Weekend Reading #253
This is the two-hundred-and-fifty-third weekly edition of our newsletter, Weekend Reading, sent out on Saturday 3rd February 2024
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*****
What we are thinking
An incredible set of results from Meta. Readers of this letter will know our admiration for Mark Zuckerberg and this result highlights a continued transformation of the business from the mess of 2 years ago. This guy is the entrepreneur of his generation, has turned his business around completely. The stock meanwhile has rocketed almost in a straight line from the lows of 2022. Almost impossible to believe it fell over 70% in that year! Now it is way beyond its previous all-time high. And why? Zuckerberg was not dogmatic. He listened to the criticism of the company, and he fixed it. Legend.
What we are doing
I’m now back from Japan and having tackled the ensuing jet lag have been back on track with all things Nachas. This week we’ve been rolling out some new regulatory reporting features so if there are any funds out there that need to do transaction reporting with whichever regulator, be sure to send me some sample data or just drop me a line and I’ll see if we can help you too! Aside from that, it’s been nice catching up with friends that I hadn’t seen in a while having left shortly after the Christmas/New Year period. I’ve not been anywhere particularly adventurous in London this week but went back to the Marylebone pub on Marylebone High Street for a quick pint with some friends. Otherwise, I tried a Japanese/Filipino restaurant, Ramo Ramen, last weekend which was tasty, but difficult to distinguish where the Filipino elements came through in what I ordered. This weekend (should the weather hold up), I’ll be playing a round of golf at Birchwood Country Club and finally having a bit of a relax. HS
This week we’re meeting up with family on a trip in Buenos Aires – a city that has most certainly been romanticised in history, the “Paris of South America”, home of Evita (further popularised by Andrew Lloyd Webber’s production and its most well-known song, Don’t cry for me, Argentina.), capital city of the home country of Maradona, Messi and the Pope. Of course, behind the nostalgia also lies the sad truth of multiple sovereign debt defaults and a country with rampant inflation, and most recently the country that elected to office a new president, Javier Milei, that is at first glance breaking every rule in the economics orthodoxy. Going around the city, it is easy to see how the everyday Argentinian would be frustrated at the country’s state of economic affairs to opt for something different and unorthodox.
On one hand, the wide avenues that cross the city of Buenos Aires, lined with buildings that architecturally rival those of classical Europe, tell a story of a city with a great and illustrious past. The Teatro Colon, for example, is said to have some of the best acoustics in the world, not to mention also having external architecture that would rival those of any European capital – unfortunately, in the height of the Argentinian summer of 37-38 degs in the daytime, it’s not opera season here. The history of Argentina is a story of a plethora of people migrating from all over the world in search of a better life, and some fortunes. With districts in Buenos Aires named after Italian, Spanish, English and even Welsh influences, and the local Spanish bearing traces of other influences (e.g. “Birra” for beer, like in Italian, vs the usual “Cerveza” in Spanish), it is clear that this was a melting pot of cultures, languages and philosophy.
On the other, Buenos Aires also bears the marks of a city – and a country - that has seen better days. Along its broad avenues that bear some resemblance to downtown New York sits a smorgasbord of old and new buildings, from 19th century classical European style architecture to the less-than-pleasing brutalist builds of the late 20th century. It’s a massive city, but years of economic adversity have left its buildings in a less than pristine state. It has a metro system with 5 lines running across the city, and the station entrances (as well as brightly covered wrought iron viaducts stretching across wide junctions) give off a very Manhattan-esque feel – but the trains that ply its lines are more on average 60 years old, which again speaks to how this was a metro system that was state of the art just half a century ago. Sadly, the peak for Argentina was probably further back, almost a century ago: in 1913, Argentina was top 10 in the world in terms of GDP per capita. Now, at US$13,650 p.a. GDP per capita, it’s closer to being in the middle of the pack. As Javier Milei pointed out in his address at the WEF weeks ago, Argentina’s troubles are a warning for those who would seek to take a similar path.
No surprise that the country would vote for an economic maverick to run the country. Will it all work? Who knows. Unfortunately, this being our first time here, we don’t really have a before/after comparison to make. But given a couple of uber drivers we’ve ridden with (including one called Jesus Nazareno) and their anecdotal feedback, business has been booming, and with more work comes more income. We’ve spotted and endless supply of tourists: Chinese, Russians, Americans, Australians, and lots of Spanish speakers from all around, and the walking tours we’ve been on are consistently packed, with 30-40 people per group, despite the hot weather. Maybe they’re here because it’s “cheap” - paying in USD gets you a 30-40% discount vs the official peso prices. USD still commands a premium here as a “hard” currency – for now. But maybe, just maybe, there’s actual interest in giving Argentina another shot whether for tourism or for business with a fresh breath of unorthodoxy at its helm. It may be well past its previous prime, but there’s nothing better than a story of something retaking its old highs and breaking out to new all-time highs.
It’s well worth a visit – just maybe not in the middle of summer. EL
What we are watching
There’s nothing like a 14.5 hour flight to use to catch up on a Netflix backlog, and at the top of the list was a 4-episode mini-series from the Witcher lore collection called Blood Origin, set as a prequel to the main Witcher storyline. Having not read the original books, I can’t say for sure whether the plot laid out across the 4 episodes is faithful and accurate – the wikipedia article about the series uses the term “loosely adapted”, so Witcher purists may disagree. But as a standalone series, it served as a useful explainer of how what could be described as the first Witcher came into existence, tracing the storyline back to the sage Balor, the history of the elven kingdom of Xin’trea, the discovery of the monoliths, the creation of the first mutant bearing the blood of monsters from the other worlds and the resulting Conjunction of the Spheres which essentially blended different worlds and creatures into the single Witcher multiverse. As always, there’s something elegant about a series that has a finite number of episodes and a defined ending which doesn’t drag on endlessly. This happens to be one of them – it's perfectly fine as a standalone, and certainly helps put context to the rest of the Witcher episodes.
Next on the list for the flight back, and equally overdue – all the episodes in Season 3 of the Witcher. EL
What we are listening to
In order to try and understand a bit more about the history of Iran and indeed the Persians, I turned to an epic podcast series on the Empire Podcast with William Dalrymple and Anita Anand. This is a brilliant podcast and has produced a number of series on history’s great empires. They have featured The British, The Ottomans and the Russians in previous series but series 5 is all about Iran and its Persian history. Last week I listened to the episodes featuring Shah Ismael, Shah Abbas and the city of Isfahan and the leadup to the last Shah, Pavlavi. I love this series as it interweaves the competition with the Ottomans, the Russians and generally the story of the world at the time and really does give superb insight into many of the issues that still exist today. In particular the tension between Shia and Sunni Islam, which began in earnest in the time of Shah Ismael as his expansionist Safavid power came up short against Selim the Grim at the Battle of Chaldiran, before the Ottomans went on to build their Empire in earnest. The battle was settled through the emerging technology of gunpowder and cannon, with Selim’s army employing these advanced means versus the horseman of Ismael. Next up are the 4 parts leading to the 1979 revolution! DC
What we are reading
A somewhat unusual profile of a Meta executive appeared in this week’s The Profile email. The executive in question is Nicola Mendelsohn, a somewhat unusual choice for Meta’s head of its Gobal Business Group. We often think of these massive businesses as driven by their founders, but the reality is there is far wider group of people who have influence on its fortunes and Mendelsohn despite being very senior, I had never heard of until I read this. She also has a CBE for services to the creative industries in the UK. A great profile. DC