China getting h200s isn’t as bullish nvda or the semi complex as it is bullish China tech imo

Had the pleasure chatting with @conorsen.bsky.social about all the cross currents we’ve seen this year- and try to map out the main scenarios going forward. Enjoy! Always a good time, appreciate it man! open.spotify.com/episode/7LD5...

Happy for everyone just rolling in it with all their AI trades they think are obvious and shitcos. I’m just here to say this isn’t my market. Hasn’t been since April. Just owning it. Not at all an environment I operate well in. Know your strengths and weaknesses I guess? lol

I really think there is signal in the recent OpenAI pivot. Yes it’s “well they need to have big rev to pay for the big obligations to raise more big money to make god” If that’s how the trajectory is going a lot of coattails cos are gonna be big mad.

I just don’t know mate. The karpathy stuff, Demis tweet on the OpenAI guys math tweet. OpenAI biz shifts. User slowing graphs. Lots of smoke by very informed people differentiating llms from agi and resetting mile high expectations. Just don’t think oracle has picked up on this yet lol

Barnums (JPM cfo) view on the Econ just now is exactly how I see it too.

I do wonder how much of the mkt is held up by anthropic and OpenAI going around and saying “ok cool you got me covered for 2030 in case I need it?” to 4 different companies.

Innovation and computers are cool. But it’s still wild to me that I left my house at 7 in Charlotte and I’m center downtown Philly in 4 hours flat.

Curiosity question- did intel dilute themselves 10% or where did this 10% come from? Or no one knows?

I don’t know about this mate

I embarked on an experiment - create a small, secure CRM. I can’t code anything btw. I’ve used all 3 AIs to do it, and let me tell you- Gemini is **very good** Blows the other two out of the water. GitHub ui, firebase deploy using firestore and GCP. Just reporting my experience

Not a complaining post about gpt5- works good for me. But I can appreciate the “step change” isn’t there, and is worse in some things. That in and of itself I would think is a thesis killer for some of the AI right tails out there. But alas, this mkt is p weird.

So expect a lot of made up PRs or worst case, a forced bad allocation of capital.

lol on the zoetis call- ques about if they’re included in tariffs- “Honestly we don’t know yet, it’s not really clear.” Sure guys, uncertainty def gone. 😂

So meta is spending near 30% of rev on capex. And they’ll stand up the 1mn token clusters or whatever. So it’s just assumed they’ll be a winner. But they don’t even have a top model. And when their $1bn ai team makes one- it’ll be the best? Not recognized enough that maybe meta fails.

Yah everyone always poking fun at adp, now it’s all we have lol

What’s to say the July number isn’t gonna be revised down 100k?

On one side, a mercantilist with twitter is keeping rates high by fueling goods inflation, then on the other side a group of 5 or so mgmt teams are keeping rates high by throwing as much money at AI build as they can find. Both entities basically holding the rest of the economy hostage. Wild

Thing I recognized today is that data center capex is running about 1ish % of GDP, and the tariff tax hike is running about 1ish % of GDP. Winner and loser environment, sure- but weird it kind of offsets on the surface. The latter is a bigger coefficient to u3 tho, I’d assume. We’ll see

I’m seeing really bad takes this morning. Just bc the mkt or companies haven’t digested consequences yet doesn’t mean everything is cool. Last wk eu stuff was 10%, this wk it’s 15. That’s *another* incremental tax hike that’s gotta be absorbed.

Pretty normal debate that happens when data turns at any time- but for now, is this true data accel H2 or just a pop from the April/May disarray? We’ll see.

Everyone finds their stride I assume in *how* you use AI, but for me and my process- Chat -best at reasoning. Makes up the most stuff, so try to confine it to working on stuff I upload. It’s elite there tho. Gemini-deep research is insane good. Brevity isn’t its gift in general for normal queries

Bro you’re telling me consensus 26 est is 300$?? From 263 this year? So 8% growth this yr and 13% next. No way anyone thinks that’s real come on. Straight fantasy land stuff.

Been a bit since a post bc I’m bad at it tbh/ but while everyone likes to post how genius they are, I’ll say this- I’m blown away by how ironclad the mkt believes tariffs will be TACO or just won’t matter. It’s too big of a net drag for me to just say “nah it’s cool” Just me I guess

So net net, didn’t the Vietnam tariff rate just go up? lol

@peark.es @conorsen.bsky.social I’ve never seen a keeper as in the zone as freese right now wow

lol the labor mkt is good and everything is fine, oh btw we’re gonna cut 10% of staff. Brilliant stuff

The deregulation pro-growth fantasy is every bit as delusional as believing Trump and DOGE would reduce debt and deficits.

lol the whole tariff thing is still pretty unresolved too you guys.

