Weekend Reading #271
This is the two-hundred-and-seventy-first weekly edition of our newsletter, Weekend Reading, sent out on Saturday 8th June 2024
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What we're thinking.
Another week another all-time high in the US Indices (ex the Dow). In our weekly progress report on Nvidia’s roadmap to become the most valuable company in the world, we note it is now around 5% away from Microsoft. Divergence continues with respect to price action inside the market with cyclicals (including commodity names) underperforming and large cap tech and crypto pushing to break out further. Eventually the tech party will end but it isn’t this week. Bitcoin is pressing its recent highs and seems quite keen for a major move. The reasons for it as always will be written afterwards.
What we're doing.
After a quick few days in Singapore, I find myself back in London just as summer has arrived. I started Friday evening off in Sloane Square in the beautiful outdoor terrace bar that has been set up in the middle of the square. Being such an affluent area surrounded by such a bustling street, the lively atmosphere of the bar was amplified by the occasional turbo crack of nearby supercars. HS
What we're watching.
I’ve recently started watching a BBC iPlayer series, Tokyo Vice, in which an American journalist finds himself wrapped up within the Yakuza territorial battles of 1990’s Tokyo. As the first ‘gaijin’ journalist of the Meicho newspaper, the pressure is on to do the best he can whilst he traverses the tricky relationships of the city’s underworld. I’m only a few episodes in but so far, it’s captivating and I find myself caught wanting to watch more and more. Fortunately, there are a couple of seasons, so I’ve got plenty more to go. It was just rather unfortunate that it wouldn’t load whilst I was in Asia. HS
What we're reading.
This guy, Tomas Pueyo, comes up with some excellent blog posts for his blog, Unchartered Territories. What’s weirder about this one which is all about geography and history of Hungary, is that Hungary was on my mind literally as I opened my email to see this at the top of the inbox for absolutely no reason at all. My new policy of leaning into coincidences (thanks to Tom Morgan) seems to be paying off handsomely. This post is absolutely fascinating. It’s called Why is Hungary So Small? and when you read it you understand so much about why Hungary is the way it is and also seemingly why it’s leader in the form of so called “strongman”, Viktor Orban, is so vocal about “preserving its heritage”. On his motivations I don’t really know without digging much deeper in Hungarian politics but there certainly is a lot there to be proud of.
This is a really well written and thoughtful take on what the future of work may look like once AI takes over most jobs. The writer is Avital Balwit, the Chief of Staff to Anthropic’s CEO. In it she writes of what we might do in an era of abundance. She covers the psychological effect of feeling useless and also closes with the unlikely place we may find answers to our search for meaning – the AI itself. Very cool. DC
What we're listening to.
Argentina’s seemingly mercurial president, Javier Milei, has been all over the headlines in recent months and more recently we have begun to see his “shock therapy” policies bearing some fruit with a collapse in inflation boding well for further progress ahead. In this conversation with Bari Weiss he talks about capitalism vs socialism and why he thinks the west is in grave danger. As president of a country that fell to socialism for many decades, he has been in the trenches as opposed to the campuses where today's purveyors of socialism have been on view in the US. He has lots to say in his usual colourful way about many other things too as you can imagine. Well worth a listen.
An excellent crypto-related podcast this week from Jason Choi of Blockcrunch, in which he interviews Yield Guild Games (YGG) founder, Gabby Dizon about the business and how it has evolved over the years since its launch. I know Gabby and he is a star. A man who is passionate about his business and bringing gaming to the masses. What’s fascinating about YGG is that whereas it was originally founded as a gaming guild it is evolving to become what he calls the first guild protocol. As we have written for the past few months, our view is that we are on the cusp of a Web3 gaming outbreak as a multitude of quality games are set for release in the coming months. Crypto as we know is narrative driven, and YGG may be about to catch the wave for the second time. (Disclosure: I am invested in YGG).
And finally on the listening, an absolutely wonderful conversation between Rick Rubin and Michael Richards on Rubin’s Tetragrammaton podcast. Richards is famous for his role as Kramer on Seinfeld and he does not disappoint in this conversation about his upbringing, his career and his philosophies. This one was a real pleasure to listen to. DC