Think Different

A couple of years ago, I had a subscriber at one of the big banks, and I decided to tug on his ear to see if he could get his desk signed up for a group subscription to The Daily Dirtnap. He was a bond trader. I actually make more money off of individual subscriptions, but the institutional subscriptions tend to be stickier, and therefore more desirable. He suggested that I fly up to NYC and meet with the desk. I go to NYC all the time, so fine.

I went to his building, checked in with the security dopes, took the elevator up, and stepped out onto the trading floor.

I knew instantly that I was not going to sign the deal.

Fleece vests. Standard issue haircuts. Chad and Brad. Headed to a kid’s lacrosse game after work. Phish concert on Saturday night. If you’ve never spent any time on Wall Street, and you’re reading this, wondering what I am talking about, Wall Street has a type. Much like any other industry has a type. I think there is an assembly line somewhere that cranks these guys out. They are not big consumers of independent research, because they are what I would call incurious. The buy bonds at par and sell them at par and a quarter. They do that day in and day out and get a $600,000 bonus. I’m sure some bond trader is reading this who’s deeply insulted, thinking that there is a lot more sophistication required to do that job, but there is a breed of cat who buys bonds at par and sells them at par and a quarter. You don’t need a newsletter to do that, and you’re probably not super interested in reading observations from some weirdo in South Carolina. I knew it within a second. A half-second.

I thought of this recently when I was having a conversation with another subscriber, who is a luxury homebuilder. He invented a new way of framing that was better and cheaper, but he was meeting resistance from the engineers and contractors. This is the way it’s always been done! You ever notice that when presented with something new, like a new restaurant, a new book, or a new TV show, your initial reaction is…resistance? You don’t want to try something new, because you’re accustomed to going to the same restaurants, reading the same books, and watching the same shows. You’re content with what you have, and something new is—scary! This is the way it’s always been done. I have a book coming out in September about a new way to save for retirement. Everyone is going to hate it. They won’t even read the book, but they will hate it. It is new and scary.

Innovation is a funny thing, and the thing about innovations is that they have to be puny. People are only open to small, incremental changes. I can tell you right now that there is a good chance the book will fail, and the reason that the book might fail is because it is not a small, incremental change. What I am proposing, if adopted fully, will blow up the entire financial industry. People aren’t ready to hear it yet. Also, I know a thing or two about books, and I will tell you which nonfiction books succeed—the ones that tell people what they already believe to be true. The Millionaire Next Door sold millions of copies because people believed that they had to undergo soul-crushing austerity in order to become millionaires, and the book told them that they had to undergo soul-crushing austerity to become millionaires, so it confirmed their priors. Even though it was completely false! And terrible advice! So in a world where people believe that the path to riches is to plow money into index funds learn that here is a new, different, and better way to do it, they shut down and refuse to even consider the possibility. Maybe the book will be a success—20 years from now. In the fiction and movie world, people like linear plots, an upright, virtuous protagonist, and a happy ending. If you’ve ever read the book Save the Cat! you know that formulaic storytelling works for a reason. Requiem For a Dream was the best movie ever made, but what did it do at the box office? All the Evil of This World (my anti-plot novel) was the best thing I have ever written, but how many copies did it sell? If you want to make money, there is a science to storytelling. If you don’t want to make money, there is an art to storytelling. The kitsch and the avant-garde. Critically and commercially successful. We have been over this before, and it all comes down to openness, and creativity.

It’s funny, because I was just talking to one of my pals about the new Meta glasses. This is not a new product! Google came out with Google Glass over a decade ago, and the people who wore them got beat up. It was not a puny innovation, and so the world was not ready for it. And yes, part of the reason Meta has sold million of these things is because they’re in Ray Ban frames, and Google Glass made you look like you were fresh off the set of Blade Runner, but there is more to it than that. It was new, it was unfamiliar, and people weren’t ready for it. The Palm Treo was the world’s first smartphone, but people weren’t ready for that, either. And everyone laughed at the Apple Newton. People are not fucking ready for self-driving cars, even though it’s going to save hundreds of thousands of lives and put all the sleazy ambulance-chasing lawyers out of business. This is all a long way of saying that people are a little short in the imagination department and resistant to change.

