Acid Breath 4 - The Gateless Gate and Acid Capitalism

A Life in Rebellion

You should listen to the Acid Capitalist Podcast.

It's my raw and revealing true story. It's about rebellion. The quiet, existential battle against the grey, the dull, soul-crushing monotony that sneaks into the cracks of life. This isn’t just my story, it’s the story of the markets, a cosmic dance between chaos and order, failure and transcendence.

The Rebel’s Genesis

I grew up in Glasgow, a city painted in every shade of grey. Not just the skies -though they did their part - but a deeper, existential grey. It seeps into your bones, wraps around your dreams like damp wool, and whispers, "This is all there is." But the thing about despair is that, at its nadir, it can break you or awaken you. For me, it cracked open a door, and in walked Mr. Rebel, my lifelong companion.

Markets as Rebellion

Markets are alive, messy, and paradoxical. You're maybe subscribing to investment trading videos. They're a con peddled by folks who've never managed money professionally. They’re shills. Markets are not built on fundamentals or formulas but on sentiment, much like the neurotransmitters in your brain. The yin and yang of your nervous system, that mirrors the speculative highs and lows of trading. To navigate them is to ride the wave of human emotion, teetering on the edge of reason. You need to hear my story.

The Void and the Dopamine Trap

My rebellion wasn’t about making money, though I did plenty of that. It was about proving to the grey world that I’d escaped. Like a Zen koan, the markets posed unanswerable questions: What is the sound of one hand clapping? Why do bubbles burst? What’s next?

I chased answers, built houses with swimming pools and tennis courts, and even tried to buy happiness on a tropical island. But the grey always seeped back in. It took me years to realize that heaven isn’t a place on Earth. It’s a state of mind, a rebellion against the self.

Zen and the Art of Acid Capitalism

In Zen, they speak of the gateless gate, the barriers we construct in our minds that don’t truly exist. The markets are full of these gates: self-imposed limitations, conventional wisdom, and the fear of uncertainty. To pass through them, you need to embrace paradox, chaos, and, yes, a little bit of

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to Sunny, Sublime St Barts
• 1:44 The Gateless Gate and the Grey
• 6:29 The Rebel and The River that runs through Egypt
• 10:00 I'm from the future
• 14:35 Happiness
• 18:57 Sex, Drugs and Rock'n' Roll
• 23:10 The Wu Men
• 31:36 The Acid Breath

Transcript

Ladies and gentlemen

It's Hugh Hendry, the acid capitalist, welcoming you once more from the sublime, from the sunny island of St. Barts in the French Caribbean.

Today I want to take you on another journey, into the dark recesses of the mind. I'm going to try to explain how it may help form a unique perspective out there on the edge of reasoning. Because sometimes it may present you with huge trading opportunities that no one else gets at first. It's going to put you in pole position to ride the wave.

I want to talk to you about the gateless gate of acid capitalism. Because I grew up in a grey world. It wasn't just the weather. I mean, that was tough. I may have been the only person on the planet that moved to London in search of sunshine. But no, I'm talking about a deeper kind of grey. The type that seeps right into your soul. The kind that strips the colour from your dreams before they've even had the chance to take shape. A truly ghastly thing.

Now, I may have painted my bedroom walls a vivid colour purple. I promise you I did. But outside my bedroom window, the hills, the sky, the other houses, everything was painted a dull, insipid shade of grey. Now, depression, it wasn't a diagnosis back then, and certainly not for a fast kid like me. It was something you carried like a coat of damp wool. It clung to you day after day. Looking back, I think it gutted me. I was no more than 12 or 13. A weird kid with no manual for how to fight it. No prescription to dull the ache. But when it reached its low, it cracked open a door inside me. And guess what? Guess who walked in? Mr. Rebel. My rebellion had begun.

At first, I found solace in music. Allow me to be playful. I wore out the Waterboys vinyl album, *Fisherman's Blues*. Lyrics from other misfits at that time, they were my escape function. And just the other night here in St. Barts, I was gazing at the evening sky, looking for the return of the lunar cycle, which I very much missed. And it's reappeared in the ink dark skies. And what did I see? I saw a crescent moon.

