The weekend is here! Pour yourself a mug of Colombia Tolima Los Brasiles Peaberry Organic coffee, grab a seat outside, and get ready for our longer-form weekend reads:

• America Underestimates the Difficulty of Bringing Manufacturing Back: The 14 Reasons Why these Tariffs Will Not Bring Manufacturing Back. (Molson Hart)

• How a Funeral Director Brought Wind Power to Rural Missouri: Every year for nearly two decades, the small city of Rock Port has been producing more electricity from wind energy than it needs. (New York Times)

• ‘It’s Disneyland for preppers’: why apocalypse-minded shoppers go to Costco. A doomsday meal bucket drew attention to something end-timers have known forever: the bulk store is the perfect place for stockpiling. (The Guardian)

• The Stock Market’s Casino Problem: Casinos have long known a simple truth: if you want people to gamble more, just add a subtle unpredictability. Just enough to keep people guessing. Make the lights flash. Add a few near-misses. Let them win once in a while so they feel like they’re on the edge of something big. (Safal Niveshak) 

• 4chan Is Dead. Its Toxic Legacy Is Everywhere: It’s likely that there will never be a site like 4chan again. But everything now—from X and YouTube to global politics—seems to carry its toxic legacy. (Wired)

• Meet the KGB Spies Who Invented Fake News: We reveal how one of the biggest fake news stories ever concocted — the 1984 AIDS-is-a-biological-weapon hoax — went viral in the pre-Internet era. Meet the KGB cons who invented it, and the “truth squad” that quashed it. For a bit. (New York Times)

• The pundit’s dilemma: Conservative industrialists, however, are facing a much harder dilemma right now. Biden’s industrial policy was a mixed bag, with more successes than failures. But Trump’s tariff policy is a giant flaming disaster. The dollar is down, as investors flee American bonds, putting the country’s whole financial stability in danger. Forecasts for the real economy are getting more pessimistic by the day. Stocks are down yet again. Here’s a representative headline. (Noahpinion) see also An Autopsy of American Exceptionalism: The strange thing about this turmoil was that much of it was predicated on falsehoods. I remember specifically combatting many of the narratives following the Financial Crisis. While I disagreed with policies like QE and the bank bailouts I also thought that the fear mongering around these ideas was misplaced. The common narrative was that these policies would cause hyperinflation, but as we now know QE did nothing of the sort. That policy has since been thrown in the dustbin and I am proud to have consulted on legislation banning its use and also helping to create a more automated interest rate policy at the Federal Reserve. But its impact lingers to this day. (Pragmatic Capitalism)

• The Architect: Behind Trump’s imperial presidency (and Elon), there’s Russell Vought. The Trump loyalist who’d just been named director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) as well as acting director of the CFPB. A self-described “boring budget guy,” he’s best known for co-authoring the 900-page policy playbook of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which has become something of a bible for Trump’s second term. Vought’s think tank, the Center for Renewing America, has produced numerous policy papers that advocate for such Trump fixations as the annexation of Greenland (“a prudent aim,” according to a CRA paper) and enacting broad tariffs (“just as sometimes a nation must go to war with guns and bombs, so sometimes are trade wars necessary”), among others. At the center of Vought’s ideology is the unitary executive theory, which critics say amounts to an argument that Trump should have wide latitude to do whatever he wants. • The Real Mastermind Behind Trump’s Imperial Presidency (Bloomberg)

• Why Is Everyone Getting Their Tattoos Removed? For decades, Americans were covering their bodies with more and more tattoos. Now, they’re getting them removed as fast as they can. We speak with the patients going under the laser, the tattoo-removal technicians whose business is booming, and the tattoo artists whose work is being erased to understand how something so permanent became so ephemeral. (GQ)

• 37 takeaways from 200 hours with Bach: “Year of Bach” snowballed from a tired bit of shtick I shared with my son on a drive to Trader Joe’s, Christmas Eve 2023. It grew into hundreds of hours of rewarding listening and writing. Here are 37 takeaways from my survey of the complete works of J.S. Bach: (Year of Bach)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business this week with Jeff Becker, Chairman and CEO of Jennison Associates (a division of PGIM). The firm was founded in 1969. Prior to joining Jennison in 2016 as CEO, Becker was CEO of Voya Investment Management.

