There are two narrative structures that have grown to a size and a level of cohesion that makes them impossible to be politically ignored.
One is the student loan “crisis”. The other is the Big Tech “monopoly”.
And yes, I’m putting those words in air-quotes, because the first isn’t really a crisis and the second isn’t really a monopoly. But since when did that matter in narrative-world?
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Every morning, we run the Narrative Machine on the past 24 hours worth of financial media to find the most on-narrative (i.e. interconnected and central) stories in financial media. It’s not a list of best articles or articles we think are most interesting … often far from it.

But for whatever reason these are articles that are representative of some sort of chord that has been struck in Narrative-world.

Of all the last couple years’ IPO run-ups, Beyond Meat’s is the one that feels most to me like vintage ’90s. The narrative power of Unknown Growth Potential! is so strong in a largely growth-constrained world that we’re almost all willing to take a small gamble on it, or else bet that others will do so, which works out to the same thing.

So I don’t begrudge those that

Every morning, we run the Narrative Machine on the past 24 hours worth of financial media to find the most on-narrative (i.e. interconnected and central) stories in financial media. It’s not a list of best articles or articles we think are most interesting … often far from it.

But for whatever reason these are articles that are representative of some sort of chord that has been struck in Narrative-world.

Most Potemkin Villages are not about malicious deception.

In other words, most are not displays intended to convey a lie that is only recognized as such by one party, like the imaginary town of Rock Ridge, built to prevent the would-be atrocities of the Number 6 Dance later on. On the contrary, most of these elaborate set-pieces are lies constructed to maintain common

DISCLOSURES

This commentary is being provided to you as general information only and should not be taken as investment advice. The opinions expressed in these materials represent the personal views of the author(s). It is not investment research or a research recommendation, as it does not constitute substantive research or analysis. Any action that you take as a result of information contained in this document is ultimately your responsibility. Epsilon Theory will not accept liability for any loss or damage, including without limitation to any loss of profit, which may arise directly or indirectly from use of or reliance on such information. Consult your investment advisor before making any investment decisions. It must be noted, that no one can accurately predict the future of the

The New York Times published a powerful story this weekend.
It was the kind of story that has become entirely too common – the story of a young woman, a child from a suburban Dallas megachurch who was abused by a church leader. Not only that, but a leader of the church’s children’s ministry. Utterly heartbreaking, and the kind of thing that our growing familiarity has made too easy to ignore, or to allow not to affect us. 
And yet the story was different from those that would be familiar to us, at least in some small ways. Unlike the prior scandals in the Catholic Church, for example, it wasn’t that the authorities weren’t immediately notified. They were. It wasn’t that the abuse wasn’t taken seriously by church leaders. By all accounts and by all evidence, it was. It wasn’t

Every morning, we run the Narrative Machine on the past 24 hours worth of financial media to find the most on-narrative (i.e. interconnected and central) stories in financial media. It’s not a list of best articles or articles we think are most interesting … often far from it.
But for whatever reason these are articles that are representative of some sort of chord that has been struck in Narrative-world.

This is among the weirdest press releases I’ve ever seen. Any time you kick it off with stats about the relative public bathroom proclivities of different demographics, you’ll make the list.

So why publish a press release like this? Like any other PR piece – even one as weird as this – the entire aim is to create common knowledge, to make the reader change what he or she

This candidate-specific report is part of our Epsilon Theory Election Index series, in which we turn the tools of narrative analysis and natural language processing to media coverage of the 2020 election. For more about this series, including explanations of all of the terminology and measurement used here, please read our first installment here.

Biden Narrative Map as of May 31, 2019

Source: Quid, Epsilon TheoryBiden Narrative Commentary

In general, while sentiment attached to Biden by the political media continues to be far more negative than for other major candidates, some of that sentiment is isolated to topics that don’t appear to be getting much traction: his role in the 1994 Crime Bill, the Trump/NK ‘low IQ’ banter and ‘Ukraine scandal’ being chief among them.

Every morning, we run the Narrative Machine on the past 24 hours worth of financial media to find the most on-narrative (i.e. interconnected and central) stories. On the weekend, we leave finance to cover the last week or so in other shifting parts of the Zeitgeist – namely, politics and culture. It’s not a list of best articles or articles we think are most interesting … often far from it.

But these are articles that have struck a chord in narrative world. 

The Puzzle [The Players’ Tribune]

It is encouraging to see a piece that doesn’t treat strength and vulnerability as dichotomous at the top of the Zeitgeist.

I am not the target audience for this piece, or perhaps much that gets published at the blog that, like Deadspin, was among the Gawker properties that

Smiley-faced authoritarianism is rarely announced with dire, thundering rhetoric.

