Founder & CIO - India Pvt Mkt Funds | ex coder, consultant, iBanker | Student of History | On Arts, Macro, Gold, Geopolitics, Physics, #booknotes #ArtInvestLive
Mumbai, India
Joined August 2012
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Random musings
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1)
Have you read The Godfather?
If the Families try to take out Sonny, and eventually do take out Sonny, that doesnt mean they are at war with Sonny.
2)
And sometimes, the good son uses up all the bullets on a shooting range so that the bad son has none left to use.
3)
What our current generations doesnt understand is - that intelligence isnt enough.
Knowledge of history, 3000 years of history, is also needed to understand how the world works.
Since they dont realise, they refuse to aquire knowledge even when thrust onto them.
This is very convenient for the rulers, who created the managerial class (politics) and companies (nation states) for this very purpose - of creating diversions, from their wealth, and games.
This position holds price of gold in $ terms....
and is paid in literal $ when things go bad.
In something akin to a divine comedy,
you get paid in the very thing you want to short.
You are long $ in your position that seeks to short $.
Spdr is the reserves equiv of gold banking.
Holding its units, is so strange,
as they are NOT even ISSUED by spdr.
Thats divine comedy squared.
The night is young,
And full of (t)errors
(and I dont mean the duomo, milano...as it just fills the air with sadness)
The lead time to a major, real, war is roughly 20 years, give or take.
The playbook hasnt changed, even over centuries
Why change what aint broken...
Most times, its not clear even 100s of years later, as to - where, by who and how the clock started ticking on the lead time. That is the very reason the playbook survives.
The key, in there present times, is judging not only what sets the clock ticking, but also the definition of "major" and "real" as above.
Apply this to any real war of today, or of the last few decades, and you get to interesting starting points.
Apply it to some siesmic changes over the last 15 years and you start seeing some terrible endpoints in near future.
Such is the circle of war.
spookysilver retweeted
Watch this acceleration by Vithya Ramraj to overtake the Chinese athlete in the final leg!
- Helped India win its first Athletics Gold Medal at Asian Games 2026! 🥇
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
spookysilver retweeted
Meanwhile, in Bangkok, Thailand’s prime minister sang “Let It Be” and “Blowin’ in the Wind” as Singapore’s prime minister played guitar.
#Thailand #Singapore
spookysilver retweeted
In 1912, JP Morgan, testifying before the Pujo Committee, which was investigating concentration in commercial credit et al, said two pivotal things:
(Paraphrasing from memory)
1. "Credit is an evidence of banking, but it is not the money itself. Money is gold, and nothing else."
2. When asked if credit was solely based on collateral, Mr Morgan replied -
"The first thing is character, before money or anything else. Money cannot buy it... A man I do not trust could not get money from me on all the bonds in Christendom. I think that is the fundamental basis of business."
Fast fwd to today, and we have a world where the populace, and intelligentsia, believe credit is money (overturning #1 above).
And HENCE, in that context, a borrower with an unlimited credit line, that is collateral-free, SHOULD bring out the infantry to hold that line.
Its natural....
All we see is the quiet part being said aloud....
spookysilver retweeted
The modern understanding of capitalism, communism, and the moddle class is disoriented, by design.
Going all the way back to bc and until early 1700s, the system comprised largely 2 classes, and their relations were governed by ownership, and hence equity. A commune, around owner nodes.
That shifted in early 1700s for a varierty of reasons and was sold to people as slavery-bad, sovereignty-good. Shifting labour interse within capital-nodes - from agrarian-nodes to mfg-nodes. The middle layer just shifted from fiefs/vicars et al to the so called managerial class or middle class. Itnwas the same thing. Just the relations shifted from equity to perceived-sovereignty.
Its a long topic. Ill stop here. Look into history of marx. Of lenin. Where they came from. And who batted for which model. Overall, there is a front end wrapper of capitalism, communism and middle class...and a back end reality.
The 50 year fluke theory is not new. Its been around. But the theory itself is a wrapper hiding a reality.
spookysilver retweeted
ORBIT ACHIEVED. 🚀
Vikram-1 Test Flight-1 has reached orbit. India's first privately developed orbital rocket has completed its final burn and injected its payloads into a ~450 km orbit, making India the third country in the world with private orbital launch capability.
History is made. 🇮🇳
#Vikram1 #JourneyToOrbit #SkyrootAerospace
youtu.be/ABF1dPmUkmc?si=041Q…
This is an incredible exchage.
Esp from 2:45 onwards.
Not only unbecoming.
But also uninformed.
spookysilver retweeted
I am am not going to spend what is left of my life renting myself to a thing that can take the badge back whenever it likes.
thecuriousmind.org/p/the-ins…
spookysilver retweeted
I lost my marriage, a promotion, and a major client the same way.
