Good Friday...Walk good. 28all. Eya. *DC, ED, JS*

The Warm-Up: 

“Do you wanna be free or do you just want the oppressor’s throne.” ~Melech E. M. Thomas

The Core: 

“You are never strong enough that you don’t need help.” ~Caesar Chavez

“Have clear goals. Be ambitious. Attractive people are all working hard.” ~Orange Book

“My best career advice: At every job you should either learn or earn. Either is fine. Both is best. But if it’s neither, quit.” ~Garry Tan

“Setting boundaries isn’t a way to get rid of people. It’s a way to keep them in your life without destroying your inner peace.” ~Thibaut

“Never regret a day in your life; good days give happiness, bad days give experiences, worst days give lessons, and best days give memories.” ~Richard Feynman

“Good Friday marks the slaying of our Jesus. The unblemished lamb, the perfect sacrifice. He took our guilt and blame upon Himself so we could be with Him in paradise.” ~Anonymous

“Who is right is less important than what is right. When the focus is who, it’s mostly on you. Your desire to be right even when you’re wrong. This can lead to thinking the world should work in a way it doesn’t. Outcome over ego.” ~Shane Parrish

“On this LP dd thread q, running a L/S fund specifically, requires—stock picking, portfolio/risk management, & managing internal and external relationships. Almost all dd focuses on pt. 1 and almost all failure occurs because of deficiency in 2-4.” ~Paul Enright

“98% of Partners at Venture Capital firms will never understand the unique structural challenges we face. Let alone what it takes to overcome them. Statistically speaking, that’s what I call sustainable competitive advantage. The Marathon Continues…” ~Elliot Robinson

“When the facts come out, my sense is the Bill Hwang blow up will be the most spectacular personal loss of wealth in history. If I was an investigative reporter, I’d be working 24-7 since this is cover story material. How he quietly got so rich and how fast it all disappeared.” ~Mike Novogratz

“Everyone wants to get rich, few take risks. Everyone wants to get smart; few push themselves mentally. Everyone wants to get fit; few push themselves physically. Everyone wants an attractive spouse, few questions their own attractiveness. Everyone wants peace, few meditate.” ~Orange Book

“Backable people have taught me that long-term success can come from short-term embarrassment. Compelling presenters who seem to speak naturally and off the cuff are often the product of tons of practice rounds. They’ve practiced so much that their speech seems unpracticed.” ~Suneel Gupta, Backable

“Because humans insist on investigating things already known, forgetting what we do not know, this prevents us from recognizing opportunities and makes us too vulnerable to the impulse to simplify, narrate, and categorize, forgetting to reward those who know how to imagine the impossible.” ~100 Mental Models (Black Swan)

“The purpose of financial analysis isn’t to produce impressive-looking spreadsheets: it’s to make better decisions. If the data you’re examining doesn’t lead to changes that improve your business, you’re wasting your time. The core of finance is examining a potential action, consulting the data you have at your disposal, and deciding what (if anything) to do.” ~Josh Kaufman, The Personal MBA

“Having greater gender diversity also drives greater profitability. Companies are 25 percent more likely to outperform their peers on profitability when women are well represented in leadership. Additionally, shares of companies with female CEOs outperformed those of companies led by men by an average of 20 percent over two years.” ~Elizabeth Davis, Gender Wealth Gap: Why We Need to Equalize Equity Ownership and Increase Board Representation

“A quick recap of what’s happened since early March highs in tech markets: 1) Fears of inflation have driven many institutional investors to the hills. They are unwinding trades that have worked for DECADES. 2) Factor rotation out of tech and into more defensive/cyclical stocks that tend to do better during time of inflation. 3) Commodities have spiked which tend to do better during inflation. 4) Bonds have puked as yields have risen as they forecast inflation. 5) $1.9T stimulus bill; potential for $3T infrastructure bill and another several trillion-stimulus bill in the offing will give inflation fears more juice. 6) Pensions and others are going through a big rebalancing through Q1 which isn’t done. The are no easy answers for the next several weeks except to go back to work and re-underwrite everything we own. Look at our forecasts, look at our sizing, look at the risk and be ok owning them as we stress test our holdings under various potential scenarios.” ~Chamath Palihapitiya

Last Set: 

“Preservation of one’s own culture does not require contempt or disrespect for other cultures.” ~Caesar Chavez

Food for Thought: 

“Figure out what you’re good at and start helping other people with it. Give it away. Pay it forward. Karma works because people are consistent. On a long enough timescale, you will attract what you project. But don’t measure—your patience will run out if you count.” ~Naval Ravikant

Food for Thought II:

“1Q21 was quite the ride. We saw an inverse of the post COVID-19 ‘20 trade with IWM +12.7% > INDU +7.8% > SPY +5.9% > QQQ +2.8% > WCLD (-10.1%) YTD. BTC & ETH have continued their parabolic moves higher while GLD traded off (10.3%). We saw 285 SPAC IPOs raise ~$95B. Under the surface of the index level there was a lot of pain with high profile growth stocks down 20-30% from their Feb highs and down 5-10% YTD. On a micro level we had all things GME, BB, AMC, with high short interest names +45% during the month January, and the entire RobinhoodApp fiasco (which involved quant funds, HFs, and retail investors). We saw an explosion in NFTs and trading cards records, Elon Musk buying $1.0B+ of BTC, and the total value of assets locked in DeFi more than double. We finished things up with all things Archegos watching multi-billion-dollar companies trade up 60-70% to down 30-40% in a matter of weeks & finish in-line YTD with the broader market while causing billions of dollars of losses across the street. We had another $1.9T of fiscal stimulus passed coupled with a proposed $3.0T infrastructure bill which would bring the total post pandemic spend to $9.2T or ~5.0x the GFC. Looking at major CB balance sheets total assets are now approaching $29T. All of this has happened as HF performance is on track for its worst year since 2016. Shaping up for an interesting next 9 months of the year.” ~John Street Capital