Investing & Markets
Chips, the AI supply chain, macro and money flows: slowly making sense of markets. 141 posts.
After Cook Hands Over: The Thing to Worry About Is Usually What the Successor Isn't Good At
Notes from the Supply Chained episode on Tim Cook handing the CEO job to John Ternus. Starting from Morris Chang's line that there is no such thing as a non-executive chairman, this piece looks at how to read a succession, the hardware-software imbalance at Apple, and the invisible design conservatism hiding behind on-time shipping. Educational notes, not investment advice.
Betting Before the Answer Arrives — Notes on Sarah Guo and What the 250 People Building AI Believe
Notes after listening to Invest Like the Best EP.489: how do you judge something moving too fast to backtest? From venture decision-making to compute, open models, and the danger of borrowing someone's résumé instead of forming your own view. Educational, not investment advice.
The Sentence He Didn't Say: Notes on Speed, Dissent, and the Job Losses AI Hasn't Caused Yet
Personal notes after listening to Bloomberg Odd Lots (2026-09-01) with Adam Posen: the difference between direction and speed in central bank communication, why committees drift into silent agreement, and why AI's labour market effects still aren't in the data. Educational reflections, not investment advice.
OpenAI's Chili Pepper Chip: When Complexity Can Be Outsourced to AI, the Rules of Chip Design Change
Notes after listening to TechWave EP152. Starting from Jalapeño beating Blackwell on a public inference benchmark, three layers: how far those numbers can actually be pushed, why a chip that switches its own operating modes saves power, and the key shift — once programming complexity can be handed to AI, all the trade-offs chip designers avoided because they were 'too painful' are back on the table. Educational content, not investment advice; no stock recommendations or price targets.
The Little Robots on the Ceiling: The Invisible Line That Actually Decides a Fab's Output
Asianometry's 2026-08-30 episode on the overhead transport systems inside semiconductor fabs — from cleanroom floor space costing more than prime Taipei real estate, to why material movement is the real bottleneck, and how a generational transition reset an entire industry. Educational only; not investment advice, no stock picks or price targets.
Glass Substrates: Every Advantage Has Its Flaw Written on the Back
Notes from the 2026-08-30 episode of the Taiwanese podcast Statementdog on glass substrates — the distinction between carriers and substrates, the drilling and metallization bottlenecks, the three-way competitive landscape, and the production timeline. Educational content, not investment advice; no stock recommendations or price targets.
When a Central Bank Stops Explaining Itself: Donald Kohn on the Fed's Past, Present, and Future
Reflections on the August 31, 2026 Macro Musings conversation with 40-year Fed veteran Donald Kohn: why Volcker eased while inflation was still near four percent, why Greenspan refused to forecast but never refused to narrate, and why a claim that cannot be falsified is the opposite of accountable. Educational, not investment advice.
The Economy That Refused to Break: Richmond Fed's Barkin on Stubborn Resilience
Notes from the Aug 31, 2026 Odd Lots interview with Richmond Fed President Tom Barkin — on how consumers are 'creatively' finding money to spend, whether data centers crowd out other construction, and the two defensible ways to slice the same 65 months of inflation. Educational, not investment advice.
Availability Matters More Than Price — Seven Days of Upstream Posts, Laid Side by Side
An independent researcher covering AI infrastructure upstream left forty-odd public posts this week. Put them in order and what surfaces isn't a stock — it's five lines of reasoning about how bottlenecks move, how they get priced, and how they get misread.
Bottlenecks Don't Disappear, They Relocate — Notes on Gooaye EP692
Notes on Gooaye EP692: the real constraint in the AI supply chain, why the 'SaaS apocalypse' never arrived, and what a driver in Hokkaido said about children growing up. Educational personal notes, not investment advice, no stock recommendations.
When Uncertainty Itself Becomes a Price
Notes from MacroMicro's After Meeting EP.212: why long-end Treasury yields were driven entirely by term premium, why gold and bitcoin rallied together, and how AI hyperscaler bond issuance is competing for the same buyers as the US government. Educational commentary, not investment advice — no price targets, no stock recommendations.
When 'Overheating' No Longer Looks Like Low Unemployment
Notes on the Odd Lots interview with Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee: why the question 'is policy restrictive?' can't be answered directly, whether the AI build-out is sectoral heat or economy-wide heat, and the difference between a reaction function and forward guidance. Educational, not investment advice.