The real decision happened in a room I wasn’t in.
My wife spent two years arranging her exit while we were still planning holidays. I had strong revenues at Goldman but a weak reputation in the rooms where partners actually formed their views. A colleague took my largest client by making the case while I waited to be assigned.
3 different decades. Identical signature.
For a long time I attributed it to bad luck or insufficient calculation. Neither explanation works.
I was simply playing by rules that didn’t match the actual game. The outcome had already been decided in rooms whose existence I only discovered after the fact.
Connecting three books written across many centuries finally gave me the language for what had happened.
Sun Tzu on the gap between what you believe about the situation and what is true. Machiavelli on why seeming often beats being. Clausewitz on why intelligent people keep losing wars they should win because narrative and moral forces outlast physical ones.
Turns out they reached the same conclusions because they were describing the same underlying territory.
That territory has a few consistent features. Your reputation moves through rooms you’re not in and frequently decides more than your visible work. Force can win the immediate contest. What people come to believe determines what happens next. Self-knowledge is not introspection. It is an accurate map of your actual position, including the parts you’d prefer not to see.
Most costly failures are map failures.
The promotion process at places like Goldman exists because the institution already understands this. Your MD vote is shaped by partners who may have had only one or two conversations with you. Their view was formed in the small moments you assumed didn’t count.
You are never in the most important room. The question is what that room is saying about you while you’re gone.
These books do not teach you to become more ruthless.
They teach you to stop being surprised. Most of us operate with an incomplete model: that merit speaks for itself and character is sufficient. That model is not wrong as a moral aspiration. It is incomplete as a description of how power and institutions actually function.
Knowing where it diverges does not make you cynical. It makes you less likely to keep paying the same price.
I don’t think about those three moments with bitterness anymore. I think about them as expensive tuition I received later than I should have. The afternoon the client called to say goodbye, I already knew something fundamental had shifted. I just didn’t yet have the words for it.
Make sure you are in the right rooms.
gold falling
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My sense is that the gold paper longs (hedges against a weak $) are being unwound
Hedges are being unwound as near term outlook has shifted to a strong $
Part of the shift is bec of US Treas. Secy talking up the $ a few days ago
Part is due to the whole commentary around fed rate hike expectations
Overall, a strong $ expectation is geopolitical.
Till this remains, gold shld keep sliding down.
The thesis breaks as soon as there are disruptions - either in physical gold market, or in $ expectations (macro or geopolitical)
spookysilver retweeted
I have read approximately 3,000 10-Ks in my life. I have read my wife’s emotional state correctly maybe 11 times. This is troubling because the skills should transfer. Both require you to look past the headline. Both require you to read the footnotes. Both require you to notice what was said last quarter that is not being said this quarter.
I can spot a goodwill impairment from 40 pages away. I cannot spot that my wife has been quietly furious since Tuesday. In a 10-K I notice when management changes the word “challenging” to “dynamic” and I correctly interpret this as a warning. In my marriage my wife changed the word “fine” to “fine.” and I did not notice the period. The period was the entire disclosure.
I missed it. I read a footnote last week in a packaging company’s annual report that disclosed a related-party transaction worth $400,000 and I caught it in 90 seconds. My wife told me three times this month that she was tired and I interpreted this as “tired” when in fact it was a Level 3 disclosure requiring immediate management response. I have a system for 10-Ks. I read the MD&A first, then the risk factors, then the cash flow statement, then the notes. I have no system for my wife. She is a company that does not file. She reports continuously and without warning and the format changes every quarter. Her risk factors are not enumerated.
Her MD&A is delivered through sighs of varying length and I have not yet developed the ear. Last week she said “do whatever you want” and I did whatever I wanted and it turns out the correct interpretation of “do whatever you want” was “do not do that specific thing” and I have no idea how I was supposed to know that, and yet, looking back, the signals were all there. The signals are always there. I have been trained to find signals. I find them in companies I will never meet. I miss them in the person I have lived with for nine years. My wife has started saying things like “you would notice this if I were a stock” and she is correct. She is correct. If she had a ticker I would have already built a 6,000-word model on her. I would know her seasonality.
I would know her capex cycle. I would know which quarters historically run hot. Instead I treat her like a private company and I am surprised every time the auditors arrive. I am going to bed now. She said good night in a tone. I do not know what the tone meant. I will find out in the morning. Or I will not. The 10-K of my marriage is filed in real time and I am, as always, three quarters behind.
Yesterday
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Hearing Mr Warsh's press conference yesterday reminds one of Lou Gerstner who made an elephant (IBM) dance (change).
But when elephants dance, it sets the stage for next several decades.
K street in DC is unlikely to get much sleep for the rest of the year as it seeks to shape the dance moves at the Eccles.
