Stefan Gasic

Financial Cartoonist | RWRI | MBA | CEFA & CESGA | “These pictures bust more BS than volumes in libraries.” -@nntaleb | ”Your talent is great.” -@ScottAdamsSays

[Stefan Gasic @NonMeek]

The market explained in one cartoon strip.

[Ricardo @Ric_RTP]

Today the EU made American AI illegal in 27 countries.

The reason is ONE sentence Microsoft's own lawyer said under oath:

This morning in Brussels, EU Tech Chief Henna Virkkunen unveiled the Cloud and AI Development Act. It's the most aggressive anti-American tech move from Europe since GDPR.

The law forces EU public sector procurement in banking, healthcare, defense, and energy to apply mandatory non-price factors favoring software and hardware built inside the EU. Microsoft Azure can be cheaper, AWS can be faster, Google Cloud can have the better model, and EU governments MUST legally prefer European alternatives.

AWS, Microsoft, and Google currently control roughly 70% of the European cloud market. Brussels is now openly targeting greater independence from US providers in cloud, AI, and semiconductors.

The largest regulatory market-share transfer in tech history is being written into law right now.

But the real story is how this happened...

On June 10, 2025, a man almost no one outside Brussels had heard of walked into the French Senate. His name is Anton Carniaux, Director of Public and Legal Affairs at Microsoft France.

Senator Dany Wattebled asked him under oath whether he could guarantee that data belonging to French citizens, stored on Microsoft European servers, would never be transmitted to US authorities without explicit consent from the French government.

Carniaux answered honestly. He admitted he could not guarantee it, because Microsoft must comply with the US CLOUD Act regardless of where European data physically sits. One sentence of sworn testimony from Microsoft's own counsel killed every sovereign cloud defense Big Tech had spent five years building.

It became the legal foundation for the law unveiled today.

Then Trump accelerated the divorce.

January 2025 brought executive orders expanding US surveillance authorities. Vance went to Munich and attacked European democracies on stage.

The tariffs followed and so did the Pentagon's $200 million AI contract war that ended with OpenAI replacing Anthropic after Hegseth labeled it a supply chain risk. So did OpenAI's Stargate and yesterday's Trump AI Executive Order, whose Section 3 lets the White House pick which AI companies get 30-day early access to frontier models. American AI was officially declared a US government strategic asset.

Europe heard every word of it.

On May 12, Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch told the French National Assembly that Europe had 24 months to build sovereign AI infrastructure or become a permanent US VASSAL state.

And the response came fast:

April 24: Cohere acquired Germany's Aleph Alpha for $20 billion with both Germany's and Canada's digital ministers in the room at the Berlin announcement. May 30: SoftBank committed up to $87 BILLION for French nuclear-powered data centers, the largest AI infrastructure project in European history.
Yesterday: EU Parliament announced it's dropping Google for French search engine Qwant tomorrow. France ordered every government workstation off Windows and onto Linux.

Today the Cloud and AI Development Act made all of it law.

- Mistral is building a 1.4 gigawatt AI campus near Paris by 2028 with Nvidia, MGX, and Bpifrance
- SAP's EU AI Cloud, launched last November, runs on Cohere, Mistral, and SAP's own sovereign infrastructure
- McKinsey forecasts $600 billion in sovereign AI needs by 2030

None of that money is going to Silicon Valley.

The America First AI policy built a wall around the world's most regulated economy, and American companies are on the wrong side of it.

Microsoft's lawyer told the truth in a Senate hearing nobody watched. Trump turned that admission into a national security narrative while the EU turned that narrative into procurement law.

And one entire continent walked away from the American tech stack...

[GuruAnaerobic @GuruAnaerobic]

Anyone who thinks this is skinny is insane. 25.4BMI is actually just into the 'overweight' category 😅

There are exceptions (mostly to do with higher muscle mass) but the healthiest (and most athletic) people on earth are light to medium weight for their frame.

The modern US framing of how heavy a 'real man' should be is warped. Staying lean, relatively strong, and light on your feet is a superpower which lasts into old age.

When you're young chase whatever physical goals you want, but YOU WILL AGE - that's when should shift your thinking if you want a healthy, robust, fit and vital old age. When you get to 50 you still have another 35years to live, it's not just a few years tagged on to your adulthood which you can ignore. Being healthy and fit WILL matter when you get there, trust me on this.

