The Daily Feather — Cuff & Link
“Is that really you down there?” The year was 2017. Fed Up had been out for eight months and I was no longer an invisible former bureaucrat. My wry thought: ‘There’ve been more auspicious beginnings to conversations.’ The befuddled look on this man’s face was priceless. Holding his rollie-bag handle in a glass-enclosed Hilton elevator on the mighty Mississippi River in the Big Easy, he expressed surprise at my vertically challenged state. “You look much taller on TV,” he continued, words that confused as much as they amused after the fact. The occasion: my first appearance at the New Orleans Investment Conference (NOIC) six years ago. Early Saturday morning, getting ready for my keynote at the 48th annual NOIC, I flipped on the TV to catch the news. Before I could scroll down on the maddeningly slow GUIDE, one word caught my eye: “Rocky.” It’s rare to allow distractions when I’m getting on my game face. But wasn’t game the point of the 1976 epic? I watched the last hour, took the glass elevator down, and pounced onto that stage…in high heels.
Rewatching movies when you know the ending, especially when they’re legends still producing offspring, would seem to redefine futile. How is it, though, that there’s nearly always a reward? Since leaving the Fed, it’s been my honor to befriend Charles Payne. An icon in his own right in the financial media, those who’ve sat by him on set would too have been stopped short when Rocky introduces his pet turtles to Adrian (who sold them to him) as “Cuff & Link.” I’ve seen “Rocky” dozens of times. That was the first I caught that and chuckled about Charles, who has the best cufflink collection in the world.
At QI Research, the Mondays after nonfarm payroll (NFP) Friday are our Super Bowl. From the minute the data cross at 8:30 ET, we’re barraged with conventional analysis and an occasional nuance. Adding insights 48 hours later is a welcome challenge.