Substack Library
GlossaryIt Is Going to Get Worse
March 4, 2022“Once my mother fainted from hunger. People thought she had died, and they laid her out with the corpses.” Putin on what his mother’s experience during the siege of Leningrad, 1941-44.
Harry Potter Versus Voldemort
February 27, 2022Ukraine fits so neatly into our story rubric that it is immediately recognizable. Zelensky is Harry Potter and Voldemort is you know who. It is also David and Goliath and The Hobbit and Smaug.
Ukraine Update #2
February 25, 2022I am aghast at the videos of Ukrainians cowering in subways, clutching their children, just as the Russians did when the Nazis attacked them.1 The parallel is 1939, when Hitler invaded Poland, only this is also being live streamed on Telegram, Twitter and TikTok. And that bizarre parallel—barbarous invasion alongside free, disorganized, observation facilitated by private companies, technology and citizens—sum up the essence of the conflict. This is the medieval versus the modern.
Ukraine Update
February 22, 2022I am getting questions about Ukraine. Below, I share what I am seeing and doing. I am also offering an “ask me anything zoom session” about this topic later today, if it’s helpful, and tried to pick a time that works for Asia, Europe and the US. To be sure, it is hard to offer clarity given how fast things are moving and my views will evolve as the facts do.
My Geography Lesson
February 20, 2022We grow mostly by word of mouth and a bigger community creates more robust dialogue, so feel free to forward widely!
Things Fall Apart
February 13, 2022It’s easy to be lulled into a sense that lessons once painfully learned, sometimes over hundreds of years—like the value of stable borders or rules limiting a leader’s power—are now accepted wisdom. I spent part of last week in Turkish-controlled Cyprus, a place that serves as a reminder of what happens when this wisdom is lost.
The Physics of Story
February 6, 2022I like a good framework. For instance, an equity (a stock) has just two moving parts, earnings and the price paid for those earnings. Earnings, in turn, are spending. A framework puts individual observations, like the price investors are willing to pay to own a company’s earnings, into logical context.
Tightening and War
January 30, 2022There are times when it is easier to make money investing and times when it is harder; this is a time when it is harder. Investors (savers) need to simultaneously navigate a) less Fed money printing and b) a potential war—while not losing sight of the big picture, which is a transformative wave of innovation.
The Tide Goes Out
January 23, 2022If the rest of 2022 looks like January, most savers are in for some pain. Asset prices (stock indexes and bonds) are down and inflation is up. In real terms (after inflation), the typical saver has a lot less money, like about 8% less just this month. If this continues for the next six months … that is a meaningful decline in real wealth.