This morning, Donald Trump capped off what it’s probably fair to call one of the more absurd weeks of his young presidency.
What started with an on-the-fly, off-script threat to destroy an entire country (a threat delivered during a truly outrageous, orange-faced rant at the U.N. General Assembly), ended with the President of the United States locked in a tweet war with dozens of professional athletes, some of whom he accused of being traitorous “sons of b*^&%$es” at a rally in Alabama just 36 hours previous.
On a certain level, you have to marvel at the sheer outlandishness of it all. “You can’t make this stuff up” is now a phrase that can be taken literally. There is no way to lampoon this. Reality is not only stranger than fiction, it is also far funnier – if one can get past the fact that nuclear weapons are involved.
It’s on weeks like this that the commentaries penned by One River Asset Management’s Eric Peters come in particularly handy. He has a unique style he employs on the way to delivering his weekend LinkedIn posts and the latest edition is particularly amusing. You can find excerpts below and read the full post here.
Via Eric Peters
“Did he really call me Rocket Man?” cried the chubby Korean kid. “Yes he did Rocket Man,” said some nervous sycophant in a cheap suit, saluting his Dear Leader. “Did he call me a scared, barking dog?” barked earth’s most powerful man, typing a tweet. “Woof!” answered the President’s pack. “He called me a suicidal madman on Twitter!” stammered shorty, combing his black bouffant. “He said he’d tame Trump with fire?” asked The Donald, incredulous, swirling his sweep. “He tweeted North Korea would be tested like never before!” screeched Kim, pounding the table, knuckles mere dimples, baby fat. “He said he’ll detonate a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific?” asked our entertainer in chief, excited, knowing a sensational season opener when he sees one. “Shall I go thermonuclear?” asked the itsy bitsy dictator. And his generals glanced left, right, unsure. “Shall I do it?” he screamed. The garden gnomes stood motionless. “Tell me, shall I mention Trump’s little hands?” asked Kim Jong Un, dead serious. They shook their heads in perfect unison; such a devastating insult would surely end 3.5mm years of human evolution. “Dear Leader, such an insult must be saved, savored,” pleaded his generals. “Very well, I’ll call him a dotard!” cried the child. “Kim called me a dotard! A dotard! What the hell does that even mean?” whispered the steward of earth’s largest nuclear arsenal. An Ivy League intern explained, “Mr. President, it’s actually pronounced DOE-turd, and it’s a middle English word used by Shakespeare that means an ageing imbecile…” The Donald cut him off, “You’re fired!” The room fell silent, the enormity of this unexpected crisis sinking in. You see, dotard is the kind of nickname that just might stick. But at least the risk of nuclear Armageddon had receded. Because of course, it’s simply not possible to end civilization amidst such buffoonery.
Anecdote: “Whatever investment style you adopt will blow up someday,” said the CIO. “When that day comes, will you fold or double down?” he continued. We were discussing systematic investing. I see its future dominance and am building my firm accordingly. “If you’ve surrendered control to a machine, how will you make that decision?” he asked. Before I could answer, he supplied his own. “I’d rather practice making decisions along the way so that I’ll either avoid the blow up or at least understand my strategy in the crisis.” That’s a credible position to take on the matter; for years I took it myself. But time changes most things, ourselves in particular. Day by day, month by month, we’re different people. Humble, hubristic, stubborn, objective, greedy, fearful, certain, confused, euphoric, depressed, and every imaginable combination thereof.
The two greatest advantages of developing decision-making algorithms are that they allow us to consistently be our finest selves, and they can apply our process across more markets than a single human ever could. But the difficulty of distilling profound complexity into a set of robust rules leads many practitioners to cut corners – which takes the form of choosing rules that worked in the recent past for seemingly arbitrary reasons, and building algorithms without sensible risk-mitigation to avoid its corresponding costs. Such strategies put their investors at risk of catastrophic loss in exchange for a pile of pennies, and/or tend to make money in every time period except for the future. But such pitfalls are not machine error, they reflect human weakness, and are thus common to both poorly designed discretionary and systematic strategies. Because ultimately, every conceivable form of successful money management requires the experience to identify rules that tend to make money over time, and the introspection necessary to come to know our finest selves.
H- CLASSIC, that is a grrrrreat post thanks.
Take his “trigger” away!!!!!
Thumbs UP!