1 Healthy, 2 Wealthy & 3 Wise — 24th May

Risk & Randomness, Druckenmiller, Joe Rogan Different Take, Investment Writings, Calorie Counting

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HashTalk

7 min readMay 25, 2020

A weekly newsletter bringing you the best of Health, Wealth and Wisdom to lead, better meaningful lives. Please help share this newsletter below or give me feedback on how I can improve further.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK — Larger than life, to the point 🎯

“I realized that I could lose myself in a character. I could live in a character. It was a choice. And when I finished with that, I took a month to remember who I was. ‘What do I believe? What are my politics? What do I like and dislike?’ It took me a while, and I was depressed going back into my concerns and my politics. But there was a shift that had already happened. And the shift was, ‘Wait a second. If I can put Jim Carrey aside for four months, who is Jim Carrey? Who the hell is that?’ … I know now he does not really exist. He’s ideas. … Jim Carrey was an idea my parents gave me. Irish-Scottish-French was an idea I was given. Canadian was an idea that I was given. I had a hockey team and a religion and all of these things that cobble together into this kind of Frankenstein monster, this representation. It’s like an avatar. These are all the things I am. You are not an actor, or a lawyer. No one is a lawyer. There are lawyers, law is practiced, but no one is a lawyer. There is no one, in fact, there.”
— Jim Carrey (@JimCarrey)

TWEET OF THE WEEK — I still can’t believe Twitter is free. Thank you Jack 👌🏼
Chris Sacca nailed it for me this week in this tweet storm. Talking about WFH culture and moving to quieter places, he writes “In parallel, Warren Miller, a filmmaker/author who deeply influenced my journey passed away. He had a famous saying that I live by, “If you don’t do it this year, you’ll be one year older when you do.” Preach. Scary as it might be, maybe now is the time to make your move.’’

Random Thoughts - History, Randomness & Tail End Risks

Nothing in this post is an investment advice guys

I have been thinking a lot about “luck” & “history” lately. Especially in light of Corona and how our world has turned upside down since January. No one could have planned this. Future is so uncertain. Yet we never sit down and reflect back for a moment or relax and calculate our risks in careers & life.

Morgan Housel had an excellent piece this week on “The Three Sides of Risk”. A tragic story about losing his two closest friends, things beyond his control & what it taught him about risk. He finishes the essay concluding from his experience below:

But once you go through something like that, you realize that the tail-end consequences – the low-probability, high-impact events – are all that matter.
In investing, the average consequences of risk make up most of the daily news headlines. But the tail-end consequences of risk – like pandemics, and depressions – are what make the pages of history books. They’re all that matter. They’re all you should focus on. We spent the last decade debating whether economic risk meant the Federal Reserve set interest rates at 0.25% or 0.5%. Then 36 million people lost their jobs in two months because of a virus. It’s absurd.
Tail-end events are all that matter.

This resonated right away to the thoughts I was having on risk & luck. But how do you measure them? How to tune your mental models to think about these tail winds? How do you connect your knowledge of history on the subject to calculate odds for a satisfying future?

As a student of history (political, economic, and financial), I find it fascinating. As they say — History always rhymes. History teaches you patterns, how people think, how they behave, how they make decisions in different situations. If you go back a bit longer in history, it can can all start to make sense. You will see that we are actually moving in circles. In long term circles of 100 years and medium term circles of 10 years. Thinking and planning lesser than a decade is just meaningless.

For example, every 100 odd years we have had the rise of a new nation so powerful, that it displaces the old economic order with its new culture and philosophy. Portugal (1500), Spain (1600), Dutch (1700), English (1800/1900), US (1900/2000). Who is next? China perhaps? It all rhymes. Doesn’t it? The conditions surrounding these regime changes also rhyme very well — education, technological advances, capital of the world, global reserve currency etc. All come and go in large macro cycles of 100 years. That is how I have started to think in centuries from different perspectives.

Similarly when you think and plan ahead in decades (because you really can’t plan for 100 years) , it gives a whole new meaning. Markets in 10 years? Regimes? countries? Life? Kids? everything. As Jim Carrey says above, your mind is fed to think in the language and culture your parents taught you. Your school, country, your patriotism, all is fed to you. You are an idea that was developed as you were grown g up. Wise are the men, who take a pause, reflect back hundreds of years, and plan their future in decades, against all calculated odds learned from historical references.

Yes, against all odds. Once you’ve seen historical macro cycles, and you are aware of your surrounding environment, you can plan your future. And by planning I mean, what are the odds of you being right. Odds of the calls you make about your career and your life? It is all about those odds. Knowing the past, are of present and making calculating bets on your future. Once you’ve done that, you know the risks. You will still have those tail wind risks, but now you will be in a better position to sail through. Once you consistently start making calculating bets and be disciplined, you will come out a winner.

James Clear has put hot perfectly I think:

“There are 3 primary drivers of results in life:
1) Your luck (randomness).
2) Your strategy (choices).
3) Your actions (habits).
Only 2 of the 3 are under your control. But if you master those 2, you can improve the odds that luck will work for you rather than against you.”

Have a great week ahead. Now on to Health wealth and wisdom.

1 — on Health 🏃🏻‍♀️🏃🏼‍♂️Calorie Counting

Death of the Calorie — The Economist. For more than a century we’ve counted on calories to tell us what will make us fat. Peter Wilson says it’s time to bury the world’s most misleading measure.

2 — on Wealth 🥂🍻 Debt in Tech, Best Investment Writings

1- Debt is coming to tech — by Dance that also covers Carlota Perez and her book Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital exploring the relationship between Financial Capital (FK, the equity and debt that’s owned by investors) and Production Capital (PK, the factories, equipment, processes, and other real-world concerns which financial capital owns).

2- My Favourite Investment Writing of 2019 This one is a great treasure on investment writings of 2019. Try if you can read all of them why OfDollarAndData

3 — on Wisdom 🧠🗣

Avoid The Zeroes — OfDollarsandData is an amazing piece on looters game vs winners game. The better strategy for investors then is not to try and win, but to not lose. Too many people in the financial community (especially FinTwit) obsess over the “optimal” way to invest when their time would be better spent steering clear of actions that could lead to ruin.
100 Little Ideas — A list of ideas, in no particular order and from different fields, that help explain how the world works by Collaborative Fund

If a tyrant threatens me at court, I say ‘What is he threatening?’ If he says, ‘I will put you in chains,’ I say, ‘He is threatening my hands and feet.’ If he says, ‘I will behead you,’ I say, ‘He is threatening my neck.’ If he says, ‘I will throw you into prison,’ I say, ‘He is threatening my entire body’; if he threatens exile, I say the same. ‘Well, then, aren’t you threatened, even a little?’ If I feel that these things are nothing to me, then no. But if I fear for any of them, then, yes, it is I who am threatened.
— Epictetus

3. The Price of Discipline by David Perell

Video I am watching — Stanley Druckenmiller

Stanley Druckenmiller Interview — The Economic Club of New York (2019)