Weekend Reading #250
This is the two-hundred-and-fiftieth weekly edition of our newsletter, Weekend Reading, sent out on Saturday 6th January 2024
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What we’re thinking.
A very happy New Year to all our readers wherever you are. Markets didn’t give anyone a chance for that extra week to relax as we have started full steam ahead. After a rather meteoric rise over the past few months, some weakness is not completely out of order. Not much has changed just because the year count has switched over. Yields have popped back up a bit and the dollar has strengthened a bit but it's too soon to see any major reversal in the trend we have been seeing for the past months. The new year often brings some kind of shift in market leadership, and this frequently materialises after a selloff when we see which part of the market takes up the mantle. In recent weeks, the weak dollar trade gave rise to some moves in emerging markets and commodities before correcting this week. We need the dust to settle a bit to see if this trade endures. Many variables but as ever, price action will guide. Right now, it's not clear.
One place where we have a lot of action is in crypto as volatility came back with a vengeance with a massive open interest liquidation event earlier this week. As the Bitcoin ETF comes close to supposed approval, we strangely enter into its approval period now with low funding, lower open interest and a sell the news mentality. Price action won’t help us here over the short term but over time it's pretty impossible to not be bullish on the first new asset class ETF approval in decades. The tradfi marketing machine will go into full flow and Ben Hunt’s Bitcoin™ comes into existence as providers can begin to milk the fees on anything sellable.
What we’re doing.
To call the all-time classic RPG Dungeons and Dragons a “board game” is a terrible misnomer, although a quick google search suggests the correct term is a “tabletop role playing game”. But for any D&D enthusiast, perhaps the most challenging role in any D&D session is that of Dungeon Master – the art of not just telling a story, but guiding gameplay and keeping the entire adventure exciting, dictating tests and scenarios in a manner that is engaging but not cringe-inducing, is one mastered by only a rare few. Unfortunately, we aren’t one of those masters, and we’ve often wished that someone would make an app to serve as Dungeon Master.
Lo and behold, we across a tabletop RPG that was on 50% sale on boxing day called “Lord of the Rings – Journeys in Middle Earth”. One can have mixed opinions about a tabletop RPG complete with map tiles and miniature figurines, set in the LOTR timeline between Bilbo’s return to the Shire and Frodo’s adventures, but a tabletop game accompanied by an app that reveals the storylines, controls monsters, dictates tests and plays out the role of Dungeon Master in the LOTR world was something hard to pass on. Of course, the game publishers took artistic license, adding characters, villains and storylines that are not necessarily “canonical”. And of course, the hybrid tabletop + app set up is as much best of both worlds as it is worst of both worlds, not to mention that the app probably could do with some UX improvements. But if the end goal, as it is for us, is to have an opportunity to sit at the table and enjoy an adventure RPG together, then at 50% off this has so far been an excellent deal. We’re not yet at the point where we need expansions (though there are 2 expansion sets available), and there’s an option to purchase an additional campaign download for £2.79, and with multiple permutations of characters that can be played (up to 5 characters in a campaign, by any number of players, including solo if one fancied that), this still has much more enjoyment to deliver.
A playthrough video of the game is on Youtube by the team at BoardGameGeeks (warning: it’s 3 hrs long for a 4 player game), but the one thing I’d point out is unfortunately they’ve approached gameplay as a single adventure game rather than a multi-stage campaign, and some of the strategies and thinking they’ve rationalised is not exactly optimal. To be fair it looked like their first time playing through it, so there was likely a lot of figuring out as they went along going on. EL
What we’re reading.
This is a fascinating paper written by someone called Flavia Cymbalista. The paper is entitled “How George Soros Knows What He Knows” and tries to put into science Soros’s knack for getting a bad back when he is uneasy about the market. It goes deep into his famous Theory of Reflexivity and calls his backache “experiential reflexivity”. Page 36 is the crux of it but bottom line when his back gets sore he knows something is wrong. The issue is he doesn’t know what that is until he then goes and unpacks everything. Apparently this is not something unique to Soros, rather just that he is very self aware and able to listen to what his body is telling him. It’s quite a dense paper but if you interested its worth diving into.
