Weekend Reading #282

This is the two-hundred-and-eigthy-second weekly edition of our newsletter, Weekend Reading, sent out on Saturday 7th September 2024

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What we're thinking.

Everyone knows that September is historically a poor month for equities but this time round it has been broadcast to all and sundry more than we’ve ever seen. Everywhere you look, there are seasonality charts and when it appeared on CNBC, it really did prime everyone for a weak month. When the first trading day of the month was a very big red day it perpetuated the thought process. The weakness has been led by tech of course but also notable has been the tremendous weakness in industrial metals stocks. The reasons are always mentioned afterwards as now talk of continuing China weakness and global growth concerns come to the fore once again. Gold so far is the only commodity which really has a bid. This is possibly nefarious in itself. Crypto continues to move lower. Friday’s jobs report didn’t really help either, giving no real further indication of where we are heading on the growth front in the US. Once again, not a time to be a hero! 

What we're reading.

Despite the bear market in crypto, somehow one project has managed to become one of the fastest growing startups in history, as per Qiao Wang. Pump.fun is... Wait for it... A memecoin generator. You go to Pump.fun, you connect your wallet and literally a short template pops up. You give your coin a name, write a short description and off you go with your memecoin. During the memecoin frenzy earlier this year on Solana this thing was ACTIVE. It’s still active but less so. Nevertheless, and mind-blowingly, its generated over $100m in revenues in its 6 short months or so. Extraordinary. No product market fit in crypto? Think again. It still seems anything related to speculation is very much a good fit. 

Meanwhile in the geopolitical hotbed that we live in, Turkey is looking to shake things up by applying to join the BRICS group of nations. Turkey is currently a NATO member but in recent years acts less and less like it. As we wrote some years ago now, most countries must choose whether to join the US-led axis or the Chinese led one. Turkey, having straddled both, seems to be getting closer to an endgame in its decision-making process. One of the reasons cited by the Turks is the failure to progress in its attempt to join the European Union, something that has been ongoing for decades and which many Turks believe the EU never seriously considered. It's all politicking of course but we will soon see where this is going. To be honest it's unclear even still. 

After never in my life reading anything by Ken Follett, I was at the local library with my kids a few weeks back and his 2022 title, Never, caught my eye. It’s a proper, well put-together, global, thriller. Its set in 3 locations, the US, China and North Africa (Chad, Sudan, Libya) and it rollicks along with eerie and intentional similarities to today’s world. This could easily happen in reality. A series of low-key local incidents spiral increasingly and bring the great powers to the edge of conflict. It’s a bit different to most of the spy/geopolitical thrillers I have read in recent years as the build-up is more considered and the characters much more deeply developed. I also learned a lot from it. A great read. DC

As the idea of space exploration re-enters the mainstream narrative, this article about the discovery of a lava tube on the moon tosses up some interesting possibilities. A lava tube is essentially a huge cave formed by cooled lava flows underground, potentially stretching for miles – there are many of them on Earth, and the discovery of these on the moon as well has inspired ideas for using these as potential human habitation (indeed, the thought of moving to the moon is no longer as foreign as it was) but more excitingly as a potential micro ecosystem where one might find lunar life. The next step: sending a rover down a couple of them to check them out – who knows what might be lying in wait. 

When it comes to keeping time, the gold standard for accuracy as far as clocks are concerned is the atomic clock. Perhaps not for much longer – enter the nuclear clock, or at least the starting ingredients for one, that is 100,000 times more accurate than the current best effort. But perhaps more fascinating as far as physics goes is the sensitivity of this potential nuclear clock to fluctuations in dark matter: 100m times more sensitive to the fluctuations of some “lighter” forms of dark matter. Who knows what other applications could come along from the ability to detect and better understand these fluctuations? Perhaps room for some sci-fi to flow into the realm of the possible.  EL 

What we're watching.
I haven’t watched too much TV in recent months but I decided to give season 2 of House of the Dragon a go a few weeks back and much to my surprise and delight it was outstanding. House of the Dragon is a spinoff of Game of Thrones, set some 200 years before the series begins. It features the battle for iron throne in House Targaryen. The first season was slow and a bit laborious, but this one exploded to life. It reminded me of the middle bit of Game of Thrones when it grew to become one of the best shows in TV history. Really good entertainment despite the tiff between GoT creator, George RR Martin, and the showrunners on one or two aspects of the change in storyline. DC