Instead, it is delivered with smiles and hashtags. It is celebrated as an achievement. It is tweeted with the perfect celebratory photo, tinted with just the right filter, Twitter handle watermark in just the right place. If the composition of the photo can frame the idea of ‘speaking truth to power’, all the better. If it can superimpose self-praise in bold text, we are in the smiley-faced sweet spot. If that self-praise can incorporate an Orwellian euphemism like, say, “legitimize a growing industry,” it is hard to see how we can do better.

Perfect.

There are powerful memes here: ‘legitimizing’ an industry isn’t just a creepy paternalistic turn of phrase – in this case it is also a

This is the second installment of Epsilon Theory’s new monthly feature – the ET Election Index. Our aim with the feature is to lay as bare as possible the popular narratives governing the US elections in 2020. That includes narratives concerning policy proposals and candidates found in the news, opinion and feature content produced by national, local and smaller outlets.

Our goal isn’t to uncover ‘media bias’.

Our goal isn’t to discuss the ‘fairness’ of coverage to different candidates.

Our goal isn’t to ‘fact check.’

Our goal is to make you a better, more informed consumer of political news by showing you indicators that the news you are reading may be affected by (1) adherence to narratives and other abstractions, (2) the association/conflation of topics and (3) the

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Every morning, we run the Narrative Machine on the past 24 hours worth of financial media to find the most on-narrative (i.e. interconnected and central) stories. On the weekend, we leave finance to cover the last week or so in other shifting parts of the Zeitgeist – namely, politics and culture. It’s not a list of best articles or articles we think are most interesting … often far from it.

But these are articles that have struck a chord in narrative world. 

After a year of devastation to parts of the American midwest, flood coverage has gone from being a third choice for coastal national media to being a prime attraction. Its language now gets sprinkled throughout a great many different news articles.

Some of this is because it connects to narratives about climate

I remember the first time I saw one of those dialect maps of the United States.

The best one is a still-active quiz on TheUpshot blog on the New York Times website. (Yes, unfortunately, it does now require you to create a free account to use it.) The questionnaire poses 25 multiple-choice questions about the word you use for certain things and how you pronounce it.

It then plots you on a map to guess where you’re from. Like my accent, my dialect similarity map is a bit of a mess. I was born in Arkansas, but lived there less than a year before moving to an exurb of Chicago for 13 years. The rest of my youth was spent in rural southeast Texas. I guess the logic of the quiz split the difference and decided to call my dialect Generic Flyover State.

But Lord, what a joy it

Join us on June 4th for the next installment of Epsilon Theory Live!, our live, interactive video discussion. Remember, ET Live! is a subscriber-only event, so please be sure to join as a Premium or Professional member on or before June 4th to participate.

I am not much given to outward displays of patriotism these days. Part of the reason, I suppose, is how easy it is to become cynical about the many times those who would influence us rely on our willingness to raise our ‘Yay, Military’ signs to serve some other motive. In my book, anyone who uses our most powerful and uniting symbols to marshal us into division or needless conflict has earned that cynicism in full.

And yet, both the 4th of July and Memorial Day are Holy Days. The 4th of July is our Clear Eyes holiday, a day we remember the lengths to which we must sometimes go to demand our God-given rights from those who seek to deny them. Memorial Day is our Full Hearts holiday, when we remember that the greatest gift we can give to another person is to lay down those rights

Every morning, we run the Narrative Machine on the past 24 hours worth of financial media to find the most on-narrative (i.e. interconnected and central) stories. On the weekend, we leave finance to cover the last week or so in other shifting parts of the Zeitgeist – namely, politics and culture. It’s not a list of best articles or articles we think are most interesting … often far from it.

But these are articles that have struck a chord in narrative world. 

In lieu of the usual narrative map here, a brief note to our regular Zeitgeist readers: beginning in the next week or so, you should see a site re-design that will change how you see this content:

We will be separating the ‘curated’ content into brief individual notes throughout the day, which will allow us to cover

In celebration / abject dread of the 2020 election cycle that is already upon us, Epsilon Theory is beginning a new monthly feature – the ET Election Index. Our aim with the feature is to lay as bare as possible the popular narratives governing the US elections in 2020. That includes narratives concerning policy proposals and candidates found in the news, opinion and feature content produced by national, local and smaller outlets.

Our goal isn’t to uncover ‘media bias’.

Our goal isn’t to discuss the ‘fairness’ of coverage to different candidates.

Our goal isn’t to ‘fact check.’

