Hello from Northern Ireland again.

This vacay/adventure/regroup continues to be amazing. I am so excited to have enjoyed every moment and am very fired up to be home in Phoenix and San Diego this weekend.

Early this morning I went on an incredible 7 mile hike from the Bushmill Inn (yes the Bushmill Whiskey is excellent) over to ‘The Giant’s Causeway‘ – which I had never heard of – and was blown away by the beauty. My friend Mike Kerns pushed me to go and we had a great two hour hike. Mike is an awesome investor and operator and a partner at TCG (The Chernin Group). Mike and I love talking about investing and strategy in content and media (especially finance and sports) and TCG has had hit after hit for a long time. I am hoping to work on something with Mike and TCG one of these days. I will have him on ‘Panic With Friends’ sometime soon. Here are some photos from the hike…

Today is a day off from golf to catch up on email and Zoom calls. Yesterday was day FIVE in a row for golf at the very beautiful and difficult Port Stewart golf course in Northern Ireland.  Tomorrow is our last day and we are playing Royal Portrush which was the site of the 2019 British Open.  My son Max and I went to that Open and played Port Stewart (blog post here).  I’m excited to actually play the course tomorrow.   It is supposed to very windy and rain all day which is just part of the adventure.

I have not played golf five days in a row since college.  It has been fun to just grind and survive against the elements.  The walks and camaraderie have been wonderful.

Now…about the ‘moments to pay attention’…

I have been droning on and on about the ‘valuation compression’ in tech public markets and it is just now working it’s way down to seed investing which is great for my day job.

For every other part of my investing life, the world mostly sucks right now.

The US dollar is screaming and the financial media will start banging the ‘currency war’ drum soon.

The $VIX is elevated now above 30 and the financial media loves this because ‘the higher the $VIX, the more clicks‘.

You can get 4 percent in 1 year t-bills so I get the feeling there is no sense of urgency to ‘buy the dip’. The Fed’s normalization of interest rates is finally laying to rest the longest-running acronym in markets: TINA (There Is No Alternative). Charlie has a fantastic 10 chart post on a lot of this.

BUT with the $VIX high and seasonality becoming favorable, traders are definitely licking their chops to try some longs. We are at some make or break support points in some major indexes including Industrials, Semiconductors, Transports…

I loved this from The Rotation Report on whether this moment in markets is ‘descriptive or predictive’…

I think it is a bit of both.

‘Tis the season for change and I sense many will be placing bets on the end of the world and/or the resumption of some very long term trends. I have been nibbling on some of my favorite technology brands and we (Social Leverage) have been active for the first time in a year writing seed checks lately.

Have a great day.