Game-theoretically Google should be eschewing Gemini ads until they've snuffed out OpenAI -- if there was a time to throw around B/S strength and FCF generation in pursuit of adoption and share gains, that time is now

I think financial market participants have a fundamentally dated view of the fiscal positions in the US vs Europe Since the Euro crisis, EU has de-leveraged, while USG has levered up Right now EU is running NGDP growth well above fiscal deficits, while US is running deficits well above NGDP growth

We are in the "this other number is bigger than this number I calculated" part of the market cycle

OAI making a hard pivot into ads while product gets worse smells of desperation You do ads from a position of strength, not weakness

Wait what

Decline in median size of new home is fascinating -- how much of this is due to the geography of new home demand (more urban? more apartments?), demographics (older people need smaller homes) and household size (children per family declining)?

Adyen since the first-day IPO pop

MS Survey on AI suggests reasonably large employment impacts focused on early-career workers

‘The Rip’ is a case study in streaming movie incentives and smart people crafting content to fit it - Get a mix of A and B-list stars, market off the thumbnail - Know that cop/crime content works - promise a rip roaring action heist with Damon / Affleck - Cool, mysterious title Actually deliver:

In many ways 'Landman' is bigger than 'Stranger Things'

The continued dependence of Western democracies on US tech companies is a huge policy error Their unwillingness to curtail, tax, and restrict US Tech companies is costing them their Sovereignty

India underperforming EM by ~50% since then and China by ~70%

Large caps > Small caps Existing firms > New firms Incumbents > Startups Many forget that when they own the equity market, they own the existing, listed firms and in a dynamic economy earnings growth is shared with new, yet-to-exist and smaller, unlisted firms

Two great charts by Matt Klein on Japanese wage growth and the labour market

The best time to do this was summer of 2024. The next best time is now.

I pay for ChatGPT Pro and it is astonishing how slow it has become on any reasoning tasks Gemini and Claude much faster across the board with similar results

To say this is extraordinarily stupid given the circumstances and direction of travel is an understatement www.politico.eu/article/pala...

Tfw when a sector returns 52%.. and underperforms for the year

I find it hard to square the preciousness about "why would someone ever stay on Twitter?" when everyone on this site knows that the community here intentionally chased off lots of people.

👇🎯 Rofer’s Razor

0.0%

I know many figured this out before me but truly asking the LLMs how to use them well works better than it has any right to

~10 pt total return differential between the two largest ‘Emerging Markets’ ETFs mainly due to Korea which is +94% YTD

“Greene expressed her perplexity over his intransigence [on Epstein]. Trump replied, “My friends will get hurt.” When she urged Trump to invite some of Epstein’s female victims to the Oval Office, he angrily informed her that they had done nothing to merit the honor.” www.nytimes.com/2025/12/29/m...

Finally finished ‘Highest 2 Lowest’ - a 4 star film for an hour that is bookended by two 2 star films to start and end - and it made me wonder: is Jeffrey Wright a good actor or does he just have a great voice?

AirPods 2 to 3 has been one of the worst upgrades I’ve ever made — constant problems. Don’t connect automatically, noise cancellation doesn’t work, one AirPod doesn’t work. Wonder if this is a widespread belief or I just got a bum model

I find it strange that this incident has somehow been memory holed in the collective political consciousness It’s weird to discuss politics, parties, horse race etc without this being the first topic in every conversation In an important sense all other details about politics are irrelevant

The funniest ending to the Somali fraud story would be a bought Presidential pardon Probably not even that far fetched

Tfw you invest in a category-defining generational startup in a hotly contested private round that ends up fulfilling most/all its promises and then some… and yet you make less than half the return of the Nasdaq and don’t even keep up with the SPX a decade later

Interesting thread Fascinating that in the most affluent country in the history of humanity where 'middle class to instantly, totally destitute' rarely (not 'never') happens, it is received wisdom amongst content creators and consumers that it happens often enough to worry about it constantly

I'm once again politely asking Bluesky developers to allow us to attach multiple photos and videos in one post.

Don't need to imagine, Sinatra had something to say about multicultural liberal democracies 🧵

Substack writers' sentiment check

End to end encryption is not compatible with our current political direction Hard to see it surviving if we continue in this direction

They talk about ‘Minions’ and ‘Babylon’ and not even a passing appreciation for the best film of the year, ‘Decision to Leave’?! Disaster draft pca.st/episode/1ec8...

GS on Japan's foreign asset position Large number of JP investors are unhedged and have benefited dramatically from ex-Japan asset returns -- especially if they bought SPX

Not that it will but the willingness of Americans to obey is a very funny contrast with our self-image and should probably prompt some reflection bsky.app/profile/jonf...

Large-cap growth vs Small-Cap Value after the French-Fama research was published Yikes Ht Joachim Klement

Hot take: last 2 Spielberg films > last 2 Marty movies (even if his 2 feel more ‘important’) Last 2 decades Spielberg has made more movies and has more ‘good’ films vs Scorsese - but Scorsese has clearly had higher highs

One has to admit that whatever is going on here, there is something truly astonishing about it

why would immigrants do this www.politico.com/news/2025/10...

Pricing power in AI Chatbots

I think the CBO immigration estimates are too optimistic if the current administration stays in place

One of the victims of the antisemitic massacre in Australia was a Holocaust survivor. www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

Ok this story is totally insane Rich Chinese building armies of American born children via surrogacy

This has been obvious for years www.ft.com/content/137b...

Checking in on this

One of America's most popular shows has adults acting like children in a nostalgia-infused fantasy world where they heroically battle demons, and the other is 'Stranger Things'