10 Weeks to Covid [#7= the end?]
10 most_Viral weeks of last 10,000 days: what a friend-what an enemy
Reminiscences of a risk operator: 7_4.22.2021 / 8pm Singapore / 2,000 words, 7mins
Come as you are, as you were
As I want you to be
As a friend, as a friend
As an old enemy
Take your time, hurry up
Choice is yours, don't be late
Take a rest, as a friend
As an old enemy, yeah / KurtC @MTV
][INTRO: We close the introductory Pandemic series for future High Schoolers with a last look at numbers behind the global COVID19 story, or better yet the numbers that pre-told the story, before the ‘true’ storytellers decided to late-tell the story. Dates, times, $$, all sorts of figures that can be leveraged in YOUR next 10K days as you keep growing your AP Finance education (your next 10K days will cross into 2030s, which will be absolutely wild).
][JOURNAL APPETIZER: as humans we swim in dates = births, deaths, anniversaries, budget submission, tax day, commencement, finally justice days. But most are 1 day in time - it’s much harder for us to remember a Series of dates, let alone a series 1 year or decade ago.
-Don Q first learned this lesson as a juror in his 20s from witnesses where ALL contradicted each other ( 2 girls + only 1 “boy” = rumble time).
-Sancho learned same in 30s when Wall St. melded into a rollercoaster of weeks/months/late-all nighters; reinforced later in failed attempted litigation where prep sessions with fancy lawyers revealed how little ALL remember.
-And we all are living this now since we ALL forget facts and figures of Covid19.
The sole saving difference for us explorers going into 1Q ‘20 is we had learned the importance of “writing it down.” A life habit now, with 90pct never to be shared, just like a junior high dear diarist.
We first told a friend we’d be creating Erratic Narratives for Covid in contemporaneous form on the exact same date, 1 year later, but that proved too ambitious. Instead we’ve published a tad late, mostly public info, and perhaps we will dribble out more info in years to come.
What is public and what can’t be denied are timelines - and this one below perhaps helps most in 1 glance:
*Note our Covid Series ends before expansion below, before March 16th history-making as we only covered the first 10 weeks - intentionally. The entire setup was in those first 10 weeks - billions made, billions lost, NO_TEARS (If you read to appendix, we will finally be kinda-clear on most of our covid-portfolio).
*always click to enlarge all pictures*
][ARCHIVE: #0 1 yr later #1 It was inevitable #2 JLo’sSuperShakiraBowl #3 My Word is My Bond #4 YOU are not a Doctor! #5 The VIX Doctor #6 4-Layered Mall of America
][THE 4VECTORS: given we also all gravitate toward image over text, we introduce the 4Vectors - Don Q loves triangles, Sancho loves stars, this is a good compromise. Going forward Erratic Narratives will be mail 2x/month, ex-Mar. (just pictures), ex-July (Euro holidays), and Dec. (4 book reads in 4 wks) = in total 18.
4Vectors of the Financalypse: Learn-Invest-Operate-Risk
Learning :: Mount Everest climb: a silent, solitary, unpredictable journey up-down frozen, steep paths w/critical consequences while time & resource oxygen dwindles
>>Leading to binary choice = Invest or Operate…
Investing :: Magic Kingdom: a hyper stimulating go-all-in circus surrounded by millions all crowding each other into circular supply & demand rides (GME!)
Operating :: Round-the-World Ocean Voyage: 1 chosen vessel, joined by 1 chosen team, with 1 chosen mission, while endless pirates attack
>>All 3 demanding soberly sophisticated evaluation…
Risking :: 24 Hour Sahara Tour: a groundhogs day cycle of hot profit days and cold loss nights surrounded by distraction dust, discipline, and dead things
Having recently taken an S Galloway course, we believe one day ‘Universities’ will finally adapt to real life and for our money we would ban Finance-related majors that didn’t cover each of the 4Vectors for an entire year.
