The Sunday Drive - 11/19/2023 Edition [#85]
Musings and Meanderings of a Financial Provocateur
👋🏼 Hello friends,
Greetings from Saratoga Springs, NY! For my family, the Thanksgiving holiday has always been a celebration of food, family, and football. I hope the upcoming holiday is a safe and pleasant one for all of you. Happy Turkey Day! 🦃
Now, let's take it easy and enjoy a leisurely Sunday Drive around the internet.
The Sunday Drive is also published at NewLanternCapital.com.
🎶 Vibin'
With the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, I am reflecting on how very much for which I have to be thankful - a wonderful wife and two amazing children, a long and still fruitful career, and many friends and colleagues, both old and new. So this week, I’m vibin’ to Gratitude by Earth, Wind and Fire.
💭 Quote of the Week
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” – Albert Einstein
📈 Chart of the Week
It's hard to put in context what an outlier last Tuesday was. It was the 5th-highest S&P 500 return (up 1.94%) in the over 30 years of VIX history when the VIX was below 15. But that's nothing compared to the move in the Russell 2000 (up 5.44%), which had a 7 standard deviation move relative to the history of price changes when VIX<15.
Normally, big up moves like this come after periods of market stress and high volatility. However, the performance of the mega-tech names this year has masked the underlying weakness of the overall equity market and dampened volatility.
I’ve been commenting for a while on my expectation for a broadening of the equity market participation beyond the Nasdaq 100 and Magnificent 7. I believe that this week marked a turn in the performance of small cap stocks relative to the mega-cap tech stocks. If interest rates decline as we head into 2024 as I expect, then small cap stocks, and small cap value stocks in particular, could do quite well relative to other parts of the equity market.
🚙 Interesting Drive-By's
This week we have articles on Problems, Longevity, Short-sellers, and Background Checks:
💡 Working with Problems - from Seth Godin
They’re everywhere we look. Here are a few thoughts on the ones that won’t go away:
First, is it a problem or a situation? Problems, by definition, have solutions. You might not like the cost of the solution, the trade-offs it leads to, or the time and effort it takes, but problems have solutions.
On the other hand, situations don’t. Situations are simply things we need to live with.
Once we realize that a problem we have isn’t a problem at all, but actually a situation, it’s easier to do our best to move on and thrive. Focusing on a situation is usually a source of stress, not a way forward.
Second, has anyone else ever solved a problem like this one in a useful way? If not, it might be a situation. See question one.
Third, if the problem has been around for a while, it might not be an easy problem. Those tend to get solved right away. It’s probably a problem that involves more effort or trade-offs than you were hoping for. Resetting our expectations for what it might take to solve gives us the chance to recalibrate it as a situation we’re willing to live with, simply because the cost of the solution is too high.
And finally, some problems get better if we’re willing to talk about them. Some situations, on the other hand, simply get worse when we focus our energy and community on them. [link]
❤️ Longevity Tips from Super-agers
Ben Meyers and Fabrizio Villatoro are part of LongeviQuest, an organization that validates the ages of the world's oldest people and shares their stories in a database. Meyers, the CEO, has met over 1,000 centenarians through his work with older people, and Villatoro, LongeviQuest's Latin America Research President, has personally verified the ages of around 20 centenarians and supercentenarians (people who are 110 or older).
Genetics can determine whether or not someone lives to 100, but lifestyle factors such as diet, exercise, and relationships, can play a role too. Meyers and Villatoro have picked up on many of the common habits and mindsets that centenarians from all over the world share. [link]
💣 You Only Get to be a Grizzly Once
[link]
[link]
👋🏼 Parting Thought
I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday. 🦃
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.
Please note that the content in The Sunday Drive is intended for informational purposes only, and is in no way intended to be financial, legal, tax, marital, or even cooking advice. Consult your own professionals as needed.
I hope you have a relaxing weekend and a great week ahead. See you next Sunday...
Your faithful financial provocateur,
-Mike
If you enjoy the Sunday Drive, I'd be honored if you'd share it with others.
If this was forwarded to you, please subscribe and join the other geniuses who are reading this newsletter.