If there's magic [...] it's the magic of
fighting battles beyond endurance [...]
it's the magic of risking everything for
a dream that nobody sees but you.
- Eddie Dupris, Million Dollar Baby
This is awful. The last ever Denby Pottery going to the kiln. Why is there not uproar? Where’s the government in this?? We all have Denby in our homes, in family heirlooms, as our history and now it’s closing through lack of support, such a sad sad day. #SaveDenby@denbypottery
Most people think character is something you're born with. It isn't. It's the residue of five decisions you keep making — usually without noticing.
1. What you pay attention to.
Attention is the raw material of experience. William James said it a century ago: my experience is what I agree to attend to. The phone in your hand isn't stealing your life. It's revealing what you keep choosing to look at.
2. What you tolerate.
The behaviors you don't push back on become the behaviors around you. From your own procrastination to a colleague's interruption — silence reads as consent.
3. What you commit to in writing.
A value you haven't put on the calendar is a preference. Timeboxing your day is how you turn intention into identity. Schedule builders, not to-do list makers.
4. Who you spend time with.
You don't rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of the people whose discomfort you've learned to share. Pick carefully.
5. What you do with discomfort.
This is the one underneath the other four. Every distraction, every broken commitment, every avoided conversation traces back to an unwillingness to sit with a feeling. Time management is pain management.
None of these are personality traits. They're decisions. Which means tomorrow you can make different ones.
🚨The US stock market is more overvalued today than at any point in the last 125 years:
Tobin's Q Ratio hit 2.11, the highest reading since records began in 1900 and +149% above its long-term average of 0.85, according to Advisor Perspectives analysis.
The Q Ratio measures the total market value of all US corporations relative to the replacement cost of their physical assets.
A ratio above 1.0 suggests the market is pricing companies above what it would cost to rebuild them from scratch.
At 2.11, investors are paying more than twice what these companies would cost to replace, the highest level on record.
However, this is not a short-term timing indicator, and high readings can persist for extended periods, particularly where intangible assets, software, brand value, and earnings power are poorly captured by replacement cost measures.
Historically, extreme Q Ratio readings have tended to align with late-stage bull market conditions, including prior major peaks, but the signal is more structural than tactical.
The market is not just expensive, it is priced for perfection.
🚨 EVERYTHING THAT COULD GO WRONG FOR MARKETS WENT WRONG TODAY.
S&P 500 down -1.65%, wiping out $1.14 trillion.
Nasdaq down -2.60%, wiping out $1.11 trillion.
Gold down -3.38%, wiping out $1 trillion.
Silver down -6.9%, wiping out $280 billion.
Bitcoin down -6.31%, wiping out $80 billion.
In total $2.5 TRILLION wiped out in a single session. These were not isolated moves. Everything started breaking at the same time.
It started with the jobs report this morning.
The US economy added 172,000 jobs in May. Wall Street expected 88,000. That is almost double.
On any normal day, strong jobs is good news. But inflation is already at 3.8% and oil is sitting at $90. A labor market this strong tells the Fed it cannot cut interest rates and may actually need to raise them.
The probability of a rate hike this year went from 40% to 57% in a single day. That spooked every investor holding tech and growth stocks because higher rates mean those stocks are worth less today.
Then the AI trade started cracking.
Yesterday Broadcom reported record earnings: revenue up 48%, AI chip sales up 143% and the stock still crashed 12.6%. The reason was simple.
Broadcom did not raise its AI revenue targets for the year. Investors had expected it to. That single miss made people ask a question they had been avoiding for months: are we paying too much for AI stocks?
That question got louder today when a research firm called SemiAnalysis revealed that Nvidia's next-generation AI chips will need significantly less memory than everyone assumed, roughly half of what the market was pricing in.
Memory chips are what companies like SK Hynix and Samsung make. SK Hynix fell nearly 10% today. Samsung fell over 6%.
South Korea's entire stock market crashed 5.5% in a single session. Japan's semiconductor stocks did the same.
And then Anthropic added fuel to the fire by publishing a report warning that AI is getting close to the point where it can improve itself without human help and calling for a global pause in AI development.
Coming on the same day as the memory demand news and Broadcom's miss, it fed a single growing fear across the market: what if the AI boom is moving faster than the business models can keep up with?
Underneath all of this, there is a liquidity problem nobody is talking about.
SpaceX goes public next week at a $1.75 trillion valuation. Anthropic just filed to go public. OpenAI is next.
These three companies together are worth $4 to $5 trillion. Fund managers need cash to buy into these listings.
But cash levels are already at their lowest since early 2024. The only way to raise cash is to sell what they already own. That selling is happening right now.
The new Fed Chair Kevin Warsh will also hold his very first policy meeting in 11 days. He was appointed by Trump with the expectation of cutting rates.
He is now walking into a situation where inflation is high, oil is high, and the job market is running hot. Investors do not know what he will do.
When nobody knows what the most powerful central banker in the world will decide in less than two weeks, the safest move is to reduce risk today.
Everything that could go wrong, went wrong at the same time. A hot jobs report, a collapsing ceasefire, a crack in the AI trade, a trillion dollar liquidity drain, and a Fed meeting with no clear outcome.
Phenomenal detail from @FT obituary of the great Alex Younger, from @charles_clover & @JP_Rathbone:
When Dominic Cummings called him for the first time, he asked Younger what he was doing. “Plotting evil shit,” Younger replied.
https://t.co/8zp813oNi6
Major cheat code in life: Master the graceful exit. From conversations. From parties. From opportunities. "This has been wonderful, but I need to go." No elaborate excuses. No fake emergencies. Just clear, kind departure. Most people don't know how to leave. They stay too long or leave badly. Master the exit.
You're a man. Act broke. Delete food delivery apps. Drive a modest car. Live in a cheap apartment. Keep a simple wardrobe. Ignore their judgment. Stack cash. Invest, invest, invest. Set yourself up for life.
Younger parents tend to ask my parents for advice.
I've condensed some key points over the years.
Run these psyops on your children:
- You are gifted intellectually
- You can unlock your supreme athleticism.
- Work diligently on skills and education that nobody can take away from you. That is the secret to everlasting confidence.
- You are the type of person who can achieve whatever you want when you discipline yourself to work for it – It does not just happen.
- You have an unending capacity to work, you are not lazy.
- You set your standard. Others are to fit in with you.
- Never worry about making friends, once you truly get comfortable being alone, people are drawn to you.
- Everything is a skill. You can learn anything; anything becomes more interesting the more you learn about it.
- Whatever you're interested in, be excellent in your chosen path. You will be supported.
- Genius is a state accessible to you.
- Nobody has the right to disrespect you, even at your young age. In any room you find yourself in, you have valuable contributions. They have inherent valuable because the words come through someone like you.
- Do not shrink yourself. You deserve to take up space.
- You can come to me for anything, even if you think I'll be upset – which I might be. But with me, you can unburden your conscience with the truth. I'm with you always.
I will always be the fortress that supports you until my dying days; and when I'm gone, gaze upon the spread of the heavens.
Know that I support you still.