Investing & Markets
Chips, the AI supply chain, macro and money flows: slowly making sense of markets. 299 posts.
A Company Earning 30% Margins Chose to Leave the Stock Market: Nakano on His MBO (Investor's Sunday)
The October 11, 2026 episode of Investor's Sunday, part two: Ihara Science chairman Tokuo Nakano on the 2023 MBO — why a profitable company went private, how a ¥30bn loan got approved, and the problem that got harder after the shareholders left. Listener notes for education only; not investment advice.
Yields at a 20-Year High, Stocks at a Record High — Notes on MacroMicro After Meeting EP. 217
Listening notes on MacroMicro's After Meeting EP. 217 (11 October 2026): the US 10-year yield reached 5.3% while equities made new highs. Breaking a single rising number into its three components, and why the term premium is the line worth watching. Educational content, not investment advice; no individual stock recommendations or price targets.
AI Keeps Getting Smarter. Can the Hardware Keep Up? Notes on TechWave EP158 with Infineon Taiwan's Managing Director
On 9 October 2026, TechWave EP158 interviewed Chih-Hao Chen, Managing Director of Infineon Taiwan, on data-center power delivery, software-defined vehicles, and humanoid robots. These are my listening notes and personal reading — educational discussion only, no investment advice, no stock recommendations, no price targets.
TSMC in Texas? Turning "Anchor Customer" Into an Actual Number
Notes after listening to Asianometry's 2026-10-08 episode "TSMC is Coming to Texas?" — working back from Arizona's $265B to estimate how large a customer commitment a Texas fab would need, and where that chain of reasoning breaks. Educational, not investment advice; no price targets or stock recommendations.
An Old Path, Reopened: Notes on Caibaogou Episode 569
The 2026-10-08 episode of Caibaogou covers China's export curbs on gallium and quartz, a proposed US tariff on Chinese-made lasers, and a VCSEL redesign that stretches reach from 100 metres to two kilometres. Listening notes and supply-chain structure, for education only — no investment advice, no stock recommendations, no price targets.
When the Rubber Meets the Road: Jurrien Timmer on Rates, Earnings, and 60/20/20
Listening notes on the October 9, 2026 episode of The Compound and Friends (#263). Fidelity's director of global macro Jurrien Timmer on how a 5.3% 10-year yield and 2.9% real rates compress valuations, why a falling P/E doesn't rule out risk, and how to think about allocation once the 60/40 premise breaks. Educational notes only — not investment advice, no stock picks, no price targets.
After the Dollar Cleared 102, I Crossed "The Fed Is Out of Bullets" Off My List
Listening notes on MacroVoices Episode 553 with Brent Johnson: dollar strength, revaluing the gold on the books, and a Treasury that keeps crossing into the Fed's lane. Educational notes, not investment advice; no tickers, no price targets, and the conclusions need rerunning when market conditions change.
Should AI Agents Run Your Asset Allocation? Andrew Ang First Shows Taxes Take a Third
Listening notes on The Meb Faber Show #653 (2026-10-09): Columbia professor Andrew Ang calculates that taxes drag 160–170 bps a year on taxable US equity investors, compounding to over a third across thirty years, and discusses the AI agent swarm he is building for asset allocation. Educational commentary, not investment advice; no stock recommendations or price targets.
When AI Starts Proving Theorems, What Do Mathematicians Do? Odd Lots on the Age of Proof Abundance
Notes on the October 9, 2026 Bloomberg Odd Lots episode with MIT's Justin Solomon: AI-written proofs, the Lean checker, the Navier-Stokes counterexample, and the collapse of academic quality signals. Educational reflection, not investment advice; no stock picks or price targets.
Did Microsoft Make Its Spending Look Smaller? Burry Said So. The CFO Said It First, on July 29
On September 24, 2026, Michael Burry wrote on Substack that Microsoft stretched the useful life of its data centers from 15 to 25 years so its capital spending would look smaller, and the story later spread as a Chinese-language news flash. This post goes back to the July 29, 2026 earnings call and Microsoft's fiscal 2026 annual report, checks six claims one by one, and then looks at the lease numbers that actually deserve attention. An educational note on reading accounting disclosures, not investment advice and not a recommendation to buy or sell any stock.
Where the Water Actually Goes: Notes on a Podcast About Data Center Cooling
Listening notes on the 2026-10-08 episode of Catalyst with Shayle Kann featuring cooling expert Tim Shed: how much water a data center consumes is mostly a design choice, and that choice is being made right now at gigawatt scale. Educational commentary on industry structure and how to read competing claims. Not investment advice; no individual stocks discussed.
What He Actually Did After the Index Hit 50,000 — Notes on Gooaye EP703
Listening notes on Gooaye EP703 (2026-10-07): trimming the positions that failed to follow a record-high index, hedging shortage-driven names with volume-driven ones, and the gap between practice numbers and match numbers. Educational reading notes, not investment advice; no tickers or price targets.
