Hypernormal Times

Trying to use 4 decades of financial market experience to good effect in my own investment performance. Where everything is forever until it is no more.

[Hypernormal Times @TimesHyper]

1.Get Some Real Asset Protection  
2. Pricing Power Matters
3.Innovation is Difficult
4.Success is Often Oblique
5. Data Delivers Advantage
6. Skin in the Game Mitigates Risk
7. You Can’t Rely on Mean Reversion 
8. Compounding is Powerful 
9. Debt is Dangerous
10. Buy & Hold

[Hypernormal Times @TimesHyper]

@hkuppy 🤣

[Hypernormal Times @TimesHyper]

@DavidBCollum Gave up on it about five years ago.

[Hypernormal Times @TimesHyper]

@JavierBlas @fionaharvey @IEA Have we reached peak wood burning yet?

[Hypernormal Times @TimesHyper]

Malinvestment

[Matt Ridley @mattwridley]

Three decades ago, when the COP summits got under way, it was reasonable to hope that decarbonisation might prove to be easy and cheap as well as urgent. Now we know better.

Bjorn Lomborg, president of the Copenhagen Consensus, a project set up to identify the greatest challenges facing the world and how to solve them, has launched a new website – https://t.co/ovv3H9ycq1.

In Britain’s case, if we reach net zero by 2050, the world will be 0.00376C less warm in 2100. That is to say, at a cost of £695billion we can make our great-grandchildren’s lives cooler by under four thousandths of a degree Celsius – less in summer in the daytime, more in winter at night.

[Hypernormal Times @TimesHyper]

Makes sense.

[Nury Vittachi @NuryVittachi]

THINK ABOUT IT.

- Bill Gates had lots of illicit girlfriends—no problem.

- Elon Musk has multiple children with multiple women—no problem.

- Dario Amodei dated a Chinese woman, Jade Wang, before marrying Cami Clark, who pitched a pornography business to none other than Jeffrey Epstein—no problem.

- But Jensen Huang commits old-fashioned infidelity—and this is such a big problem that he has to resign?

Doesn’t make sense.

Here’s the real story.

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CHAPTER ONE: BIDEN’S CHIP WAR
Jensen Huang of Nvidia was puzzled. It was 2022, and his video-graphics processors had become globally popular as the heart of high-end computing across the planet.

But that autumn, Biden violated the World Trade Organization’s most fundamental principles. He ordered the world’s makers of advanced semiconductor chips and chipmaking equipment (in the Netherlands, Taiwan and Japan) to stop sales to China.

Biden’s administration implied that the chips were for China’s military gear, but this was a lie. The US’s own security establishment admitted that 99.9 per cent were used for civilian purposes, like medical technology and AI computing.

Huang was dismayed. He could no longer sell Nvidia’s A100 and H100 to China.

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CHAPTER TWO: SOLVING A PROBLEM
Jensen Huang was a problem-solver. In February of 2024, Nvidia launched the H20, a made-for-China AI chip less powerful than its US-only top model.

That way he could keep the US government happy but also have something to sell to the Chinese.

Not everyone in the US was happy about this, and export rules fluctuated.

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CHAPTER THREE: THE DEEPSEEK MOMENT
In January 2025, a nerdy young man from the Chinese finance industry announced that his firm Deepseek had quickly and cheaply created a high-efficiency open-weight AI.

The implication was huge: the Chinese were finding ways to develop top level AI functionality without massive clusters of top-tier Nvidia GPUs.

Jensen Huang knew he had to respond urgently to keep his place in the China market. He flew to meet trade officials in Beijing in the middle of April and vowed to make "every effort" to serve the Chinese.

The US anti-China hawks had been quietly mobilizing—and made an announcement. In April of 2025, the US banned all export of Jensen Huang’s H20s to China.

Unbelievable! The Nvidia CEO was furious. "Anybody who thought that one chess move to ban China from H20s would cut off their AI ability is deeply uninformed," Huang told an interviewer at a trade meeting in Taipei.

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CHAPTER FOUR: HUANG’S SPECIAL SKILL
Then came some rare good news. The Nvidia CEO started lobbying Trump behind the scenes. Huang was a master negotiator – and his efforts proved successful.