So really, I should be reciting my other favorite song, *The Whole of the Moon*. I saw the crescent, but you saw the whole of the moon. I was singing that last night—belting it. Singing is wonderful. But I’m not going to sing it now. Instead, I’m going to recite words that I remember from back then, from another track:

“I wish I was the brakeman on a hurtling fevered train, 

crashing headlong into the heartland like a cannon in the rain, 

with the beating of the sleepers and the burning of the coal, 

counting the towns flashing by in a night that’s full of soul, 

with light in my head, my darling, with you in my arms, 

I know I will be loosened from the bonds that hold me fast, 

that the chains all hung around me, those damn things will fall away at last. 

And on that fine and fateful day, 

I will take thee in my hand. 

I will ride on the train. 

I will be the goddamn fisherman.”

Wow. Absolutely love that song. Mike Scott, another Scot, a lyrical genius. Always takes me higher. Please check it out.

By the time the last grey months of summer—yeah, summer was like winter; it was just grey and wet—when those months passed, I was ready to be a fisherman. I wasn’t going to endure anymore. I was going to rebel. Which got me—well, I’m reading Albert Camus, The Rebel. I love Albert Camus. God is dead. The great existentialist. There are no rules. You’re on your own, baby. But I’m reading The Rebel. It was published after his death. Did he mean it to be published? I don’t know. It’s a tough read.

I read it last thing at night as I lie down. You know, I sleep on a yoga mat. I take the Shavasana, the dead body pose, with me into the twilight. Here I am at the preposterously beautiful Blanc Bleu. Check out the website or IG blancbleuofficial. A Great Gatsby house. I’m in the master bedroom. But I sleep on my magic carpet, on the floor. I’ve made a promise to myself. Until I hold thee in my arms once more. It’s a solitary life for me. The bed’s too big. And the yoga mat suits me perfectly.

Anyway, back to Albert and The Rebel. He captures a lot of this sentiment perfectly. That rebellion isn’t simply a denial of the world. Denial? Okay, hold on a second.

I debated with Niall Ferguson, superstar historian, professor of history at Harvard. He’s from Glasgow. But he’s got a little bit posh, and he now refers to himself as Neil. And I mean, my friends were like, why would you take on this gig? He’s the best speaker in the world. You’re going to get absolutely trounced. And I’m like, yeah, let’s have a go.

So how do you get inside the head of someone like Niall Ferguson? You do so by referring to him as Niall, to which his retort was, "The Nile is a river that runs through Egypt." That’s also your real name, my friend.

Anyway, rebellion isn’t simply a river that runs through Egypt. It’s a demand for clarity and order in a universe—heavens, and the universe of today’s financial markets—that seemingly offers none. So rebellion, paradoxically—one of my buzzwords—rebellion paradoxically seeks structure.

To this day, I still find it so hard to go back to Glasgow. I still have family there, but my visits are fleeting and rather rare. Shame on me.

Anyway, rebellion was the start of something in me that never quite went away. Because rebellion rewires your brain. The cerebral cortex... Why do I keep returning to the 20 billion neurons? The masterpiece of the deity that resides within you and me. It’s supposed to make sense of the world. Analyze, judge, control impulses. Remember, it’s really there to control movement. Do we need it if we’re not moving? Or does that sound like another podcast?

But when rebellion takes over, it turns that whole orchestra, that mental orchestra, into a punk rock band. It doesn’t want harmony. It wants disruption. It doesn’t ask, why are things this way? It asks, why shouldn’t they be burned to the bloody ground?

And here’s the thing about rebels. They’re outsiders. The rebels are cursed and blessed simultaneously. Cursed or blessed to see the flaws in the system. And cursed or blessed to be trapped outside of it. Living in a space between what is and what could be.

It makes me think, a wise man—why is it always a wise man?—it was a wise lady that said to me, you’ve got to be careful that in the life of speculation that you don’t invest too much of who you are in living in the future. That clarity and freedom thrives on now.

