BIG week ahead! $10 trillion in tech earnings. Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon. All expected to post strong revenue growth - but that's not what matters. The market wants to know one thing: how much are you burning on AI, and when does it show up in free cash flow? Meta raised AI spending to $825B last week. The stock still dropped 6% and CDS spreads hit fresh highs. Investors have zero tolerance for higher capex. And the FOMC is the SAME DAY. This is where the AI trade gets decided.

Everyone's watching the French protests. But the real problem isn't social unrest - it's that the government is fiscally broken. France is running a 5% deficit with 3% nominal growth. Debt is heading to 111% of GDP. Raise taxes? Revenue falls because France is already at the limit where new taxes hurt more than they help. Cut spending? Voters won't accept it & the political system is paralysed. This is what a fiscal trap looks like. No way out without pain.

These US midterms will produce 1 of 2 possible outcomes: 1. A Democratic blue wave 2. The final nail in the coffin of modern political polling

This is WILD. According to a poll on FOX NEWS, political grift is a greater concern for voters than gas & inflation?? Those House investigations are going to have wall-to-wall coverage. This level of corruption coupled with all the public anger is a perfect storm.

Remember that AI productivity boom they were all promising?? Well, according to Apollo, there are NO signs of this through the broader economy. The only sector that benefits is tech. Read that again. 493 out of 500 companies in the S&P 500 saw no benefit from adopting AI...

The oil market's last cushion is gone - just as demand is aggressively ramping up. According to Barclay's latest research: - China crude imports back near pre-war at 10.5mb/d - India running +600kb/d y/y - US demand recovering Supply stuck at 84% of pre-war with demand back at 100% - that's the squeeze. And prices are adjusting quickly. Buyers are paying a $13/bbl premium for cargoes loading next week over the front-month contract. A week into the war, that premium was under $4. 500m barrels of inventory have been burned through. Paper can be jawboned. Physical can't.

Why is Bitcoin trading like an escalation in Iran is imminent?

It's cheaper to send a rocket into space than to send oil from the US to China. The rate to rent a tanker from US-China is $79m - almost 10x pre conflict levels. The cost to launch SpaceX rocket 9 is about $70-$75m.

Everyone's talking about oil flowing through Hormuz. But what about gas? It's barely flowing and WAY down from prewar levels. Hopefully Europe has been stocking enough gas before the winter...

Did Moonshot just killshot OpenAI & Anthropic's IPO? Kimi K3 Pro is a 2.8 Trillion parameter model that beats Opus 5.5 & GPT-6 on SWE marathon. It also scores better than Opus & GPT on benchmarks while also being cheaper. Open weights to be released in the next few weeks...

Just 2 years ago, Bessent mocked Yellen because she was using short-term bills to finance the government. Well, he's only accelerated that practice & a new IMF paper shows how dangerous that can be. America has relied heavily on short-term borrowing before, particularly in the 70s, 80s and early 2000s. The difference? Government debt was substantially lower relative to GDP. Today, with debt at historically elevated levels, greater reliance on short-term borrowing leaves the Treasury increasingly exposed to interest rate changes. If rates stay higher for longer, refinancing costs could rise rapidly, putting further pressure on deficits. The irony? The Fed's fight against inflation could make America's debt problem even harder to manage.

Hyperscalers have bet the farm on AI. They've gone from cash cows to debtors. There's a lot riding on them being right.

US inequality is at record levels. Average household wealth climbed by $12.5 Trillion in Q2. The richest 0.1% captured 22% of it whereas the bottom 50% only got 1% of it. In other words, ~137K households captured ~22x more of Q2's wealth gain than 67.6M households combined.

Absolutely WILD how much is going into the AI buildout. The biggest capex spent EVER. Even when adjusted for GDP, it's still considerably larger than all previous investment cycles. Hopefully once it's complete, it will be as impactful on society as Fiber and railroads.

Oil prices are breaking new highs. This even after record SPR releases from multiple governments. Trump is pulling every emergency trick in the book. It's not working. But yes, I'm sure Hormuz flows are "near pre-war levels" right?? 😏

Trump is desperate and he's pulling every emergency lever he can. He officially activated the Defense Production Act to boost oil production & refining. Market implications could be huge: 1. Oil: More US supply could weigh on prices over time, but won’t add new barrels overnight. 2. Energy stocks: Producers, refiners & pipeline operators could gain from federal funding & new projects. 3. Inflation: More gasoline, diesel & jet fuel supply could eventually ease energy costs. The department of energy plans $150M to boost US refining capacity by millions of gallons a day. But will fuel prices ease before voters head to the polls in 12 days?

The AI labs are hyper exposed to a small number of customers. This shows exactly that. A small number of companies doing most of the spending. In Anthropic's leaked S1, it was revealed 24% of their revenue came from only 2 customers! We don't know who the customers are...

Japan's core CPI just printed above the BoJ's 2% target for the first time in 9 months It's also up from 1.7% in August & is a sign of broadening inflation pressure. Translation: The BoJ will almost certainly hike in the next meeting - and the market is pricing that in.