klaxxon

Exploring the future of AI

[klaxxon @klaxxon_]

Jordan Belfort owed 1,513 victims $110.4M and the clock ran out in April 2026 with $96.65M still unpaid.

The tape is from December 1994. Lake Success, Long Island. A 32-year-old grabs a hand mic in front of a room of brokers who are standing on their chairs, and he screams at them about a telephone.

He is not hiding. He is being filmed. On purpose.

That's the part everyone misses.

By that Christmas, Stratton Oakmont had been under NASD scrutiny for 5 years. 1,378 employees. 35 offerings. The largest over-the-counter firm in the country, built on one move: buy the stock cheap, scream it up the phone, then refuse to place a client's sell order.

He threw a party and taped it.

In April 1996 regulators barred the firm from retail transactions. In December they expelled it. In 1999 he was indicted for manipulating at least 34 companies across 7 years.

Then he wore a wire on the men in that room.

4 years. He served 22 months.

The court ordered $110.4M back to 1,513 clients. By 2018 they had been credited $12.8M, and roughly $11M of that came from government seizures, not from him. His own payments over 11 years: about $1.8M.

He sold his life rights for $1.2M. $21,000 of it reached the victims. The film about him grossed more than $390M.

After 2018 the obligation was $10,000 a month. 95 months of that is $950,000.

On April 28, 2026, exactly 20 years after his release, the federal collection window closed and he posted that he had completed his restitution.

He didn't pay it off. He outlasted it.

[klaxxon @klaxxon_]

Jordan Belfort owed 1,513 victims $110.4M and the clock ran out in April 2026 with $96.65M still unpaid.

The tape is from December 1994. Lake Success, Long Island. A 32-year-old grabs a hand mic in front of a room of brokers who are standing on their chairs, and he screams at them about a telephone.

He is not hiding. He is being filmed. On purpose.

That's the part everyone misses.

By that Christmas, Stratton Oakmont had been under NASD scrutiny for 5 years. 1,378 employees. 35 offerings. The largest over-the-counter firm in the country, built on one move: buy the stock cheap, scream it up the phone, then refuse to place a client's sell order.

He threw a party and taped it.

In April 1996 regulators barred the firm from retail transactions. In December they expelled it. In 1999 he was indicted for manipulating at least 34 companies across 7 years.

Then he wore a wire on the men in that room.

4 years. He served 22 months.

The court ordered $110.4M back to 1,513 clients. By 2018 they had been credited $12.8M, and roughly $11M of that came from government seizures, not from him. His own payments over 11 years: about $1.8M.

He sold his life rights for $1.2M. $21,000 of it reached the victims. The film about him grossed more than $390M.

After 2018 the obligation was $10,000 a month. 95 months of that is $950,000.

On April 28, 2026, exactly 20 years after his release, the federal collection window closed and he posted that he had completed his restitution.

He didn't pay it off. He outlasted it.

[klaxxon @klaxxon_]

@cjja07 Maybe he wasn’t the best CEO, but you can’t deny that Microsoft was making serious money while he was in charge His leadership had flaws, but saying he was simply bad for the company is an oversimplification.

[klaxxon @klaxxon_]

Steve Ballmer is worth $179B for screaming one word at a developer conference in 2000.

The clip is 26 years old. A 44-year-old CEO sprints across a stage in Orlando, dress shirt already soaked through, and howls "developers" until his voice tears.

The room laughs. The internet has been laughing ever since.

Everyone read it as a breakdown. It was a budget line.

Windows never won on code. It won because 3rd parties shipped 100,000 apps that only ran on it, and every app made switching cost more. Ballmer wasn't chanting at a crowd. He was chanting at his own executives, who kept calling Microsoft a platform company and then acting like the platform was the product.

Then he spent 14 years proving the doubters right.

