New here? Start with Getting Started with Babylon Burns. It’s the map: who I am, the thesis in two minutes, how I run the book, a reading path for whatever brought you here, and every call I’ve made in public, with the losers left in.
What this is
Babylon Burns is a macro equity research letter with a live global portfolio attached.
Everything I publish is downstream of two ideas: debasement and multipolar fracture. Governments have promised their citizens far more than they can afford. They can’t tax or grow their way out of the hole, so they’ll inflate the gap away. At the same time, the world order is splitting into blocs that no longer trust each other, and a fractured world has to rearm, rebuild its supply chains and fight for the resources it used to buy freely.
On my research, money has a half-life of about fourteen years. If the currency loses 8% of its real value in a year and your portfolio gains 8%, you didn’t make money. Only the return above the rate of debasement is real. If you’re running as fast as the other guy, you’re on a treadmill and going nowhere.
So I go looking for what outruns it, starting with five themes: hard money, resource scarcity, global rearmament, the demographic dilemma and restructured rails. Some of the best ideas fit none of them, and those go in the book too. Leave no rock unturned. Find alpha or die tryin’.
The founding essay, They sold you a dream and you bought it wholesale..., lays out the whole thesis.
How the portfolio is run
New ideas go in as small starters, about 1% of the book. Every position has its exit before it has its entry. Most starters die within a few months, and dying costs pocket change. The ones that work get added to on evidence, and there’s no cap on winners.
The whole rulebook is free in How I’ll Run the Babylon Burns Portfolio. The rules are simple. Following them through distress is something else.
Everything recommended here is mirrored with my own capital. I eat my own cooking. And I publish everything: the winners, the losers, the sizes and the exits. Plenty of newsletters will show you the winners. This one shows you EVERYTHING.
Who writes it
I’m Sam Kovacs. I’m Franco-British, Dubai is home base, and I’ve published equity and macro research publicly since 2015. I studied at HEC Montréal and Sciences Po Paris. With my father Robert, I run the Dividend Freedom Tribe on Seeking Alpha. I was CIO of Havelet Bay Capital, a macro hedge fund, and I’ve advised sovereigns on economic policy, most recently in São Tomé and Príncipe.
What you get
Free subscribers get the macro essays, the industry thesis that opens most paid posts, full reports whenever I decide to open one up, and the videos. Put your email in and they land in your inbox the day they’re published.
Babylon Burns is $399 a year or $100 a month, and every member gets everything: every pick with its size, stop and exit, plus the web app with the live portfolio, trade alerts by email, monthly tear sheets and the Studio charting tool. Annual works out to about $1.10 a day, a third of what twelve monthly payments cost. Substack gives you seven days to read everything and take your money back.
As Babylon burns, we light the cigars.
Sam Kovacs
Babylon Burns is written for informational purposes and not to be construed as investment advice. I write about what I own and how I think. Your decisions are your own; do your own work before acting on anything here.
