Rolling recession since 2022. Liquidity turning. AI | Energy | Infrastructure Capital cycles | Family offices | Long-duration capital.
Frisco, TX
Joined August 2014
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The world isn’t short on ideas.
It’s short on infrastructure.
AI isn’t just software.
It’s power.
It’s water.
It’s transmission.
It’s capital cycles.
We are entering a decade defined by:
• Energy re-industrialization
• AI compute buildout
• Monetary regime stress
• Infrastructure bottlenecks
• Capital reallocation into hard assets
I focus on the intersection of:
Macro cycles × AI infrastructure × Energy × Alternative assets.
If you’re thinking in 10–20 year horizons instead of 10–20 day trades, we’ll get along.
This is one of the biggest reasons I’m optimistic about the economic outlook.
If oil continues moving lower as Gulf exports recover, inflation could fall much faster than expected. That gives the Fed more room to cut rates and takes pressure off consumers just as the economy is beginning to accelerate.
Oil bulls have come out of the woodwork again and are telling their same old scare stories. But how do you tell a convincing story that oil needs to go a lot higher with supply almost back to normal and Brent 75% above early 2026 levels? Not compelling...
robinjbrooks.substack.com/p/…
Douglas Swift retweeted
Meloni's strong condemnation of the US diesel deal with Russia would carry more weight if Italian exporters weren't falling over themselves transshipping goods to Russia. Europe is all about big speeches and virtue signaling. It's all just empty words...
robinjbrooks.substack.com/p/…
Tariff-driven inflation is fading just as energy remains one of the biggest sources of price pressure.
If oil normalizes as the Iran conflict winds down, we could see a very different inflation picture in 2027 than the one we’re dealing with today.
Tariffs added 2.9 percentage points to consumer goods inflation at their February 2026 peak, per New York Fed research.
Without them, goods prices would have fallen slightly.
Since then, the effect has faded fast, after the Supreme Court struck down Trump’s emergency tariffs.
The NY Fed now expects tariffs to actually pull goods inflation below zero into early 2027.
I still expect another major escalation with Iran after the midterms, which could send oil higher temporarily.
But look at how quickly Persian Gulf exports have recovered.
If the conflict ends decisively and shipping normalizes, oil could reverse much faster than the market expects.
Crude oil exports out of the Persian Gulf are almost back to pre-war levels based on data from the great team at @TankerTrackers. Reason oil prices aren't down is IRGC attacks on ships, which have spiked shipping costs. Time to shut IRGC gunboats down...
robinjbrooks.substack.com/p/…
Douglas Swift retweeted
JUST IN: Taiwan to build a $4,000,000,000.00 AI manufacturing complex in Texas to support Nvidia, TSMC, & other major chipmakers
Douglas Swift retweeted
US Industrial Production Is Growing At The Fastest Pace In 4 Years As Manufacturing Rebounds zerohedge.com/markets/us-ind…
I expect a much larger military campaign against Iran once the midterms are behind us.
Oil could spike initially, but my expectation is that the conflict ends quickly and we see a dramatic reversal in prices as the war premium disappears.
That could be a major disinflationary catalyst heading into 2027.
The consensus view is that the day after the midterms - Nov. 4 - the US resumes bombing Iran. That's the main reason oil prices are so much above where they should be given supply of crude out of the Persian Gulf, which continues to flow at a healthy clip.
robinjbrooks.substack.com/p/…
Douglas Swift retweeted
🔴 Iran Update:
There is an absolute IRGC bloodbath happening in the Iranian region of Sistan & Balochestan. Assassinations everywhere and almost daily.
I haven't spoken much about this particular battlefield.
As an Iranian nationalist I will never approve of separatism, nor will I blindly praise the JMM militant group. I don't know this group, and as of writing this I don't trust them either. They claim to fight for all of Iran after merging several militant groups together, but at least one faction among them are historically Baloch separatists. They are also very conservative sunni muslims.
Therefore, I won't boost their videos or statements for the time being. Until I know where the Shah and his team stand regarding this group and where they stand regarding him, I won't give them my attention.
However, I can speak about what the last few weeks of fighting could mean for Iran:
Regardless of what I think of JMM, their targets have Iranian blood on their hands and undoubtedly deserve it.