You know, I wear those damn silly goggles from Burning Man. Why? Like, you know when people say, hey, where are you from? I’m like, oh, oh, I’m from the future. And I wear the goggles because the present, the present is so magnificent. It’s so damn bright. It’s so wonderful.

Anyway, rebellion is also where creativity lies. It’s where markets live. It’s where you can imagine something else, a better trade, a different life. And markets, they’re like the brain itself. They’re chaotic systems of excitation and inhibition. Again, yin-yang opposites. Different sides of the same coin. Glutamate excites. GABA excites.

What is GABA? GABA is an inhibitory neurotransmitter. Lives in your central nervous system. Inhibits you. I promise you I love a bit of GABA last thing at night as I lie down on my magic yoga carpet. The brain running on neurotransmitters. The market running on sentiment. Certainly not fundamentals these crazy days. And both are capable of stunning feats of creativity and catastrophic collapse. Both designed to make, to take meaning. The brain takes in the chaos of the world and tries to make sense of it.

The poor brain sits there in a dark chamber, no light reaches the brain. It’s only the musings of your monkey mind confusing it. But regardless, the brain takes in the chaos and tries valiantly to make sense of it all. And markets... Markets suck in the chaos of human behavior, turn it into digital prices, trades, bubbles, and even crashes.

Crashes happen because when the markets lose their grip on reality—and yes, they do—hint today or perhaps a portent of next year, 2025. Anyway...

When I finally stepped into that hedge fund world in 1999, having sleepwalked my way through the trauma of the aristocratic investment houses of Charlotte Square in Edinburgh, when I arrived in London—well, not initially, because when I arrived in London, I was working at crappy old Credit Suisse Asset Management. Forgive me, guys, but you were useless.

But London... London was alive. It was chaotic. It was raw. It was everything the grey world from a long time ago just wasn’t. But here’s the rub again. Opposites colliding.

Rebellion doesn’t cure depression. It channels it. It gives it a purpose. Keeps you on the edge, because I was in a constant state of war, on a warpath against everyone, but mostly against myself.

But the markets were my battlefield, and I fought them with the same tenacity that I fought the grey skies of Glasgow. Some days I won, many days I lost. I remember saying, I am the architect of the fleeting and very few great victories. But I am the instigator, I am the author of all the damn stupid things that I have done. Anyway, the fight, the fight was intoxicating. And it was certainly the life that I’d been seeking.

But here’s the kicker. What is meaning? I went chasing for happiness. Happiness. There’s another song by... The Blue Nile from Glasgow. Tinseltown in the Rain—sublime. But happiness, the Blue Nile, please tell me you know the Blue Nile. You must listen to the Blue Nile and the wonderful song, happiness, happiness.

But Belinda Carlisle. Belinda Carlisle had a deeper impact. You don’t know Belinda Carlisle, do you? Belinda Carlisle was rock, pop, American female singer, artiste, one of the Go-Go’s. And she just had a global sensation hit. Heaven Is a Place on Earth in 1987.

Heaven is happiness. So happiness is a place on earth. Or so I thought…

And as I constantly tried to push back the grey, I was determined to be happy. I bought countless beautiful houses. I was chasing heaven. Heaven was a place on earth, and I was determined to buy it. Tennis courts, swimming pools, chickens, llamas. Only for the grey to seep back in.

In fact, St. Barts—I’ve lived here now semi-permanently for the last 10 years. And initially, it was the same thing. It was a doubling down. I was like, oh, come on. Where is the least grey place on earth? Where is my happy place? St. Barts, baby!

And yet the greyness, the void, still descended. Foolish me. Took me many more years to recognize that heaven—and I’m guessing you guys have already worked it out. You guys are smart. Heaven is not a place on earth. Heaven is a place inside you.

It was like, what with my eternal fight with myself, I kind of lost sight of why I started in the first place. You get lost in the rebellion, in the trades, the adrenaline, the scene. I may even have become the thing I was fighting against—a slave to the system, to the dopamine rush of the next big trade, the next rebellion. Had I become a hedge fund caricature living in my country house?

