WH

Hobbyist Investor

[Gregory Blotnick @gregoryblotnick]

Q: "Why did you have a fallout with Warren? Are you guys on good terms now?"

Alice Schroeder: "I wouldn't call it a fallout. He made himself extremely vulnerable when he opened himself up to do this book, without any control over the contents. It was the right decision and he did it because he knew it was the only way to get a credible book. Then, as you would expect, when he read it, the book did not perfectly match the narrative of his own life that he carries in his mind. That was pretty uncomfortable for him. One of his friends wrote me a letter that said, oh my god, you captured him exactly but it was like taking all his clothes off in public. And that's true. So, I have a lot of empathy, because he made himself vulnerable in a way that I would never do myself. It was courageous of him. The end result is that the book makes him feel uncomfortable. He would rather not think about it. There's no personal issue between us at all, it's pretty comfortable actually."

https://t.co/N5NmokEq2C

[Andrew Feldman @andrewdfeldman]

When you build the fastest AI processor in the world, you bring it everywhere with you.

It’s with me at the kitchen table.
It goes to the gym with me (admittedly infrequently).
It goes on vacation with me.

Here I took it Vegas.

[Nicholas Mugalli @RealNickMugalli]

I wonder what Bessent, Soros, and Druckenmiller would do if they were still at Quantum Fund and another Treasury Secretary pulled a stunt like this. They’d smell blood in the water and squeeze the Treasury until the yield curve broke completely

Let the bond market speak is right

[Andrew Feldman @andrewdfeldman]

@firstadopter

[𝖓𝖎𝖓𝖊 🕯 @atlanticesque]

John Thompson has been studying the guqin—a silk string zither—and classical Chinese music since 1974.

Here he is with Hong Kong filmmaker Lau Shing Hon performing a drinking song first published 1589 and attributed to third-century poet Ruan Ji: Jiu Kuang (Wine Mad)

[Turner Novak 🍌🧢 @TurnerNovak]

VCs have gone absolutely mad

I love Chocolate chip cookies. But the largest exit in CPG history was $8B (Coca Cola acquiring Body Armor).

$21B for a chipmaker has to be top of the market?

[Bohan @loubohan]

Everyone in the Valley has a take on whether China is winning AI, robotics, and biotech. Almost nobody understands how the capital works

Notes from meeting China's tier-1 investors and founders on how their venture ecosystem actually works. https://t.co/Dii6Oeqn1A

[Balaji @balajis]

Should the global tech community continue investing in Malaysia?

Given recent events, I raise this question respectfully for the consideration of Prime Minister Yang Amat Berhormat Dato’ Seri Anwar bin Ibrahim (@anwaribrahim), for the people of Malaysia, and for our friends in the Malaysian tech community. The answer will be of interest to anyone in global tech that’s considering building, investing, or expanding in Malaysia, including executives at Google, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft, founders of tech unicorns like Coinbase and Solana, and investors at the world’s largest venture capital funds like a16z and Polychain.

As context, I am the former CTO of Coinbase and former General Partner at a16z. In October 2024, I opened a startup society called Network School in Malaysia, because I felt I’d been invited in by the government’s pro-tech policies.

Specifically, the KL20 initiative set out Malaysia’s ambition of becoming a top 20 global tech hub. Their MDEC digital nomad visas and MM2H investor visas were created to facilitate an influx of global talent and capital. And the Johor-Singapore Special Economic Zone was announced to facilitate the flow of capital and talent between Malaysia and Singapore, where I live. When taken in combination with Malaysia’s datacenter buildout and its policy of welcoming visa-free visits for 98% of the world, it seemed like Malaysia might be a great place to build a global tech hub that was simultaneously inexpensive and easy to visit (especially for non-Westerners).

And that’s what we did, by creating Network School. It’s an international tech community with its first node in Forest City, Malaysia. We picked Forest City because it had millions of square feet of empty space, because it was one hour from Singapore’s capital markets, and because it was within the Johor-Singapore Special Economic Zone. Then, within 18 months, without a single penny of government money, we built Network School into a global attraction that brought thousands of engineers, investors, and builders from 70+ countries to learn technology, burn calories, earn online, and have fun, integrating with the local Malaysian economy along the way.