In the middle of July, 2025, Huang was back in China—his third trip in 12 months.

Huang appeared without his signature black leather jacket. Instead, he wore a traditional Chinese tang suit, and made some of his speech in Mandarin.

Washington had cleared the way for Nvidia to export the H20 to China, he said. We’re back!

Trump had demanded a cash cut of H20 sales in return for approving the exports—US government policy appeared to be literally for sale.

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CHAPTER FIVE: SPOOKS WERE NOT HAPPY
Huang was moving chips to China again, and the anti-China hawks in the US government were unhappy—and so were the spooks.

There’s a widespread tendency to visualize the US intelligence community as right-leaning hard men, Trumpites in black suits.

This was the opposite of the truth. The CIA leadership greatly preferred the simple, blanket negativity towards “the enemy” characteristic of the Democratic Party. With Russians, Chinese, and North Koreans portrayed as cartoon villains, black ops were justifiable.

But for all his bluster, Trump had a propensity towards treating the leaders of Russia, China and even North Korea, as actual humans who could be negotiated with.

This transactional approach was enormously problematic for the CIA, which needed cartoon villains to justify their annual budget of more than US$15 billion.

And Trump’s habit of parachuting unsuitable new leaders in to command the intelligence community—such as the widely disliked Mike Pompeo—crystalized the negativity, as CIA chroniclers have written.

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CHAPTER SIX: A TWIST IN THE TALE
Jensen Huang’s celebrations were short-lived. In an unexpected twist, China in September 2025 said it did not want Nvidia chips and would no longer buy them.

- US$15 billion in sales projections vanished.

- Nvidia had to write off a reported $5.5 billion in inventory losses.

- The company had now completely lost access to China's AI market, estimated at US$50 billion.

- And hard evidence was emerging that Chinese companies were building alternatives even for CUDA (a unique element in Nvidia chips).

Huang wanted more positivity from the US. Nvidia was a US firm, and it went from having a 95% market share in China to 0%. “I can’t imagine any policymaker thinking that that’s a good idea,” he told reporters.

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CHAPTER SEVEN: AGAIN, HE SOLVES THE PROBLEM
But Huang’s extraordinary skill in dealing with Trump paid off again, and by mid-2026, the Nvidia business found a complex equilibrium had emerged in its China business.

Huang had (in December 2025) persuaded the US President to allow Nvidia to sell even the high-powered H200 chip to China, as long as the US government got 25% of the take. So a range of Nvidia chips could again be sold in China.

- Other Nvidia chips were arriving in China via the black market.

- There were suspicions that companies in Singapore and Malaysia, such as Megaspeed, were flouting export restrictions, also delivering chips.

- Some Nvidia chips were stuck in Hong Kong, trapped by the confusing, ever-changing rules, but were expected to be released eventually.

- On the downside (from Huang’s point of view), new China-origin chips, notably Huawei’s Ascend 950, were catching up with advanced capabilities that mimicked those of Nvidia.

In short, China was back in the game.

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CHAPTER EIGHT: TAKING HIM DOWN
Something had to be done. China had to be dealt with. But first, Huang had to be taken down.

The US anti-China hawks saw Huang’s success in making deals with Trump as a key part of the problem. It was an element which had to be surgically removed.

The CIA and their partners in the western mainstream media sprang into action.

In October 2026, the US intelligence community told New York Times reporters that there were suspicions that Huang’s mistress, Alice Huang Le, was a Chinese spy.

It provided no evidence.

The allegation was plainly ridiculous—the flow of legitimate and illegitimate chips across the border was no secret, and the idea that discussions about the detailed minutiae of nano-level semiconductor engineering could be exchanged during pillow talk was ridiculous, even comedic.

But when the US intelligence community and the mainstream media join forces, they’re virtually invincible.

At this moment in the process, the complicit media are playing its role. A typical headline was that in the Economist yesterday:

“Jensen Huang must resign.”

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EPILOGUE

Jensen Huang resigned.

Trump has been weakened.

The world’s public has been fooled with the “honeypot” story.