Vista. The Kin, killed 48 days after launch. Nokia's phone business bought for $7.2B in 2013, written down $7.6B two years later. In 2007 he watched the iPhone and said $500 was the most expensive phone in the world, no keyboard, no chance with business customers.

He left in 2014 with the stock lower than the day he took the job. Forbes-adjacent lists called him one of the worst CEOs in tech.

He bought the Clippers for $2B and stopped talking.

He also never sold a share.

Microsoft is worth $3.81T. Ballmer still holds roughly 4%. The stock went from $348 to $513 this year alone, which moved him past every founder-adjacent name on the board.

Gates is at $114B. He gave nearly $100B away and owns less than 1%.

Gates gave his stake away. Ballmer just kept screaming. $65B is the difference.

[klaxxon @klaxxon_]

@batagonx The real advantage isn’t the money, it’s understanding how it works. Free knowledge like this can be worth more than any expensive finance course.

[klaxxon @klaxxon_]

@cjja07 I think “nearly destroyed” is a bit too harsh. He made some big mistakes, but Microsoft was still growing and making huge profits under his leadership!

[klaxxon @klaxxon_]

Steve Ballmer stood at the Oxford Union in 2015 and admitted Microsoft only ever did 2 tricks.

He had walked out of Microsoft 30 days earlier. 34 years inside. He joined a 30-person company doing $2.5M. He left one with 100,000 people doing $80B.

First speech as a civilian. He opened by saying he was nervous.

Then he laid out the thesis.

Most companies are one-trick ponies. They learn one thing brilliantly and ride it until it dies. Coca-Cola got 100 years out of one trick. Oxford has run its trick for 900.

Microsoft got 2. Windows and Office. Then microprocessors pushed into the back end of every business on earth.

$80B in revenue. $20B in profit. 2 ideas.

Apple got 2 as well. The Mac, then low-power touch.

People kept asking him about the third.

He named it himself: phones.

"I don't know whether we were too busy or we only knew the tools of the first two tricks."

7 minutes later he defended the phone business anyway. Tiny share. Huge spend. Everyone in the industry telling him to quit.

"We're in the weight room, baby."

That was February 2015. Microsoft killed Windows Phone 2 years later.

He had already explained why, in the same room, in one sentence.

There are no 100-year tricks in technology.

The weight room closed.

[klaxxon @klaxxon_]

Steve Ballmer stood at the Oxford Union in 2015 and admitted Microsoft only ever did 2 tricks.

He had walked out of Microsoft 30 days earlier. 34 years inside. He joined a 30-person company doing $2.5M. He left one with 100,000 people doing $80B.

First speech as a civilian. He opened by saying he was nervous.

Then he laid out the thesis.

Most companies are one-trick ponies. They learn one thing brilliantly and ride it until it dies. Coca-Cola got 100 years out of one trick. Oxford has run its trick for 900.

Microsoft got 2. Windows and Office. Then microprocessors pushed into the back end of every business on earth.

$80B in revenue. $20B in profit. 2 ideas.

Apple got 2 as well. The Mac, then low-power touch.

People kept asking him about the third.

He named it himself: phones.

"I don't know whether we were too busy or we only knew the tools of the first two tricks."

7 minutes later he defended the phone business anyway. Tiny share. Huge spend. Everyone in the industry telling him to quit.

"We're in the weight room, baby."

That was February 2015. Microsoft killed Windows Phone 2 years later.

He had already explained why, in the same room, in one sentence.

There are no 100-year tricks in technology.

The weight room closed.

[klaxxon @klaxxon_]

Arthur Laffer drew a tax curve on a napkin in 1974. He says the napkin in the Smithsonian isn't his.

Washington, 1974. An expensive restaurant. Laffer is at a table with some of the most powerful politicians in America.

He draws 2 points. Tax people at 0%, you collect nothing. Tax them at 100%, nobody works, you collect nothing.

Between them, a hump.

Then the punch line: for any revenue you want, there are always 2 tax rates that get it. One low. One high.

