Weekend Reading #322
This is the three-hundredth-and-twenty-second weekly edition of our newsletter, Weekend Reading, sent out on Saturday 5th July 2025
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What we’re thinking.
The theme of the week has been rotation as the tech and retail rally paused to some degree while so called value or cyclicals rallied hard. Copper and some other commodity stocks appear to have broken out as the thrashing of the dollar continues. Are we seeing the end of the retail tech rally? Our base case is we have some rotation but that the real fireworks are still ahead of us. Policy is favourable, geopolitics has subsided, price action looks excellent, and the ingredients are there for some kind of climax and as we like to say, who knows how long it will last? We will attempt to ride it as much as we can while being mindful that after the climax usually comes heavy selling. There is always a reason, but it’s usually got more to do with full positioning. Our view has been that we are still in the process of getting all the participants back in who sold into Liberation Day on April 7th. This process still has room to run but we are getting later and later in this, and the boat is filling up.
What we are watching.
Wimbledon is here though for some reason it seems subdued despite the hot weather. Maybe we are going out of the great era of Feder, Nadal and Djokovic and despite much promise the intensity of the tennis just isn’t the same. Alcaraz vs Sinner shows great promise as their recent French Open final showed but they are only beginning their own rivalry. I hope to be surprised positively! DC
This National Geographic feature on Octopuses was a brilliant documentary, exploring the social lives of these fascinating creatures that are almost aliens in the sea. Starring an octopus named Scarlett, the documentary explores how octopuses communicate with each other, and even with other species (including humans!), working together to hunt, and form societies with different types of octopuses in a literal Octopuses’ Garden. The best part is that they aren’t taught these skills – their behaviours, from camouflage to interactions to learning how to hunt to learning how to defend themselves are learnt on the fly, a testimony to their immense intelligence. EL
What we are reading.
I can’t remember the last time I read a non fiction book in such a short space of time without being bored but this week I breezed through A New Science of Heaven by Robert Temple. It’s a particularly impressive feat for me as it is quite technical and heavy on science jargon. I mentioned this book a few weeks back. It covers the titillating topic of plasma, the fourth state of matter, and how it could be the key missing ingredient to explaining pretty much everything we don’t understand about life on earth. This book blew my mind. If you are curious as to the nature of consciousness this is the book that for me has done more to explain the nature of our reality than any other. It is quite possible according to this book that plasma equals consciousness. Did you know we have plasma bodies? Plasma is not something new but research into it appears to have been heavily classified for nearly 100 years. I suspect we will be hearing a lot more about this in times ahead. If there are any scientists or anyone who knows anything about this topic please reach out, I’d love to chat.
Neil Stephenson is famous as writer of Snowcrash, one of the original novels about a future with AI as our overlords. In this fantastic blog post he focuses his attention on the already current problem of AI in education. He refers to another great blogpost by Niall Ferguson on the topic (behind a paywall). The question is clear – if the AI can answer all the questions that our kids are being taught what is to stop them from using the likes of ChatGPT to answer them? And indeed, why shouldn’t they? The answer he gives is one which I gave to my own daughter when she asks why she has to do well in her exams. We can only learn how to do hard things by doing hard things in the first place. It’s not the content that is important but the process. And Stephenson’s conclusion is that without GRIT and the ability to do hard things through pain, frustration and practice, we simply will be able to do almost nothing. This is another pet topic of mine. Keen to hear other ideas on this theme, incl the best AI education tools for kids!
This cool article deals with the topic of solar storms and the potential impact on Earth. The culprit once again is plasma! The last big one was in 1859 and is called the Carrington Event, named after one of the scientists who spotted it early on 1 September of that year. The article goes into the history of CME’s (coronal mass ejections) and speculates about what would happen today if we had such an event or even a far larger one. The answer is that everything electronic we rely on – satellites and anything that can get hit by a massive electro-magnetic impulse is at risk. Our world is most certainly not prepared for it. But its one of those things that can happen tomorrow, or it can happen in 100 years. Food for thought but there is not a whole lot we can do about it!
Finally, a piece on the Kurds of Turkey and why Erdogan is reaching out to them. With Erdogan EVERYTHING is political. He knows the only way for him to survive the next election is to get the Kurds onside. This excellent article sets it out nicely. DC