Uranium, Inflation, P2E Gaming, The Metaverse and Reese Witherspoon

September 6, 2021

Sep 6

Welcome to the +40 new subscribers since last Monday’s email! If you’re reading this but haven’t subscribed yet, do it!

Each week, I write an email that mixes technology, markets and worldly wisdom picked up from a +21 year finance career.

It’s been called “the best signal-to-noise ratio of any email”

How was your summer and how has September started for you?

Do things feel different, a little better than in June?

“Never ask anyone for their opinion, forecast, or recommendation. Just ask them what they have – or don’t have – in their portfolio…

I find it profoundly unethical to talk without doing, without exposure to harm, without having one’s skin in the game, without having something at risk. You express your opinion; it can hurt others (who rely on it), yet you incur no liability. Is this fair?”

– Antifragile, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“As I grow older I’m becoming more and more like the American empire. For example, I’ll walk into a room and then think, ‘why did I come in here?’”

- Satirist Karl Sharro

“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you have was once among the things only hoped for.”

- Epicurus

“The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.”

- Henry Kissinger

“Consider how hard it is to change yourself and you'll understand what little chance you have in trying to change others.”

- Jacob Morton Braude

A. A Few Things Worth Checking Out

1. Scott Malpass, CIO of Notre Dame’s Endowment was on the Invest Like the Best podcast discussing How to Build a Great Endowment.

Here is a great twitter summary if you don’t have time to listen:

John Street Capital @JohnStCapital

0/ @patrick_oshag had former Notre Dame CIO Scott Malpass on the pod, Malpass took ND's endowment from a 3 person team (a priest, a receptionist & himself) & $425M in 1989 to ~$14.0B when he stepped aside last year w/ endowment spending going from $19.5M to $425.7M over that time

2. Uranium is moving. You should learn more about it and it’s now on Wall Street Bets too. A great podcast on what’s happening in the Uranium industry.

3. What I Learnt About Failure on Wall Street:

Ahmed H @1ahmedh1

20 years of failing on Wall Street. I learnt a lot about failure during my time on Wall Street. Over 20 years, I felt like a failure every month. This is the story of my failures, what it taught me, and how I learnt to deal with it.

B. Thinking About Inflation

I read this over the weekend, and it really resonated:

The ‘four inflationary ideologies’ (‘safety-first’ covid authoritarianism, climate change ideology, equality ideology and identity ideology) will continue to drive supply side constraints via political intervention in trade as well as through domestic goods & services disruption, further accelerating cost push directly, but also indirectly, via declining productivity.
Persistent cost inflation, and heightened trade and supply chain disruption are set to trigger a major change in supply chain management. After 40 years of increasing supply chain complexity, ‘efficiency’ and fragility, consumers and corporates will start buying ‘insurance’; hoarding working capital, onshoring, and integrating vertically. They will then pass these costs onto their customers, reinforcing the macro inflationary pressure from the combination of easy money and fiscal largesse.

In the near term though, we likely need three issues to be resolved before inflation really shows up:

1. US Fiscal spending needs to be resolved

2. China Growth needs to come back

3. Fears around the Delta variant need to dissipate

Where do you stand on Inflation?

C. The Tech and Crypto Section

1. Fortune Magazine’s latest issue was dedicated to Crypto and DeFi. Check it out.

2. One of the best pieces on the Metaverse and what it means was written by the folks at Bankless. I’ve read it twice, and will likely read one more time.

DavidHoffman.eth Ξ🦇🔊💰 @TrustlessState

"The Metaverse Emerges" My newest article in @BanklessHQ The metaverse arrives by different components becoming stitched together But each corner of the metaverse must share a single source-of-truth of all metaversal objects Thats what #Ethereum is for newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/the-metavers…

3. Dr Pippa Malmgreen and Clint Cox continued their discussion on digital currencies and decentralized finance on part 2 of their MacroVoices podcast. Super listen!

MacroVoices Podcast @MacroVoices

MacroVoices continues with the second installment of our two-part summer special featuring @DrPippaM and Clint Cox, discussing digital currencies and decentralized finance revolution. With your host @ErikSTownsend. bit.ly/2UpC53g

4. The fun origin story of Solana

Governor 🏛 @defigovernor

Solana broke $150 today and became the 7th largest crypto by market cap. It’s time to freshen up your history. The Solana Archives: January 2018 - September 2021 Roll tape 🎬

5. We have discussed Axie Infinity before and Patrick O’Shaughnessy interviewed Gabby Dizon, the founder of Yield Guild Games, which is a play to earn (P2E) gaming guild.

These will change gaming forever and remember gaming is a bigger business than movies and music combined.

The future is wild.