In Episode 125 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Harvard’s Laura Huang about her research into intuition and behavior as it relates to investing and entrepreneurship. Rather than focus on our shortcomings, Laura teaches us how to turn adversity into advantage.
The title of Laura’s book is an acronym that stands for four different words: Enrich, Delight, Guide, and Effort. The foundation of our edge, according to Laura, comes from our ability to provide value to and enrich those around us. Those who have an edge find ways to enrich and bring value to others rather than posturing about the supposed value they bring (we all know people like that). Those who have an edge, however, are also able to demonstrate and effectively communicate the value they bring, rather than leaving it up to others to guess. However, before we can enrich others, we have to be let in. Those who already have an understanding of how they enrich are most equipped to delight. Delighting isn’t synonymous with being charming or entertaining, or charismatic in the typical sense. And everyone has the power to delight. Delight can help pacify skepticism and misgivings. The third letter stands for “Guide.” When we know (and can figure out) how others see us, it gives us the capacity to guide and redirect that perception, so that we can influence how they grasp and appreciate the value we command and the edge we bring. Finally, Laura points out how “Effort” and hard work reinforce the edge that we create for ourselves. Sometimes it’s as much what we do as it is the effort that we put into not doing other things. Don’t be mistaken—hard work is critical. But ultimately, gaining an edge requires hard work, plus.
This is a great episode for anyone struggling with figuring out how to turn hard work into success.
You can access this week’s overtime segment, transcript, and rundown through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers also gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application.
Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou
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In Episode 124 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Peter Zeihan, a geopolitical strategist who combines an expert understanding of demography, economics, energy, politics, technology, and security to help his clients prepare for an uncertain future. Before founding his own strategy firm, Peter helped develop the analytical models for Stratfor, one of the world’s premier private intelligence companies. He’s also a critically-acclaimed author whose first two books — The Accidental Superpower and The Absent Superpower — have been recommended by Mitt Romney, Fareed Zakaria and Ian Bremmer. His latest book, “Disunited Nations: The Scramble for Power in an Ungoverned World,” hits bookstores tomorrow.
This is one of the most educational conversations that we have ever recorded on Hidden Forces. The episode is meant to provide you with a comprehensive overview of Peter Zeihan’s work and outlook on the subjects of foreign affairs, economics, and geopolitics. The goal is to help you understand just how abnormal our world has been for the last 70 years and what a return to a more “normal world” is going to look like. America’s withdrawal from the world has consequences for governments, business people, retirees, and especially for anyone who is living or invested in countries that have been the primary beneficiaries of the American lead international Order of the past three generations.
In the first hour, Peter lays the foundation for what this new world is going to look like, how it differs from the world we’ve inhabited since the end of World War Two, and what sorts of forces will be driving the changes that we can expect to experience over the next few decades. Towards the end of the episode we start to get into specific countries and regions, exploring the types of changes that we can expect to see economically, politically, geographically, and militarily in the not-too-distant future.
The future that Peter lays out is one of both risk and opportunity, and we explore many of these opportunities in the second half of this episode, including those dealing with Turkey, Argentina, and perhaps, most importantly, the United States and what Americans and their nation’s regional partners can expect to experience in the scramble for security, resources, and power in the world to come.
You can access the second hour, as well as the transcript and rundown to this week’s episode through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers also gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application.
Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou
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In Episode 123 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with two guests who have each made one prior appearance on Hidden Forces: Grant Williams and Ben Hunt. Ben is the founder of the widely read Epsilon Theory, a newsletter and website that’s become popular for its insights and analysis into markets and society with a particular focus on how narrative drives our perception of the world and our place in it. Grant is the long-time publisher of a popular financial newsletter, the host of a phenomenal sports podcast, and the co-founder of Real Vision, a financial media company that offers in-depth video interviews with some of the world's most thoughtful investors.
Today’s conversation is broken into two parts, the second hour of which is available to our paid subscribers. In the first part we discuss a philosophy that Demetri calls “financial nihilism,” which treats the objects of speculation as though they were intrinsically worthless.
