The Sunday Drive - 04/02/2023 Edition
👋🏻 Hello friends,
Let's take it easy and enjoy a leisurely Sunday Drive around the internet.
Vibin'
It’s been a life and death week for our family.
On a somber note, my 93 year old mother-in-law finally found her place of peace after a 13 year journey through dementia. They say that most deaths are tragic, but a few are merciful. Hers was one that was merciful. Now, she can share eternity with her husband of 65 years. May they both rest together in joy and peace forever.
On the other hand, after a six month gestation period with many twists and turns, we brought to life the New Lantern Hedged Equity Fund on April 1st (no foolin’ 😉).
A number of readers of the Sunday Drive have expressed interest in learning more about the Fund and what it can do for investors. I’m very excited to tell the story of a fund designed to be a cost-efficient, liquid and transparent alternative to annuities for retirement income. Not a solicitation, but I am happy to share info on the fund if any of my readers are interested.
This week I’m vibin’ to Kyrie from the 1985 album Welcome to the Real World by Mr. Mister. According to Richard Page, the singer/songwriter, the song was essentially written as a prayer. The Greek translation of “Kyrie Eleison” - a part of the Christian liturgy - is literally “Lord Have Mercy”.
My prayer this week is for that which is gone, and for that which has been newly born into this world. Vibe on, my friends.
💭 Quote of the Week
📈 Charts of the Week
While I do not anticipate a credit crash, I do believe we are seeing the beginnings of a credit crunch. Restricted credit availability is a key driver of recession and is something to keep an eye on.
🚙 Interesting Drive-By's
🙌🏻 The Small Business Renaissance - The 1990s and early 2000s were defined by Wall Street. The mid-2000s till the early 2020s were defined by Silicon Valley. In the opinion of the author of this article, the next 10-15 years will see a renaissance of small businesses in America. These modern small businesses won’t look like the Main Street businesses you are used to though.
🤯 Superhuman: What Can AI Do in 30 Minutes? - The thing that we have to come to grips with in a world of ubiquitous, powerful AI tools is how much it can do for us. The multiplier on human effort is unprecedented, and potentially disruptive.
🤩 God, AI, and the Scalable Class - The performance of ChatGPT and the "engine" that runs it is incredible. And even more astonishing is the rate of improvement compared to previous versions from mere months ago. It is starting to change our most basic assumptions about the meaning of "thinking" and "intelligence." At its core, ChatGPT is a statistical engine that identifies patterns in human content and guesses which word is most likely to follow another word. Technically, it doesn't understand what it says; it only predicts what the most appropriate thing to say in the context of what was already said.
🤔 Mental Liquidity - It’s the ability to quickly abandon previous beliefs when the world changes or when you come across new information. It shouldn’t be controversial. But mental liquidity is so rare. Changing your mind is hard because it’s easier to fool yourself into believing a falsehood than admit a mistake.
📞 Weekly Call 2 Action
One of the OG readers of the Sunday Drive suggested I add a C2A section to the newsletter, so here goes…
Much as been made of recent concerns regarding FDIC bank deposit insurance and the $250,000 limit per account. An extreme example is that of Silicon Valley Bank where nearly 90% of their deposits were larger than the $250,000 and so were technically “uninsured”. I’ll leave aside the fact that the FDIC, the Federal Reserve, and the Treasury Department came to the rescue of SVB’s depositors and made them whole, despite the gross mismanagement of the bank.
As a call to action, I suggest that if large deposits are something you need to address - either personally or for your business - you might consider looking for a bank that is a member of and offers the services of IntraFi Network Deposits - a network of banks that allows access to multi-million-dollar FDIC protection through a single bank relationship. It looks something like this:
San Diego, CA based Axos Bank is a great example. The bank offers the InsureGuard+ Savings account for individuals and the Insured Cash Sweep product for commercial customers.
👋🏼 Parting Thought
The state of banking today…
If you have any cool articles or ideas that might be interesting for future Sunday Drive-by's, please send them along or tweet 'em at me.
I hope you have a relaxing weekend and a great week ahead. See you next Sunday...
Your faithful financial provocateur,
-Mike
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