SI407: Why America Is Rewriting the Rules of Capitalism ft. Cem Karsan

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
Welcome to Top Traders Unplugged. In markets, success doesn't come from predicting what happens next. It comes from being prepared for what you can't predict.
In each episode, we go deep with some of the world's most thoughtful minds in investing, economics and beyond to understand how they think, how they prepare and how they decide, and the experiences that shaped how they see the world. No noise, no shortcuts, just real conversations to help you think better and invest with confidence.

**Niels Kaastrup-Larsen** (0:35)
Welcome or welcome back to this week's edition of the Systematic Investor Series with Cem Karsan and I, Niels Kaastrup-Larsen, where each week we take the pulse of the global markets through the lens of a rules-based investor.
Cem, it's great to have you back on this series. It's not been too long since we last spoke. It's only been a few days because we just had Pippor on together, but it is great to have you back to hear what is going on. How are you doing?

**Cem Karsan** (1:02)
Doing great. We are back in Chicago after being in Turkey for two weeks with family, which was wonderful.
And with the World Cup going on and 4th of July, it's quite the summer here in America.

**Niels Kaastrup-Larsen** (1:16)
It is quite the summer. Yeah, absolutely. Well, it's also quite the lineup of topics that you kindly brought along, so we'll dive into those. They are very important.
So I know people will pay attention to that. But before we do, as you know, I'm always curious if there's anything outside what we normally talk about that is on your radar at the moment. So I'm curious.

**Cem Karsan** (1:39)
Well, there's this little thing called the 250th anniversary of America. And I think the thing we don't talk much about is that 250-year mark is around that time where a lot of empires start to have, not always, the question marks and things begin to, these aren't just, you have fourth turnings, but then you have this bigger, longer cycle of 250 years. And we're at a critical juncture here in the US. And I think one of the interesting things, there seems to be this kind of zeitgeist, this with the World Cup happening as well, this debate about who are we right now. And America is doing a lot of soul searching, I would say, right now.
And some of it positive, some of it negative, a little messy. So I think it's an interesting moment, I think, for all people here in the US, to want to kind of, you know, I rolled out my American flag off our house this morning. You know, I don't do that ever.
And I just had a lot of introspection about what it is and what I love about America, what amazing, the amazing things that it's done in so many different ways, but also kind of the things that it can improve on.

**Niels Kaastrup-Larsen** (3:14)
Yeah, no, it's definitely an important time to reflect and, I mean, in a sense, what better way to time it than when the World Cup is happening at the same time. So, lots of focus on the United States at the moment. It's almost like, I hate to say it, it's almost like we've forgotten everything that happened in the Middle East just a couple of weeks ago, frankly, if you look at the news flow.
But there we are.

**Cem Karsan** (3:42)
That's by design, I'm sure.

**Niels Kaastrup-Larsen** (3:43)
No, it probably is. You know, so on my radar, actually, the first point I had was a little bit related to the thing about Iran, because I don't know about you, but I felt that there was a lot of experts that came out in April and May talking about how it was inevitable that oil would go to $200 or $150 or $200.
And I did see that some other podcasts at least have invited some of them back to explain how they were wrong, which I haven't listened to yet, but I kind of feel I should. But I am surprised in some ways. And maybe you see this more with the kind of a different lens because of your volatility background, but markets, and we've seen this before, that you're kind of, yeah, this must happen because of such and such crises. But as soon as there's like an inch of clearing the air, markets are super quick to remove that risk factor and bring things down to more normal level.

**Cem Karsan** (4:58)
So we've talked about this at length before, but I just want to be very clear. Nothing, literally nothing is more important than positioning itself.