Indeed, in terms of quantifiable contribution to the Malaysian economy, we’ve already invested 100M+ MYR in our campus to make it startup-friendly. For perspective, that’s about 4% of the budget of Johor, the Malaysian state where Forest City is located. We employ dozens of Malaysians directly and indirectly at every level from executive to staff. We’ve backed Malaysian tech startups like Collektr, hosted events for local teams like Superteam Malaysia, and are major customers of many local businesses like barbers, laundromats, and restaurants. We’ve also revitalized the multibillion-dollar Forest City project, causing millions of MYR in real estate appreciation. And, as the video below describes, we were on the cusp of a 500M+ MYR expansion to grow our community, as well as a global merit scholarship with my friend Amjad Masad of Replit.

However, that emerging multi-billion dollar success story — which should rightfully have been hailed as a huge victory for the pro-tech policies of the Malaysian government — is at risk of being derailed by a fake story spread by an anonymous account named MP4P.

In short: on the day before the July 11 Johor elections, MP4P posted an Instagram post falsely accusing Network School of harboring illegal aliens. The sensational accusations caused a tizzy in Malaysia, until Malaysian authorities came to our campus on July 14 to investigate. (I should note that the officers were very polite and professional.) After checking hundreds of physical passports from 40 countries, including dual passport holders, the authorities confirmed to the press on July 15 that all travel documents were in order. During the process, we cooperated fully; in the thread below you can see a photo of the men, women, and children of Network School smiling and holding up their passports in the bright daylight. Our faces are shown and our names are known; we have nothing to hide.

With that said, the process is the punishment. What MP4P did is very similar to the American crime of “swatting”, because MP4P created a hoax report of a serious threat, thereby forcing the Malaysian police to take time away from protecting the Malaysian people towards investigating a nonexistent issue. Moreover, this anonymous MP4P account has also called for Malaysia to boycott Apple, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft…a move that would cost ordinary Malaysians thousands of jobs…even while MP4P’s own Instagram collaborators promote their Apple and Google apps! I mean, we aren’t talking about a credible accuser, but just someone screaming inconsistently at the top of their lungs on social media for traffic, an all-too-common phenomenon these days.

Anyway, at this point, all further investment we were planning to make in Malaysia is on hold until we get sufficient assurance that such issues won’t recur. So are the investment plans of many of our friends, including the execs and investors at global tech firms that we brought to Forest City. Because to put it very plainly: we have invested 100M+ MYR in Malaysia, while creating jobs for dozens of Malaysians, and our faces and names are known. Our Malaysian executives and employees deserve the benefit of the doubt over anonymous internet trolls.

There are two paths forward. In the first case, if Malaysia still wants continued global tech investment, if it wants to be a top 20 tech hub, if it wants us to revitalize Forest City, then we request an audience with the Prime Minister’s office to discuss the terms of a memorandum of understanding between Network School and the Malaysian government, similar to the document recently signed between the Solana Foundation and the Kazakhstan government.

Specifics can of course be discussed, but we would publicly commit to abiding by all Malaysian laws (we already do) and respecting Malaysia’s sovereignty (never in question). In return, they’d get to know our friendly community, and realize that we actually chose Malaysia because we thought it was a great place to build a tech hub where engineers from the global South, investors from the West, and builders from Malaysia itself could meet new people, build cool things, and perhaps create millions of dollars in economic growth in the fullness of time.

That vision of peace and trade, internationalism and entrepreneurialism, is still on the table. We aren’t asking for any money — just a meeting, to help restore confidence in Malaysia as an investable jurisdiction. Alternatively, if you don’t want our investment, or those of our colleagues at billion dollar funds and trillion dollar companies, we will of course respect your wishes, and reallocate our capital to other countries instead.

Either way, we will remain friends and abide by your decision. Please let us know.