Future lessons on the 3 financial statements, Christensen Dilemmas, risk/rewards, BHAGs, past/present/future value, capital structure stacks, crossing chasms, accounting, fairness opinion letters, Porters 5 Forces, Fiats and On-Chains, and all sorts of 10Ks-8Ks-10Q-Def-14s will all be rapid stops within the 4Vectors.
][10,000 Days to Vectory: It is ~mid-April ‘21 now, a full 56 weeks since ‘modern’ America shut-down for Covid. The lame biz magazines & boring corp. headlines call it “the acceleration of 1 decade of change into 1 year”… and the variants of these talking points will make you absolutely sick (WFH flexibility being wrapped in “Inclusion” language may make you even more sick).
Instead of saying ‘1 yr accelerated 1 decade’, our view is the prior 10,000 days (and what you did with yours) prepared global citizens for the most viral 10 weeks of that day-series, which then set everything up for “real” Covid19 2020.
As sample, since most get overwhelmed with data, below just three 20 years of points = 3/15/00 to 3/15/20, introduced by the one & only, who tells us so sweetly what was occurring in commodities, equities, rates, all_of_it, all_at_once IF you had clear eyes to see, open ears to hear, and unfettered nose to smell markets:
1] VIX (verde) vs S&P500 (azul): ‘0 correlation b/n easy $ and low int. rates vs. this chart’ = pls move on…!
2] GOLD (verde): In March 2031 we expect to not publish this, but instead show btc chart as it matures into true digital gold.
3] UST 10yrs (verde) and UST 30yrs (azul) = ‘0 correlation b/n ALL-asset inflation vs. this chart’ = pls move on… (or go back and read our archives for good times)
The last chart shows yields (the live-implied interest rate) for debt backed by USA for 10 years and 30 years. While EN #5 (The VIX Doctor) published our top 10 signposts
for Covid, 1 sufficed - this chart. Rates started dancing early, so early, so often, so weird, so late night and Sunday pm. You had to stick your head in the markets sand to not see it.
Sancho watching Messi move the ball, glance at another screen, see the UST 10yr drop another 2 bps.
No biggie? On a Sunday it’s Yuuuuge - because it wasn’t 2 or 3 but 6-8 bps in top 3 liquid market globally = Unheard of = like NBA games at 367-243, or NFL 105-76, or MLB at 49-23, or Champions (no Super) League at 14-9.
These ‘20 yield curve hips don’t lie - or do they?
Sancho, in person, ran into a voting member of the FOMC and asked that very question day after 1 of the 10% moves you see below during these 10 weeks in 2020.Scene: many suits/ties // Markets: gyrating on our phone // Answer: ‘need to run’
*many points below broke all-time records, most dizzying on right side: 10 year and 30 years = could be an NFT…
][DE-CIDE ON CHANGE: Some trusty readers notice the sharp points that make us cringe - ‘pet peeves’ in Americana - MSM, ‘arbitrage’ having become a dirty word, 60/40 ‘portfolios’…but for sure ‘change management’ is up there. Will be a summer topic because during Covid there was powerpoint change > and > real change.
Last year one of the VC senior statesmen put out a pretty good essay pushing for “it’s time to (re) build America” but since then DEbuilding has accelerated.
To go up, you have to go down. In these modern 2020s, to construct, you have to DEconstruct. Given this is AP Finance, not AP Ethics, we cannot fully explore the ramifications of D. Brooks explaining the necessity to go down into the valley before getting to the Second Mountain*
In 4Vector land - to construct, have to DEconstruct. And the 4 Covid Quarters jumpstarted the golden DEage of:
DEplatforming (Twitter/FB : Geneva or Kremlin?) / DEflating (School boards : meritocracy encouragers or deniers?) / DEmediaing (media angry : media quits media : media goes to new media : media angry at new media) / DEpumping ( Fed/Tsy : Doge walkers? or creators?) / DEcelebritization (Oscars/Grammys died : no ones cares?) and all sorts of forces that are bringing on the tidal wave of DEcentralization – our main topic for Fall semester adressed through a story.