Technology developments over time vs population

Source: Haim Israel, Merrill Lynch Thematic Investing

 

Sign up for our reads-only mailing list here.

~~~

To learn how these reads are assembled each day, please see this.

The post 10 Weekend Reads appeared first on The Big Picture.

 

 

This week, I speak with Jeffrey Becker, Chairman and CEO of Jennison Associates.

Prior to joining Jennison in 2016, Jeff served as the CEO of Voya Investment Management, formerly ING. He held various positions with ING including Vice Chairman, Chief Operating Officer, and Chief Financial Officer. He is a member of the Economic Club of New York and also serves as an Advisory Board member of Institutional Investor’s U.S. Institute. Additionally, he is Vice Chair of the AmeriCares Board of Directors, and Chair of the AmeriCares Free Clinics Board of Directors.

We discuss his path through finance, managing risks in today’s environment, and global trends and opportunities.

A list of his current reading is here; A transcript of our conversation is available here Tuesday.

You can stream and download our full conversation, including any podcast extras, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and Bloomberg. All of our earlier podcasts on your favorite pod hosts can be found here.

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business next week with Sander Gerber, the CEO/CIO of Hudson Bay Capital. The firm is a global multi-strategy private credit and real estate firm based in Greenwich, with offices in NY, Miami, London, Hong Kong, and Dubai. Founded in June 2005 (with Yoav Roth) they manage $20B in client assets.

 

 

 

Current Reading

 

 

 

The post MiB: Jeffrey Becker, Jennison Associates Chair/CEO appeared first on The Big Picture.

My end-of-week morning train WFH reads:

• “Smart is good. Smart and lucky is better” It’s better to look stupid and learn than pretend and lose money. Once we know how something ended — a movie, a stock crash — we forget what it felt like to not know the outcome. The real challenge for investors is human behavior. Financial literacy matters, but it fades. (Big Think)

• The Gen Z Lifestyle Subsidy: In the 2010s, Millennials got cheap Ubers. Today’s young people are getting free SuperGrok. (The Atlantic)

• They Are Hot, Upwardly Mobile Jobs. Here’s Why They Are So Hard to Fill. Some of the fastest-growing careers lie in middle-skill roles like sterilizing surgical tools, yet too few people know about them (Wall Street Journal)

• How Gen Z Became the Most Gullible Generation: The almighty algorithm is fueling conspiracy theories among young people and ruining their ability to tell fact from fiction on the internet. (Politico)

• Inside Home Depot’s $20 Billion Secret Garden: The retail giant spends years developing plants and flowers. The goal: make shoppers better gardeners—and loyal customers. (Wall Street Journal)

• Can’t Look Away: The Case Against Social Media:  Through emotional testimonies and high-stakes legal battles, the film explores the tension between corporate profit and child safety, highlighting systemic failures that leave young users vulnerable. As families seek justice, Can’t Look Away underscores the urgent need for industry reform and serves as both a wake-up call about the dangers of social media—and a call to action to protect future generations. (Bloomberg) see also The Effect of Deactivating Facebook and Instagram on Users’ Emotional State: We estimate the effect of social media deactivation on users’ emotional state in two large randomized experiments before the 2020 U.S. election. People who deactivated Facebook for the six weeks before the election reported improvement in an index of happiness, depression, and anxiety. (NBER)

• These Maps Show Federal Employees Work in Every Corner of America: These maps are based on newly available data from payroll records and offer a glimpse of the federal government’s 2.3 million or so civilian workers in March 2024, before the recent cuts. They show employees based in every state and in thousands of cities and small towns across the country, far beyond Washington, D.C. (New York Times)

• Have they been here? When we look for extraterrestrials, we often peer into the depths of space. But alien life might be closer than you think. (Aeon)

• How Trump Worship Took Hold in Washington: The President is at the center of a brazenly transactional ecosystem that rewards flattery and lockstep loyalty. (New Yorker)

• ‘It was a magical chemical balance’: How Monty Python and the Holy Grail became a comedy legend (BBC)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business this week with Jeff Becker, Chairman and CEO of Jennison Associates (a division of PGIM). The firm was founded in 1969. Prior to joining Jennison in 2016 as CEO, Becker was CEO of Voya Investment Management.

 