It lands like a joke. That's why it traveled.

It took 4 years and a storyteller. Jude Wanniski was at that dinner. In 1978 he put the scene in a book, "The Way the World Works."

After that it stopped being economics. Reagan ran on it. Thatcher's Britain ran on it.

Decades later the Museum of American History went hunting for the napkin. Wanniski was already dead. They called his widow and asked her to go through his things.

She called back. She'd found it. Cloth.

It sits in the museum today.

Then a reporter called Laffer and asked if it was his.

"I'm sure it's not. My mother taught me you don't write on napkins."

Robert Shiller told this story in a 59-minute lecture at Cambridge to explain what his own field keeps missing. He runs economic ideas through a 1927 epidemic model - built by a biologist and a physician for actual diseases. Contagion rate. Recovery rate. A population that goes immune.

Stories move the same way. The absurd detail isn't a flaw in the story. It's the part that spreads.

Bitcoin launched in 2009 at a price of nothing and crossed $300B while the profession shrugged.

The napkin was never the argument. The napkin was the virus.

[klaxxon @klaxxon_]

Arthur Laffer drew a tax curve on a napkin in 1974. He says the napkin in the Smithsonian isn't his.

Washington, 1974. An expensive restaurant. Laffer is at a table with some of the most powerful politicians in America.

He draws 2 points. Tax people at 0%, you collect nothing. Tax them at 100%, nobody works, you collect nothing.

Between them, a hump.

Then the punch line: for any revenue you want, there are always 2 tax rates that get it. One low. One high.

It lands like a joke. That's why it traveled.

It took 4 years and a storyteller. Jude Wanniski was at that dinner. In 1978 he put the scene in a book, "The Way the World Works."

After that it stopped being economics. Reagan ran on it. Thatcher's Britain ran on it.

Decades later the Museum of American History went hunting for the napkin. Wanniski was already dead. They called his widow and asked her to go through his things.

She called back. She'd found it. Cloth.

It sits in the museum today.

Then a reporter called Laffer and asked if it was his.

"I'm sure it's not. My mother taught me you don't write on napkins."

Robert Shiller told this story in a 59-minute lecture at Cambridge to explain what his own field keeps missing. He runs economic ideas through a 1927 epidemic model - built by a biologist and a physician for actual diseases. Contagion rate. Recovery rate. A population that goes immune.

Stories move the same way. The absurd detail isn't a flaw in the story. It's the part that spreads.

Bitcoin launched in 2009 at a price of nothing and crossed $300B while the profession shrugged.

The napkin was never the argument. The napkin was the virus.

[Dnkvwv @Dnkvwv_05]

https://t.co/xXXATTcAxv

[klaxxon @klaxxon_]

British banks lent £1.7 trillion against houses and £164 billion to every small business in the country.

One number is 10x the other.

Gresham College, March 2018. Jagjit Chadha puts a chart on the screen and asks a room full of City people why the machine stopped working.

Over 20 years UK house prices rose 3.5x. Earnings rose 1.5x.

Secured household debt hit 100% of household income. In the early years of liberalisation it was 20%.

The easy story is that banks got greedy. The real one is duller and worse.

Banks lend against collateral. A house is collateral. An idea is not.

So the founder who already owns a flat gets funded. The better founder who doesn't, doesn't. Wealth picks who gets to build.

The clue sits in the banks' own books.

Capital once ran 30-40% of liabilities. Now it runs about 5%. Thinner cushion, cheaper deposits, and every incentive to write another mortgage instead of another loan to a machine shop in Sunderland.

You can see where the money went by looking at a map.

London and the South-East run away on productivity. House prices track the same lines. 2 decades of lending never moved a single point of it north.

Meanwhile the capital stock per pound of income has been falling for years. Investment grows 2-3% a year, below the rate the stock wears out. R&D sits at 1.7% of GDP against a G7 average of 2.4%.

