rent control advocates talk about people who'd like to pay the market rate for their $300/mo West Village 1BRs the way MAGAs talk about immigrants at Costco
As everyone watches the SpaceX IPO today, its worth remembering this advice from Buffett
"The idea that a newly issued security (IPO)—brought to market at a time of the seller's choosing and surrounded by massive hype—is the single best bargain among thousands of global businesses is absolute nonsense.
When an offering carries a ridiculous 7% commission just to incentivize salespeople, it simply cannot be the most attractive investment available.
While people easily get caught up in the excitement of a new launch, look at the reality: you have thousands of existing public companies whose prices are set by a natural auction market, free from aggressive promotion or hidden fees.
It makes no sense to buy a security precisely when an insider decides the timing is perfect to sell. Frankly, it isn't worth spending five seconds thinking about IPOs."
- Warren Buffett
As a Knicks fan since May, it is really hard to see all these fakers come into my fandom. Like where were you when we beat the sixers? Where were you when we beat the cavs? In fact, where was I? Where am I?
the year is 2028. claude infers whether you’ve ever even thought about gradient descent and silently routes your queries to Claude Sisyphus, a model RL’d to maximize engagement while avoiding task completion. you spend your entire UBI token allotment on it without ever realizing.
I have always supported regular order. However, the members of the House of Representatives decided the Ukraine Support Act should come to the floor and be given a vote of conscience.
For the past four years, Russia has committed war crimes against the country of Ukraine — from raping women to killing innocent civilians to kidnapping children and sending them to the frontlines. In recent days, Putin has only increased his barbaric attacks — which include the use of three hypersonic missiles fired at Kyiv — reiterating his utter disdain for peace.
Today’s bipartisan vote sends a strong message to Ukraine that we support them and a clear message to Putin that we stand against Russian tyranny.
So let me get this straight.
Jake Tapper is focused on attacking my Mom.
Jared and Ivanka are building a private island paradise on Albanian protected land.
Don Jr married the daughter of Epstein’s banker, and a startup his fund backs just got a record $620M Pentagon loan.
Eric is taking an Israeli drone company public for $1.5B in the middle of a war with Iran that nobody wanted.
And I know: “But what about your paintings, Hunter?”
Please.
Documenting the headwinds I now see for AI.
It won't seem like it, but I love AI and am long-term positive. But when "math doesn't math" I take note.
1. The core thesis for foundation model lab investment has been high upfront investment made worthwhile by significant long-term profits.
2. These are capital intensive businesses and the compute commitments are very high relative to revenue and require strong growth over long time periods. The "leverage" (commitments versus revenue) is extremely high.
3. The fundamentals are not as positive as they previously were:
• Input costs are higher (commodities, chips, power)
• Interest rates are higher
• Competition is more intense
• Scaling Laws are now problematic: exponential costs/power cannot continue
4. Forecasting compute spend is challenging and high risk due to (a) revenue uncertainty and (b) algorithm uncertainty
5. Revenue growth appears to be slowing. The technology is valuable, but ROI is proving to be more expensive and take longer than anticipated.
6. The future is likely "different models for different use cases" with the lower end of the market being highly competitive.
7. Core use cases such as agentic software engineering are likely to need approaches beyond next-token prediction. They are Σ₂ᴾ complexity problems requiring multi-objective optimization and likely a combination of Transformers and other methods.
8. Current forecasts in memory makers are built largely on quadratic attention. That will not persist: we are already seeing work from DeepSeek, Minimax and Nvidia that can cut RAM needs by 80% or more.
9. This means semiconductor valuations are substantially overinflated and will go through the traditional glut versus shortage cycle.
10. For foundation model providers: lower costs with competitive differentiation is good. However, lower costs with a lack of differentiation would mean lower revenues. This makes it harder to (a) service commitments and (b) pay back investors.
11. Leverage is substantially higher than in previous cycles, evidenced by leveraged ETFs, call option activity and margin loans. Korea is particularly susceptible.
12. 0DTE options create a profile that has stronger parallels to portfolio insurance and 1987 than any other point I can remember.
13. The combination of exponential increases in call activity coupled with the ties of semiconductors to structured products means there is a non-trivial systemic risk to the financial system.
14. Implied earnings growth rates are inconsistent with other periods in history.
15. Macroeconomically we cannot and should not fund exponential cost increases. History has shown us repeatedly that there are better ways (see Quick Sort and Simplex).
16. Significant supply is hitting the market via IPOs.
––
Taken together: costs and competition are increasing while revenue growth is likely slowing. Valuations are fragile and prone to technology disruptions that are already here. Systemic financial market risk is extremely high.
Mitt Romney to Harvard Business School graduates: "There's more to a country than its economy. To be a great nation, it must also be a good nation. The world needs good men. It needs good women. Good leaders. Good parents raising good children. There is no national success that could compensate for failure to be a good and noble people."
Everyone should read this quote.
America does not *automatically* produce a surfeit of jobs and wealth.
America produces jobs and wealth because our system protects property rights, enforces contracts, and otherwise mostly frees ambitious people to go out and get paid to solve problems for others, which generates wealth for them and for everyone else.
1/ The Delhi Gymkhana Club is getting evicted by the Modi government after a 113-year tenancy and it's causing drama in Delhi!
Although it isn't moving markets, given our fund is named after this most famous of India's many Gymkhanas, we had to dive into the controversy👇
Trump could have presided over a very strong economy. All he had to do was...nothing: Inflation was trending downward, the AI boom was raising growth.
Instead, he engineered a global trade war and energy shock, while shrinking America's labor force. https://t.co/JvvlsQ83R8