Strap in. When Jeff Macke is driving the conversation, you need to pay attention. The wisdom, wit, and one-liners fly by fast.
While other seven-year-olds spent their weekends playing with Lincoln Logs and Wiffle Ball, Jeff was riding around town in a station wagon with his dad, visiting Target stores. He wasn’t just tagging along—he was analyzing end-caps, product presentations, and the cleanliness of the floors and staff.
The Animal Spirits have turned savage on Wall Street as stocks post their worst day in years. Time to take personal inventory and make a shopping list.
I started running money in 1997, straight out of graduate school. Underfunded and overconfident but with the magnificent good fortune to be working in San Francisco during the original Internet Bubble. It's been a journey. A deeply weird and eventful journey.
My career was almost killed in the crib by LTCM and ripple effects from the Thai Baht, a currency I haven't bothered to think about before or since. I survived the Dot.com bubble and crash, the GFC and a downgrade of US debt. Five years ago this week then-President Donald Trump declared COVID-19 a national emergency. Six days later California became the first state to issue Stay-at-Home orders and the country was on its way to shutting down almost-but-not-quite everything for 18 months.
Let me tell you something, "What happens if every public space closes?" was a hard Headwind to price into your spreadsheet. February and March were tough for Consumer Discretionary and pretty much everything else:
