Hardo & Co makes large-format works for people who lived these worlds — and the few outsiders who understand them. Each series is built around a single financial universe: its rituals, its language, its absurdities.
A world map rendered in the Authagraph projection (the only one that shows Earth without distortion) overlaid with forty-plus commodities: their deposits, their growing regions, their greatest mines, all positioned as pieces on a global game of Risk. Shipping routes trace the paths of the fleets that move them, sailing between the ports that keep the world running.
The trading houses that absorb this risk, and that hunger for control of these assets, appear as armies on the board, their logos on cubes, their ultimate owners named. Kings, in the tradition of the King of Oil, staking their claim across every continent at once - and shipping Kings rule the waves.
This is not a map of the world. It is a map of who owns it.
M&A is the ultimate goodwill machine. To operate the machine, you need to be as strong intellectually as resilient mentally.
A chessboard, but the game being played is a career. White pieces as the top-tier banks: hard enough to enter, harder still to survive. The black pieces are the Sunday Scaries: the anxiety, the attrition, the quiet casualties of the grind. Around the board, doors lead outward, to PE, to hedge funds, to the C-suite. Unlocked only by those who lasted long enough to earn their desired exit.
Floating above it all: the MDs, the deal toys, the accumulated detritus of transactions closed and tombstones collected. Kandinsky's visual language, originally built to express the inexpressible, here maps the inner architecture of a career in M&A: structured on the surface, turbulent underneath.
The gambit is this: you sacrifice years to gain optionality. Whether that trade is worth it, is up to your resilience.
Seven Formula 1 circuits interconnected inside the Indy 500 ring. A single track built not for horsepower but for microseconds. So many price discovery options. The microwave towers between Chicago and New York as the straights. A global competition built for low latency connoisseurs.
Every inefficiency on this track has already been arbed away by the time you read this sentence. What remains is the race itself: the relentless, invisible competition to shave the next fraction off a signal already travelling at the speed of light. From blowing up the CME and market structure inefficiencies like boring latency coils, this work gets you in top gear to maneuver through trading loopings and overtake whenever the algorithms smell weakness.
Inspired by the old Nanex tradeflow depictions between exchanges, where a significant % of global GDP gets turned around every day. This is what it looks like when you finally slow down enough to see it.
A horse race, but the horses are dressed up as unicorns and the jockeys are founders. LPs bet on GPs who bet on entrepreneurs, all chasing the same finish line: the IPO post. In the background, ZIRP inflates the golden valuation balloon. It helps every stride look longer, every lead look safer, than it really is.
The track is Sand Hill Road. The crowd is made up of everyone trained to repeat at nauseam the infamous anti-portfolio line "we'll need to see more traction."
The edition structure mirrors the cap table itself: Angel through to IPO (in ten steps), each round priced higher than the last. As in life, the earliest believers carry the most risk. The last one in pays the highest valuation, but arrives just in time to sound the bell.
A football field, beyond the football field valuation. The Oakland Las Vegas Raiders, reborn as Corporate Raiders, take on Corporate America in a Super Bowl of leverage. Michael Milken coaches from the sideline. The lenders, the investment committee, and every college team that ever fed the pipeline fill the stands. Gatorade flows like unlimited liquidity.
Every element on the field is earned, not decorative. The deal structures, the cap tables, the hubris baked into every down. Private equity depicted not as Excel-white-collar spreadsheet but as contact sport. Brutal, theatrical, and, unapologetically American. With somewhere in the back, the reminder of the purity that America's College Football is also on the fringe of losing. Whereas authenticity, too, has value.
One day, everything will be owned by PE. This is what that looks like at halftime. Therefore, inspired by the deep, pure love of America for College football, and if not out of envy of those who lacked all ethics in the Eighties, then for the more recent years I missed of those in 1Oak in NYC.
A driving range of pods, each one a fund, each fund a world unto itself. Golf balls (capital raised from LPs) arc through the air toward a single destination: the hole that represents alpha. Fifteen strategies are mapped across the field, from long/short equity to global macro, from deep value stockpickers to volatility vultures, each with its own trajectory, its own swing.
The range is crowded. Everyone is aiming at the same hole. The difference between them is not the goal but the method — and the conviction that their particular approach to an inherently uncertain game is the right one.
For another year of outsized returns, low redemptions, and having finally cleared the high-water mark.
All currencies as run by Central Banks that are members (shareholders) of the Bank for International Settlements.
Creating a 'quilt' out of currencies, the stitching is made out of macro news updates on interest, employment and inflation. Everything is connected, but pairs will always trade in their bandwidth vs the reserve currency, which is why for now the USD still creates the outer frame for this work.
A landmark in quiet Basel, the eye of the BIS is all-seeing and (along with its Mexico and Hong Kong offices) all-knowing. Basquiat's visual language arrives as editorial commentary, asking the questions that formal monetary policy never quite does out loud. Now that all shares of the BIS are held by member banks, the central bank for central banks no longer has private shareholders and this work is probably the closest you can get to a dividend in SDRs.
The James Bond barrel shot, but the barrel is a portfolio, and whoever is standing at the other end of your trade is already in the crosshairs. Inside each barrel: LIBOR rates and S&P returns, logged quarterly since Hardo's birth. Twenty-five Bond films, fully fihnanced into a single NYSE Royale.
Fixed income and equities, the two great forces of capital markets, rendered as the oldest rivalry in cinema: the one where someone always gets shot, the market always moves against you at the worst possible moment, and the soundtrack is better than the trade.
On her majesty's portfolio's secret service. The position is always open. The hedge is never quite enough.
Shipping as a game of battleship in which market participants are provided with near-identical information but all make very different choices.
The world at peace may seem so easy but when the going gets tough, control over the Straits determine good fortunes or bad.
From the importance of landlocked (!) Switzerland to the slow progress of the energy transition, from pirate ships to Capes. Shipping will always be a force to be reckoned with and without it, there is no economy.
The more senior you become, and the bigger your firm, the more entangled you get in the maze of financial regulations.
We follow Hardo who as modern-day Theseus enters the labyrinth, a roll of red tape in his hand to find his way back if he needs to. Graffiti adorns the walls, with comments of those who felt inclined to share their feelings this way before.
In the style of French comics artist Jean Giraud, better known as Moebius, the labyrinth is endless. It consumes itself. Giraud created Lieutenant Blueberry, but the real wild west is still out here in the world of regulations. All to say that it is up to the viewer to determine if this is a Gary Gensler hate piece or not.
Truly in draft with many layers still to come. Current Boogie Woogie will be victorious and you'll see the initial Monopoly recognition disappear a bit.
What will remain is the Monopoly set-up of following Commercial Real Estate on its way from self-managed real estate to prestigious square feet by the tens of thousands, and air rights on top.
A landmark work for those working on our key landmarks.
Wealth Management is no easy sailing. From juniors cold calling to build their book to seniors carrying the weight of managing other people's money with integrity.
The J Class ships, the second official ship ever for the Americas Cup (do go see the maquettes at the New York Yacht Club) as carriers for the elements of what Wealth Management entails. The water, the asset classes it navigates. The sky, the wind as macro environment to deal with.
There are only nine J Class yachts active, including three original surviving. Most family wealth is destroyed withing three generations. The role of intergenerational good shepherd, weather as private family office or as good money structurer, is pivotal for those who know they can't entrust future generations with a blank cheque.