Trade Negotiations Take Time

Source: PIIE (Freund and McDaniel), Apollo Chief Economist

 

Sign up for our reads-only mailing list here.

The post 10 Friday AM Reads appeared first on The Big Picture.

 

 

Let us stop for a moment to consider all that is going on with the new administration’s new economic trade policies at ~100 days.

There is a new tariff policy that is (by design) threatening the pre-existing global trade order. This has led to what looks like the early stages of capital flight, as both the dollar and US Treasuries have been sold off. The implications of this are significant. That is before we get to other issues with economic long-term ramifications.1

I have no idea how these policies will play out. My current (wishful) thinking is that this will not be worse than COVID-19 or the Great Financial Crisis (GFC), but less fun than 2023 and 2024 SPX gains of 25%. Maybe that idea will be proven wrong.

Let’s get more granular:

Most of the time, we have a fairly good understanding of the basic building blocks of our world. We all have a routine we go through, getting up each day, getting dressed, going to work or school or whatever, occupies the vast majority of our time. We assume a high probability that today will look like yesterday or tomorrow.

Sometimes, a minor curveball gets thrown our way. You’re driving to an appointment and a road is closed because a storm knocked a tree over or a water main pipe burst. It takes our brains a moment or two to contextualize the disruption, calculate an alternative route, and head on our way. That’s an easy problem to recognize and fix. It is also relatively simple. There are (usually) multiple routes between any two random points, and the map in your brain can easily manage it.

Most problems are like that. Where we run into problems is when there is either only one possible solution, or so many variables as to the potential solutions are nearly infinite.

Centre Island is a lovely neighborhood 6 minutes drive from my house. It has literally one road in and out. Sure, you can swim, paddle board or jetski to and from, but not with the entire fam. If that road is out, you are going to have major issues.

At the other end of the spectrum are things like global trade — large complex interrelated economies, driven by everything from policy to consumer sentiment, geography, innovation, employment, inflation, natural resources, etc. This is why I keep discussing why forecasting market prices or macroeconomic data is so challenging: There are simply too many variables, each dependent and reflective of even more variables, to pretend we truly know what comes next.

Forecasting the NCAA college basket playoffs is much easier than trying to accurately predict the global economy. It did take a decade, but someone kinda won Warren Buffett’s $1 million NCAA Tournament bracket challenge.2 To be fair, they “only” picked 31 of the 32 first-round games correctly. The odds of predicting a perfect bracket are mind boggling:

 

With the NCAA, there are only 64 teams you need to track. There are 195 Countries, 3450 publicly traded U.S. companies, over 50,000 non-U.S. publicly traded firms, millions of CEOs/CFOs, tens of millions of private companies, billions of consumers — all making independent, yet highly interrelated decisions every single day.

Project that out 365 days — what are the odds of getting that correct?

I always try to remember this, especially when I see a pundit telling me what is going to happen next…

You have to be able to pull yourself out of the day-to-day noise and remember why you are putting capital at risk in the markets. The daily news flow, upgrades and downgrades, corporate guidance, and back and forth is not the reason.

Or as John C. Bogle liked to say, “The stock market is a giant distraction from the business of investing.”

 

 

 

 

Previously:
What Are the Best & Worst-Case Tariff Scenarios? (April 15, 2025)

The Consequences of Chaos (April 7, 2025)

7 Increasing Probabilities of Error (February 24, 2025)

Tune Out the Noise (February 20, 2025)

 

 

 

__________

1. e.g., Executive orders on deportation, fighting Universities, threatening law firms, due process, Greenland, and the one that matters a great deal to the financial markets, who is the Federal Reserve Chairman….

2. “In 2014, he launched a $1 billion challenge to any Berkshire Hathaway employee who could correctly predict every single game in the NCAA Tournament. The odds of that are … extremely long. No one was able to claim the prize. Over time, the contest rules shifted. In 2016, the challenge was reportedly amended, offering $1 million to any employee who could predict the first 48 games correctly. Still, no one managed to claim the grand prize. The rules relaxed even further in 2025, as employees had to correctly predict 30 of the first 32 games in order to take home the grand prize, according to the Wall Street Journal.”

 

