For over fifty years, one of the most powerful arrangements in global finance has been hiding in plain sight. It is not a law. It is not a treaty you can look up at the United Nations. It is a handshake between the United States and Saudi Arabia that says: oil gets priced in dollars, […]
The Saudi Switch: What Happens to Your Portfolio When Oil Stops Trading in Dollars? Read More »
There is a reliable pattern in financial markets that has nothing to do with price charts or earnings reports. Every few years, someone invents a new vocabulary word. The word sounds fresh. It carries the scent of innovation. And it exists, almost always, to describe something old enough to have a Wikipedia page. The pump
There is a particular kind of pain reserved for the rational investor during a bull market. It is not the pain of losing money. It is the pain of watching everyone else make money doing things you know are stupid. You have done the reading. You understand valuations. You can spot a bubble forming the
Why Being Rational is Your Biggest Liability in a Bull Market Read More »
There is a particular kind of confidence that comes from having a good reason for everything. It feels sturdy. It feels earned. You did the research, ran the numbers, built the thesis. And then the market did something that made your airtight reasoning look like a paper umbrella in a hurricane. This is not a
A brief history of how humans learned to bet on the future – and kept making the same mistakes Most people think of the stock market as a modern invention. Something that arrived alongside WiFi and financial news channels. But humans have been pooling money, trading shares, and losing their shirts in speculative manias for
There is something almost poetic about watching a government lose a fight with a number. Not a war, not an election, not a scandal. A number. A simple exchange rate that Britain insisted was correct while the entire planet disagreed. On September 16, 1992, the United Kingdom was forced out of the European Exchange Rate
You have never made a truly rational financial decision in your life. Neither have I. Neither has anyone walking the floor of the New York Stock Exchange or quietly managing a sovereign wealth fund in Oslo. This is not an insult. It is a design feature. The human brain did not evolve to maximize portfolio
Why Your Brain Needs a “Story” More Than It Needs a Profit in Financial Markets Read More »
Most people read Sun Tzu for the warfare. The battles, the tactics, the ancient glamour of generals outsmarting each other across misty valleys. But the real genius of The Art of War has almost nothing to do with fighting. It is a book about when not to fight. About patience. About terrain. About knowing yourself
There is a particular kind of genius that only reveals itself in hindsight. It is the genius of the financial fraudster, a person who manages to look like the smartest person in the room right up until the moment everyone realizes they were the most dangerous. Jérôme Kerviel nearly brought down Société Générale in 2008.
For fifty years, the world has run on a quiet handshake. Oil gets priced in dollars, dollars get recycled into US Treasuries, and the United States gets to borrow at rates that would make any other country blush. We call it the petrodollar system, and most people treat it like the weather. It is just
Beyond the Barrel: Why the “Petro-Bitcoin” Idea Is Not as Crazy as You Think Read More »