The vibes in SF feel pretty frenetic right now. The divide in outcomes is the worst I've ever seen.
Over the last 5yrs, a group of ~10k people - employees at Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI, Nvidia, Meta TBD, founders - have hit retirement wealth of well above $20M (back of the envelope AI estimation).
Everyone outside that group feels like they can work their well-paying (but <$500k) job for their whole life and never get there.
Worse yet, layoffs are in full swing. Many software engineers feel like their life's skill is no longer useful. The day to day role of most jobs has changed overnight with AI.
As a result,
1. The corporate ladder looks like the wrong building to climb.
Everyone's trying to align with a new set of career "paths": should I be a founder? Is it too late to join Anthropic / OpenAI? should I get into AI? what company stock will 10x next? People are demanding higher salaries and switching jobs more and more.
2. There’s a deep malaise about work (and its future).
Why even work at all for “peanuts”? Will my job even exist in a few years? Many feel helpless. You hear the “permanent underclass” conversation a lot, esp from young people. It's hard to focus on doing good work when you think "man, if I joined Anthropic 2yrs ago, I could retire"
3. The mid to late middle managers feel paralyzed.
Many have families and don't feel like they have the energy or network to just "start a company". They don't particularly have any AI skills. They see the writing on the wall: middle management is being hollowed out in many companies.
4. The rich aren’t particularly happy either.
No one is shedding tears for them (and rightfully so). But those who have "made it" experience a profound lack of purpose too. Some have gone from <$150k to >$50M in a few years with no ramp. It flips your life plans upside down. For some, comparison is the thief of joy. For some, they escape to NYC to "live life". For others still, they start companies "just cuz", often to win status points. They never imagined that by age 30, they'd be set. I once asked a post-economic founder friend why they didn't just sell the co and they said "and do what? right now, everyone wants to talk to me. if i sell, I will only have money."
I understand that many reading this scoff at the champagne problems of the valley. Society is warped in this tech bubble. What is often well-off anywhere else in the world is bang average here.
Unlike many other places, tenure, intelligence and hard work can be loosely correlated with outcomes in the Bay. Living through a societally transformative gold rush in that environment can be paralyzing. "Am I in the right place? Should I move? Is there time still left? Am I gonna make it?" It psychologically torments many who have moved here in search of "success".
Ironically, a frequent side effect of this torment is to spin up the very products making everyone rich in hopes that you too can vibecode your path to economic enlightenment.
It turns out, the job of a radiologist isn't to read x-rays.
It's to cure people.
And if AI can help speed the process of understanding x-rays, radiologists can see and cure more people.
Rare setup in $BOIL: 6 straight days of selling as of yesterday’s close.
Historically, when #natgas gets this washed out, the look-forward edge becomes statistically significant.
$QQQ: 12 Days Green. 🟢
We are now in the 99.9th percentile of historical streaks. Only 1999 and 2013 have gone longer (14 days). Two more days to tie the all-time record.
$QQQ just hit a rare "11+ Day Win Streak." 📈
Since 1999, this has only happened 6 times. While the short-term is a toss-up, the intermediate-term looks promising:
🔹 5-Day Return: 0.02% Avg (50% Win Rate | Coin flip)
🔹 30-Day Return: +2.45% Avg (90% Win Rate)
The last 10-days have been unlike any 10-day period in the market since 1950.
First, the S&P 500 is up 9.8% in 10-days, which is in the 99.7th percentile of all 10 day returns.
I’m ngl macro trading was more fun before the defining edge was whether you were in the inner circle of people who knew what the president was about to tweet.
5 years old - Dad knows everything!
7 years old - Dad knows.
10 years old - Maybe dad doesn’t know?!
12 years old - Dad doesn’t know.
14 years old - Dads gone crazy!
16 years old - Can’t take dad seriously.
18 years old - What does dad know?!
22 years old - Dads talking rubbish!
24 years old - I know more than dad!
26 years old - Dad seems to know some things after all.
30 years old - Think I should ask dad about this?!
40 years old - It’s amazing how dad went through all this!
45 years old - Dads been right all along.
50 years old - If dad was here, I could have learned a lot from him.
Your father is the only man who's proud to see you doing better than him.
this chart from Anthropic on AI and job displacement is basically the HALO trade visualized (the bet that physical economy stocks are the safe haven from AI disruption, coined by @Downtown)
Construction, agriculture, transportation: barely touched. Computer & math, office & admin, finance: already getting eaten.
@vader7x $SPY vs $SGOV since 10/29/2025 FOMC day
“A further reduction in the policy rate at the December meeting is not a foregone conclusion, far from it,” Powell
Since inception, the Silver $SLV etf has had 13 prior occurrences of 10% range days (0.3% of all trading days) - today will be the 14th. Backtest of this condition has very poor 1-day, 5-day, and 30-day return profiles. #silver $ZSL
Since inception, the Silver $SLV etf has had 13 prior occurrences of 10% range days (0.3% of all trading days) - today will be the 14th. Backtest of this condition has very poor 1-day, 5-day, and 30-day return profiles. #silver $ZSL