The Moment You Remove the Screen: What BMW's Neue Klasse Says About the Cost of Being Different
Notes on Business Today's podcast episode 547. BMW's product lead on the Neue Klasse generation shift, where the EV adoption gap between Europe and Taiwan actually comes from, how local road conditions get translated into standard equipment, and one falsifiable test for whether a differentiation bet worked. Educational only, not investment advice, no stock recommendations.
Bottlenecks Everywhere: NVIDIA's Call, Hot Chips, and a Ten-Year Packaging Bet
Notes after listening to the 2026-08-27 Caibaogou markets episode: NVIDIA underwriting compute with its own balance sheet, Hot Chips turning into a memory conference, and Powerchip's decade-old panel-level packaging finally landing orders. Distilled into one way to read 'capacity-constrained' versus 'demand-starved' growth. Educational only, not investment advice; no tickers recommended and no price targets.
How Much Longer Can the Dollar Be the World's Money? — Notes on MacroVoices #547
Reflections on the MacroVoices interview with Daniel Lacalle (2026-08-27). It unpacks the three limits that give government debt its credibility, why stablecoins may be the bridge between the old monetary system and the new, and why central banks buy gold but not crypto. Educational notes only — no investment advice, no tickers, no price calls.
One Man's Uprising: Why Things at the Top Don't Need a Reason to Fall
Notes on The Meb Faber Show episode 648 with Paul Kedrosky. Why AI may be the first moment where every ingredient of a historic bubble arrives at once: extrapolating the future from coding, the least representative starting point imaginable; data center financing flipping from cash flow to external debt; a commodity deflating 70-80% a year; and how failure at high valuations becomes a matter of probabilities adding up. Educational only, not investment advice, no stock recommendations.
Making Payments Boring, Making Disagreement Public: Odd Lots' First Conversation at Jackson Hole
Notes and reflections on Bloomberg's Odd Lots (Aug 27, 2026) with Kansas City Fed President Jeffrey Schmid: why instant settlement leads straight back to duration and liquidity, how to read the long end of the curve, how the AI data center buildout crowds out other industries, and what a dissent actually means. Educational commentary, not investment advice; no tickers, no price targets.
When a Carmaker Decides Not to Do What Everyone Else Is Doing
Notes from a Taiwanese industry podcast on BMW's Neue Klasse: what a pricing team actually does, why Taiwan's standard equipment list was shaped by its alleyways, and how to tell whether a brand narrative carries information or merely a position. Educational only — not investment advice, no stock recommendations or price targets.
"Two Companies Will Own Most of the World's Compute" — Notes on Dylan Patel's 2028 Map
Listening notes on the Dwarkesh Podcast conversation with SemiAnalysis founder Dylan Patel: how compute is concentrating into two labs, why revenue-per-megawatt is the ruler that matters, and how $5 trillion of credit reaches every stock you own. Educational; not investment advice, no tickers, no price targets.
Fifty-Eight Years of Almost: When a Technology Finally Finds Its Buyer
Notes from an Asianometry episode on the solid state transformer's fifty-eight years of near-misses, and what it teaches about the gap between technically possible and commercially viable. Educational only — not investment advice, no tickers, no price targets.
When the Price of Money Starts Rising: Reading This Market Through the 10-Year
Notes from listening to The Compound and Friends, 2026-08-24. Decomposing long-term Treasury yields into inflation expectations and real rates, why the classic bond hedge stopped working, the growth term everyone forgets in the valuation formula, and the no-recession assumption this market is quietly built on. Educational only, not investment advice; no stock recommendations or price targets.
Moats Evaporate. The People Who Dig Them Don't — Notes on TechWave EP151, After CUDA
Personal reflections on TechWave EP151: why CUDA's porting-cost moat is loosening, what Jensen Huang is really trying to solve by turning AI factories into an asset class, and what the Moderna mRNA headline actually means. Educational notes only — no stock recommendations or price targets.
The Circuit EP 189: Analog's AI Moment, and the Day Chip Companies Started Borrowing
Personal notes after listening to The Circuit (Aug 23, 2026). From ADI's earnings and analog content per gigawatt, to why SAM beats TAM, to the misread Marvell–Google deal, to chip companies competing with their balance sheets. Educational reading notes focused on how to interpret, not on stock conclusions. Not investment advice.
Four Shocks That Didn't Break the U.S. Economy — Notes on Macro Musings with Ben Harris
Notes after listening to the 2026-08-24 Macro Musings episode with Ben Harris: why the expected recession never arrived, why the real oil bottleneck is refining rather than crude, and whether AI can grow the U.S. out of its fiscal hole. Educational only; no investment advice, no stock recommendations.