IRGC thugs, basijis, regime linked clerics and foreign proxy terrorists are all being killed at a growing rate. Police stations, bases and checkpoints are raided. Patrols come under attack as they drive through cities. There's been at least one case of fighting reaching the Kerman region. Today, a female basiji commander was assassinated in front of her house. Yesterday, dozens of Afghan proxy terrorists were wiped out. Last month, a regime linked sunni cleric was shot dead. Many of the assassinations are very high ranking.
I don't know what suddenly changed, but it's gotten very deadly and dangerous to be an islamic regime figure in S&B.
What does all of this mean?
1) The islamic regime is losing control.
2) Regime thugs used to feel safe and protected. Now they don't. Psychologically this will do serious damage, especially to lower ranking demoralised basijis who aren't receiving their blood money salaries anymore due to sanctions.
3) If this keeps up, the islamic regime will have to send large forces from other regions to go fight in S&B. I shouldn't have to explain that this will benefit the rest of Iran when the next uprising happens. Thousands of IRGC terrorists forced to fight in the South East means thousands fewer IRGC to oppress Iranians in other provinces. It means evening out the playing field.
Again, this is an analysis, not an endorsement of JMM. They still need to clarify their stance on Iran's territorial integrity, their stance on the Shah, and their stance on separatism and islamism. We also need to know what their actual goal is once the islamic regime is overthrown.
Until then, as far as I'm concerned, the IRGC is getting killed in big numbers from within Iran and seemingly without any outside assistance, and that's what I will focus on.
What's happening in S&B is going to have huge consequences for Iran in the coming months, and everyone should pay attention.
Inflation pressures are becoming less widespread across the economy.
That’s encouraging, especially if economic activity is starting to accelerate again.
The Fed may have more room to ease than the headline inflation numbers suggest.
This is the diffusion of CPI inflation, measured similarly to Kevin Warsh's preferred PCE inflation diffusion metric.
It's down.
our full reaction @TheTerminal blinks.bloomberg.com/news/st…
Douglas Swift retweeted
US CPI shows the stupidity of rate hikes.
The entire impact comes from refined products.
Rate hikes will not create more barrels nor increase refining, but they damage families and businesses.
Douglas Swift retweeted
China is experiencing a balance sheet recession on a scale the world has never seen before. Economist Richard Koo coined the term to explain Japan’s stagnation in the 1990s.
At its core, it describes a collective shift in economic behaviour: households and companies prioritise repairing their balance sheets over spending, borrowing and investing, even at near-zero interest rates.
The result is chronically weak aggregate demand, against which conventional monetary policy loses much of its effectiveness. It is not merely a financial problem. It is a profound shift in economic psychology. Deeply structural and profoundly scary.
It is also the key reason I don’t buy the copper “supercycle” narrative. China accounts for roughly 50% of global copper consumption, much of it historically tied to construction and infrastructure. Nothing can compensate for a structural collapse in that demand. Not even close.
Nor can the West afford the much-advertised “green transition” at the scale and speed promised. By now, much of it has become a face-saving exercise for bureaucrats in Brussels, increasingly divorced from economic and fiscal reality.
It won’t survive the rebellion in government bond markets, already visible in French sovereign debt. In that sense, many European governments face their own balance sheet constraints, although these are not balance sheet recessions in Koo’s original sense.
When the AI mania finally slows, copper, among others, will nosedive. For now, the scramble to front-run US tariffs and the speculative demand it generates keep the mirage alive. It won’t last forever.
China’s passenger vehicle retail sales fell 24% in September from a year earlier, while new-energy vehicle sales dropped 12%. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
This could be a meaningful development for the inflation outlook.
Diesel prices have surged roughly 70% since the Iran war began. Now Trump is announcing a deal to bring millions of tons of additional supply into the market.
If energy costs begin falling while economic activity continues expanding, the Fed could find itself with considerably more room to ease.
That’s a very favorable combination for the next leg of the economic cycle.
We’ve been watching the economy move toward a new expansion for months, and the data is increasingly supporting that view.
Q2 GDP revised up to 2.2%, Q3 tracking around 3.7%, and manufacturing has now expanded for nine consecutive months.
What interests me most is what happens as this strength spreads beyond AI infrastructure and into the broader economy. Capital spending is already moving. The question is how quickly the rest catches up.
David Sacks: The Economy Is Stronger Than You Think
“There's been a tremendous amount of economic data in just the last week or two showing that the economy is much stronger than people are giving it credit for.