Financial services added 2-3% productivity growth a year before 2008. After, it subtracted 2-3%.

Britain's answer was the British Business Bank. Founded 2012 with £1 billion. It now runs roughly £10 billion in assets.

That is 0.5% of GDP, against £1.7 trillion parked in brick.

Churchill wanted finance less proud and industry more content.

Britain got a mortgage.

[klaxxon @klaxxon_]

British banks lent £1.7 trillion against houses and £164 billion to every small business in the country.

One number is 10x the other.

Gresham College, March 2018. Jagjit Chadha puts a chart on the screen and asks a room full of City people why the machine stopped working.

Over 20 years UK house prices rose 3.5x. Earnings rose 1.5x.

Secured household debt hit 100% of household income. In the early years of liberalisation it was 20%.

The easy story is that banks got greedy. The real one is duller and worse.

Banks lend against collateral. A house is collateral. An idea is not.

So the founder who already owns a flat gets funded. The better founder who doesn't, doesn't. Wealth picks who gets to build.

The clue sits in the banks' own books.

Capital once ran 30-40% of liabilities. Now it runs about 5%. Thinner cushion, cheaper deposits, and every incentive to write another mortgage instead of another loan to a machine shop in Sunderland.

You can see where the money went by looking at a map.

London and the South-East run away on productivity. House prices track the same lines. 2 decades of lending never moved a single point of it north.

Meanwhile the capital stock per pound of income has been falling for years. Investment grows 2-3% a year, below the rate the stock wears out. R&D sits at 1.7% of GDP against a G7 average of 2.4%.

Financial services added 2-3% productivity growth a year before 2008. After, it subtracted 2-3%.

Britain's answer was the British Business Bank. Founded 2012 with £1 billion. It now runs roughly £10 billion in assets.

That is 0.5% of GDP, against £1.7 trillion parked in brick.

Churchill wanted finance less proud and industry more content.

Britain got a mortgage.

[Dnkvwv @Dnkvwv_05]

https://t.co/xXXATTcAxv

[klaxxon @klaxxon_]

@Ryomenex Talent matters, but knowledge and practice matter more. The formula is simple: improve what you can control, not just what you were born with

[klaxxon @klaxxon_]

@Neighboritto The 2008 crash showed one thing: bad incentives can turn small risks into a massive crisis.

[klaxxon @klaxxon_]

Tim Cook spent 15 years after college with no idea what his life was for.

Duke grad school. Every box ticked. He tried philosophy. He tried religion. He jokes that he may even have tried a Windows PC.

March 1998. He takes a job at a computer company that had nearly died the year before, and meets Steve Jobs.

The question stops being what work. It becomes who does this serve.

August 24, 2011. He becomes CEO. 6 weeks later Jobs is gone.

June 9, 2017. Killian Court. He tells the graduates about a shareholder who stood up and demanded Apple only fund things that pay a return.

"If you can't accept our position, you shouldn't own Apple stock."

He tells them about Pope Francis, who spent more time in slums than with heads of state, and who told him this:

Never has humanity had such power over itself, yet nothing ensures it will be used wisely.

Then Cook says the line the whole speech was built to hold.

"I'm not worried about artificial intelligence giving computers the ability to think like humans. I'm more concerned about people thinking like computers - without values or compassion, without concern for consequence."

That was 2017. 5 years before ChatGPT.

The machines think fine now. That was never the test.

[Dnkvwv @Dnkvwv_05]

https://t.co/xXXATTcAxv

[klaxxon @klaxxon_]

@zeryxgm A strategy loses its edge when people copy it. But poker proved that a truly solved strategy can stay unbeatable even when everyone knows it

[klaxxon @klaxxon_]

Warren Buffett walked onto a Columbia stage in 2017 and admitted he reads 6 hours a day.

Alfred Lerner Hall. January 27. Bill Gates in the chair beside him. Buffett was 86. Gates was 61.