[Brett Harrison @BrettHarrison]

Compute options will be as transformative to the US AI industry as compute futures. Sellers and buyers of compute won't only use options for insurance, they'll write options and get paid. Covered calls and cash-secured puts:

Compute sellers: covered calls

Compute sellers such as neoclouds are long inventory: racks of accelerators that will be rented out over the coming years. Against the capacity they already own, they can write covered calls on GPU-hour prices above today's market and collect the premium as income. If prices stay flat or drift lower, they keep the premium as yield on top of their rental revenue. If prices rise above the strike price at expiration, they rent out capacity at the strike price while still keeping the premium. The upside beyond the strike is capped, but in return the seller converts a portion of future GPU price volatility into present cash. At each expiry, the seller can keep writing calls against inventory, harvesting premium from a depreciating asset.

Compute buyers: cash-secured puts

Compute buyers such as frontier model companies and AI labs are short inventory, looking to acquire rental time on GPUs. Buying futures locks in their effective price, and buying calls insures against rising prices. But there's another important derivatives trading strategy for compute buyers: writing cash-secured puts. If there's a price below the prevailing GPU rental rate that a buyer would be happy to pay, they can sell a put at that strike and immediately collect the premium as income. If prices rise, they keep the premium when the put expires out of the money. If prices fall to the strike or below, they effectively buy compute at the lower price, partially subsidized by the premium they collected.

Both strategies, executed with discipline and proper risk management, generate income while the worst-case exercise scenarios align with the natural hedge.

In summary:
• Futures: lock in the forward price of compute.
• Buying options: insure against adverse moves in GPU prices.
• Selling covered calls or cash-secured puts: generate income where exercise aligns with the natural hedging outcome.

These strategies are hallmarks of mature US derivative markets facilitated by CFTC oversight. The American Innovation Exchange and our industry partners are ready to support compute as a US-developed asset class from the beginning.

[WH @WHKL_Ong]

@Jason well done! im planning the same this year

[Negligible Capital @negligible_cap]

https://t.co/8WaPe6QT6I

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Lee Kuan Yew was a genius

[Joe Weisenthal @TheStalwart]

In my entire life, I have never read anything like this footnote from a piece of bank or asset management research.

[NVIDIA @nvidia]

Water usage has been a hot topic in the AI data center world, but the numbers may surprise you.

According to the Manhattan Institute, data centers use 0.2 percent of daily water usage in the U.S. and that number has dramatically decreased in the past few years due to a new method: liquid cooling.

By moving to 45°C liquid cooling, AI factories in favorable climates can use dry coolers instead of conventional cooling-tower-based systems, cutting facility cooling water use from roughly 2.6M gallons per MW per year to near zero.

Liquid cooling enables AI factories to be both water and energy efficient, while creating opportunities for heat reuse and dispersal to local communities, allowing these factories to become energy grid assets.

Learn more below ⬇️

https://t.co/7WanoPNKTR

[Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 @pmarca]

I have had 1,000 conversations with government officials that go like this:

1. “How do we have a Silicon Valley of our own?”
2. [I list the half dozen key things]
3. “But what if we can’t do any of those?”

The world would be better with 10, 100, 1,000 more Silicon Valleys.

[Hunter Biden @HunterBiden]

@IterIntellectus Finally, a headline I’m okay with

[Dirt Cheap Banks @dirtcheapbanks]

I have built a spreadsheet. It has 847 rows. Each row is a community bank in the United States with a market cap below $200 million, a price-to-tangible-book ratio under 0.85, a non-performing loan ratio below 0.4%, and a CEO who has been in the role for at least twelve years. I update it every Sunday from 6 AM to 11 AM while my family attends church without me. I have visited the headquarters of nineteen of these banks in person. I have eaten a complimentary lobby cookie at each one. The cookies are how you can tell. A bank with a good cookie is a bank that respects its depositors. A bank with a stale cookie is a bank that will be acquired within 36 months at a 40% premium. I am never wrong about the cookies. The cookies have never lied to me. The cookies are the only thing left that tells the truth.

[Jawwwn @jawwwn_]

Stanley Druckenmiller: “Palantirians, a term I’ve heard for many years as being a cult.”

Palantir CEO Alex Karp:
“A cult where I get no sexual benefits by the way. Just to be clear.”

“It’s a rare cult with no sex and very little drugs and we’re not poisoning anyone but… yep.”

