Weekend Reading #315

This is the three-hundredth-and-fifteenth weekly edition of our newsletter, Weekend Reading, sent out on Saturday 17th May 2025

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What we're thinking.

We seem to be saying this every week now but markets soared on once again despite all the worries. Meanwhile President Trump and his administration are getting stuff done. Fast. There will always be those who say he capitulated to the Chinese and that the terms of the deals are no good but more importantly for us is that deals are getting done one way or the other. This means that momentum still pushes forward. Trump’s trip to the Middle East has been most extraordinary. The Qatari plane will take attention and so will the hundreds of billions in investments but more importantly, PEACE seems to be on the verge of breaking out. Our view of the Middle East potentially being like Europe after the fall of the wall is looking increasingly possible. It’s just rather warm there. Syria is being welcomed back into the fold and while obviously it remains to be seen whether Mr al-Sharaa is genuine in his keenness to make peace with everyone (including Israel), the signs are looking very good. Saudi, the UAE and Turkey have replaced Iran and Russia and Syria’s patrons and al-Sharaa’s following of the Erdogan post 2000 playbook is working a charm. Let’s hope he sticks the early part of it rather than the latter.

What we're doing.

Over the past week, as I very belatedly found out that with my Revolut metal plan I get a free subscription to Perplexity pro, I’ve been setting Perplexity on multiple adventures. As an AI service, notwithstanding it being free now (it’s the same price as Claude or Chat GPT), it is excellent especially as a research tool. For conducting research on any subject under the sun, including real-time evaluations of press releases from stocks and examining reactions to results, prompted correctly it produces notes that – without exaggeration – render any 1st/2nd year analyst on the trading floor useless. The quality of referencing, cross-referencing and citations is excellent, and while very useful for our research purposes, is a harbinger of bad things to come for “knowledge” economies. As we’ve written before from different angles, access to knowledge is now free. So, for anyone that operates in the knowledge realm (physical world challenges e.g. plumbing, woodworking, fixing a broken car etc. are still safe from AI incursion – for now), there’s some serious rethinking about life plans to be done especially at entry/graduate level. The typical City job is effectively worth $20/mth with no off days now – how will grads be trained? Who will bother to train them? What happens when multiple cohorts of university grads who’ve spent their entire lives working for their degree on the promise of a nice job get told their specialised knowledge is now worth $20/mth? The cost savings on one side could easily escalate into a societal structure issue on the other – and it’s heading there fast.
 
On the flipside, having access to excellent research tools brings ancillary benefits too. My distaste for what I’d outright call “bad” music aka the music that pollutes most “pop” airwaves these days is no secret – on any given day, I’d have Mendelssohn, Beethoven, Iron Maiden or Jimi Hendrix. The comeback against my criticism is of course that music is “just a matter of taste” and that “everything is good to someone”. Good news – I can now debunk that, thanks to Perplexity. My question in my head was simple: “Does music with syncopated beats impede the ability to think?”. It turns out the answer is yes. Perplexity then points me to two interesting articles (which probably belong in the reading section): 1. A paper entitled “Music in the Brain” by UCL suggests that syncopation (e.g. in Latino/reggae tracks) creates rhythmic complexity that introduces prediction errors, engaging motor regions (creates a tendency to move) and the prefrontal cortex to “error-correct”. As a result, syncopated rhythms demand “heightened cognitive effort to reconcile violated metric expectations”; and 2. An article entitled “Cognitive and Affective Judgements of Syncopated Musical Themes” by Aarhus University suggests experimental subjects syncopated patterns were found to be more enjoyable and perceived as “happier” than unsyncopated ones – basically the musical equivalent of dopamine.
 
So, there you have it – trash music is basically analogous to empty calorie junk food from music land. Scientifically proven to eat brain space. Thank you, Perplexity. EL

What we're reading.

I made light work of Empire, the final book of Conn Iggulden’s Ancient Greece series. The final battle between Sparta and Athens was laid out in this one as the great Pericles moved into the final chapter of his life. A vivid reimagining of historical events with all the detail in between. What struck me most about this one was the reality of what it was like to live with a plague. A real one that is. Cholera most likely is what ravaged Athens while Spartan warriors waited outside the high city walls and placed the city under siege. Human waste, lack of water and the smell of fear. This completes what for me is the best historical fiction series I’ve read since The Mongols series by Iggulden. Every so often (not often enough) I get sad a series is over. This was one of them.
 
European defence stocks have been on a tear, especially German ones. In this article, newly installed chancellor, Friedrich Mertz waxes lyrical about his ambitions to build the strongest army in the EU to act as a deterrent. "The federal government will provide all the financial resources that the Bundeswehr needs to become the strongest conventional army in Europe,” Merz said. “This is more than appropriate for the most populous and economically strongest country in Europe. Our friends and partners also expect this from us, and what's more, they are actually demanding it." Even though there has been a massive rally in these names, Turkey’s blueprint is one to watch. Aselsan, the Turkish national champion defence electronics company, is still growing earnings 30% a year, over a decade after the initiation of Erdogan’s domestic defence supply chain policies were introduced. DC

What we're watching.

I started watching Your Friends and Neighbours on Apple TV with Jon Hamm and its really good. I never watched Mad Men but now I am keen to give it a go. He really is good. Proper fun show. DC