I spent a lot of time writing about my exhilarating trip to the Dolomites. As part of the tour, Biko Adventures (team of three) put together this amazing short movie of our ride with incredible camera angle footage by the three using cameras and iphones and drones. The drone footage is incredible. Now that I have seen it I would never do another trip like this without the benefit of sone talented person offering this service. I have emedded it here as well:

Onwards…

It was Evergrande expert week on the internet. Everyone had a strong opinion on how it would affect the markets so I just ignored them all.

I waited for Matt Levine’s take because he would get right to the heart of it:

I am very far from an expert on the situation at giant indebted property company China Evergrande Group, but I will say that two things that appear to be true are:

It owes 1.6 million apartments to people who have put down cash deposits, and it may have trouble delivering them; and
It owes billions of dollars in cash to people who have bought “wealth management products” (retail debt instruments), and it will have trouble paying them, to the point that it has offered to give them apartments instead of money.
This strikes me as inefficient. If you have some apartments, you should deliver them to people to whom you owe apartments. Then you take the cash from those people and deliver it to the people to whom you owe cash? Again I claim no expertise here and I am sure they have their reasons, but that’s how I would do it. I gather that the people with the wealth management products do not want the apartments, but the people who have put down deposits for apartments do want the apartments.[1]

It seems to me that what is interesting about Evergrande is not so much the magnitude of its debt problems but their variety. Evergrande owes money to Chinese banks. It owes money to foreign hedge funds, and foreign investors own its stock. It owes money to suppliers, and to Chinese retail investors in those wealth management products. And it owes apartments to buyers. And the retail investors who bought Evergrande wealth management products were often also Evergrande homeowners, because the products were sold at Evergrande buildings

Read Matt’s full post here.

The Evergrande story is like most stories, long term uneventful if you have a good investing plan. I liked this piece from Nick Maggiulli titled ‘Why Buying the Dip is a Terrible Investment Strategy‘. The gist…dollar cost averaging is a much better plan for getting invested and higher returns.

Schwab strategist Liz Ann Sonders reminiscences on 35 years as a strategist.

Here is Morgan Housel on ‘History’s Seductive Beliefs‘.

‘You Will Work For a Protocol Someday – an interesting read on Future of Work

And finally, this weeks listen, Patrick O sat with Spotify founder Daniel Ek. Really enjoyed it.

I am going for a ride than plant myself in front of YouTube TV for Ryder Cup final day.