[George Noble @gnoble79]

This is the most SHAMELESS structural manipulation of a major index I've ever seen.

SpaceX is preparing what could be the largest IPO in history.

Target valuation: $1.75 trillion.

That would make it the sixth-largest company in America on day one.

And Nasdaq wants the listing so badly they're literally CHANGING how the Nasdaq-100 works.

In February, Nasdaq published a "consultation" proposing sweeping changes to how companies enter the index. The timing is pure coincidence, of course.

Just like it's pure coincidence that SpaceX has reportedly made fast index inclusion a CONDITION of listing on Nasdaq.

Here's what they're proposing:

A new "Fast Entry" rule would let any newly listed company whose market cap ranks in the top 40 of current Nasdaq-100 members get added to the index after just 15 trading days.

No seasoning period. No liquidity requirements. Completely exempt from the standards every other company had to meet.

Currently, new public companies typically wait up to a year before they're eligible for major index inclusion.

That waiting period exists for a reason. It lets the market establish real price discovery. It protects passive investors from being forced into untested, illiquid stocks.

And Nasdaq wants to throw all of that out. For ONE listing.

But the Fast Entry rule isn't even the worst part...

The real scandal is the 5x float multiplier.

Right now, the S&P 500 uses a free-float adjusted methodology. If only 5% of a company's shares are available for public trading, the index weights you at 5% of total market cap.

That's common sense. You weight a company based on what investors can actually buy.

Nasdaq's current methodology already uses total market cap rather than free-float for weighting. But for very low-float stocks, they at least had a 10% minimum float threshold.

Under the new proposal, that threshold DISAPPEARS entirely.

Instead, any stock with less than 20% free float gets weighted at FIVE TIMES its actual float percentage, capped at 100%.

Do the math on SpaceX:

If SpaceX IPOs at $1.75 trillion and floats 5% of its shares, there would be roughly $87.5 billion worth of stock available for public trading.

Under Nasdaq's proposed 5x multiplier, the index would weight SpaceX at 25% of its total market cap. That means passive funds would be forced to buy as if SpaceX were a $437.5 billion company.

But only $87.5 billion of stock actually exists in the market.

You are forcing hundreds of billions in passive buying into a $87.5 billion float.

QQQ alone manages nearly $400 billion. The total Nasdaq-100 ecosystem represents over $1.4 trillion in exposure across ETFs, mutual funds, structured notes, and derivatives.

Every single passive vehicle tracking this index would be REQUIRED to buy SpaceX at whatever price the market dictates.

On Day 15.

With zero price discovery. Zero track record as a public company. And a float so thin you could read through it.

So what this actually does is it creates a structural wealth transfer mechanism.

The passive bid from index funds pushes the stock price higher. That higher price benefits exactly one group of people: the insiders and early investors who own the other 95% of the shares.

And when lock-up periods expire 90 to 180 days later? Those insiders sell into the artificially inflated passive bid. Your 401(k) is the exit liquidity.

This is the fundamental corruption of indexing.

Indexing used to be brilliant. Low cost. Efficient. You were free-riding on the price discovery done by active managers. The index reflected the market.

Now the index IS the market. Trillions of dollars flow blindly into whatever the index tells them to buy. And the people who control the index methodology are changing the rules to serve the interests of a single IPO candidate.

The S&P 500 requires companies to have at least 50% of shares available for public trading. It requires 6 to 12 months of seasoning. It uses free-float adjusted weighting so passive investors aren't buying phantom liquidity.

Nasdaq is doing the exact opposite. 15 days. No float requirement. 5x multiplier on insider-held shares.

Every passive investor in QQQ, QQQM, and every fund benchmarked to the Nasdaq-100 should understand what's about to happen:

The rules are being rewritten to benefit IPO issuers and early-stage insiders, and your capital is the tool being USED to enrich them.

45 years in this business and I've watched Wall Street find creative new ways to separate retail investors from their money in every cycle. But usually they at least try to be subtle about it.

This one they put in a PDF and called it a "consultation."

What's your take?

[WH @WHKL_Ong]

@InvestInJapan I guessed $40 - was it actually about $10? No way