So what do the 56 weeks have to do with the 4Vectors? All 4 were changed forever:
Get-High-on-All-Time-Highs-High: Robinhood/Citadel, ETFs, Blackrock at 9.5Trillion in Assets Under Management — asset/stonks/yield curve control: this is a new mix worthy of a headband…
*GME alone did more to expose shadow narratives than most investigative journalists.Disney DCF: JPMorgan announcing how the venerable Discounted Cash Flow investing tool went bankrupt in 2020-2021…
For Operators Forever Given: a boat nearly stops the physical world. The MOA of the ocean…Mona Lisa of traffic congestions…Doge of rescue missions…
Fiat Risking: when capital ‘allocators’ decide to go all 1972 Nixon on tried and true models of golden risk reputation (ie lets chart a new path) – you get bumps in the night – small and big - including Greensill, Robinhood, Credit Suisse, Archegos = fancy bumps.
][WRAP-UP: But did 56 weeks really create as much change as a decade? If 56 weeks x 7 = 392 days, what happens extending it back 10,000 days? We get decades and decades of erratic change basis the McKinsey propaganda that litters our burner email? How erratic was it?
Sancho believes it was EXTREMELY erratic because each of the 4Vectors live on a spectrum, a see-saw, a push-pull, beatles/stones, on-off, Batman-Joker, 0 & 1 combo that co-exists concurrently.
In learning, investing, operating, and risking we all are faced with the spectrum conundrum that each data gem is a friend & an enemy. It is the past & the present. It is urgently here & futuristically unreachable.
COVID-19 was the ultimate 4Vector boot camp, all in 10 weeks Jan to Mar ‘20. It laid bare false theories, false leadership, false Western entitlement, false communication, false Rich assumptions, false trust in institutions (for Emerg Mkts its all the same), false head fakes, false mountain tops - where you think you got to the top - but no you just started.
And yet this Mt Everest of learning was great for our generations - a time of delayed wedding joys and intense remote grief and so the circle goes. Covid was many things because it also brought about real change to the positive - and for that you, as a curious High Schooler in 2026, need to get out and ask some old folks, because learning ultimately is many things:
It is a friend. And an enemy.
It is November 1993
to
April 2021
=
10,000 Days.
? What will you_do with your 10K ?
][Final Song:
Come as you are, as you were
As I want you to be
As a friend, as a friend
As an old enemy
Take your time, hurry up
Choice is yours, don't be late
Take a rest, as a friend
As an old enemy, yeah
//END = Visit us to subscribe with friends at: erraticnarratives.substack.com
Filmed November ‘93 in NYC for MTV Unplugged.
//END // @ErraticNars ARCHIVE
//Disclaim: Individual, non-corporate; not investment advice; may be long/short\\
][APPENDIX: Erratic Nars are late-2020s AP Finance letters—
—Current Covid status via Morning Brew: “Last week, more people globally were infected with the coronavirus (5.2 million) than in any other week during the pandemic, according to Bloomberg. Covid-19 is currently ripping through lower-income countries, which have been far slower than wealthy ones to vaccinate their citizens.”
—Covid portfolio salad from spring ‘20: $ moves through dimons & adyens, for which you’ll need to zoom in, to get in too early into a B plane, while maintaining balance with a few industrials, yet teslaing into teams for the excel of it, and shopping at the everything store, as we watch the new Billie & Taylor music-docs!
>>Here in Spring 2021 wanderings we’re clear on getting BUZZed up, decentralized to the moon, and making cash work. But the Off trade now is a Euro2012-debt-duldrums period over the variant storm brewing in Brazil, etc.
So while we holding our reopen trades and adding high beta, when BTC hits $79K will start to reduce beta in the old world.
*FYI - crypto beta is a conundrum wrapped in an enigma that even Fairness Committees can’t unravel…
—Last fun w/numbers: the Weird erosion of market cap in 1 month (Feb - Mar 2020)