Many Years ago, I lived in Putney Hill.
In a curious twist, my neighbours in my block of Flats were Iraqi and Insiders of the Ancien Regime.
Mr. and Mrs Chalabi lived opposite and of course it was their nephew Dr. Ahmed Abdel Hadi Chalabi who was a close confidante of the Bush Administration and a big Promoter of American intervention in Iraq and a Math Whiz.
Mrs. Chalabi was a seriously accomplished Chef and would occasionally knock on my door and invite me for the finest Tea, considerably outperforming anything Fortnum and Mason’s could dish up.
We had bought the apartment from Dr. Allawi and in fact up there on Putney Hill, I later appreciated I was surrounded by Folks whom Saddam Hussein probably was not very keen on. There were many moments after a late night out that I imagined that Saddam’s fidā'i known as the Order of Assassins, often referred to as the Hashshashin were probably en route and due to a cruel twist of fate would mistake Flat 31 for flat 32 and I would be an inexplicable foot note in the entire US Iraq Bush the elder and the younger Saddam Hussein saga.
Regime Change came to Saddam’s Iraq and for a while regime change was de rigeur. Muammar Gaddafi was decapitated and the domino effect only stopped when Vladimir Putin decided he was going to put a stop to it and intervened on behalf of Bashar Al-Assad in Syria. Today, the US has exited Afghanistan and the days of a Unipolar World are self evidently behind us.
We exist in a Tripolar World [US China and Russia] with rapidly emerging Middle Powers.
I am not discounting Fortress Europe but one senses the Fortress is keener on a more defensive posture unlike the US [notwithstanding its withdrawal from Afghanistan], China and Russia.
Taiwan and Ukraine are the immediate geopolitical flashpoints.
The Invisible Microbe has metastasized into Omicron and what we know is that COVID-19 far from becoming less virulent has become more virulent. B.1.1.529 seems to have gone from 0.1% to 50% in just a couple of weeks, when it took Delta several months to achieve that. #Omicron @TWenseleers
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function."
this variant is out-competing others *far* faster than Beta and even Delta did #Omicron @jburnmurdoch
https://twitter.com/jmlukens/status/1464654513667592195?s=20South Africa: 1124% France: 191% Spain: 134% Portugal: 115% Switzerland: 111% Ecuador: 105% Czechia: 101% Jordan: 95% Vietnam: 89% Sweden: 88% Update #COVID19 in GAUTENG • 2,629 new cases today, 7-day avg up 331% week-on-week Case incidence doubling every 3.5 days @rid1tweets
The transmissibility of #Omicron is not in question, it clearly has a spectacular advantage. The Open Question is whether it is more virulent. If it is less virulent then #Omicron is breaking the Trend of increasing virulence.
The arrival of #Omicron brought ‘’Regime Change’’ to the markets on Friday. For some time I have been saying A REGIME CHANGE IS UNDERWAY [in the markets] There is no training – classroom or otherwise.. that can prepare for trading the last third of a move, whether it's the end of a bull market or the end of a bear market. There's typically no logic to it; irrationality reigns supreme, and no class can teach what to do during that brief, volatile reign. Paul Tudor-JonesI have been warning The Music has been playing for Eternity and its about to stop https://bit.ly/2Wzp4FgAnd below captioned is my favourite musical snippet of recent times Just played #laritournelle with @ESKAonline and some amazing musicians @southbankcentre paying tribute to the legendary #tonyallen @thenitinsawhney
BRENT front-month futures closed down -11.3% on Friday, a percentage price change almost 5 standard deviations away from the mean. It was the 9th largest one-day decline since 1990 @JKempEnergy
The Oil Markets are no doubt looking over their shoulder and remembering the negative prices we witnessed last year. Mirrors on the ceiling, The Pink champagne on ice https://bit.ly/3Bk45GjLast thing I remember, I was Running for the door
The Stock Market has a long way to fall Just to put things into perspective: S&P 500 trades at a higher multiple than before the pandemic crash in Mar2020 @Schuldensuehner
Bitcoin tumbles 20% from record highs earlier this month, entering a bear market #BTC @crypto
If after this morning you still think that #BTC is a hedge against world events, or represents "diversification", you must stay out of finance, & take up some other hobby s.a. stamp collecting, bird watching or something less harmful to yourself & others. @nntaleb
They can never beat you if you buy the dips. @nayibbukele
The ‘’Bukeleists’’ are going to be tested "Money Suppy increases", if they went somewhere, they went to ... Bitcoin. @nntaleb I’m really concerned about @bankofengland printing money out of thin air. @nayibbukele
The Signal in the Noise is the Dollar
The Dollar has been on a roll and simply crushing other G10 currencies and creaming EM EM looks like Trevor Berbick did when he was crushed by Mike Tyson The Turkish Lira has been leading the downside charge of course The emerging markets sovereign CDS index has just taken out the year's wide; got to a peak of 470 bps in the initial Covid lockdown in March 2020 (and over 800 bps in the GFC). @bondvigilantes
For a while this Portfolio did not look too clever 23-AUG-2021 :: ZigZag Therefore, I am clearing the decks and just holding https://bit.ly/2Wzp4Fg$TNX 20% Ultras (#UB_F) 50% $NFLX 10% Short ZAR 10% Cash 10% The newest iteration is as follows $TNX 20% reducing to 10% at 1.15-% to 1.25% yield levels Ultras (#UB_F) 50% scale reduction to 20% at above 203.00 on a price basis $NFLX 10% Short ZAR 10% Cash 10% Increasing allocation to Coffee Natural Gas Wheat
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