Part of Europe's Decline Was Calculated, Not Measured
Notes on Bloomberg Odd Lots (2026-10-08): economist Dominik Leusder takes apart the Draghi report's headline trend line — Europe's output per hour falling from 90% of the US to 70% — and shows how differences in how the US and Europe deflate tech prices compound into that slope, while Germany's loss of over a million manufacturing jobs since 2021 remains real. Educational notes only; no investment advice, no price targets, no stock recommendations.
Columbia Energy Exchange: A Tonne of Carbon Has to Become a Unit Before There Can Be a Market
Notes on Columbia Energy Exchange (6 October 2026), where Gautam Jain of Columbia's Center on Global Energy Policy and Ned Shell of Bloomberg discuss project-based carbon credit markets: the EU issuing 250 million extra allowances over ten years and spending the proceeds on removal credits, Microsoft accounting for roughly 90% of removal offtake on Gautam's estimate (about 45 million tonnes), and retirements surrendered into compliance markets rising from under 10% to 20–25%. Educational listening notes only — no investment advice, no price targets, and the judgements here may be wrong.
Thai Floods and Hard Drives: Why the Cheap Land Was Cheap
Notes from the 6 October 2026 episode of Supply Chained on the 2011 Thai floods and hard drive factories. A two-sided look at climate risk and insurance incentives in siting decisions — educational notes, not investment advice, no tickers or price targets.
The Circuit: Has the Memory Cycle Broken? It Comes Down to Whether the Old Lines Stay
Notes on The Circuit (5 October 2026): Ben Bajarin and Jay Goldberg on Micron, a memory floor that has been lifted, bit growth running only in the low twenties, the allocation maths where four consumer parts' worth of capacity buys one top-end HBM stack, and Broadcom committing up to $42bn of credit to Anthropic. Educational listening notes only — no investment advice, no price targets, and the judgements here may be wrong.
Bang All the Keys at Once and the Behavior Still Comes Out — Huberman on the Neurotech Frontier
Invest Like the Best EP.494: Andrew Huberman on reading and writing to the nervous system, the three prerequisites for sleep, and a memory model punctured by its own control experiment. Listening notes, educational only, no investment advice or stock recommendations.
The Last Order of Brazil's Armored Vehicle King
Notes on Asianometry's 4 October 2026 episode about the collapse of Brazilian arms maker Engesa — customer concentration, patron risk, and how leverage multiplies both. Educational, not investment advice; no stock recommendations or price targets.
Reserves, Panics, and Dumb Rules: George Selgin on the New Deal and Banking Crises
Macro Musings, October 5, 2026: George Selgin on the Fed's balance sheet, the 12% loss rate on Main Street Lending, and the regulatory roots of banking crises. Educational discussion of method — no investment advice, no stock recommendations.
Why Treasuries Became Risky Again
Notes after listening to Bloomberg Odd Lots (2026-10-05): Chicago's Carolyn Pfluger explains the yield surge through bond-stock correlation, the perceived policy reaction function, the 1980s bond market, and a financial path to hegemonic transition. Educational notes, not investment advice.
Podcast Notes Weekly: Sep 28–Oct 04, 2026
The takeaways from 26 podcast notes I wrote this week (Catalyst with Shayle Kann, Macro Musings with David Beckworth, Bloomberg Odd Lots, Serenity Weekly, Asianometry, The Circuit and more). Two to four sentences per episode, with a link to each full post.
Gooaye EP702: Engineers Want the Best Tool, the Boss Reads the Invoice
Notes on Gooaye EP702 (3 October 2026): MediaTek capping how much AI its engineers can use, the 65% US bill-of-materials threshold in Morgan Stanley's 1 October optical-module rumour report, October's broad strength in Taiwan, and why quant trading is a different kind of contest. Educational listening notes only — no investment advice, no price targets, and the judgements here may be wrong.
90% Equals Zero: How a Near-Bankrupt Japanese Parts Maker Reached a 20% Operating Margin on Punctuality Alone
On the 2026-10-04 episode of Investor's Sunday, IHARA SCIENCE chairman Takuo Nakano describes taking over a company carrying ¥3.5bn in accumulated losses in 1999 and turning it around through cash-bleed control, receivables conversion, and making profit visible on the shop floor. Personal listening notes, educational only, not investment advice; figures come from the speaker's own recollection with no public filings to check against.
Where Does the AI Supply Chain Go Next? Power Became the Thing That Jams Everything｜Notes on MacroMicro EP.216
Notes from the MacroMicro After Meeting Podcast EP.216, recorded 1 October 2026: how the power bottleneck pushes money into chip efficiency instead, how to tell restocking from passive pile-up when inventory value explodes, and why a shortage does not mean pricing power. Educational commentary, not investment advice — no tickers, no price targets.