[David @David954FLA]

Aleksander Barkov becomes only the second player in professional hockey history to both captain an NHL team to a Stanley Cup Championship and his country to a World Hockey Championship.

Sidney Crosby was the only one prior to today.

Generational talent.

[Stefan Gasic @NonMeek]

Keep calm but SELLSELLSELL* your stocks today because the market will crash tomorrow.

You heard it here first.

*not investment advice

[Stefan Gasic @NonMeek]

@the_chart_life @Raysliquidity Bingo!

[Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський @ZelenskyyUa]

Thank you to Finland for the 33rd defense assistance package for Ukraine, worth €128 million. Strong, timely support is what strengthens our defense and ultimately compels Russia to realize it has to bring its war to an end.

Grateful to President @AlexStubb, Prime Minister @PetteriOrpo, and the Finnish people for their steadfast support. Everything must be done to ensure that Moscow finally takes steps toward peace — not toward expanding its aggression.

[Nassim Nicholas Taleb @nntaleb]

My IQ piece:
"To do well in life one needs to think independently. And one has to be a lunatic (or a psychologist) to believe that a standardized test will reveal independent thinking."

Edgar Morin (born Nahum) is a smart fellow.

[Financelot @FinanceLancelot]

This is insane! They need to find a home for $86B worth of SpaceX $SPCX stock on day one

They're planning to sell 30% to retail, normally 5% is risky

The sheer size of this retail allocation is 150x times larger than any previous IPO in history 🤪

@TheCompoundNews @NoelKapela

[Ben Norton @BenjaminNorton]

The world's richest centi-billionaire oligarch used his power to change the rules, so he could dump his garbage company (which is cartoonishly overvalued, unprofitable, and incinerating cash) on retail investors, using trillions of dollars in retirement funds as exit liquidity, all in order to become the first trillionaire.

This is the perfect metaphor for the US economy as a whole, which is entirely based on bubbles and scams.

[Financelot @FinanceLancelot]

Holy shit! They changed the rules for Elon again...

They waved the profitability rule & are adding SpaceX to indices only 5 days after IPO... normally it's 90

This forces 401k retirement & passive funds to buy SpaceX at elevated IPO pricing, holding the bags the entire way down

[Stefan Gasic @NonMeek]

@EGHaug @Stefano_Peron @DouadyPrimers It’s a combination of mathematical realities and extensive financial markets experience n stuff

[Michael Mauboussin @mjmauboussin]

This is the time of year when a lot of investment firms welcome interns. While our work is geared toward institutional investors, a lot of it can be useful for learning about markets and the investment process. Here are a handful of reports and how they can guide interns:

[Nassim Nicholas Taleb @nntaleb]

Finito.
I used to hold those who support Israel in moral disgust, eliciting a deep visceral revulsion.
Today I hold ALL those not disgusted by Israel in moral disgust.
Life is too short to tolerate evil & abettors of evil.

[Stefan Gasic @NonMeek]

@nntaleb Assolutamente bellissima 😍

[Stefan Gasic @NonMeek]

SpaceX will only be bought by “dumb money”:

1) die-hard Musk fans that will buy the stock no matter what

2) index funds that will buy stocks in the index no matter what

[Ed Elson @edels0n]

https://t.co/mtlXWVFnjR

[Ed Elson @edels0n]

I read all 277 pages of SpaceX's IPO filing so you don't have to.

Losses up 700%. Revenue decelerating. 107x price-to-sales multiple.

It's a trainwreck. Full breakdown below 👇

[Primers Of Raphael Douady @DouadyPrimers]

Next Primers in Paris June 1-6
Registration link in bio

[Stefan Gasic @NonMeek]

@STrosterud @nntaleb @GoujianofYue Same trend amongst clients who dislike searching for rare downtown parking spaces.

[Stefan Gasic @NonMeek]

Stocks will crash next Tuesday!

That’s tomorrow folks!

SELLSELLSELL* today!

*not investment advice

[Stefan Gasic @NonMeek]

@Porkchop_EXP @streamingdeluxe Mr Orange is right or wrong depending on how Northern Europe is defined in this conversation; right if NE = Nordic Countries (FI, SE, NO, DE), and wrong if NE = Europe on the wrong side of the Alps.