So first of all, Q2 GDP was revised up to 2.2% from 1.5%, so that's basically a 50% increase. Economists had expected no revision. Q1 was also revised up to 2.5% from 2.1%. And if you look at the Q3 growth, it's tracking well above that. The Atlanta Fed GDPNow is showing around 3.7% as of late last week.
And then there was also some good news on inflation, we saw that core PCE just came in at 3.0% versus 3.3% expected. So inflation is still a bit too high, but actually it is cooling and beating expectations.
And then finally, you look at manufacturing. We're seeing a huge wave of re-industrialization in this country. A couple of the measures are the Chicago PMI and then ISM Manufacturing. They both are well into expansion territory and beating forecasts.
Just one last point, let's talk about poverty for a second, because I want to address the idea that this is just a K-shaped recovery.
So if you look at US household income, it's now at record high. The median household income is almost $90,000, and after-tax household income is growing again in the second Trump term, it's averaged 3.1% a year. In Trump 47, it was 3.9%, in Trump 45, and it was -1.2% in Biden's term as a four-year average. So we're seeing that after-tax household incomes have risen by 3.1%, and the poverty rate in the US has fallen to its lowest level in history, 10.2%.
So the poverty rate, the child poverty rate, these are all at historic lows. The average household's real income after inflation, after taxes, is increasing for the first time in years.
And you've got this SI boom that the Wall Street Journal said is bigger than the railroads, the canals, and the electric grid combined, and all these things are basically fueling strong growth in the economy.
And again, I would just dispute the K-shaped narrative because the poor are benefiting and the average household are benefiting as well.”
Douglas Swift retweeted
Oil flows in the Strait of Hormuz have sharply rebounded:
Persian Gulf crude oil exports surpassed 14 million barrels per day last week for the first time since the Iran War began on February 28th.
This marks an over +210% increase from the ~4.5 million barrels per day low seen in March.
As a result, the 4-week average is up to 14 million barrels per day, the highest level in 6 months.
Persian Gulf crude oil exports have now recovered to ~80% of their pre-war levels.
This comes as the US military has increasingly secured the Strait of Hormuz and established a two-way shipping corridor along the coast of Oman, allowing oil convoys to resume through the waterway.
Meanwhile, refined fuel shipments, including gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, remain at only around 50% of pre-war levels, as these products are more expensive to transport than crude oil and some refineries in the Persian Gulf that were damaged during the early stages of the war have also yet to fully resume operations.
Oil flows are coming back, but the fuel market is still under intense pressure.
Iran was supposed to have the leverage because it could choke off Hormuz.
Instead, oil is increasingly moving while Iran’s own currency is collapsing.
Hard to win a war of economic attrition when the clock is working against you.
Iran is hitting a wall. Every day the Rial falls to a new low. That's a major vindication for the blockade and US sanctions. Iran's economy is imploding, even as it's lost its stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has played its cards very poorly...
robinjbrooks.substack.com/p/…
Douglas Swift retweeted
Bill Ackman’s post about inflation took me back to the late 1970s, when similar concerns were everywhere. What followed was stronger growth and falling inflation, helped by the PC and software revolution. We believe today’s innovation platforms could have an even greater impact.
Most people think our forecast for high single-digit real GDP growth is crazy. I understand why. We’ve spent our lives in a roughly 3% global growth world.
But look at AI. At a fixed level of performance, inference costs are falling 99.99% a year. Yet OpenAI’s annualized revenue run rate has jumped from $20 billion to $70 billion. As prices fall, demand explodes. We’ve never seen anything like this kind of growth!
We believe those cost declines will seep into the broader economy, lifting productivity and profitability while pushing inflation much lower than most investors expect. That’s “good deflation.” Interest rates could rise in that environment because real growth is stronger.
In this month's In The Know, I respond to Bill’s concerns, explain the research behind our outlook, and examine what credit markets are telling us about the AI investment boom. Watch it here: youtu.be/4Rir6HADnT8?si=JHQv…
“It's good deflation, meaning it causes a boom in growth.” @CathieDWood on why she believes falling prices driven by technology are nothing like the deflation investors were taught to fear.
Watch a brand new "In The Know" now.
youtu.be/4Rir6HADnT8?si=JHQv…
Douglas Swift retweeted
ISM US Manufacturing Activity: 54.5
9 straight months of expansion…
2026 looking very different than 2022-2025.
Douglas Swift retweeted
Iran’s ability to choke off oil flowing through the Strait of Hormuz—and use that as leverage in talks with the U.S.—is breaking down on.wsj.com/46VDa4v