The post Why Macro Forecasting Is <strike>So Hard</strike> Impossible appeared first on The Big Picture.

My morning train WFH reads:

• The White House is killing one of our strongest exports: Higher Education: The president wants to balance U.S. trade deficits? He can’t do it without this industry he hates. (Washington Post)

• China Has an Army of Robots on Its Side in the Tariff War: Enormous investments in factory equipment and artificial intelligence are giving China an edge in car manufacturing and other industries. (New York Times) see also Five-Minute EV Charging Is Here, but Not for U.S.-Made Cars: CATL’s and BYD’s rapid-charging technologies underscore China’s dominance in the EV sector, a technological priority for Xi Jinping (Wall Street Journal)

• The Things That Make You Money: Holding is the hardest part because it combines all the feelings and potential regrets that can arise from both buying and selling. Howard Marks once wrote, “It’s not the things you buy and sell that make you money; it’s the things you hold.” (A Wealth of Common Sense)

• Why Florida’s Condo Owners Are So Desperate to Sell: Insurance increases, special assessments and limited financing options have elevated costs beyond what many can bear (Wall Street Journal)

• When Heirs Say ‘No Thanks’ to Art and Collectibles: Cerity Partners’ Natalia Tchetchoulina on the do’s and don’ts of passing those vintage cars, paintings, or jewelry to your heirs. (Barron’s)

• Swiss banks are back in style for rich Americans (Thank Trump): Americans worried about volatile U.S. markets and a weakening dollar are looking to diversify their portfolios abroad. (Quartz)

• For Greenland’s Minerals, the Harsh Reality Behind the Glittering Promise: There is excitement about the potentially lucrative resources scattered around the island, especially the rare earths. But extreme weather, fired-up environmentalists and other factors have tempered hopes of a bonanza. (New York Times)

• Scientists Are Mapping the Bizarre, Chaotic Spacetime Inside Black Holes: By understanding the churning region near singularities, physicists hope they might be able to reconcile gravity and quantum mechanics. (Wired)

• Democrats Should Seize on the Tariff Flop: The economic chaos is giving the opposition party a prime opportunity to push back against autocracy. (Vanity Fair) see also James Carville: How to Turn Trump’s Economic Chaos Against Him: The problem is that smoke and mirrors only work until you screw up so hard that no act of lunacy can pull the American people’s attention elsewhere. And boy, did the president just screw up royally. (New York Times)

• Jeff Bridges Just Gave His Blessing To A ‘Big Lebowski’ Theory That Donnie Isn’t Real: It’s one thing to read a fan theory on Reddit. It’s another to hear Jeff Bridges unpack it live, like it’s just something he’s been casually chewing on for years, as The Big Lebowski keeps aging like White Russian-soaked folklore, somehow getting deeper, weirder, and more beloved by Little Achievers like myself every year. (BroBible)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business this week with Jeff Becker, Chairman and CEO of Jennison Associates (a division of PGIM).
The firm was founded in 1969. Prior to joining Jennison in 2016 as CEO, Becker was CEO of Voya Investment Management.

 

Poll: Americans sour on the economy

Source: Reuters

 

Sign up for our reads-only mailing list here.

The post 10 Thursday AM Reads appeared first on The Big Picture.



 

 

In their latest episode of the VALUE: After Hours Podcast, Tobias Carlisle, Jake Taylor, and Barry Ritholz discuss:

Barry Ritholtz: From Blogfather to Podcast Pro How Not to Invest: The Making of Barry’s New Book The Belfer Family Tragedy: Enron, Madoff, FTX The Real Cost of Bernie Madoff: It Wasn’t the Money Billion-Dollar Advisors, Underperforming Portfolios Fiduciary Failures and the Problem with Finance Panic Selling, Risk Off, and Behavioral Finance High-Frequency Trading and The Vanguard Effect Jake’s Veggies: Trophic Cascades and Tariff Lessons Tariffs, Trump, and Market Reaction

 

The Book Tour continues…

 

 

Source:
After Hours (S07 E13): How *Not* to Invest with Barry Ritholtz
Johnny Hopkins
Acquirers Multiple, April 21, 2025

 

The post After Hours (S07 E13): How *Not* to Invest appeared first on The Big Picture.

 

I had a great conversation with Eric Markowitz of The Big Think about HNTI. He focuses on all the right things:

