Money Rot
Once you strip away the illusion created by decades of inflation mismeasurement, assets may not be worth what we think.
Ernie Gray
The Veneer of Affluence
The consumer credit crisis has created a lag in recession signals by temporarily inflating credit scores and spending power, masking underlying financial distress. Similar dynamics preceded the 2008 financial crisis, where easy credit defaults led to a sudden collapse of the bull market.
New Order of the Ages
“Trees don’t grow to the sky,” they say. But there are substantial reasons to question whether the “new market” is like the old market, and redress its underlying mechanisms.
Democratization & DeFi
Will the underlying technologies of DeFi live up to the fervor and marketing hype, or will the technology inevitably be cast aside, a hollow shell of its ethos, living on in name only as its “brand power” is strategically co-opted by dominant interests?
The Story of Target Date Funds
The Target Date Fund, now a staple of 401(k) plans, has a surprisingly colorful origin—emerging from academic theory, shaped by pension consulting, and even brushing up against Star Wars and Kubrick. Behind its quiet ubiquity lies a story of mathematical elegance, financial innovation, and unexpected creativity.
Greater Fools
The greater fool is an economic term. For the rest of us to profit, we need a greater fool — someone who will buy high and sell low.
Price Illusions
While passive investing offers cost efficiency and broad exposure, its growing dominance may cause illusory distortions in prices and leave markets more vulnerable to abrupt dislocations when the tide turns.
Tactical Sector Investing
A sector investing strategy is like a well-designed oil tanker navigating volatile seas. Just as an oil tanker is built with separate compartments to keep liquid cargo from shifting and destabilizing the vessel, a portfolio made up of sector ETFs can isolate risk and limit damage from downturns in any one part of the economy.
The Squiers of Foots Creek
As young boys growing up in rural America, Michael Rawlins and Jacob Williams spent much of their time playing in the woods, swimming in creeks and discovering the wonders of nature around them. The forest that bordered their family farms seemed an endless expanse of wilderness frontier…
The Great Hollowing?
In the elegant machinery of economics, supply and demand form a perfect circle—each feeding the other in a self-sustaining loop, like the smooth symmetry of a donut. In the new world of AI, the donut isn’t just missing its center—it’s crumbling from the inside out.
The Second Life of James Lyons
It happened in a bookstore café in Midtown—of all places. James had wandered in while visiting a friend. He was sipping black coffee and thumbing through a used copy of Leaves of Grass when a voice rang out: “Lyons? Is that really you?”
Cogs?
We are social animals. Our sense of self-worth is deeply tied to how we’re valued by society. While fear of economic insecurity is certainly real in modern society, most of us have a deeper anxiety of becoming irrelevant, of having nothing meaningful to offer in return for recognition or belonging. Despite what we think makes for a successful career, what we really crave is fairness and social validation; it’s a primal need to feel useful to the collective.
Remember Human
Do we remember how to be human? Music written, recorded and produced during the summer of 2024.
Bancor
Bancor was a supranational currency proposed in 1944 to facilitate international trade by balancing global liquidity and preventing chronic trade deficits and surpluses through an International Clearing Union.
Finfluence
Social media influencers have not only altered the way financial information is consumed, but the markets themselves.