I have been thinking for a long time that when I’m finished the Elon biography, I’ll write a piece about him and what I think. I’ve been through ups and downs in my assessment of him (recently more and more up) and still learning and consuming lots of info which keeps my opinion shifting all the time. This week I read this well-written piece by a guy called Casey Handmer. Handmer was catalysed into writing this by watching a really poor anti-Elon segment from John Oliver, the famous late-night US showman. Since Elon has taken over Twitter the attacks on him from establishment actors have grown more and more frequent and unhinged and this article from Handmer is a strong reminder of the things Elon has achieved in what, given his age, is still likely only the first part of his career. Well worth a read.
South African’s bungling government, which has for its own delusions of grandeur reasons filed a genocide case against Israel in the International Criminal Courts, showed everyone how much of a joke they are by merely days later giving a hero’s welcome to none other than “General” Mohamed Hamdan "Hemedti" Dagalo, leader of the RSF in Sudan and executor of actual, bona-fide genocide in Sudan. You actually can’t make this up. An account that has proved really valuable in debunking not only the death numbers in Gaza (see here) but also this case brought by South Africa against Israel goes by the Twitter handle, Aizenberg (@Aizenberg55). All the information needed is right there for anyone to see who is interested in the truth in numbers. DC
What we’re watching.
I was really looking forward to the new Ricky Gervais special on Netflix from his latest Armageddon tour, which was released on Christmas Day. For the first time I found him a bit boring to be honest. There were moments where I approached the belly deep laughter I’m used to experiencing when watching Gervais, but they were few and far between. The rest was just an orgy of purposeless vulgarity. There are so few comedians who can genuinely create that deep laughter and though for me he is one of them, this show was a great disappointment. I’m always up for any new, funny comedians so please send me some if you have any good stuff. DC
What we’re listening to.
Some things are so good you instinctively don’t want to share them but in the spirit of this newsletter I will let you all into one of the great minds I have paid attention to over the past many years. His name is George Gilder. I first came across him many years ago in 2018 when reading a book he wrote called “Life After Google”, in which he laid out in great detail his case for crypto and why the version of the internet we have is ultimately going to be replaced. Gilder has been around a long time (he is 84) and is by no means a crypto fanboy. He has spent his career predicting technological leaps and developments. He has a fantastic success rate. He doesn’t appear in podcasts often but every now and then I search for him and last week I hit the jackpot when I not only found he has a new book called “Life After Capitalism” but also appeared on a podcast in the middle of last year. He is full of knowledge, most of it not what you will hear elsewhere. The book is on order, and I can’t wait to get stuck in. His books are always current and there has been no bigger question in my mind in recent years than what comes after capitalism. Hopefully he can provide some differentiated indication of what’s coming. DC
While we’re back on the LOTR theme, I was told by a friend that Andy Serkis, well-known for many voice roles including that of Gollum, had recorded a series of Tolkien audiobooks now available on Spotify, including The Silmarillion, The Hobbit and the main LOTR trilogy. It is well known that he has a wonderful voice, and applied to the tough read that is The Silmarillion (at 1x speed, rather than the usual 2-2.5x – this is storytelling for pleasure, not information nor efficiency), the tales of the early ages of Middle Earth are actually soothing to listen to, quite the opposite of the experience of trying to read that same text. Hearing the words spoken like lore being passed down also confers life upon the stories told, and underscores exactly how brilliantly detailed Tolkien was in his world-building – in case that wasn’t already evident enough. Given I’m on this at 1x speed, and the total play time of the Silmarillion is 19h24min, and each of the trilogy books at 20-22hrs, I’ll be enjoying this for at least a couple more weeks. EL