š ASB Partners Nuggets 6.27.25
This is a short weekly email that covers a few things Iāve found interesting during the week.
Interesting Links/Reads
Many links are sourced from Marginal Revolution (bold and italics are my own to highlight what I found particularly interesting)
The first half of 2025 has felt like a nonstop series of emergencies. Wildfires in California caused tens of billions of dollars in damages. DeepSeek released its AI chatbot, knocking trillions off the market value of U.S. technology stocks. After President Trump launched the biggest trade war in 80 years, U.S. stocks fell 12% in four days. Israel and the U.S. went to war against Iran, sending oil prices gushing upward.
Natural disasters, technological breakthroughs and geopolitical turmoil have emptied their quivers at the stock market, and the damage has been minimalāfor investors who didnāt flinch.
Despite all the upheavals, the S&P 500 is up 3% in 2025. If you had gone into a long sleep on Dec. 31 and you finally woke up this week, youād think from the level of the stock market that absolutely nothing important had happened in the past six months.
Last Word
Benign neglect is the secret to long-term investing success. If you change your investment policy, you are likely to be wrong; if you change it with a sense of urgency, youāre guaranteed to be wrong.
āCharles D. Ellis
Movies are getting longer too. Of course this is the exact opposite of what the āsmart phones are ruining our brainsā theorists have been telling us. I think I would sooner say that the variance of our attention spans is going up? In any case, here is part of Tedās theory:
The dopamine boosts from endlessly scrolling short videos eventually produce anhedoniaāthe complete absence of enjoyment in an experience supposedly pursued for pleasure. (I write about that here.) So even addicts grow dissatisfied with their addiction.
More and more people are now rebelling against these manipulative digital interfaces. A sizable portion of the population simply refuses to become addicts. This has always been true with booze and drugs, and itās now true with digital entertainment.
Short form clickbait gets digested easily, and spreads quickly. But this doesnāt generate longterm loyalty. Short form is like a memeāspreading easily and then disappearing. Whereas long immersive experiences reach deeper into the hearts and souls of the audience. This creates a much stronger bond than any 15-second video or melody will ever match.
3.I underestimated him More than once. A lesson in self-reckoning Russ Roberts Jun 25, 2025
Iām writing this on June 25th, the day after the ceasefire. And thereās already an immense chorus of negative feeling on social media from pro-Israel voices about this latest turn of eventsāthere was supposed to be unconditional surrender, what about regime change, Iran still has 900 lbs of enriched uranium, the Iranian foreign minister has already vowed to restart the program, weāre back to square one, there are still hostages in Gaza.
All of that is true. And it totally misses the point. Those are the trees. Look at the forest. The last two weeks, what Trump has cleverly called the 12 Day War, will be talked about and written about for ages. But the military success is just the beginning. Trump and Netanyahu have re-made the Middle East. And theyāre just getting started. You underestimate them at your peril.
Thereās a joke about the Six Day War and it may be a true storyāthat the war isnāt studied at West Point because thereās nothing to learn. It was too miraculous. The 12 Day War seems like it might be more impressive. And the whole thing was made possible by a coordinated campaign of misdirection between Trump and Netanyahu that preceded the war that lulled Iran into a state of complacency and made the initial attacks a complete surprise.
But Trumpās boldness is otherworldly. Off the charts. What I mean by boldness is to do something that just isnāt done, that everyone knows isnāt done, that everyone is telling you canāt be done or shouldnāt be done. He floats bold schemes that are so outside the box the world takes them as humor. Canada could be the 51st state! Greenland would be nice to have! Letās build a wall and get Mexico to pay for it!
Trump doesnāt care. That is a superpower. Itās a dangerous superpower. He has done and will do some very bad things because of his boldness. But his handling of the Middle East so far is beyond creative and unexpected. I underestimated him.
The book is written in a friendly and encouraging style, and offers many observations that might spark sober recognition in any reader. āThe time you take looking at the screen is time you donāt get back,ā one media professor tells Mr. Simon. āItās almost like I want something in that junk food category in my brain,ā a software engineer confesses. The sight of parents ignoring their children in favor of their phones is the subject of the authorās recurring laments. Kindly but firmly, Mr. Simon insists: āUnless youāre working at the State Department there is no need for you to be checking news throughout the day.ā
The biggest problem with this bookās arguments is that they make individuals responsible for resisting the blandishments of smartphone tech, when its intrusive demands are often mandated by forces outside their control.
Podcast/Videos
Show notes from Peter Attia Podcast āThe Driveā
I hope you enjoyed it.
Adam