“As Ritholtz puts it, “The book is ostensibly about investing. But if you strip it down to its most basic form, it’s about decision-making, judgment, and behavior.” He likens smart investing to participating in humanity’s progress — buying into the slow, compounding gains of innovation, from safer cars to better sneakers. But he also warns about the instincts that evolved to protect us — like our fear of uncertainty — which now work against us in the markets.”

There is a lot more — and its very different than most of the book media I do… Source:
The Barry Ritholtz Interview: “Smart is good. Smart and lucky is better”
Eric Markowitz The Long Game, April 15, 2025

The post The Big Think: “Smart is good. Smart and lucky is better” appeared first on The Big Picture.

My morning train reads:

• Why Patience Matters During Market Stress:  Trend investors have had a bumpy ride so far this year, but how does today compare with history? (Man Group)

• How Wall Street got Donald Trump wrong: Titans of finance and business are beginning to realise they misread the president’s second-term priorities. (Financial Times)  see also Silicon Valley got Trump completely wrong: Three months into his presidency, Trump has delivered on many of the so-called tech right’s requests for regulatory relief. Yet, to the extent that their faction genuinely cares about maximizing American economic growth, technological progress, and global standing, their investment in Trump has been an utter disaster. (Vox)

• Don’t Buy Into This Easy Fix for Stock-Market Craziness: Be wary of alternative funds that cost too much, disclose too little and are higher risk than they sound. (Wall Street Journal)

• The Trump Family Is Going All-In on Crypto Projects, From Bitcoin Mining to Stablecoins: The Trump family has invested in various crypto projects, including nonfungible tokens, decentralized finance, stablecoins, Bitcoin mining, and memecoins, with paper gains approaching $1 billion. Summary by Bloomberg AI The family’s crypto investments have raised questions about potential conflicts of interest, given the administration’s sway over regulations, and have been met with mixed reactions from the crypto industry. (Bloomberg)

• They Are Hot, Upwardly Mobile Jobs. Here’s Why They Are So Hard to Fill. Some of the fastest-growing careers lie in middle-skill roles like sterilizing surgical tools, yet too few people know about them. (WSJ)

• I Quit My iPhone Two Years Ago. It Completely Changed My Life. This New “Dumbphone” Is a Lot Smarter Than It Looks Trading in a smartphone for something slower, quieter, and a little weirder changed how I live. Now that the Light Phone is evolving, so is my relationship with it. (Slate)

• Rules Of Thumb Vs. Rules Of Big Toe: Why personal pain is the best teacher. In the “stuff that I’ve figured out for myself” category live my Rules of Big Toe. I call them Rules of Big Toe because they’re lessons learned after stubbing my own toe, in a way I don’t want to repeat. Hopefully ever. Instead of a Rule of Thumb that relies on anyone else’s stress test, these Rules of Big Toe have been proven by me, and to me, through my own painful lessons (re” stubbings). (Cultish Creative)

• If Harvard, armor-plated by history and padded with funds, can’t beat Trump, no one can: The awe-inspiring might of the government is pitted against the might of the revered US university: let the fight begin. (The Guardian)

• What Happened To The Planet That Earth “Ate”? Maybe the real Theia is the Moon we made along the way. (IFL Science)

• The Slow Rise of Baseball’s Fastest Pitcher: With a fastball averaging 99.4 mph, Reds flamethrower Hunter Greene throws harder than any starter on record. It has made him the most dominant pitcher in baseball. (Wall Street Journal)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business this week with Martin Escobari of, General Atlantic, where he is Chairman, and head of the Global Growth Equity Investment Committee, and Managing Director. Before joining General Atlantic in 2012, Martín was Co-Founder and CFO of Submarino.com, a leading Brazilian online retailer that went public on the Bovespa and was sold to Lojas Americanas in 2006. He was recently appointed to the Harvard Management Company Board.

 

Only 24% of homes purchased today are bought by first-time homebuyers. This is the lowest level on record

Source: Apollo

 

Sign up for our reads-only mailing list here.

The post 10 Tuesday AM Reads appeared first on The Big Picture.

 

 

 

The transcript from this week’s, MiB: Martín Escobari, General Atlantic, is below.

You can stream and download our full conversation, including any podcast extras, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and Bloomberg. All of our earlier podcasts on your favorite pod hosts can be found here.

 

 

