Fast daily notes on markets, macros, books, and real world insights.
After watching high‑beta tech crack in 2021 before the first hike, it’s natural to ask: could 2026 rhyme with that episode? The goal isn’t to call a top, but to map the conditions that made 2021 so painful and see how many might line up again. In 2021, three forces converged: (1) a turn in the rate narrative as…
Most investors remember the first Fed hike arriving in March 2022. But if you pull up a chart of the Nasdaq and the highest‑beta names, the real break started months earlier, in 2021. The key shift wasn’t the policy move itself; it was the rate narrative turning decisively away from “lower for longer.” Through early 2021, tech…
Disruptive technologies often trigger brutal sell‑offs in the sectors they threaten, but prices don’t fall forever. History suggests that share prices usually stabilize only after the earnings outlook stabilizes. You can see this pattern in past disruption episodes. Newspapers lost most of their market value as the internet reshaped advertising, and tobacco stocks were crushed…
Insurance is one of Warren Buffett’s favorite business models—but you don’t have to underwrite risk yourself to tap into its economics. Insurance brokers occupy a quietly powerful position in the global risk economy. They don’t usually take underwriting risk themselves; instead, they sit between businesses and insurers, helping clients design, place, and service insurance programs…
If you read Berkshire Hathaway’s shareholder letters, one theme appears again and again: insurance is the engine of the whole empire. Warren Buffett has called it the most important business they own – not because it’s flashy, but because of how its economics work. The key concept is “float.” Property‑casualty insurers collect premiums today and pay claims…
The US federal debt story is no longer about a distant 2030 problem; it is already reshaping policy today. By late 2025, total federal debt stood around 38–38.5 trillion, roughly 125% of GDP. With nominal GDP near 29–30 trillion, debt now exceeds output by a wide margin. That ratio is projected to keep grinding higher…
Gold’s latest rally isn’t just another cyclical trade. It sits on top of deep structural trends in politics, fiscal policy and global liquidity that all point in the same direction: the real value of paper currencies, especially the US dollar, is being chipped away over time. First is the political shift. In the US, a deliberately “weak…
Donald Trump’s push for Fed funds to drop toward 1% sounds completely at odds with nominating Kevin Warsh, a figure widely viewed as more hawkish on monetary policy. The tension is real, but it becomes less puzzling once you separate Trump’s short‑term rate preferences from the long‑run regime he wants the Fed to embody. Trump’s 1% rhetoric is about…
A Warsh Fed likely doesn’t mean an abrupt policy lurch on day one, but it does tilt the medium‑term regime. The core idea is a central bank that is more focused on long‑run price stability and less inclined to lean against every bout of market stress. That has several implications for how investors might think…
Kevin Warsh’s previous writing offers a clear window into a macro philosophy that is more rules‑based, inflation‑averse, and skeptical of oversized central banks than the post‑2008 norm. Across speeches, op‑eds, and interviews, several consistent themes emerge. Warsh has argued that “inflation is a choice,” not an accident, and that the Fed in recent years has…