Chris Watling

Founder of Longview Economics
Connecting macro to markets, into financial history, maths in markets & behavioural economics.

[Charlie Bilello @charliebilello]

SpaceX's market cap crossed above $3 trillion today in after hours trading.

That's higher than the market cap of Amazon ($2.65 trillion) & Microsoft ($2.97 trillion).

Microsoft Sales: $318 billion
Microsoft Net Income: $125 billion

Amazon Sales: $743 billion
Amazon Net Income: $91 billion

SpaceX Sales: $19 billion
SpaceX Net Income: -$9 billion

[PMH Capital @CapitalPmh]

FT 14th Jun'26

"The first half of 2026 has been the strongest for purchases of UK companies by foreign buyers in decades."

"The driver is we’re in an M&A wave and these UK firms are decent global businesses that are, for whatever reason, underperforming,” said one investment banker.

[Higgy @higgyboson]

America- "We're building rockets that can take people to Mars".

UK - "We're going to make people turn off their towel rails".

[Polling USA @USA_Polling]

A reminder of how many times Trump has said a deal is right around the corner with Iran

[Rubén Pueyo | EAW @Aqui_mi_casa]

Desde que aprendí a hacer así más tortillas, ya no quiero más omelettes.

[Merryn Somerset Webb @MerrynSW]

Who is keeping this year's list of things that have been promised by politicians.. but that definitely will not happen? Please add this.

[Saul Staniforth @SaulStaniforth]

Peter Kyle: the plan is great

Naga Munchetty: have you seen the plan?

Kyle: no

Munchetty: So how do you know its great?

Peter Kyle: "Because I have faith in a PM.. to fund the plan & design a plan & lead a plan, of course & he is the PM that is fit for the moment we're in"

[Creative Deduction @CreativeDeduct]

Food is not a human right.

Most people assume it must be. Food is a basic necessity for survival, so it feels natural to treat access to it as a fundamental right. But when activists and politicians declare that “everyone has a right to food”, they are not talking about a right in the traditional sense. They are claiming a positive right – an entitlement that others must be forced to fulfil.

This view confuses needs with rights. A genuine right, properly understood, is a claim of non-interference. You have a right not to be killed, assaulted or stolen from. These rights impose a duty on others to refrain from certain actions. They do not require anyone to provide you with food, shelter or healthcare.

A “right to food", by contrast, means that farmers, truck drivers, shopkeepers and taxpayers can be compelled - through taxation, regulation, or outright seizure - to supply it. This turns productive people into obligated servants of those who claim the right. It is not a right; it is a claim on other people’s labour and property.

Once the state accepts a duty to guarantee food, it must also claim the power to control production, prices and distribution. History shows what follows: central planning, shortages and the expansion of coercive authority over those who actually produce the food.

You cannot have both a right to other people’s labour and genuine individual rights at the same time. One must give way to the other.

[Mario Nawfal @MarioNawfal]

🛢️ Shell CEO drops a bombshell on the oil market:

The world is short 1.2 billion barrels, that’s 12 full days of global consumption gone missing because of the Iran war.

Over 10% of global crude production is offline, and the deficit is deepening every day.

Inventories are crashing toward the lowest levels since 2003. Rebalancing could take “close to a year, if not longer.”

This is the biggest supply shock in oil market history. Brace yourselves.

Source: @jackprandelli / Writer: Lynn

[JustDario @DarioCpx]

Oracle is literally having a mid-life crisis and gambling away all its and relatives' savings as if there is no tomorrow.

[Thomas Sowell Quotes @ThomasSowell]

Elon Musk: “There is an over allocation of talent in finance and law. Too many smart people go into finance and law. We should have fewer people doing law and finance and more people making stuff.”

[Chris Watling @LongviewEcon]

@Creditisoxygen @stevehou @Silicon_Data ??

[Chris Watling @LongviewEcon]

Bingo! Grt quote

"The mismatch is between a payoff that runs on the slow clock of organizational redesign and a financing structure that runs on the fast clock of capital markets."

Interesting article @KSimback

[Kevin Simback 🍷 @KSimback]

https://t.co/WBk7rvs8WG

[Justine Moore @venturetwins]

Me using Claude Opus 4.8 to rename a file

[Steve Hou @stevehou]

Different data sources and methodologies are allowed to naturally disagree. Based on the 10s of thousands data points @Silicon_Data tracks and our methodology, we don't see any dramatic swings in GPU rental prices, which continue to modestly move upwards. Scarcity is the theme.

[Silicon Data @Silicon_Data]

There's a second quote from this interview we liked. We couldn't agree more! Our goal is exactly to become that new class of "financial entrepreneurs" to help bring about new and useful financial instrument that can help manage, appropriately distribute the risks and foster more optimal capital allocation, when the stakes are becoming so enormous and consequential at the national and global levels.

"But I believe we are approaching a really interesting time. We’ve never really talked about the quantum of money. I think that’s where we are right now. 2025 was just the proof of concept that data centers, energy and chips were all needed. In 2026 the market is starting to recognize that if this continues, $800B of capex from just the four large public companies, not to mention the private, that everyone who’s an investor is going to be concentrated in certain names, and we are gonna actually hit concentration limits. We are seeing this across the board, I think the spreads are gonna widen. I think really good entrepreneurs are going to end up in partnership with entrepreneurs of another type, those that are financial entrepreneurs, who help to democratize credit assets, hybrid equity and other types of things. I don’t think the imagination is going to stop at chips, data and energy."

[Joe Weisenthal @TheStalwart]

No doubt @Silicon_Data has a way better grasp on this than me. But I don’t get why usage is always framed as “expensive SOTA models vs cheaper open weight ones.” What about cheaper, closed, non-SOTA models, which keep getting better and can ably handle many tasks?

[Ridge & Frost @RidgeandFrost]

🗣️ 'It's better to produce natural gas if we have it locally in the North Sea than to import a liquefied natural gas'

Founder and Chair of BeyondNetZero @LordJohnBrowne tells @WilfredFrost he thinks Ed Miliband is wrong about not drilling in the North Sea reducing emissions.

[James Chanos @RealJimChanos]

This isn’t even remotely true. $AMZN went public in 1997 at a $450M valuation, or 3x revenues. $GOOGL went public in 2004 at a $23B valuation and at 7x revenues. $META had a $104B valuation in 2012 at 20x revenues(and immediately sold off almost 50%). SpaceX dwarfs these numbers.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

The magnitude & brazen nature of the government payment fraud is staggering