Weekend Reading #279
This is the two-hundred-and-seventy-nineth weekly edition of our newsletter, Weekend Reading, sent out on Saturday 17th August 2024
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What we're thinking.
So many things are going on with geopolitics remaining hot and although economic data is strong one day, it is weak the next. Markets have rebounded sharply from Yenmageddon, especially tech and AI. Nvidia is up over 20% up from the lows. Is the selloff over? Who knows? The only way we can cut through the various opinions (including our own) is to study the price action. And for now, it's telling us the market wants to go up again. There is also some major action in South African equities, bonds and FX all moving higher as the flow of money gravitates towards the coalition magic trick. Elsewhere, Gold is flying, and Bitcoin is not, which tells us something.
Crypto has been a major disappointment apart from Bitcoin which is now a macro asset captured by the tradfi system, there has been little that has really moved up over the past 2 years. Apart from a few memecoins and one or two exceptions, there has been a major absence of a bull market. The regulation and the developmental momentum continue, and the time will come when bottom up will drive crypto. At this point the opportunities will be immense. But current action is rather sporadic. We hope it improves but as someone wise once told us, “Hope is not a strategy”.
What we're doing.
I flew down to Montpellier in France this week where I spent several days soaking up the sun in the Cévennes National Park. It was a great week with plenty of barbecues, drinks and time spent lounging around the pool. We decided to go kayaking one of the days which was a fantastic way to stay cool amid the roasting 39^c heat. Whilst only 4 days in total, it felt like a solid recharge from the packed schedule that had endured the weeks prior and left me ready to hit the ground running this week as I returned to London. The only disappointment to the trip was the excessive delays on the return flight, and the seemingly absurd difficulty of ordering an Uber from Gatwick in the early hours of the morning. Nevertheless, it was an excellent trip and left me awaiting my next overseas trip...which coincidentally is only just around the corner as I take the short flight to Holland next week for a brief couple of days. HS
What we're reading.
I love reading a good profile – especially of someone who is really fascinating. This profile by Jeremy Stern on Palmer Luckey is by a long way the single best profile I’ve ever read. It is absolutely brilliant. It’s a really long one too and every sentence is a reward for continuing through it. Its clear by now that Luckey is a once in a generation find, in the mould of Elon but at the tender age of 31 dare I say he is possibly on an even sharper upward trajectory. And this guy is just like wow. Please take the time to read this one and you will educate yourself materially about a man who may just influence your life and those of your children in no small measure in the years to come.
It was probably not coincidental that the topic of Rhodesia (or what we now know as Zimbabwe) showed up on our relatively different Twitter feeds, which in itself tells of how clever the algos are in identifying like-minded people, and increasingly how easy it is to get caught in an echo chamber without even being aware of it. Notwithstanding that, the content of the posts that were served up is nonetheless interesting and food for though – and at least verifiably true, speaking with Zimbabweans who lived through the age of Rhodesia and the subsequent rise of communism, with most of these posts referencing this particular article: Why Rhodesia Matters.
To be honest, until very recently, my impression of Zimbabwe was that of a rogue state, corrupt and a textbook case of hyperinflation, with notes denominated in numbers that would make Doctor Evil’s blackmail demands look tame. It very much felt like South Africa’s messed up neighbour. Turns out I couldn’t have been more wrong, as Rhodesia – as it was once known, named after Cecil Rhodes to whom the initial land was chartered – was historically not only the breadbasket of Africa, but also a land that was “more British than the British”, organised as a democracy where the vote was granted as a function of the requisite ownership of property and hence responsible and productive participants in government, free of the apartheid that plagued South Africa. The story of how Rhodesia collapsed into the omnishambles that is today’s Zimbabwe is well worth the read.
In another Twitter-delivered special, I also came across a couple of posts about something so impossible as to be almost science fiction, but for the additional caveat that they came to light because of declassification of CIA documents, something called the Gateway Experience. What is the Gateway Experience? Essentially, it’s an out of body experience – astral projection, as would be better known in the Marvel universe. The story goes that a man named Robert Monroe finds himself disassociated from his body and able to move around, experience things and remember them, and supposedly find that his “dream” is accurate. He eventually gets looped into a government project during the Cold War attempting to train agents to be able to traverse space and time through deep meditation, and his findings are now available through the Monroe Institute (starting from $79 for a 2 week meditation course). Seriously. There’s an article on Vice about it here, including a link to the full declassified paper including a “missing” page that was supposedly eventually found.
Bottom line: meditate hard enough and you’ll see the future. Hard to believe but huge if true.
One of our readers suggested this article to us which I found to be pretty spot on as a diagnosis of how the world currently operates, titled: The Outrageous Rise of NeoToddlerism. Think of it as the whole world regressing into angry screaming 3 year olds that are only appeased by the next flashing smartphone or tablet placed in front of them, distracted by the next thing that crosses their mind. Then extend that to the way politics is run, and many things start to make sense, in a terrifying sort of way. Pretty much to be read in tandem with the Zimbabwe story. EL
What we're watching.
Based on the wonderful novel by Amor Towles, “ A Gentleman in Moscow” is brought to life by Ian McGregor’s masterful performance, making it a heartwarming yet disturbing watch. The show skilfully weaves together whimsy and deep humanity as it follows Count Alexander Rostov, a man navigating life under house arrest in a grand Moscow hotel as a result of the Russian revolution. McKellen's portrayal captures the Count's grace and wit, providing a poignant contrast to the brutal realities of Soviet Russia—a regime of fear, repression, and control that eerily parallels Putin's Russia today. The show's dark, yet touching exploration of how the human spirit can find light and connection even in such oppressive times makes it not only enjoyable but also profoundly relevant to our current world. LM