~~~

 

XXXXX insert transcript here XXXXX

 

~~~

 

 

 

 

The post Transcript: Martín Escobari, General Atlantic appeared first on The Big Picture.

My flying home from California reads:

• America’s Biggest Export Could Use a Massive Rebrand. One market stands above all else in this regard and that is the market for US Treasuries, which currently totals about $30 trillion and dwarfs pretty much every other thing out there. (Bloomberg)

• Trump and Powell on Collision Course Without Easy Escape: The president wants interest rates cut, but his trade war has the Fed chair boxed in. (Wall Street Journal) but see Amazon Is Better Prepared for the Trade War Than Investors Think: The company’s size and global reach give it muscles to flex even in a sour economy (Wall Street Journal)

• Bonds Are a Good Bet Again. Where to Find Yields of 6% or More. From junk bonds to munis to mortgage securities, yields are elevated and prices depressed. Ten funds to consider. (Barron’s)

•  What is the Optimal Portfolio Rebalancing Strategy? This white paper arms financial advisors and planners with insights about how different rebalancing strategies, in combination with bullish or bearish market conditions, can affect portfolio performance and risk. (Y Charts)

• Nvidia: The AI chip giant caught between US and China. The California-based company will require licenses to export its H20 AI chip to China, a move which the US Commerce Department said was designed to safeguard “national and economic security”. Nvidia said federal officials had told them the requirement will be in force for the “indefinite future”. But why is the company so pivotal in the race for AI supremacy between the US and China? (BBC)

• US houses are shrinking as inflation pushes ‘McMansions’ out of reach: Even in Texas, the American dream of home ownership is being downsized because of an affordability crisis. (Financial Times) see also Stubbornly High Mortgage Rates Thwart the Crucial Home-Selling Season: Mortgage rates stayed flat while stock-market volatility and recession fears threaten the housing market (Wall Street Journal)

• What Recourse Does the Supreme Court Actually Have? As the Trump administration talks itself into refusing to comply with judicial orders, federal judges are moving closer to deploying the most powerful tool they have: contempt of court. (The Atlantic)

• An Advance in Brain Research That Was Once Considered Impossible: Scientists achieved “a milestone” by charting the activity and structure of 200,000 cells in a mouse brain and their 523 million connections. (New York Times)

• Former Pentagon official warns department’s dysfunction could topple Hegseth: “The last month has been a full-blown meltdown at the Pentagon,” John Ullyot, the former top Defense Department spokesperson. (Politico)

• Richard Kind Is Still Waiting for His Big Break: Amazingly prolific and beloved by Hollywood royalty, the actor has a self-image that belies his status and achievements. “I just work,” he said. (New York Times)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business this week with Martin Escobari of, General Atlantic, where he is Chairman, and head of the Global Growth Equity Investment Committee, and Managing Director. Before joining General Atlantic in 2012, Martín was Co-Founder and CFO of Submarino.com, a leading Brazilian online retailer that went public on the Bovespa and was sold to Lojas Americanas in 2006. He was recently appointed to the Harvard Management Company Board.

 

European travellers cancel US visits as Trump’s policies threaten tourism

Source: Financial Times

 

Sign up for our reads-only mailing list here.

 

The post 10 Monday AM Reads appeared first on The Big Picture.

 

OLD SCHOOL

Get a record deal.

NEW SCHOOL

Get a fan base.

OLD SCHOOL

Learn how to play your instrument.

NEW SCHOOL

Learn how to use your computer.

OLD SCHOOL

The artist is king.

NEW SCHOOL

If the label doesn’t hear a hit, they won’t release your album. And the CEO makes more money than any of the artists.

OLD SCHOOL

Hire a publicity person to get noticed in print media.

NEW SCHOOL

Do your own publicity online.

OLD SCHOOL

Radio is everything.

NEW SCHOOL

TikTok is everything, that’s where acts break.

OLD SCHOOL

Parents hate the music.

NEW SCHOOL

Parents hate the platform, i.e. TikTok (and some still can’t get over physical media and hate Spotify, et al, too).

OLD SCHOOL

Perfect the music and only release what’s up to snuff.

NEW SCHOOL

Put absolutely everything up on YouTube so fans can find it if they’re looking for it. Live shows, acoustic in the studio, everything. Forget quality, otherwise why would people be watching audience-based videos? They want a taste of what it was like at the show. Fans want to get closer, don’t put up a brick wall, but a conduit.

OLD SCHOOL

Spend a fortune recording in a professional studio.

NEW SCHOOL

Record at home, maybe on your laptop.

OLD SCHOOL

Acts are technologically ignorant. They don’t know how the studio works.