But let me just say that the markets were never just about the money. Easy for me to say, because I was very comfortable by then. Money always in the bank. But I never counted it. Never knew how much was there. Now, shut up, me, because for sure I knew there was always enough.

But what I mean is that my life was really about proving to the grey world that I had escaped. That I’d found something brighter, sharper, more alive. And I think I did.

But like all things, it came at a cost. The same rebellion that saved me also isolated me. The same insights that made me a good trader—am I a good trader? Yeah, I’m a good trader—also made me a terrible conformist.

You’ve been on the web browser, like you put my name in. And who the hell is that old guy that features from like 10 or 15 years ago? Who the hell was the guy in the suit with the short hair? Who the hell indeed?

What does it mean to be an outsider? Well, it means seeing the flaws in the system, but never fully escaping the damn flaws. It means finding meaning, not in what is, but in what could be. And it means never forgetting the world that you came from, because that’s what drives you to rebel in the first place.

The void, I guess it will always be there. But so is the spark, the rebellion, the fight. I thought that was enough. That it had to be.

But I was wrong.

As you may or may not know, I finally got divorced about two years ago. I had married my childhood sweetheart. Who does that? I did that. But it turned out that living with a constant rebel warrior, a rebel hedge funder, was exhausting. And with the impermanence of life, the good lady? She’d had enough.

Now, despite my zaniness, I’m a control freak. Don’t tell anyone, but I’m a control freak. I’ve always been pretty damn straight. But these last two years, I mean, I’ve walked on the wild side. I’ve tried everything.

Drugs were kind of fascinating, a great dare for the control freak. They promised rebellion against the natural order of the inhibition of the brain. Alcohol—alcohol is a drug. Promises to turn down the noise. Even I have self-doubt and despair. Even I. Rebellion through inhibition seeks clarity through distortion. Why not? I thought I’d lean into the madness.

But my favorite was the psilocybin, the shroomies. Different beast. Blocks the receptors in the mind. The very gateways of learning and reality. I was going to say it turns you into one of those sea squirts because you don’t move. But your mind moves. Positively synapses. Disassociates. I can’t even say the word.

It allows you again to rewrite your reality, yourself. I love the shrooms. I find it a great source of creativity. Although, like the alcohol, I’ve been pretty straight these last few months. I haven’t needed to take any in an age.

Albert Camus writes that rebellion is not the same as revolution. Revolution seeks to overthrow, but rebellion seeks to illuminate. So drugs were a mini-revolution, a temporary escape, but illumination... Illumination for me is the markets.

I always return my mind to the markets. I had unplugged myself, closed my hedge fund in 2017, lived on a tropical island, unplugged from the mainframe. No Bloomberg terminal on my paradise island. And yet the voices were constantly still stirring within me, with their provocations.

Markets continue to be, and I think will always be, my rebellion. But the markets, like the drugs, have their price. The dopamine, the chemical fuel of desire and reward that drives every decision. Surging with the anticipation of a winning trade, but fading. Fading once you’ve hit the send button.

A certainty replaces excitement. The high becomes more elusive. Albert Camus understood this existential trap—the clash between our desire for meaning and the universe’s complete indifference. To live as a rebel, he said, is to embrace this contradiction. It’s not about winning. No, it’s still all about defying the grey void. That’s something I came from.

Every trade a metaphor, every risk a lesson. My friends, I have seen the depths of the void. I’ve touched the edges of despair. I have seen madness. I’ve lived through crushing lows, euphoric highs of rebellion. And through it all, I’ve learned that rebellion is not a destination. Rebellion is a journey.

Markets, they taught me this. Life taught me this. And as I sit here now, hunching over my microphone, I recall Central Park in fall... You tore your dress... What a mess... Stop Hugh!

I’ve come to realize that rebellion is not just an act. It’s a state of being seeking to create something beautiful out of the chaos.

Boom, we’re done. Shall we do some breathing?