Investing & Markets
Chips, the AI supply chain, macro and money flows: slowly making sense of markets. 141 posts.
NAND Flash Stays Short Through Mid-2027: Slower Price Gains Are Not a Closing Gap
Notes and reflections after listening to the Statementdog podcast episode from 2026-09-06. On the direction of China's new capacity, the split between consumer and server demand, and what changed inside those five-year supply contracts. Educational, not investment advice.
The Layer You Can't Model: Broadcom's Quarter, Supply-Chain Depth, and Agents Running Loose
Notes after listening to The Circuit Ep 191. Custom silicon has turned from a single-winner market into a mix-and-match menu that resists modeling; the bottleneck trade has run its course; and an AI assistant just offered 'skip' as a menu option. Educational, not investment advice.
Record Earnings, and a Rumor About a Guarantee Knocks It Down 4.5%: NVIDIA's Three Hats, and the Half Last Week's Gooaye Post Left Out
Kelly Tsai's September 4 video lines up NVIDIA's guarantees, financing platform, and convertible purchase this year and argues it is now supplier, shareholder, and guarantor at once. I set that against last week's Gooaye post, which said the MediaTek deal is not circular, ran the numbers from SEC cash-flow filings, and propose a sharper test: can the party receiving the money borrow on its own? Educational notes and method, not investment advice.
GPT-6 Astra Is Absurdly Good (Most of the Time): When Tools Catch Up to Your Hands
Notes after listening to Tech Wave EP153. On 3D modeling, computer use, and security benchmarks — how far this generation jumped, where it didn't, and what's left once skills and prompts get absorbed into the model. Educational, not investment advice.
What's Really Blocking the Fed's Balance Sheet Isn't the Fed
Notes on the Macro Musings conversation with Stephen Miran: why the Fed's balance sheet stays large, how bank regulation manufactures reserve demand, and the case for money aggregates as a cross-check. Educational, not investment advice.
Why Money Launderers Love $100 Bills
Notes from an Odd Lots conversation on money laundering: the paradox of record cash in circulation, the scale of trade-based laundering, and a compliance system that costs a fortune and doesn't work. Educational, not investment advice; no stock picks or price targets.
A Contract Signed Through 2031 — Seven Days of Upstream Posts, Laid Side by Side
An independent researcher who watches only the upstream of AI infrastructure left forty-odd public posts this week. Put them in order and what surfaces isn't a ticker — it's four lines of reasoning about capital picking winners, growth rates truncated by supply, time turning into an asset, and which country the real chokepoints sit in.
When Content Floods In, What's Scarce Is Someone Watching
Notes on Gooaye EP694: AI made content cheap, yet good content got more valuable; and how to read a great earnings report that the stock ignores. Educational, not investment advice — no tickers, no price targets.
Sixteen Years of Compute Forecasts Held Up. The Money Kept Breaking: Reading The Infinity Machine
Will AI capital spending overshoot? After reading Sebastian Mallaby's new book on DeepMind, I swapped the question. Across sixteen years of records, the compute curve tracked the forecast and every crisis was about money. So the question is not total spending, it is whose money can sit unpaid for ten years. Educational reading notes and reflections, not investment advice.
What Actually Changes an Organization Isn't the Rulebook: Four Years Inside Japan's Civil Service
Notes from the Investor's Sunday episode of 2026-09-06. Katsura Ito, former Microsoft Japan executive turned National Personnel Authority commissioner, on the 80% of change management that transfers anywhere and the last 2% that belongs to one organization's DNA. Educational reflection only — no investment advice, no stock picks, no price targets.
Long-Bond Yields Keep Making New Highs. What Can the US Actually Do?
Notes after listening to MacroMicro's After Meeting EP 213. The 10-year at 4.8%, the 30-year at 5.2%, and a market worried about whether America can pay. The show takes one debt equation and splits the problem into three roads — deficit, rates, growth — then walks each one. Educational notes, not investment advice.
In the AI Boom, Who Is Actually Getting Stronger and Who Just Caught the Wave
Personal reflections after listening to the 2026-09-03 episode of the Caibaogou podcast on the SEMICON show floor. From co-development between equipment makers and their customers, to who owns the heat problem, to facility lead times and local materials sourcing — a method for reading who is actually getting stronger during a boom. Educational content, not investment advice; no stock picks or price targets.
What Comes After the Data Center Backlash?
