyline, is to me an obvious “yes”, and one can only wonder why other developers don’t launch games with novels accompanying them. It’s all storytelling in the end, and there’s no better immersion than a game with a good storybook accompanying it. 

This audiobook (https://open.spotify.com/show/6cTX7fY8X4IL386N3wrefi?si=Rfx3qj50SzW59iq3QSKh2A) of The Fall of Reach explores the back story of one of Halo’s most famous characters, the Master Chief (aka Spartan John-117). This was the novel that accompanied the launch of the first Halo game in 2001 (Halo: Combat Evolved) and is as much a classic as the original game. It’s a great listen even for those who haven’t played the game - in fact, it almost makes it tempting to hunt down an Xbox and play it again. EL