NEW SCHOOL

Every act must be an engineer and producer. They must know how the music is created.

OLD SCHOOL

Put out an album, shorter than forty minutes in the vinyl era, no longer than eighty minutes in the CD era.

NEW SCHOOL

Either put out an EP with only a handful of songs, or put out an opus, a double album with maybe even thirty tracks. Because if someone is truly into your music, they’ll stream EVERYTHING!

OLD SCHOOL

Getting ripped-off by the label.

NEW SCHOOL

Believing streaming services are ripping you off even though they’re not.

OLD SCHOOL

Arguing about Spotify payments.

NEW SCHOOL

A focus on software, i.e. the music itself. Sure, business is important, but too many acts spend too much time thinking about it. Create music that draws people to it, then you’ll make money, believe me.

OLD SCHOOL

Major labels shuffled the decks every three to five years or so. A new president came in and wiped out all the old employees and brought in his own team. It was a constant game of musical chairs.

NEW SCHOOL

The same people run the major labels ad infinitum.

OLD SCHOOL

An exec is only as good as his or her last hit, money is everything.

NEW SCHOOL

An exec is only as good as his or her last hit, money is everything.

OLD SCHOOL

Print music magazines meant everything.

NEW SCHOOL

Not only is print dead, but the websites of the early twenty first century are irrelevant too, everything is word of mouth these days.

OLD SCHOOL

Lead with your music.

NEW SCHOOL

Lead with your identity/personality. Your image is just as important as your music. To be featured in the gossip columns means you’ve made it.

OLD SCHOOL

No endorsements, no sponsorships…

NEW SCHOOL

Where do I sell out? I’m dying to sell out, isn’t anybody going to give me money?

OLD SCHOOL

Credibility.

NEW SCHOOL

A bifurcation… There are acts playing the game the old way, building their audience live, over years, they are lifers. They truly focus on the bond with their audience, they just don’t pay lip service. Credibility is key. And everybody else is in it for the fame and money, and will sign anything put in front of them.

OLD SCHOOL

Stadium shows were rare.

NEW SCHOOL

Stadium shows are de rigueur. There are more people and more acts with huge fan bases. But that does not mean those who do not go to the show care.

OLD SCHOOL

Country sucks. Enough with the rednecks and twang.

NEW SCHOOL

Country is the rock of the twenty first century. But there are still a lot of rednecks.

OLD SCHOOL

Hip-hop is cutting edge.

NEW SCHOOL

Hip-hop is long in the tooth, almost a caricature of itself.

OLD SCHOOL

Rappers got shot.

NEW SCHOOL

Rappers get shot.

OLD SCHOOL

Acts rarely had a hit past their prime.

NEW SCHOOL

Acts rarely have a hit past their prime.

OLD SCHOOL

If you wanted to know what was going on you listened to a record.

NEW SCHOOL

Everybody gets their information from a different source, but one thing is for sure, they don’t get it from musicians.

OLD SCHOOL

Musicians stood for something.

NEW SCHOOL

Musicians stand for nothing, they’re afraid of alienating a potential audience member, hurting their career.

OLD SCHOOL

There were few acts who were truly superstars.

NEW SCHOOL

There are a ton of acts that they keep telling us are superstars but we can ignore them and sacrifice nothing.

OLD SCHOOL

You had to buy it to hear it. And when you bought it you listened to it over and over again.

NEW SCHOOL

Everything is available at your fingertips, and it’s hard to get people to listen to anything, never mind all the way through or more than once.

OLD SCHOOL

Very few could be successful musicians, giving up their day job.

NEW SCHOOL

Everybody thinks they’re entitled to be a successful musician and give up their day job.

OLD SCHOOL

You showed off your record collection.

NEW SCHOOL

It’s all about experiences, and you post pictures of them online.

OLD SCHOOL

Labels kept the club scene alive.

NEW SCHOOL

The labels don’t want to spend and neither does the public. If there’s no heat on the act, they’re not interested.

OLD SCHOOL

You knew all the hit acts, even if you didn’t like their music.

NEW SCHOOL

Acts can sell out arenas, and you’ve never heard of them, never mind heard their music.

OLD SCHOOL

The charts were manipulated and not to be trusted.

NEW SCHOOL

The charts are manipulated and not to be trusted.

OLD SCHOOL

The tour was an advertisement for the album.

NEW SCHOOL

The album is the advertisement for the tour.

OLD SCHOOL

Recordings were everything.

NEW SCHOOL

Playing live is everything. You may not even need a record. Or one every five years. Assuming your show is not identical every night. People will know songs that were never laid down on tape/hard drive/SSD. From going to the gig and watching on YouTube.

OLD SCHOOL

Music was everything.

NEW SCHOOL

Music is a sideshow.

OLD SCHOOL

Music saved lives.

NEW SCHOOL

Money is everything, don’t let anybody tell you otherwise.

 