We are witnessing price movements characteristic of a raging bull market without the euphoria that typically accompanies them. The rationalization that governments will "fix the mess" and that central banks will "buy the dip" channels a deeper sense of existential meaninglessness. Whether it's the decline of religion, the dismantling of the nation state, or the commodification of the self, something feels lacking.
In the second hour, the three continue their discussion about markets but also delve into more personal stories from their lives and careers. Grant shares anecdotes from his experience interviewing some of the most brilliant minds in finance and Ben shares insights from his own creative process and what motivates him. All in all, this is one of the best conversations we’ve ever released.
If you are interested in accessing the overtime, transcript, and/or rundown to this week’s episode, you can do that through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers also gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application.
Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou
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Demetri Kofinas makes a guest appearance on TC’s Chartcast, a boutique podcast for short sellers hosted by Tesla Charts and Georgia Orwell. Demetri shares stories from his life and career in markets and the media, including lessons learned from his experience overcoming dementia in his early 30’s. TC’s Chartcast is available on most major podcast platforms and you can follow TC and Georgia on twitter at @TeslaCharts and @Georgia_Orwell_.
If you are interested in learning more about Demetri’s podcast, head over to HiddenForces.io and subscribe to our free email list. You can access the overtimes, transcripts, and rundowns to our full episodes through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers also gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application.
Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou
Subscribe & Support the Podcast at http://patreon.com/hiddenforces
Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod
In Episode 122 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Christopher Cole, the founder of Artemis Capital Management about how to grow and protect generational wealth that lasts a hundred years. Imagine you have the opportunity to grant your family great wealth and prosperity for 100 years. The opportunity is subject to one final choice. You must decide what assets to invest in and maintain that allocation for an entire century without ever changing it. The future of your children’s children depends on your decision. What do you do?
According to Christopher Cole, in order to be successful the hundred year portfolio must be able to navigate the secular booms of the market (1947-1963,1984-2007) while not losing capital during periods of economic contraction, stagnation, and renewal (1929-1946, 1964-1983). In pursuit of this, many investors assemble a varied portfolio of asset classes thinking there is safety in diversification, but in a crisis, such portfolios often collapse right along with the broader markets. Another class of investors believes they can always time the wild cycles of risk when, in fact, they can barely manage the demons of their greed and fear. The greatest threat to a hundred years of prosperity, according to Chris Cole, is neglecting the lessons from long-term financial history and having no true diversification against secular change. Accordingly, the solution is to find assets that can perform when stocks and bonds don’t and boldly size them in one’s portfolio regardless of short term performance. Long Volatility, Gold, Commodity Trend, and Discretionary Global Macro, according to Mr. Cole, should be core portfolio holdings and not just periphery investments. The investor can then apply margin to the risk-balanced portfolio to meet return targets, rather than seek the excess return from components.
The first part of today’s conversation explores the investing landscape in which retail investors and professional money managers alike find themselves in today. Chris and Demetri discuss factors that have led to volatility suppression and the build-up of risk in financial markets.
During the overtime segment, Chris shares his views on what assets should occupy such a portfolio, in what quantities, and how retail and accredited investors alike might approach the task of building and protecting generational wealth that can last a hundred years.
You can access the overtime, transcript, and rundown to this week’s episode through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers also gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application.
Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou
Subscribe & Support the Podcast at http://patreon.com/hiddenforces
Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod
In Episode 121, of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Joshua Yaffa, a Moscow correspondent for The New Yorker about what life is like in Putin’s Russia. Yaffa's latest book on the subject is a fascinating inquiry into the Soviet and post-Soviet personality type that sustains the state’s power and Vladimir Putin’s place atop it.
Joshua Yaffa’s new book is titled, “Between Two Fires: Truth, Ambition, and Compromise in Putin’s Russia.” It’s a book about life in modern Russia that pulls both from the country’s history, as well as from a large body of sociological research into the Soviet and post-Soviet personality type whose “habits, inclinations, and internal moral calculations,” according to Joshua “elevated Vladimir Putin to his current position and which now perform the small, daily work that, in aggregate, keeps him there.”