Our goal is to make you a better, more informed consumer of political news by showing you indicators that the news you are reading may be affected by (1) adherence to narratives and other

I like to think that we do a good job responding to our readers’ questions.

If we have a weak spot, however, I know where it is. It is the unerring target of the question we receive most often: “What books would you recommend?”

It is a completely fair question to ask. Our work references a great many books that could (and probably should) come highly recommended. And yes, Ben and I are both passionate, greedy readers of just about anything in our areas of interest. You would think we would recommend books all the time.

But we don’t. Yes, Ben published this list…in 2014.

And yes, we fairly enthusiastically recommended Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body Problem.

But in general, it’s a question we answer a lot less often than we receive it.

I can’t answer for Ben, but

Every morning, we run the Narrative Machine on the past 24 hours worth of financial media to find the most on-narrative (i.e. interconnected and central) stories. On the weekend, we leave finance to cover the last week or so in other shifting parts of the Zeitgeist – namely, politics and culture. It’s not a list of best articles or articles we think are most interesting … often far from it.

But these are articles that have struck a chord in narrative world. 

May 18, 2019 Narrative Map – Non-Financial Articles

Source: Quid, Epsilon Theory

There isn’t much to be said about this, except how depressing it is that articles about anti-Semitism are still among the most-connected to broader narratives in news in 2019.

The iconoclasm debate is back on the menu, and the

Every morning, we run the Narrative Machine on the past 24 hours worth of financial media to find the most on-narrative (i.e. interconnected and central) stories in financial media. It’s not a list of best articles or articles we think are most interesting … often far from it.

But for whatever reason these are articles that are representative of some sort of chord that has been struck in Narrative-world.

From the headline, I thought they were going Full Robinhood, but no, it looks like your usual gym-bag-and-a-toaster kind of offer.

There has been a clear, concerted effort – with click-hungry financial media happy to oblige – by missionaries of banking to make the narrative about US banks a modern, fintech-oriented technology story. There’s a reason these stories

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Every morning, we run the Narrative Machine on the past 24 hours worth of financial media to find the most on-narrative (i.e. interconnected and central) stories. On the weekend, we leave finance to cover the last week or so in other shifting parts of the Zeitgeist – namely, politics and culture. It’s not a list of best articles or articles we think are most interesting … often far from it.

But these are articles that have struck a chord in narrative world. 

May 11, 2019 Narrative Map – Non-Financial Articles

Source: Quid, Epsilon Theory

This topic was at the top of our Friday Zeitgeist, too, so I won’t spend too much time talking about it. But one of the responses I’ve gotten in a couple places has been: “Why can’t people talk about this issue in good faith? It’s just

Every morning, we run the Narrative Machine on the past 24 hours worth of financial media to find the most on-narrative (i.e. interconnected and central) stories in financial media. It’s not a list of best articles or articles we think are most interesting … often far from it.

But for whatever reason these are articles that are representative of some sort of chord that has been struck in Narrative-world.

May 10, 2019 Narrative Map – US Equities

Source: Quid, Epsilon Theory

Back in the distant past when there were people in our industry called value investors (if you’re under 30, you’ll have to ask a coworker born before 1990), it was common to hear them wax eloquent about companies which had found an ecological niche inside the coverage gaps of larger industries

From the RSC’s 2012 Roundhouse productionThe shipwreck play is a Shakespearean staple[i]. A foundational narrative form.

Sometimes the shipwreck is the story’s MacGuffin. Tempest – you may be unsurprised to learn if you did not already know – opens cold to the audience, with peals of thunder on a ship at sea. The first scene in The Comedy of Errors sets up its own absurd plot with a long-winded description of a shipwreck in the distant past – a shipwreck that sundered a man’s two sets of identical twins. Others among his plays use shipwrecks as simple devices to move the plot forward. The rumored loss of Antonio’s trading vessels is a critical device in The Merchant of Venice. A fierce storm wrecks Pericles’s ship on Pentapolis, just in time for King Simonedes’s tournament for

Every morning, we run the Narrative Machine on the past 24 hours worth of financial media to find the most on-narrative (i.e. interconnected and central) stories in financial media. It’s not a list of best articles or articles we think are most interesting … often far from it.

But for whatever reason these are articles that are representative of some sort of chord that has been struck in Narrative-world.

May 8, 2019 Narrative Map – US Equities

Source: Quid, Epsilon Theory

Frequent readers will be familiar with our three recurring trade and tariffs arguments:

The narrative on tariffs has been complacent for the last several months – coherent and positive. Investors who have a contrarian (read: negative) view of outcomes could benefit from the resulting