~~~

Visit the archive:   http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/

@Lefsetz  http://www.twitter.com/lefsetz
–
If you would like to subscribe to the LefsetzLetter

~~~

Originally published by Bob Lefsetz at the Leftsetz Letter

 

The post Old School/New School appeared first on The Big Picture.

Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetency, corruption and policy failures:

• How Brexit, a Startling Act of Economic Self-Harm, Foreshadowed Trump’s Tariffs: Britain’s decision to leave the European Union in 2016 was sold to voters as a magic bullet that would revitalize the country’s economy. Its impact is still reverberating. (New York Times)

• Joe Biden’s Final Days: Did Aides Cover Up His Mental State—or Was It Group Delusion? Revelations from within the Biden bubble—detailed in the new book Uncharted—show how the reelection team persevered despite alarming signs of decline. Asked one top Democratic insider, “How are they letting this f—ing thing go on?”(Vanity Fair) see also The Conspiracy of Silence to Protect Joe Biden: The president’s mental decline was like a dark family secret for many elite supporters. (New York Magazine)

• The (Ludicrous) Psychology of Slot Machines: Slot Machines are the workhorse of the Las Vegas casinos. After decades of design tweaks, the “crack cocaine of gambling” brings in more revenue than every other casino game combined. (SatPost by Trung Phan)

• The rise of the infinite fringe: It used to be easy to kill a conspiracy theory. But the internet has made them immortal — and politically powerful. (The Verge)

• Tired of Winning: Why Peter Navarro Hates BMW. It turns out that his fixation on BMW’s operations in South Carolina is longstanding — and also quite puzzling given that Plant Spartanburg represents everything the Trump Administration says it wants to achieve: reindustrialization, manufacturing jobs, and exports. (Agglomerations)

• America’s Mad King: The president has grown more impulsive, more vindictive, and more anarchic. (The Atlantic)

• As ‘Bot’ Students Continue to Flood In, Community Colleges Struggle to Respond: Community colleges have been dealing with an unprecedented phenomenon: fake students bent on stealing financial aid funds. While it has caused chaos at many colleges, some Southwestern faculty feel their leaders haven’t done enough to curb the crisis. (Voice of San Diego)

• Harvard’s Decision to Resist Trump Is ‘of Momentous Significance’ But a fight with the nation’s oldest, richest and most elite university is a battle that President Trump and his powerful aide, Stephen Miller, want to have. (New York Times)

• The self-inflicted death of American science has already begun: Trump’s crackdown on foreign students and scientists will do irreparable harm to the country. (Vox)

• Jackie Robinson Would Be Appalled: As baseball gets set to celebrate the trailblazer’s legacy, it’s also placating a president who wants to dismantle everything Jackie stood for. (The Ringer)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business next week with Martin Escobari of, General Atlantic, where he is Chairman, anbd head of the Global Growth Equity Investment Committee, and Managing Director. Before joining General Atlantic in 2012, Martín was Co-Founder and CFO of Submarino.com, a leading Brazilian online retailer that went public on the Bovespa and was sold to Lojas Americanas in 2006. He was recently appointed to the Harvard Management Company Board.

 

Attack of the Quack-Industrial Complex

Source: Paul Krugman

 

Sign up for our reads-only mailing list here.

~~~

To learn how these reads are assembled each day, please see this.

The post 10 Sunday Reads appeared first on The Big Picture.


 

I had fun speaking with Ben & Michael about the new book and whether it is the culmination of my life’s work.

Fun factoid: The sound of Batnick’s eye rolls as he heard the same story for the umpteenth time was always in the back of my head as I wrote the book…

 

 

 

Source:
How Not To Invest Like Buffett.
Michael Batnick, Ben Carlson
Talk Your Book, April 19, 2025

 

 

 

 

 

The post Talk Your Book: How Not To Invest Like Buffett appeared first on The Big Picture.