This conversation is one of the more nuanced you are bound to hear on the subject of Russia, Putin, and Russian propaganda in American media. Yaffa speaks critically, but honestly, about a country that features prominently in American politics today. Demetri also shares insights from his own experience working at the Russian state media outlet RT (Russia Today).
For Patreon subscribers, this week’s rundown covers not only the subject of Demetri’s conversation with Joshua, but much of Yaffa’s book as well. You can access that rundown, the overtime segment, as well as a transcript to this week’s episode through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page.
All subscribers also gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily be added to your favorite podcast application.
Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou
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In Episode 120 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Michael Lind, a highly accomplished intellectual, writer, and academic about his latest book “The New Class War.”
According to Michael Lind, the animating force behind the new class war is not income or wealth inequality but power. The old spectrum of left and right has given way to a new dichotomy in politics among insiders and outsiders, the former of which wield social power in three realms—government, economy, and culture. Each of these realms is the site of the new class war punctuated by periods of intense conflict and contained by periods of interclass compromise. Michael Lind’s overall argument is that “only power can check power.” Absent a compromise between the classes there are only two possible outcomes: 1) The domination of the working class by a neoliberal, technocratic elite or 2) the triumph of the working class over the elite by way of reliance on populist demagoguery (e.g. William Jennings Bryan, Donald Trump, etc.). According to Lind, the technocratic neoliberal revolution from above, carried out in one Western nation after another by members of the ever more aggressive and powerful managerial elite, has provoked a populist backlash from below by the defensive and disempowered native working class, many of whom are nonwhite. Large numbers of alienated working-class voters, realizing that the political systems of their nations are rigged and that mainstream parties will continue to ignore their interests and values, have found sometimes unlikely champions in demagogic populists like Donald Trump, Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson, Marine Le Pen, and Matteo Salvini. Michael Lind’s stated purpose in “The New Class War” is not to defend populist demagoguery, but rather to diagnose it and provide his readers with a cure: democratic pluralism: “Contemporary populism is a kind of convulsive autoimmune response by the body politic to the chronic degenerative disease of oligarchy. Demagogic populism is a symptom. Technocratic neoliberalism is the disease. Democratic pluralism is the cure.”
For those of you interested in listening to this week’s overtime segment or for anyone who would like a copy of the transcript and rundown to Demetri’s conversation with Michael Lind, you can gain access to that content through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers also gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily be added to your favorite podcast application.
Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou
Subscribe & Support the Podcast at http://patreon.com/hiddenforces
Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod
In Episode 119 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Sean Carroll, a best-selling author and research professor of theoretical physics at the California Institute of Technology. His research has focused on fundamental physics and cosmology, especially issues of dark matter, dark energy, spacetime symmetries, and the origin of the universe. Recently, Dr. Carroll has worked on the foundations of quantum mechanics, the emergence of spacetime, and the evolution of entropy and complexity.
Our focus today is on the subject of Sean Carroll’s latest book “Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Space-time.” The conversation jumps around quite a bit, and much of the discussion bends towards the philosophical. Demetri and Dr. Carroll discuss ontological questions dealing with the nature of reality and the possible limitations of science as an epistemological tool for making definitive statements about our own conscious experience. They also delve into some of the core theoretical aspects of quantum mechanics like the measurement problem, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, entanglement, and nonlocality. Sean Carroll also explains some of the various interpretations of quantum theory such as the Copenhagen interpretation, Many Worlds, Be Broglie–Bohm, Spontaneous Collapse, and QBism.
For subscribers to our Hidden Forces Overtime feed, Demetri and Sean spend the balance of their time discussing more off-the-wall subjects such as the impact of quantum mechanics in culture, the fascination with time travel, challenges for artificial general intelligence, the prospect of aliens, and the implications of flat earth theory.