But
But yestwrday we also saw images of a treaty being signed at Versailles. The last big one at Versailles was signed 10 decades ago, which set the stage for world war II within 2 decades of signing and a new world for the next 8 decades. The choice of location reveals the continuity of how power is held in this world.
The issue in the 1920s treaty wasnt the terms per se. It was repatriations. Which led to formation of BIS in Basel and of financial power moving from fiscal authorities to monetary ones. And It was BIS that ultimately determined the allocation of financing of world war II. Of picking winners. But it wasnt so clear to observers at the time of Versailles what these next 2 decades of moves on the chess board were going to be, except to a very few.
Yesterday was a monumental day.
A treaty at Versailles.
The Fed announcing introspection.
(When was the last time BoE did so?)
Yesterday should end up being marked in future-history as such.
spookysilver retweeted
REPORTER: You mentioned that, staying on as Fed governor, you intend to keep a low profile. Could you give us a little more detail on what that looks like?
JEROME POWELL: *ducks down*
spookysilver retweeted
Random musings
--------
1)
Have you read The Godfather?
If the Families try to take out Sonny, and eventually do take out Sonny, that doesnt mean they are at war with Sonny.
2)
And sometimes, the good son uses up all the bullets on a shooting range so that the bad son has none left to use.
3)
What our current generations doesnt understand is - that intelligence isnt enough.
Knowledge of history, 3000 years of history, is also needed to understand how the world works.
Since they dont realise, they refuse to aquire knowledge even when thrust onto them.
This is very convenient for the rulers, who created the managerial class (politics) and companies (nation states) for this very purpose - of creating diversions, from their wealth, and games.
Whats happening to energy infra fires/explosions?
(Edited to include more details)
Non War related
(12 incidents in 50 days)
------------------
01 Mar - Esmeraldas, Ecuador, Fire at largest oil refinery (Petroecuador)
05 Mar - Channelview (Petromax), Texas, USA, Refinery fire
12 Mar - Texas, USA, Energy infrastructure incident
23 Mar - Port Arthur, Texas, USA, Refinery explosion & fire
03 Apr – ONGC Bombay High, Off Mumbai Shores, India
09 Apr - Dos Bocas, Mexico, Refinery fire
14 Apr - Sakti, Chhattisgarh, India, Boiler explosion at Power Plant
15 Apr - Geelong, Australia, Major fire/explosions at Viva refinery
16 Apr - Haripur, Pakistan, Gas pipeline explosion
20 Apr – HPCL Rajasthan, India, Plant was to be commissioned shortly
20 Apr – Myanmar, Energy infrastructure incident
21 Apr - Texas, USA, Energy infrastructure incident
Gulf War
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02 Mar - Ras Tanura, Saudi Arabia, Drone strike on oil refinery; fire
17 Mar - Fujairah, UAE, Oil industry zone fire from drone strike
18 Mar - Ras Laffan, Qatar, Missile strikes on LNG facilities; extensive damage/fires
19 Mar - Mina al-Ahmadi, Kuwait, Drone strikes on refinery; fires
19 Mar - Yanbu (SAMREF), Saudi Arabia, Drone strike on refinery
Ukr War
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03 Apr - Ufa (Novo-Ufimsk), Russia, Ukrainian drone attack on refinery; fire/shutdown
04 Apr - Russia (specific facility), Drone attack on energy infrastructure
05 Apr - Kstovo (Nizhny Novgorod/Lukoil), Russia, Drone damage to refinery & oil pipeline; fire
06 Apr - Novorossiysk, Russia, Ukrainian drone strikes on Black Sea oil terminal; fires
16 Apr - Tuapse, Russia, Ukrainian drone strike on oil refinery/port; fire
18 Apr - Russia (two facilities), Ukrainian drone attacks on energy infrastructure
20 Apr - Tuapse, Russia, Ukrainian drone strike on oil refinery/port (repeat attack; fire)
I may yet have missed some
Friday, I'm in ...
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The "Straight of Iran" is open,
"on the coordinated route",
as we just learned,
from the "Country of Iran",
on an American tech platform..
Take a minute to absorb that.
"Coordinated route" = yuan toll?
Perhaps. Perhaps not.
Even if not, then too,
Wait before you break into a foxtrot,
As,
the counter-block continues
It seems that the creators realised that the colloseum was growing quiet and uneasy and needed some action
The thing is, what is better?
- a faux war that brings in new roles for new states, or
- a real war, that achieves the same outcome
In Geopolitics, a rhetorical question this is not.
We are witnessing borders being redrawn and roles being rewritten, and yet our eyes see not.
A world order is not announced. Its a derivative. An outcome. Of state borders, state roles, and intermediation structures.
When even the young eyes see it, its usually too late. Walk in the footsteps of older eyes, who understand power, and that remains the brightest way to secure your wealth...from what is coming.
Watch the plumbing,
As the night progresses strong...