Notes after listening to Catalyst (2026-09-03): what happens when an argument stops being about whether the numbers are right and becomes about whether people want the thing at all. On micro truths that stop being true at macro scale, and how a price signal can make an unworkable business workable. Educational, not investment advice.
Energy Tech Meets Timescales: Notes on MacroVoices #548 and the Real Bottleneck in the Nuclear Renaissance
Reflections on MacroVoices episode 548 with Dr. Carly Anderson — mass manufacturing for fission, the uranium conversion bottleneck, laser enrichment, supercritical CO2 turbines, and the cost argument over fusion. Educational notes only; not investment advice and no stock recommendations.
When Gold Stops Being a Commodity: Notes on an Interview About the Rising Price of Diversification
Notes from The Meb Faber Show's conversation with AllianceBernstein chief investment strategist Inigo Fraser-Jenkins: why stock-bond diversification may not come back, why gold gets reclassified as money, and the arithmetic behind AI productivity. Educational only, not investment advice, no individual stock recommendations.
Why Yields Jumped: When the Last Buyer Is Already Full
Notes from Bloomberg Odd Lots' conversation with Stanford finance professor Darrell Duffie: the surge in long-dated Treasury yields may have less to do with inflation than with supply landing on investors who already own all they want. On marginal buyers, Treasury buybacks, the liability side of the Fed's balance sheet, and how the idea transfers to your own judgment. Educational, not investment advice.
Lasers Are the Hot New Thing in Defense: You Can Win Every Fight and Still Lose on the Books
Notes after listening to Odd Lots (2026-09-04) on directed energy weapons: how lasers differ from microwaves, why the technology stalled for sixty years on size-weight-power, and what 'win tactically, lose economically' means for investors and for everyday decisions. Educational, not investment advice, no stock recommendations.
Notes on Anchor Industry Podcast EP13: AI Boards Keep Upgrading — So Where Does the PCB Chain Actually Jam?
Reflections after listening to Anchor Industry Notes EP13: board layer counts, glass fabric, copper foil and drill bits, and why 'tight supply' and 'pricing power' are two different things. Educational only, not investment advice, no buy or sell opinions on any stock.
The Day I Ran My First 10K, and Rethought What 'Adding to a Position' Means
Notes on Gooaye EP693: what the buyers of MediaTek's $3.5B convertible bond are actually buying, why NVIDIA is fine with customers building their own chips, and whether you should add or trim after a stock has already run. Personal reflections for educational purposes, not investment advice.
Whether It's Worth It Is One Question. Whether You Can Get One Is Another.
A Chinese YouTuber who runs six machines at home reacts to the news that OpenAI bought tens of thousands of Macs to teach AI how to use a mouse. His conclusion: hardware won't get cheaper for two or three years. I checked it against Apple's own earnings call and our memory-supply research. The supply side holds up; the phrase 'this time is different' has a track record in memory. Educational notes and extensions.
When Compute Becomes a Financial Product: What's Actually Different From 2008
Notes from listening to MacroMicro's 2026-09-02 feature, 'If AI compute gets securitised, are we heading for another subprime crisis?' Covers how credit cycles self-reinforce, the four structural differences between AI financing and subprime, and how to replace a gut-level analogy with something you can actually check. Educational only, not investment advice; no stock picks or price targets.
After the Helicopter Drops You on the Summit: Terence Tao on AI, and the Same Lesson We Learned from 202 Indicators
Terence Tao says formal verification can make AI completely honest. Last week we tested that claim with 202 trading-indicator candidates: a star that scored 97.7 in round one died at 59 in round two. AI output alone is not trustworthy; AI plus a gate it cannot talk its way past is.
He Didn't Persuade Anyone — He Just Took the Pill First
Notes after listening to Statement Dog's Sept 1, 2026 interview with Phison CEO Pua Khein-Seng: demand isn't created, be your own first user, flash is a complement rather than a substitute, and how a founder holds a five-year horizon against market noise. Educational only — not investment advice, no stock recommendations or price targets.
Having the Ore Isn't Having the Metal: What a Podcast on US Critical Minerals Taught Me About Bottlenecks
Personal reflections after listening to Columbia Energy Exchange interview US Assistant Secretary of Energy Audrey Robertson. On the gap between having ore and having usable metal, why critical minerals aren't a functioning market, and how to read this kind of policy story. Educational, not investment advice.