When you talk about creativity, people usually think of art, literature, music, or film. There is more to it than that. In my business, there is creativity in trading. I don’t disclose the identity of my newsletter subscribers, but I have one who is one of the world’s most successful investors—and perhaps one of the most eccentric. He is a divergent thinker. I assure you that he doesn’t have a fleece vest, a standard issue haircut, a kid’s lacrosse game, or a Phish concert. He did not come off the investor factory assembly line. I remember many years ago, the Wall Street Journal did an interview with some strategist who wore Hawaiian shirts all the time. He also happened to be very good at his job. They even had a pointillistic picture of him in a Hawaiian shirt. Now, I know what you’re thinking. Dan Ives. Dan Ives is trying very, very hard. But there are some creatives in the financial industry. Many of them are quants. It takes all kinds.

Creativity is more than just art, literature, music, or film. It’s more than business and finance. It’s about thinking different and doing things differently. It’s also about not giving a fuck, because you know that your new idea is going to be met with derision, and you just don’t care. Tesla gets sued every time a self-driving car hits a possum. Elon doesn’t care, because he knows it is going to change the world. I write a lot about not giving a fuck. It’s nice to be vindicated in the end, like Steve Jobs. Maybe you are vindicated in the end—but not when you are alive. The modernist painters of the 40s were destitute. Today, their art is selling for tens of millions of dollars. God bless the people who are always pushing boundaries, and trying to see what they can get away with. I’m sure you can name a dozen authors who became famous—after they were dead. But occasionally something breaks through. For whatever reason, the world was ready for A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. Burgess wrote the whole thing drunk, a masterpiece. And Stanley Kubrick made a movie about it—rated X, by the way. But for the most part, when something is created that is so far outside of people’s comfort zone, at best, it has a chance of becoming a cult classic.

I have a copy of infinite Jest sitting on my shelf. At over 500,000 words, it will take me two months to finish, reading every day. I don’t know when I am going to get to it. I read recently that it was the most unfinished book in the world. David Foster Wallace is the rare example of someone who was celebrated while he was alive—but despised in death, by the 2013-2023 woke literary crowd. It’s almost like anti-innovation in reverse—people were ready for it in the 90s and 00s, but not today, which I think speaks volumes about our culture and society. I was chatting with a friend of mine today, telling her about how I haven’t been too lucky in publishing. Maybe in the year 2075, some curious literary critic will come across one of my books molding away in a library, read it, then go down the rabbit hole and read the entire backcatalogue, and write a piece in Vanity Fair about this iconoclastic writer who somehow escaped notice in the early 21^st century. I have never told people want they think they want hear. I don’t confirm priors. I’m constantly pushing boundaries, seeing what I can get away with. Speaking of Steve Jobs, he did an entire advertising campaign around it! Think Different, with the 1984 Big Brother telescreen. Who thinks differently nowadays, really, aside from Elon? Tim Cook is a great CEO, but hasn’t innovated in years. Everyone is so afraid of offending people. Everyone is so afraid of failure. Nobody takes risks. Nobody is willing to put their reputation on the line.

Change is slow. And incremental. Because people say No more than they say Yes. Government, corporations, universities, and other institutions all demand conformity. Conformity of dress, conformity of speech, conformity of thought. Then you retire and head down to the country club. More conformity. At one point, we were all in high school, going to local punk concerts and stage-diving and being nonconformist. Then what happened? Social pressures being what they are, you have to fit in a box. Screw the box. Pretend like you’re a kid again, and do whatever the hell you want.

P.S. If you are ready to hear the message of my new book, pre-order it here. The Awesome Portfolio will be released on September 8^th. If every person who read this email ordered a copy, it would be a bestseller. And it will be the greatest financial innovation of the 21^st century.