IMO the biggest fwd risk is many SMBs operate with their head in the sand irt macro, and they get surprised by tariffs/supply/shipping, without a big demand surge on the other side. And that make them cut someone. Thats where the slowdown would start, and those macro waves are *just* beginning to…

Cyclicals rallying this wk like some acceleration or boom time is in front of us. Crazy. Yes some names were pricing a big left tail and now they’re not, fine- but a lot are taking it too far imo

Idc whether you think you were “right” or not, every soul on this earth has had a wrong take at some point over the past 60 days on all this nonsense. There was *no* correct analysis bc there wasn’t anything to analyze/ no North Star. Just randomness, whims, first level thoughts, and impulsiveness.

If we tariff all imports at 10% and China at 50, do earnings go up 12% this yr? Serious question

Surprised at how many people are surprised that the 10% global rate is the rate. There’a no deal for that. The mkt is so obsessed with “deals” when trump literally said Tuesday these “deals” are de minimus. Mkt just can’t see past it lol Again, it’s hard as ever rn to know what’s priced in the mkt.

Ofc we all hear what we want when Powells job today is to say basically nothing, but unpacking it I hear: “listen things don’t look good and sure I’d expect it to rollover too but I have to wait to see it in the hard data, then we have the green light”

“In some case we’ll sign some deals it’ll be much less important than what I’m talking about” ^thats like Japan buying soybeans. Agreed, it’s irrelevant. But the mkt thinks this is the framework for everything. The man is telling you it’s the framework for nothing.

Anecdotal but talking to a few niche product cos they say everything is frozen (so no one is doing it), but even with 145% Chinese rate it’s still cheaper than the US. Heard this multiple, unrelated times. And just like Apple, also cited is its not just the cost, but they are *good*.

Also “China wants to talk” is way diff than US does tariffs > oops > begs China to talk to undo oops > they say ok we’ll hear ya out

I *do* think a good chunk of the move off of 5000 is a “most of this is walked back before it matters” thesis, and like- this China PR confirms that? Are you sure lol? If we were still at 5k, I get it- talking is good, incremental good. But, we’re not.

This is diff bc we aren’t really having a shock. It’s more a slow motion train wreck. Some cos stocked up a little to be prepped. Some are closer to the epicenter. Some are in the “eh nothings changed yet camp”. We’re just learning where cos are in the time line.

So Ford is basically unch ytd. Are we really saying that none of the last 60 days will matter and it’ll all be rolled back and “we good”? I don’t follow autos closely but idk mate, just hard to square. TM the same, GM down 10pp maybe.

“We don’t expect the situation to be the same after the 90days and we should expect the Eu to also retaliate (when final level is determined)” Ngl even I kinda forgot the retaliation phase still prob ahead.

One thing underappreciated about globalization in DM v EM: It’s not just goods v services, but we’ve outsourced cyclicality. Higher margin, more consistent fcfs get higher multiples, so every biz tries to get there. More consistent fcf = better budgets = smoother spending for services.

We still getting those semi/pharma tariffs or did he forget about those?

Just so I have this right, the 145% is still in place and there’s no timeline for that to drop, just that it will sometime? We all knew it would eventually, it’s not workable and dumb. The important q has always been for how long and too what level

Not high conviction take but I really think the trump team believes their whole tariffs are great thing, and Bessent was like “ok but can yall please just talk about deals so the mkt is cool?” And so they agreed, they all talk about deals but the actual “yay tariffs” plan is unch.

The funny thing is yall know it makes trump so mad that he’s being told that Powell is just as (more) important as he is to the mkt

Since December my take has been there’s a lot of left tails, big and small, and no right ones. Whole pod episode on it below. Today same applies, but the left most tails are prob cut off- still can’t see a right one. open.spotify.com/episode/26Nc...

Geez "To add to the list of worries, we will be in the crosshairs. It's going to happen — and it's okay. We are deeply embedded in these other countries, people like us, but I do think some clients or some countries will feel differently about American banks, and we'll just have to deal with that"

@conorsen.bsky.social jpm said it straight up- data will be weird from front running from consumers. So March retail sales? April? March cpi was before so April? What do you think?