The last few weeks I have been to a couple of conferences. The first was an LP meeting with Social Leverage – an early stage VC firm, the second a presentation from Art Laffer, the renowned supply side economist.

The juxtaposition between these two events was profound.

The Social Leverage conference was a bunch of people solving problems in unique ways. Each company was clear on their market, the challenges ahead and the work required. The enthusiasm of the founders and CEO’s was palpable. I was in awe and humbled by the scale of some of their thinking and the growth that had been achieved.

The Art Laffer presentation was somehow similar yet different. His enthusiasm and humor was great. He is friggin 78 years old – that’s six years older than the president. What a role model for being active at his age.

He was trying to describe his theories on economies and the handful of variables at play. He kept trying to distill a multi-variable system into a few talking points that were salient and believable.

The dilemma is this we cant come up with a solution to solve a “Three-Body” problem, how the hell can we come up with a solution to predict a global economy? The number of variables at play are incalculable – interest rates, tax rates, unemployment, GDP growth, tariffs, trade wars, wage growth… The list goes on and on.

I know I should spend more time trying to understand the macro forces at play and make decisions within the stock and bond market – but these decisions are complicated and don’t seem to add much in the way of return.

The decisions of private investments while complicated seem to have less variables at play but the return outcome can be mind blowing. It also seems to reward the human spirit and the way it can overcome difficult problems.

I like integrating the big and small views of the world into the portfolios of our clients.

Bye for now.