You can access the show overtime, along with the transcript and rundown to this week’s episode through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers also get their own exclusive Overtime RSS feed, which can be easily be added to your favorite podcast application.
Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou
Subscribe & Support the Podcast at http://patreon.com/hiddenforces
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In Episode 118 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Jim Grant, founder of Grant's Interest Rate Observer, a twice-monthly journal of the financial markets.
Born in New York City and raised on Long Island, Jim had thoughts, first, of a career in music, not interest rates—french horn was his love. But he threw it over to enter the Navy. Following his stint in the Navy, Jim enrolled Indiana University where he studied economics under Scott Gordon and Elmus Wicker and diplomatic history under Robert H. Ferrell, and later, obtained a master’s degree in international affairs under the guiding tutelage of cultural historian, critic and public intellectual Jacques Barzun.
In 1972, at the age of 26, Grant began working as a cub reporter at the Baltimore Sun, moving to Barron’s in 1975. The late 1970s were years of inflation, monetary disorder and upheaval in the interest-rate markets—as Jim Grant says, “of journalistic opportunity.” Barron's editor Robert M. Bleiberg, tapped Grant to originate a column devoted to interest rates. This weekly department, called “Current Yield,” he wrote until the time he left to found the eponymous “Interest Rate Observer” in the summer of 1983.
During his long career, Jim Grant has written a series of books including three financial histories, a pair of collections of Grant’s articles and four biographies, the most recent of which is about the life and times of Walter Bagehot, whose ideas about central banking informed the U.S. Federal Reserve's response to the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-09.
This conversation is unusually convivial, even by the normal standards. Demetri and Jim discuss actions by the Federal Reserve in the repo market (including official and unofficial explanations for the turmoil seen in mid-September 2019), the recent WeWork and SoftBank debacle, a possible bubble in the leveraged loan market, and much more.
During the overtime to this week’s episode, Jim shares information about how he invests his own money (and who he invests it with), delves into some of Grant’s value analysis research and provides insights into his own work process as an editor and interviewer.
If you want access to the overtime or to the transcript and rundown for this conversation, you can do so through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. Subscribers also gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily be added to your favorite podcast application.
Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou
Subscribe & Support the Podcast at http://patreon.com/hiddenforces
Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod
In Episode 117 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with author David Epstein about what the world’s most successful people have in common. He discovers that in most fields—especially those that are complex and unpredictable—generalists, not specialists, are the ones primed for success. “As computers master more of the skills once reserved for highly focused humans,” says David, “people who think broadly and embrace diverse experiences and perspectives will increasingly thrive.”
David’s conclusions run counter to the prevailing view among “experts” who argue that anyone who wants to develop a skill, play an instrument, or lead their field should start early, focus intensely, and rack up as many hours of deliberate practice as possible. “If you dabble or delay,” they say “you’ll never catch up to the people who got a head start.” But a closer look at research on the world’s top performers, from professional athletes to Nobel laureates, paints a very different picture. In fact, it shows that early specialization is actually the exception, not the rule.
In his research, David Epstein discovers that while generalists often do find their path late—juggling many interests rather than focusing on one—they arrive at their destination with a higher degree of “fit” after undergoing a prolonged sampling period. They’re also more creative, more agile, and able to make connections their more specialized peers can’t see.
In their conversation, David Epstein makes a compelling case for actively cultivating inefficiency. He explains why failing a test is the best way to learn and that frequent quitters end up with the most fulfilling careers. He gives example after example of how some of the most impactful inventors cross domains rather than deepening their knowledge in a single area. In a 21st century increasingly dominated by automation and the specter of artificial intelligence, David believes that people who think broadly and embrace diverse experiences and perspectives will increasingly thrive.
You can access the rundown to this week’s episode, along with a transcript to Demetri’s conversation with David through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers also gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily be added to your favorite podcast application, allowing you to listen in on the rest of Demetri and David’s conversation.
Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou
Subscribe & Support the Podcast at http://patreon.com/hiddenforces
Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod