What this covers
Timestamps 00:00 Introduction 02:00 What Is A "Robust" Portfolio? 06:00 Farming 08:50 America's Geographic Luxury 13:20 Carry 16:30 Financial Futures Breakdown 20:00 The Nickel Short Squeeze 35:10 Complex Macro Situation Leads To Large Moves 43:00 False Hubris Of "Understanding Markets" 52:00 Commodity Trend-Following 56:10 Fimbulwinter and Ragnarök
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In a highly financialized and leveraged global economy, systemic risks are distributed across clearinghouses and derivatives markets where path-dependent margin calls can destroy real economic producers even when their terminus position is sound, forcing investors to hedge not just market risk but counterparty and clearinghouse default risk through physical assets and community resilience.
- The LME nickel crisis showed a solvent hedger was forced into insolvency by margin calls before physical delivery, illustrating terminus vs. path risk
- Clearinghouse and margin system risks are now the binding constraint on portfolio construction, not market volatility itself
- Macro complexity and emergent properties mean traditional market understanding is an illusion; investors must prepare for slow-motion drawdowns and supply shocks alongside tail events
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Futures markets use performance bonds (typically 5-10% of contract value) rather than full collateral because the exchange marks positions to market daily and expects volatility within a known range, but when volatility spikes and margin requirements rise (doubling or tripling), traders must post vastly more collateral or be liquidated, creating path dependency where solvent hedgers with physical delivery obligations can be forced into insolvency before maturity.
“let's say i was trading the s p 500 futures and let's say there were a hundred dollars i only had to put up a performance bond of say five dollars or five percent to control that position because let's say this goes back to our all our discussions on volatility index let's say vol's at 16. so we're expecting one percent plus or minus moves a day so then my exchange is gonna say if you post five percent as a performance bond we're well within those bands where if it goes up or down you're going to be able to cover that cash position”
Markets that are forced to deleverage simultaneously (from margin calls or redemptions) experience non-economic forced liquidations where participants sell safe assets like Treasuries just to raise cash, violating the assumption that safe assets provide portfolio diversification. This happened in March 2020 when Treasury yields spiked despite being traditionally safe havens.
“when you might hear about people degrosing and forced degrossing and technical flow in the market this is some of the stuff we're talking about that when markets move faster margin calls start to happen and people are force liquidated and these are sort of non-economic transactions that can move markets very violently because you typically have all these parties having to act in the same way right it's either um they need to sell their position down to raise capital uh or they typically have to raise cash somewhere else”
The LME (London Metal Exchange) and similar commodity exchanges rely on outdated infrastructure (cell phones, fax machines) rather than automated real-time API systems for margin management, allowing positions to spiral into billions before margin calls are enforced, unlike CME/CBOT which have real-time margining and position limits on speculators
“the problem was the the margin got away into the billions before they made the you know when they made the call because we're you know running off of cell phones in fact i mean you know phone calls and fax machines still a lot of these exchanges”
Risk can be suppressed in equity markets through circuit breakers and Fed backstops, but it cannot be destroyed—it transforms into other asset classes or mechanisms, so the question is not whether risk exists but where it manifests: if equities are suppressed, volatility may appear in rates, FX, or commodities markets.
“what what really always i think about you and i've talked about a million times we've done x-ray shows on this in the past is the idea of like everybody wants to talk about like the fed or money printing or all this stuff and it's like it all boils down to food and energy right like if we have a cooling cycle and we can't produce the weed or a war happens in russia and ukraine like if people starve like that matters more than our finances didn't you no i'm just saying like i have no idea but like it's just like we think that we have a control like you said an understanding of markets but if you have an exogenous event of um you know actually global crop rotations and planting growing cycles and heat cycles and and oceanic oscillations it's like we have no idea what we're talking about right and like we can we can say oh it's the fed putting their you know thumb on the scale but if if we reduce arable land you know we go into chaos and and everybody gets hurt like and that's the really the scary scenarios to me but like corey i was thinking about this the other day what's your um what's your quote on volatility can't have a quote on volatility oh yeah risk can't be destroyed only transformed and so i was thinking about this is like so we always talk about that like you may they may be able to suppress volatility in equity markets and then everybody goes okay if they suppress it there let's let's look at like uh you know rates markets et cetera like fx markets everybody was betting that was where we were going to see volatility manifest like you said you can you can stream it but you're squeezing that balloon but did we just see that balloon pop in commodity markets that people weren't expecting that just got exacerbated that you know the the the camel that broke the straws back was the ukrainian conflict”
Physical cash ($5-10K emergency cash on hand) provides more security than gold ETFs or digital assets because it doesn't depend on financial infrastructure; in true emergencies, the value of portable cash exceeds financial claims, and psychological security of holding actual dollars matters for sleep-at-night reasons
“to me i always think about you always want some cash on hand i mean that's just smart right like there's a there's a there's also like layers and levels to this as far as prudence right”
The LME nickel crisis, March 2020 Treasury sell-off, and similar episodes show that leverage is distributed throughout the global financial system and impossible to eliminate—if a real market crisis hits requiring all participants to move to cash simultaneously, there will be absolute chaos because insufficient cash exists to meet all redemptions and margin calls, meaning systemic collapse is a tail event that can be managed but not prevented through regulation alone.
“the third order effects that i think corey and i should more talk about is like this is the world we live in right we're we're living in a highly levered world no matter what exchange you use no matter what instrument you trade nobody wants to admit that it's a highly level leveraged derivative world and if we have to all go to cash at the same time there it's going to be absolute chaos and that's just the way the financial system works”
CTA trend-following strategies profited heavily in the first week of March 2022 as commodities spiked, but then gave back significant gains as prices mean-reverted in the second week, and commodity markets with limit-up/limit-down circuit breakers trap traders in positions where they cannot exit for days at a time, creating forced illiquidity that is even more punitive than equity market crashes.
“what's been interesting and i'm sure i don't know how many people pay attention to this because how many people are primarily you know traditional financial markets versus like commodities it's like ctas and and cta trend followers like commodity has exploded this year but also this first week of march but just like this nickel trade is like your longs can get erased like overnight you know as much as giveth it take it away like that leverage and everything can mean revert on you so hard so as much as some of them are producing eye popping numbers that first week of march they're also coming back in this week”
Visual perception and cognitive bias mean observers see patterns that align with their existing mental models rather than reality ('we see things as we are, not as they are'), making market analysis inherently biased toward confirmation rather than objectivity.
“corey it's the bond market the bond market is this is the problem like with a lot of financial news and causality right it's it's all premised on almost like the great man theory like you're saying who's moving the markets who did what and it's not that simple right there's a lot of emergent properties by the way michael harris always loved the comments this one [ __ ] great guys 1966 to 1982 and spx old brokers told me they spent 10 years playing chess and one order from customers per week in large houses that is a phenomenal anecdote from from the last time we were underwater but also of course i want to bring up the napoleon thing you did is is just another perfect example of this is like our minds play tricks on ourselves anyway our lens of seeing the world is obfuscated through a subjective lens so even when i'm looking at the picture i form napoleon's horse even though it's not there like we see what we wanted like a nice nin like we see things not as as they are we see things as we are”
Producers can sometimes benefit from futures prices being elevated relative to their actual cost of production (a windfall), but can also be hurt if they locked in a hedge (short futures) before understanding all the constraints on when they could actually deliver the physical commodity, creating unintended leverage.
“and i think that's that's right and you know i think there are cases where producers can have a windfall from where futures are and there are cases where producers can potentially be hurt by futures because they are trying in many cases to hedge their risk using futures it's um but at the end of the day they're the ones actually delivering the physical commodity and they're going to try to transact at prices that make their business viable and if the business isn't viable the commodities aren't getting delivered and guess what the prices are going to go up”
Traders watch port traffic and shipping data to understand real-time commodity flows (e.g., whether China is actually backdooring Russian sanctions through oil imports) because shipping capacity is observable and constrained, making it a useful indicator of actual trade happening vs. narrative.
“it's and then as an investor is there a way to profit i saw a note from uh zoltan at credit suisse who was saying sort of long freight right if china makes this play they're going to need a lot of boats i was about to say how are they going to get it but that was my next yeah yeah i was like there's no pipelines going into china from russia and a lot of boats facilities like those port terminals aren't that big and you can probably watch that by the way there's probably resources where you could sorry watch watching ports and see how much boat traffic picks up to see if this is happening”
Fishing villages historically traded with mountain tribes: fish from coastal regions, animals and agricultural products from upland regions, mutual specialization and exchange that created resilience; this model of local complementarity is being lost in globalized supply chains, making regions more fragile
“just like i mean it gives you one example of like that was a great you know rolex trade but just like i mean they were talking about the hugh henry one two is like historically too you had to have you had the low-lying like fishing people would also make friends with the tribes in the upper regions to have the animals and they would they would exchange right”
Market causality commentary (the 'great man theory' of market moves) is almost always post-hoc storytelling because the actual movers of markets are often unknown—financial news assumes individual agents or institutions are causing moves ('who is selling?', 'why are they selling?'), but emergent properties mean the move emerges from collective behavior that may be impossible to trace to discrete actors or intentions.
“it's the bond market is the bond market is this is the problem like with a lot of financial news and causality right it's it's all premised on almost like the great man theory like you're saying who's moving the markets who did what and it's not that simple right there's a lot of emergent properties”
The underlying issue in global markets is not monetary policy or central banks but food and energy production; if you have supply shocks in wheat, oil, or other essential commodities, that matters more than financial policy because people cannot eat financial assets.
“what really always i think about you and i've talked about a million times we've done x-ray shows on this in the past is the idea of like everybody wants to talk about like the fed or money printing or all this stuff and it's like it all boils down to food and energy right like if we have a cooling cycle and we can't produce the weed or a war happens in russia and ukraine like if people starve like that matters more than our finances”
Russia is banning oil exports to Western countries until at least December 31, 2022, which creates a basis arbitrage between Russian and non-Russian commodities that only China may be willing/able to take advantage of, opening questions about whether China will circumvent Western sanctions, whether arbitrage will alleviate global commodity prices, and whether logistics can support large-scale commodity flows from Russia to China.
“we have this scenario now where there is economic sanctions against russia russia has come out and said i always said from what i saw a couple days ago that they would not be exporting any oil till december 31st they're they're banning all exports uh to western countries which sort of creates this interesting basis between russian commodities and non-russian commodities and china is potentially the only player that can arbitrage that basis or will be willing to arbitrage that basis”
Complex systems produce emergent properties (unpredictable outcomes), and integrative complexity (multiple complex systems interacting) means economists and market participants cannot truly understand or predict global economics, making claims of understanding (especially from older investors who profited from the 40-year bull market) pure hubris.
“part so part of it is like back in the day i used to do um all this course work with santa fe institute and stanford on complexity theory right and if we start talking about complexity dynamics is like complex systems create what we call emergent properties and emergent properties is a fancy word for saying i don't know right and so if you have a complex system we can't understand that determinism in a complex system so we can't really understand a complex system but then what's worse is that when you have a complex system that's what's called integrative complexity when it interacts with another complex system now we really really don't know”
In the nickel crisis, a large Chinese nickel producer shorted futures to hedge price risk, but when nickel spiked from 25,000 to 100,000 dollars per ton and margin requirements rose from 10% to 150%, the LME allowed margin calls to go unpaid, creating an 8-12 billion dollar loss from the short squeeze.
“basically nickel went from twenty five thousand dollars a ton to a hundred thousand dollars a ton and basically the losses are eight to twelve billion”
CTA trend-following strategies performed strongly during 1970s stagflation (sources suggest roughly 26% in 2001, 12% in 2002) when stocks and bonds were declining, providing a hedge for extended downturn environments.
“i was thinking about this when you were bringing it up on wednesday it's like the idea of you know 70s you know was last time we saw a deep you know underwater mark for a decade for s p but obviously you know cta trend following commodities did really well during the 70s during that stagflation environment or whatever you want to call it that you know and whether that's unique or not and then we think about you know 2000 to 2002 um don't quote me but i think i want to say sock gen um trend index was up like 26 in 2001 another 12 percent 2002.”
Markets globally have historically been underwater (down >10% sustained) during 1970s stagflation, 2000-2002 tech crash, and 2008-2009 financial crisis, but American markets have miraculously avoided multi-year underwater periods in the last decade, leaving current investors unprepared for extended drawdowns.
“we haven't had a two to three year like recession we haven't had a a decade or two of seeing like the s p underwater like we've seen historically people are completely unprepared like you said for that pain trade”
Commodity producers set spot prices based on fundamental costs and profit margins they need to stay in business; futures prices may forecast or may be driven by speculators, but ultimately producers extract what they need economically, so futures don't drive spot in the long run, they forecast it
“from people i talk to though the answer is that spot does not move to futures futures moves the spot in other words producers go this is my price take it or leave it right right they're the ones setting the price futures might be trying to forecast or certainly there's some sort of like risk neutral hedging properties that are going on with the futures uh but at the end of the day the producers who are selling know what return they need to get to stay in business and have a profit and so they're gonna sort of try to demand that price”
The concept of 'Fimbulwinter' (from Norse mythology: three years of endless winter with no summer, no food, no relief) provides a useful model for understanding slow-motion economic declines where inflationary pressures gradually build, earnings decline, individuals become unable to pay debts, and markets grind lower for 2-3 years—which is psychologically and practically harder to manage than a 'Ragnarok' (violent sudden collapse) because it offers no rally to profit from and requires sustained risk-off positioning.
“so i don't know anything about norse mythology this is just a good sort of chris cole sales situation but but everyone sort of heard of ragnarok which is probably which is like the end of the world um you know all the gods die in a giant battle uh and the world is reborn and it's a very sort of violent end of the world in norse mythology what comes before ragnarok though which is sort of the cataclysmic end is what is called uh fimble winter and fimble winter is this sort of never-ending cold and dark i think they say it's like three years of never ending winter the sun never rises there's no summer there's no food it just drags on forever”
Portable high-value assets like Rolex watches can function as emergency barter across geographies and economic states because they retain value and are divisible across third-world economies where luxury goods trade for essential goods like cars, whereas gold or diamonds embedded in the body (an extreme survival technique) has extremely high carry costs and real danger.
“i had a friend have a friend who is ex-special forces who said part of their training one thing they learned was you should always when traveling have a rolex on you because no matter where you are in the world you can probably trade that rolex for a car right”
The LME faced a moral hazard dilemma: liquidate a producer that generates $40 billion in annual revenue for the exchange and possibly blow out 12 small brokers (systemic cascade), or halt trading and reset positions to $50k/ton (protecting long speculators' paper gains but creating moral hazard). There are no good choices—only tradeoffs between different forms of systemic damage.
“so then the question becomes in a scenario like this where you have somebody that actually possesses the physical commodity it looks like an interim short squeeze the question is do you blow that participant out that's likely your largest revenue source because they're i think it was over the last two years they've done 40 billion in revenue off of nickel alone right so i didn't look into like they're probably the largest trader on the lme let's be honest and so the other part the service participants the small brokers you might have had to blow out 12 small brokers and make them go bankrupt and what is the um you know the cascade of consequences because of that”
Fractionalized ownership of farmland hedge assets creates principal-agent problems: if the property is owned by multiple people and a crisis hits, anonymous co-owners cannot be relied upon to cooperate or prioritize your interests, so community-based hedges (knowing your neighbors, building relationships) are more reliable than shared ownership with strangers.
“also you're kind of assuming though like if there is a huge disaster that would cause you to go to your farm all this cooperation you have with your your people who are fractionalized ownership like i don't know how much you know uh peace love and happiness will be if there's a crisis so you kind of you got to know people like it's got to be there's always yeah yeah you me and corey we're in the fractionalized ownership but if it's like anonymous and it's just some some guy you know like can i make any promises about my behavior me neither exactly corey and i are friends during good times wait till the bad times that's right i'm gonna eat that big bastard”
When you zoom in on details of market movements, individual transactions appear to be nonsense and don't form coherent patterns, like examining a deep dream neural network artwork where the structure is recognizable but details make no sense.
“the picture i post uh is this i'm people might be familiar with like this uh famous painting of napoleon on a horse and there's um a digital artwork style called i don't even know what it's called it's like they use they use artificial neural networks to like manipulate the images and it's it's this weird sort of methodology that keeps how do i describe it keeps the structure of the original image but everything within the image is all sort of messed up”
The current macroeconomic landscape is much more complex than the past 15 years of market conditioning has prepared investors for: COVID-induced supply chain shocks, subsequent demand surge, inflation fears, stimulus unwinding, geopolitical war, and simultaneous commodity supply shocks from Russia/Ukraine mean individual macro events cannot be rushed or pre-priced by markets, creating potential for violent repricing when events realize.
“i so where this came up for me and this is something i posted on twitter i was just thinking about how complex the macroeconomic landscape has become right uh covid turns into supply and chain shocks turns into increased demand turns into inflation risks and then we have sort of latent stimulus effects we then get uh you know is the fed gonna raise rates what are we gonna do about inflation we suddenly get a war we now have massive supply shocks coming out of russia and ukraine with wheat oil potash like you know we just have an increasingly complex macroeconomic landscape”
American exceptionalism provides structural advantages for portfolio construction and economic growth because the US has abundant arable land, dual climate zones for natural pest control via winter insect die-off that provides NPK fertilizer, access to ocean resources, protectable borders, and rainfall patterns that enable cheap farmland with good water sources, whereas other regions must devote capital to physical hedges rather than productive assets like startups and equities.
“america's the and this is what you're getting to we have this american exceptionalism it's one of the greatest growing regions in the world right we have the most arable land in the center of the country we're surrounded by oceans we have protectable borders uh more importantly we have this um we have dual climate zones that can create insect die off in the winter which provides the npk for our fertilizer so we have all these like interesting components to america”
In portfolio construction, you face a tradeoff between (1) efficiency/cost (investing in productive assets like VC and equities, using liquid instruments), and (2) resilience (holding physical hedges like gold, farmland, cash). You can layer both with return-stacking strategies, but this requires accepting that some capital will be 'wasted' on hedges that pay off only in tail scenarios.
“you can be going out way out that risk curve and investing in vc you still could be holding a little bit of physical gold a little bit of physical cash living on a farm like you can have all of these things stacked in your portfolio and that's the beautiful way that we're able to construct portfolios in america especially is that we have access to all these liquid strategies illiquid strategies and ways to kind of stack those returns on top of each other so you could go all the way from having an isolated farm but you're still you're still a vc investor over zoom and taking your meetings like it's it's pretty phenomenal world we live in”
Traders and investors building derivatives-heavy portfolios should prefer listed exchanges (CME, CBOT) over OTC counterparty risk because daily mark-to-market and multiple collateral backstops reduce single-counterparty failure risk, though this creates clearinghouse systemic risk instead.
“when we were building our firm we we specifically wanted to only trade enlisted exchanges right this is why we purposely built our products and futures and options because of this uh you know performance bond this cash flow is mark to market on a daily basis and all these redundancies that you see with like cme and sibo but what we haven't seen is a clearinghouse get too big to fail yet”
If a clearinghouse (CME or CBOT) ever becomes too big to fail, the government will step in to bail it out, which is moral hazard; but the alternative—building OTC relationships with investment banks—proved in 2008 to be worse, because banks refused to pay and you have no legal recourse to get your capital back
“we haven't seen a clearinghouse get too big to fail yet right and we haven't seen you know and so our question is always like if the cme or sibo gets like too big to fail i think obviously the government steps in which is unfortunate moral hazard”
Portfolio construction for extended downturns requires combining equities, bonds, commodity trend, long volatility, and deterministic cash flows (private alternatives that don't get marked to market daily) to maintain sleep-at-night stability regardless of market direction.
“deterministic cash flows are great too and then people you know throw that baby out with the battle water especially when they're not marked to market and so you can sleep at night and if nothing's really uh churning in your liquid portfolio at least you got you know monthly or quarterly income coming in it may not be great and we may be in inflation or a deflationary environment but it always helps you sleep at night”
Physical gold reserves that are stored remotely (in vaults outside your country) became inaccessible during COVID lockdowns when flights were shut down, demonstrating that geographic diversification of assets without ability to access them is useless—the real hedge is assets you can reach or use locally.
“or people have gold stores all over the world it's like well we found out you know also in the in the pandy that you couldn't get to your gold sources so like if if you can't move the gold around because the flights are shut down well you can't access your gold so i think there's layers and levels of this cascade”
Banks can provide price risk hedging services for producers for a fee, making it a question of cost comparison: is it cheaper to hedge on the LME with margin risk or pay a bank to take on the price risk themselves?
“banks will do this for you for a fee right so it's the question of like will the bank take on you know billions of dollars on price risk hedging and then what is the commensurate fee and then is it cheaper to do that on the lme so i think that's what it boils down to right”
If liquid financial markets shut down and banks limit withdrawals due to invasion or similar catastrophic events, someone with net worth entirely in equities and bank deposits would be effectively broke despite nominal asset holdings.
“if we were to ever undergo some scenario where the u.s were invaded and markets were shut down and banks were limiting withdrawals i would be effectively broke”
Even when using mechanistic economic frameworks like Ray Dalio's 'economic machine' (credit cycles, productivity growth, deleveraging interacting deterministically), unintended consequences, negative externalities, and causal cascades mean the framework predicts poorly because the real economy is far more complex than the model captures.
“so you you put out a great tweet too of asking about you know what happens if you know qe uh or or qt you know what does this do the rates and everything it's like if if the whole economic system worked like if i pull here this is what happens then we'd all be ray dalio but it just doesn't [ __ ] work like that like it just there's a unintended there's what we call negative externalities unintended cascade of consequences none of us truly knows right”
End-of-world hedging has practical layers: (1) emergency cash on hand, (2) 30-day food and water supplies for natural disasters, (3) physical gold and divisible assets for barter, and (4) at the extreme, farmland with clean water sources and ruminant animals in regions like Oregon and North Carolina with rainfall and protection from upstream fracking contamination, though most scenarios require focusing on relationships and local community barter networks rather than isolationist prepping.
“i think there's multiple layers to this cascade and i think the impetus came because you were in st bart's and we were kind of talking about hugh hendry's you know trade for the end of the world is he said he bought a house in st bart's and that was his end of the world trade and we were talking about like what are the factors involved in that and is that a good trade um you know when we talk about constructing portfolios right we talk about liquid you know exchanges liquid assets and we need those markets and banks to stay afloat for them to work and if those exchanges and everything shut down right then what do you have right like you said you have gold you have cryptocurrencies you know is the internet working”
Jason converted his watch collection into food for months during 2008-2009, demonstrating that luxury goods retained enough value during financial crisis to serve as emergency liquidity when cash was scarce.
“i think i think i can't remember if you and i have ever talked about this privately like my actually my watch collection like saved my bacon and bacon in 2008 literally like i converted my my my collection of watches to food for for months and months on end like that that really like it was amazing they still had value and i was able to convert that value into food”
In the 1960s-1980s period, brokers at large houses spent 10 years playing chess and received only one customer order per week, indicating extremely low trading volume and long periods of inactivity compared to today's high-frequency environments.
“michael harris always loved the comments this one [ __ ] great guys 1966 to 1982 and spx old brokers told me they spent 10 years playing chess and one order from customers per week in large houses”
The ideal solution for futures markets would involve real-time margining and real-time liquidation so that margin calls are immediately enforced, preventing positions from spiraling out of control like in the nickel crisis, possibly enabled by blockchain technology.
“the ideal world we have position limits we have real-time margining so as that position is blowing out they have the post collateral post-collateral or they get completely sold out right automatically liquidated and this is this would be the um people would understandably say this is why blockchain would be fantastic you know you can have real-time margining real-time liquidation assuming your api calls get through”
Sam Bankman-Fried's cash-carry trade between Japanese banks and US bitcoin markets in pre-2017 was a similar arbitrage pattern to what might happen with Russian commodities if China exploits the basis, and arbitrages always get arbitraged away as margins compress.
“well you and i love this as far as like um and i think like maybe luke groman and some others have talked about this like what if you know russia like just says it's crazy gold price for for our oil and they just do with china and everything and then there's an arbitrage that only maybe china can take advantage of but once again you call it an arbitrage because as we know arbitrages always get are of the way right and so it reminds me you and i have a deep love for uh sam baker freed sbfs you know cash carry trade when he was moving you know money through japanese banks”
Hugh Hendry's 'end of world trade' (buying a house in St. Barthelemy, a Caribbean island) is primarily a financial crisis hedge rather than a literal apocalypse hedge, because St. Barts has no agriculture, no water sources, and imports all food and power, so it only works if global capital still flows and wealth concentrations still exist to support luxury real estate prices.
“it's an importer of capital and an importer of food for sure yeah all right so maybe jack you can explain with a little more clarity than jason and i have as to what the trade looks like i think that the way that hugh expressed the trade to me was it's less about at the end of the world maybe he used that phrase and more about just that your very wealthy people will want to live on this island and the price of that will go up and it's you know there's only uh a fixed amount of real estate on the island and the demand will just go up so yeah i don't know if he thinks of it as sort of a crisis hedge i think he talked about it during march of 2020 yeah during it's a financial crisis hedge but like in a global you know a global world war three i don't think he would think it's a financial heads”
Hudson River Valley soil (near where Jack lives) is among the most fertile in the world due to geological history, making it a prime location for farmland hedges, similar to how Jason evaluated Oregon and North Carolina for rainfall and water source quality when considering farmland purchases.
“well it really depends on how you want to live right how you want to structure your life like jack you're not far from the hudson river valley it's got one of the most fertile soils in the world because also when you start going down this rabbit hole you're going to start going down rabbit holes on permaculture and how do you build soil integrity”