China’s Huawei is pressing ahead—with new, powerful versions of its Ascend chips slated to come out in 2027 and 2028.
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[Hypernormal Times @TimesHyper]

@Ed_Miliband 🤡

[Hypernormal Times @TimesHyper]

About right 👍🏼

[Handre @Handre]

Economist tier list:

[Hypernormal Times @TimesHyper]

@UKLabour 🤡s

[Hypernormal Times @TimesHyper]

@TorstenBell 🤡

[Hypernormal Times @TimesHyper]

@agnostoxxx But if that one doesn't work, they can find more. Show me the man and I will show you the crime.

[Hypernormal Times @TimesHyper]

My God, I think he's finally got it.

[Chris Rose @ArchRose90]

David Cameron, who led the Remain campaign is right here:

"I mean, our economic problems are we are overspending, over-borrowing, over-taxing, over-regulated, and far too much being spent on working age welfare. Those are a set of problems that have nothing to do with Brexit."

[Hypernormal Times @TimesHyper]

https://t.co/UzVwDrXSkx

[Kuppy @hkuppy]

No disrespect, but you’ve never built a massive empire of related party SPVs, self-dealt corporate guarantees, related party circular transactions, sham-sales, and odd-ball financings of partly-owned entities, etc.

I think that only Jeff Skilling can save $NVDA. Let’s bring him out of retirement…

[Catherine McBride OBE @CeeMacBee]

You would think the UK's "Climate Transition" Minister would know that this 'windy little island' has had almost NO wind for 3 days.

But she doesn't, probably because she is one of the 100s of MPs, public sevants, and climate activists attend COP in Turkey at UK taxpayers expense.

[Hypernormal Times @TimesHyper]

Will history record that the AI trade was brought down by an election or an erection?

[Hypernormal Times @TimesHyper]

https://t.co/xwS02CZS2Q

[Hypernormal Times @TimesHyper]

Credibility at Risk
Hypernormal Report on a hot US inflation print, a Fed weighing a half-point hike, diesel nobody wants, and the all important IPO for an age of miracles.

[Hypernormal Times @TimesHyper]

Meanwhile on the ECM desk at Goldman. H/T Le Shrub

[Hypernormal Times @TimesHyper]

Very good listen

[Wilfred Frost @WilfredFrost]

🚨NEW EPISODE🚨with financial historian EDWARD CHANCELLOR - 400 yrs of financial history tells him that we're in a bubble.

"It makes sense to stand back, wait for the bubble burst, observe the shakeout, & then see which companies appear to be gathering a dominant position."

We cover:
- rising rates most common factor before bubble bursts
- poor government finances makes situation particularly dangerous
- bubbles are bad at identifying the long term winners
- Messianic leaders in bubbles - Sir John Blunt in South Sea Bubble 1720s vs #JensenHuang #ElonMusk #DarioAmodei #SamAltman
- "the more information we have, paradoxically, the more irrational our behaviour becomes" - newspapers, telephone, internet inflated bubbles...and now AI?
- Lessons for today from 1630s Tulip Mania; 1720s South Sea Bubble; Railways 1840s; 1920s; 1980s Japan; Dot-Com
- Avoid index funds

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
05:24 Three stages of a bubble
07:41 Social aspect of bubbles
10:00 Investing vs gambling
12:11 Tulip mania & early 1600s
15:02 1690s – first contrarians
19:00 South Sea Bubble 1720s
21:14 Momentum vs Greater Fool
25:00 Messianic leaders today vs Sir John Blunt in South Sea Bubble
29:12 Midterms – mirrors of history?
32:06 Railway mania 1840s vs today
36:15 1920s: radio, tickers and how faster information fuels speculation
40:33 Japan 1980s & moral hazard
43:23 Dot-com bubble vs today
47:09 Real winners emerge after bubble bursts
49:01 Bubble aspects today
52:24 Government debt makes things worse
55:00 History gives confidence this is a bubble
56:40 Rising rates pops bubbles
59:45 Avoid passive index investing
@chancellor_e

[Hypernormal Times @TimesHyper]

@otemple79 @TheSecretAcct Love Costco 👍🏼