The moderator asked what the 2 of them actually share. Not money. Not deals.

Gates answered: curiosity. You predict what happens next. It doesn't happen. You go back and ask what's broken in your model of the world.

That's the whole method.

Buffett reads 5 to 6 hours a day, mostly biographies. No terminal on the stage. No alerts. He looks for 1 thing in a company - a durable competitive advantage - and 1 thing in the people running it: whether they lie to him.

Gates brought his own numbers. Polio: under 50 cases on earth in 2016, down from hundreds of thousands. The last holdouts aren't a science problem. Armed groups in Nigeria and Pakistan shoot the vaccinators.

The Giving Pledge had 156 signatures by then.

Someone asked about automation eating jobs. Buffett didn't flinch. Real GDP per person is up 6x since he was born. Productivity always wins the long run. The people it runs over need retraining, and that's a government job, not a market one.

Two men worth more than most countries, on a stage for 90 minutes.

The room wanted a stock tip.

They got a reading list.

[Dnkvwv @Dnkvwv_05]

https://t.co/xXXATTcAxv

[klaxxon @klaxxon_]

Steve Jobs stood in an MIT lecture hall in 1992 and priced his operating system at $9.95.

The tape sat unwatched for 26 years.

He is 37. NeXT is 7 years old. It grew 4x last year and he tells the room it will be a $2 billion company.

130 salespeople in the field. A factory in Fremont. Canon in Japan. Wall Street desks writing in 90 days what took 2 years on a Sun.

Then a student asks him about consultants.

Jobs stops selling.

You never get three-dimensional, he says. You leave before the thing ships. You never collect the scar tissue for your own mistakes.

Pictures of fruit. Never the taste.

By February 1993, NeXT is out of the hardware business and half the staff is gone.

The $2 billion never comes.

In 1996 Apple pays $429 million for what's left - the software he demoed that afternoon.

That code runs under every Mac and every iPhone since.

The room came for a pitch from a computer company that had 10 months left.

Everything he was selling that day died. Everything he was saying didn't.

[Dnkvwv @Dnkvwv_05]

https://t.co/xXXATTcAxv

[klaxxon @klaxxon_]

@vladoqp a simple design with one critical failure point can turn into a disaster. SL-1 proved that in the worst way.

[klaxxon @klaxxon_]

Ray Dalio cut portfolio risk 80% with 15 uncorrelated return streams and zero extra forecasting skill.

He calls it the Holy Grail. It's arithmetic.

The average 2 stocks move together 60% of the time. Own 30 of them and you own 1 position wearing 30 hats.

Start with 1 asset. 10% return. 10% risk. A ratio of 1 to 1.

Add a second stream that moves on its own logic. Risk drops. Return holds.

Do that 15 times and risk falls about 80% while the return stays put. Return per unit of risk climbs 5x.

No better calls. No sharper edge. The same forecasts, cut apart differently.

Bridgewater runs it at scale: 100+ separate alphas across 130 markets.

Then he named the part most people skip.

Alpha is zero-sum. Every trader who beats the market is paid by one who lost the same amount. Diversification isn't zero-sum. It works whether or not you're right.

He was speaking 9 years into a cycle that runs 7 to 10.

Rates sat at 2.5%. In 2008 they hit 0 and stopped working. In 1932 they hit 0 and stopped working. That left 250 basis points of ammo for the next one.

Profit margins had more than doubled since 2000.

Real income for the bottom 60% of Americans hadn't moved since 1980. 40% couldn't raise $400 in an emergency. The top 0.1% held about what the bottom 90% held combined.

He put those 3 charts on the same screen and said the last time they lined up this way was the 1930s.

Tailwinds turning into headwinds.

Most investors see an asset that went up and call it good. He sees an asset that went up and calls it expensive.

Everyone hunts the next winner. He hunts the next thing that moves differently.