There's a Lot of Action in Italy
Yesterday was a big day for Italy.
The Italian stock market printed an all-time high, resolving above its former 2007 + 2000 highs.
And that wasn’t even the most interesting thing that happened.
The Pope partnered with an AI company.
Pope Leo XIV released his first encyclical from the Vatican synod hall.
It’s called Magnifica Humanitas - “Magnificent Humanity.”
It’s focused on “the protection of the human person in the age of artificial intelligence.”
Here’s Pope Leo XIV with Chris Olah, co-founder of Anthropic, the company behind Claude.
You can’t make this stuff up.
And it got me thinking - did the Pope ever partner with the printing press?
Yes.
In 1454, Gutenberg’s workshop printed indulgences for Pope Nicholas V. The Pope was one of his first customers.
The future Pope Pius II called Gutenberg a “marvellous man.”
Five hundred and seventy-two years later, Pope Leo XIV is on a stage with the people building the next press.
Ferrari unveiled its first EV.
Same day. Same country. Across town in Rome, Ferrari pulled the cover off the Luce - Italian for “light” - its first all-electric vehicle, designed by former iPhone designer, Jony Ive.
Ferrari handed him their first EV and he returned a five-seater with a teardrop glasshouse cabin, aluminium body panels, the lowest drag coefficient in Ferrari’s history, and a claimed range up to 530 kilometers. (330 Miles)
0 - 62 MPH in 2.5 seconds.
Top speed of 192 MPH.
The interior features mechanical buttons, dials, and toggles.
Ha! What’s old is new.
And I suspect these EVs will appear in Aspen sometime soon.
But does it fly?
I want it to fly, Jony Ive.
Regardless - it’s great to see the most romantic automobile manufacturer dip its toe in electric propulsion.
The world is watching.
The Italian stock market. The Pope. Anthropic. Ferrari.
Are you staying with me?
Because I have more.
Yesterday afternoon, I found myself at a Memorial Day potluck at a big Italian family’s home here in Glenwood.
First thing I saw when I entered the space - a stack of books about Italy.
Then the floodgates opened.
We conversed about Da Vinci.
Specifically Da Vinci’s helicopter - the aerial screw, sketched in 1485.
He designed a flying machine more than four hundred years before the Wright brothers got a wood-and-canvas glider off a dune at Kitty Hawk.
The Italian Renaissance Man had the idea.
But the World had to wait.
We also spoke about a member of their family - Gregory Tonozzi - a marble sculptor who lives in Marble, Colorado.
For those who don’t know - Marble is a tiny town in the Crystal River Valley, and its quarries have supplied the marble for the Lincoln Memorial, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and the Colorado Capital Building.
The quarry is now owned by Colorado Stone Quarries, run by an Italian - with marble from the quarry being shipped back to Italy.
The Pope. Anthropic. Ferrari. Jony Ive. The Italia Borsa. Da Vinci’s helicopter. A sculptor in Marble.
I’m tuned into something.
Who knows what it is.
It could be something. It could be nothing.
It could be that I’m a momentum trader, and pattern recognition is my job, and sometimes the pattern is just - Italy.
lol
But something’s afoot.
When the Pope embraced the printing press, he did not know what was coming.
He just knew the technology was real and the moment was now.
History doesn’t repeat, but it often rhymes.
Arrivederci.
