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The Board Didn’t Change… The Position Did Last month, we framed the environment through a game of chess … not because markets are a game—but because the analogy holds: The outcome is rarely determined by a single move … but by the position that move creates. We also noted: When pressure builds, it doesn’t create weakness—it reveals it. Over…
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The move everyone misread In 1997, Garry Kasparov—the best chess player in the world—sat down across from a machine: IBM’s Deep Blue. Kasparov wasn’t just a champion—he was the champion. The consensus from commentators, grandmasters, and analysts alike was clear: experience, intuition, and human judgment would ultimately win. Machines could calculate… but they couldn’t understand. Then came Game 2….
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Crosswinds in March March 12–15, 1993 … The “Storm of the Century” … also known as the Great Blizzard of ’93! A group of close friends and I were driving down I-95 from the University of Connecticut to Daytona Beach, Florida for Spring Break. In hindsight, it wasn’t the smartest decision we’d ever made?! At the time, it didn’t…
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Always darkest before the dawn There’s an old saying that it’s always darkest before the dawn. Not because the night suddenly gets worse, but because human perception is at its weakest just before conditions begin to change. Markets behave the same way. They tend to stabilize and recover before confidence returns. Prices respond to improving conditions long before people feel them. By…
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Odometer vs. Speedometer! Most people don’t drive by staring at the odometer … they watch the speedometer. The odometer tells you how far you’ve gone. The speedometer tells you what’s happening now. Markets work in a similar fashion. The level matters, but the rate of change in both growth and inflation is what actually alters behavior, expectations, and decision…
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Forty-three days … no scoreboard There’s something uniquely American about shutting down the government for more than 40 days … only to emerge with the exact same deal you could have signed before shutting the entire place down. It’s legislative tail-chasing at a national scale … like watching a dog spin itself dizzy for six straight weeks, collapse in…
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The Runway Lights Are Lying On a clear day, any pilot can land a plane. It’s the hazy nights that separate instinct from discipline. Pilots call it the “runway-lights illusion” … the brighter the lights, the more your eyes insist you’re perfectly lined up, even as the instruments tell a different story. That’s when you decide what to trust:…
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The collapse you don’t see coming In February 2021, Winter Storm Uri rolled into Texas. Temperatures plunged, demand spiked, and the “fortified” power grid — the one officials swore was reliable — collapsed almost instantly. Millions were left without heat, water, or electricity. People weren’t caught off guard because there hadn’t been warnings — they were caught because they…
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The illusion of balance We’ve often said that when process and perception collide, perception wins the headline while process wins the war. But today, the gap between the two isn’t just wide—it’s dangerous. Markets are moving like a lightly loaded suspension bridge: cables taut, traffic flowing, everything holding—until a single ship rams a support beam and the whole thing…
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It “feels” like we’re stuck in a loop … always talking about the importance of process. That word shows up in everything we do: in the signals markets are sending, in the rate of change (RoC) of the data, yet more importantly, it’s stark in contrast to the narrative-choked headlines that dominate the news cycle. With all the unfiltered…
