Honestly CR Month so far has beaten stratospheric expectations and we still have two stone cold classics to look forward to

From end of January USD is up ~3%, SPX 2027 EPS estimates are up ~3%, and CPI forecasts are flat to down Why does the market refuse to go down? I guess this is why

They are murdering civilians on the high seas. They are murdering civilians in 🇮🇷. They are murdering civilians in concentration camps. They are murdering civilians on the streets of 🇺🇸 cities. These are not problems that can be fixed with new laws or more court orders. bsky.app/profile/mcop...

Nice piece on US equity index composition and its imact on risk and active manager strategies by DE Shaw www.deshaw.com/library/conc...

Checking in on the Baiju sector after 5 years

Lot of discussion about Private Equity being a terrible industry & asset class for investors... yet few seem to be saying what is patently obvious: Private Equity today has *adverse selection* & not *positive selection* (like it once used to) That is a fundamental strategy problem, not a market one

MS making the case that disruption in Defense is not going to be like disruption in Autos, which itself has actually stalled out in unit terms and seems to exist purely in capital markets terms

Defense spending globally

Kind of an amazing chart. Hard to tell any coherent story about the results based on 'culture', income, development level If there's an explanatory variable (or two), I'd love to see it

Great @rhg.com piece on the Fiscal Revenue challenges facing China - Fiscal revenue grew less than 1% last year after declining in 2024 - The total Deficit is ~10% of GDP vs. NGDP growth of ~4% - The largest increase in deficits over the last few years has been due to collapsing Land Sales

China Internet Index is at its Liberation Day Lows The total collapse is somewhat astonishing in both absolute and relative terms -- every other broad Chinese index is up ~18 to 35% EM ex China is up 58%

China is the anti-AI trade apparently

BofA saying payroll growth accelerating

How to lose money in megacaps

Snookering an “ally” into an unnecessary offensive war is probably not the way to regain public opinion

Jettisoning perhaps his only non-psychopathic instinct from his first term — getting into actual fights is harder than talking shit — is going to be an interesting experiment for him

It has been a bleak year, but there is joy to be found in the world -- for example, the whole internet has come together in delirious schadenfreude at the fate of Dubai

For anyone who has followed European & Italian banking, this is just such an incredible outcome -- I think 5 years ago 0 people would have predicted that Monte dei Paschi would be absurdly profitable and swimming in excess capital Makes me think European banking is too profitable right now

Quite the divergence between different Chinese equity indices

It’s heartening to see a company demonstrate principles — and stick by them in the face of threats. www.anthropic.com/news/stateme...

#$NFLX going to buy them out of Ch. 11

China has had zero EPS growth over the last decade -- compare to India and the US, which have both increased >100% Every year, people hope for EPS growth, and by year-end, their hopes are dashed (ht @volgajam.bsky.social for the correction)

Time to find out

Update - it was, in fact, over

So the implication is that OAI and Gemini have already agreed to demands that Anthropic thinks cross its red lines?

Stripe worth $159 billion or more than #$PYPL #$ADYEN.NA #$XYZ #$GPN #$NEXI.IM #$STNE #$ACIW #$FOUR #$DLO #$PAGS combined With ~1/10th the revenue

What's happening to Cursor and Devin / Cognition now that Claude Code and Codex are getting all the hype?

I realise the Trump administration seems relaxed about enforcing sanctions and money-laundering rules, but it's still amazing that the crypto firm whose founder was jailed and then pardoned by Trump is still helping the Iranians move money around. www.wsj.com/finance/curr...

#$V and #$MA ~10% from COVID low valuations

Had a lot of thoughts on the merits of SWFs in the face of AI a few years ago on the other site -- if the AI bulls are right, it is an idea that is going to have a lot more political salience in the future

Whenever the EW S&P outperforms the SPX, so do active managers

Yes the world is shit, but next month is ‘CR month’ on The Rewatchables

This is hilarious

Shopify and Amazon half of US e-com

If GRRM allows it, seems almost certain that after he’s gone someone’s gonna launch a show set entirely in Essos written partially by an AI trained on his work to get the ‘feel’ and language right

New Interview: www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a...

ok but how is the opposition party supposed to win over his supporters now, have they even thought about that

Populism innit

I guess we now have the answer -- if you are Thoma Bravo and Vista, you are not 'thinking', you are just hoping Weird that this was obvious shortly after ChatGPT came out and these guys kept doing SAAS buyouts at wild multiples for 3 years after that www.ft.com/content/954e...

Having listened to a few 'Industry' Season 4 'Dear Henry' recap pods I can tell commentators struggling with the Whitney 'twist', but that's only because they seem to be unfamiliar with the Jan Marsalek story The actual details of how it went down are much more salacious and crazier than the show!

My basic bitch opinion is that ‘Rear Window’ is the most Rewatchable film of all time and it’ll be a travesty if Bill ends the pod before letting Sean & Chris cook on this one We should have a Hitchcock month

The actual craziest thing here is Sony thinking there’s a market for the PS6 next year PS5 has barely made an impact! It has been a barren generation of consoles and the tech is already too advanced for the content quality and TV output Put out some fucking games!

Usually not the traditional setup for excess returns

This makes perfect sense -- it's a thematic continuation of the concept "Public virtue anywhere is a threat to vice everywhere"

The non sports part of prediction markets is trivially small and economists should stop being excited about it. - www.ft.com/content/1aa7...

Feels like the biggest upward move in the European telecoms sector in a decade is under discussed? What’s happening here?

Chinese real estate prices still haven't found a bottom