Weekend Reading #360
This is the three-hundredth-and-sixtieth weekly edition of our newsletter, Weekend Reading, sent out on Saturday 18th April 2026.
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What we're thinking.
You better believe it. All time highs in both the S&P500 and the Nasdaq this week and another reminder that markets do what they want regardless of what anyone thinks. The clues were there over the past weeks and here we are. New highs for memory names, photonic names and many others. Even the formerly magnificent 7 have rallied. Heck even software went up a bit. Crypto too. We are all having fun now, aren't we? Trump has called and raised the Iranian blockade of Hormuz with his own blockade of their blockade (I can’t remember where I saw the meme The Blockade of the blockade but credit to wherever that came from). Israeli stocks are all time highs, and the Israeli Shekel is approaching all time highs against the dollar. The dollar itself, having surged on recent global risk rising, has now dropped back. Will the weakness in the dollar resume? It should indeed. Many EM currencies could surpass the highs of earlier this year, especially commodity producers. The South Africa Rand has shot back down towards 16 again as an example. We are not completely out the woods on this war at all, but we have noticed over our careers that markets tend to operate on a fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me principle. The first time a new adverse shock happens, markets react poorly as they need to adjust but once that happens if it happens again markets tend to shrug it off. We saw that this week when after the US/Iran talks broke down on the weekend most market participants expected what they termed "Black Monday". But it didn't happen. Markets opened down and closed up and haven't looked back since.
What we're reading.
I read a study many years ago about how seeing and being amongst greenery lowers stress. The study also showed that hospital patients with a view of greenery recovered faster than those than didn't. So when this popped up on my X feed, it was a cool refresher with a bit more detail on this effect. It got me thinking then about fractals. So naturally as a recent arrival in Cape Town, where the ocean is everywhere you look, I applied the same logic to the ocean. It turns out the ocean has also been studied in this regard, and the effect is even more pronounced on stress. The ocean not only has the repetitive fractal patterns but also has the soothing fractal sounds! The effect is the result of the brain being stimulated to produce alpha brainwaves, which are the same waves as one would find oneself experiencing during a meditative state. This led me down a new rabbit hole. Somehow, I stumbled upon an article in 1999 from Nature magazine which is a paper showing how the drip painting art of American artist, Jackson Pollock, contained fractals. This is something he would only have been able to do in a "meditative state". It turns out that when Pollock created these works, he said he "left his body" and drip painted in a flow state. This paper was contested of course later on. But true or not you can imagine how deep down that rabbit hole I went! DC
We haven’t really looked at gene editing for some time given all the excitement around AI, but this paper was published this week entitled “Electromagnetic field-inducible in vivo gene switch for remote spatiotemporal control of gene expression”. In simpler terms – wireless control of which genes express their characteristics and which don’t. At least in mice, where certain electromagnetic waves (similar to what comes off a standard wall socket) trigger a switch in the DNA, leading to certain mice reversing their aging markers and extending their lifespan. It doesn’t of course go to say that everyone should start sleeping next to a live wall socket to live longer, but depending on how you look at this, it could be promising and terrifying at the same time that genes can be controlled wirelessly.
While we’ve all left the UK now, it’s still with great despair that we read this paper released by the UK Institute of Economic Affairs on the UK’s Attitudes to Economic Growth. On the bright side, it’s brutally honest. But the truth about which it is brutal is grim – its takeaways flag how the UK has fallen behind many of its peers, ranking 21st globally in GDP per capita, behind the US, Singapore, Australia, Germany and Switzerland. In fact, when asked to rank the UK against the 51 states of the US, UK respondents ranked it at around #7 (out of the 51). The reality: the UK ranks dead last, behind every US state including Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas. As the IEA puts it, the first step to fixing a problem is recognising it exists – hopefully this is clear enough a message for the powers that be, and more importantly for the general public. And hopefully they move to get something done about it – no matter how hard or how long it’ll take. EL
What we're listening to.
I've heard David Friedberg many times on the All-In Podcast before but never on his own. This conversation with Chris Williamson is excellent. I've been curious about the work going on in anti-ageing and longevity and this episode was a real eye-opener for me. I didn't realize how close we are to actual breakthroughs. I learned a lot and really recommend it. This guy is a mine of information. Lots of light bulb moments in this.
Also wanted to understand better some of the core issues in the software space and listened to an episode on the Meb Faber Show called Software Winners and Losers in the Age of AI. It featured two VC guys named Alex Rubalcava and Paul Bricault. Much of the conversation was obvious in terms of pros and cons but there are some real insights into what early-stage companies are doing with AI to improve their businesses. One would think on the surface that coding jobs are at risk. They are but it is not so vanilla. This is well worth a listen as on the other side of it I understand the variables a lot better.
Rounding off the listening this week was George Friedman's updated views on the Iran War and who holds the cards. In his view there is absolutely no choice but to make a deal from both parties. Clearly the US is winning militarily but Trump's constraint is political. As such a deal must be made and he believes it will be made. DC