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The Pod Street Week Team
THIS WEEK · 14 PODCASTS · WEEK OF MAY 8, 2026
This week we bring you fourteen exceptional podcasts spanning Louis Gave’s comprehensive bull case for China amid the Iran war shock, Harris Kupperman and Rodrik Vanzо on refiners, Latin America, and hidden macro themes, Eric Nuttall’s explosive energy crisis thesis and his case for oil at $200, Paul Moroz on AI barbarians at the software moat and his top three stock picks, Chris Mayer and Ian Cassel on the relational edge that AI cannot replicate in stock picking, Professor Jiang’s geopolitical framework predicting WWIII and the collapse of the American empire, George Friedman on Putin’s deteriorating position and Russia’s running out of time, former CFTC Chair Chris Giancarlo on the digital dollar, stable coins, and why banks are lobbying against your financial freedom, Danny Dayan on passive Fed easing and the inflation wave that markets are ignoring, Kieran Cavanaugh on finding asymmetric hedge fund ideas including optical networking and the AI capex boom, Jens Stoltenberg and David Solomon on the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund, global growth divergence, and Europe’s structural decline, a Milken Institute panel featuring the CEOs of Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, Apollo, BNY, Franklin Templeton, and Mubadala on global capital markets and the private/public convergence, Warren Pies on the unprecedented earnings boom and why he is simultaneously scared and bullish, and Leyla Kunimoto’s deep dive into the $2 trillion private credit market and the risks investors are ignoring. Each summary is designed to be immediately actionable — whether you are allocating capital, running a business, or simply trying to understand the forces reshaping the world around you. We hope you enjoy them.
THIS WEEK’S LINEUP
EP 1 The Bull Case for China: The Best Opportunity Right Now? — Louis Gave — Gavekal Research Founding Partner & CEO
EP 2 Finding the Market’s Most Overlooked Macro Themes | Harris Kupperman — Harris Kupperman — Praetorian Capital CIO; Rodrik Vanzо — Nightwatch Capital CIO
EP 3 Eric Nuttall (Ninepoint): $200 Oil – A Looming Energy Crisis — Eric Nuttall — Ninepoint Partners Senior Portfolio Manager
EP 4 “Barbarians at the Moat”: The Investing Warning Everyone’s Ignoring — Paul Moroz — Mawer Investment Management CIO
EP 5 The Last Moat | Chris Mayer and Ian Cassel on the Stock Picking Edge AI Can’t Replicate — Chris Mayer — Woodlock House Family Capital; Ian Cassel — MicroCap Club Founder
EP 6 Professor Jiang: World War 3 Has Already Begun, Let Me Explain! — Professor Jiang — Geopolitical Commentator
EP 7 George Friedman on Why Putin is Running Out of Time — George Friedman — Geopolitical Futures Founder & Chairman
EP 8 Why Banks Are Lobbying Against Your Financial Freedom — Former CFTC Chair — J. Christopher Giancarlo — Former CFTC Chairman; Digital Dollar Project Exec Chairman
EP 9 Passive Easing Is Fueling The Next Inflation Wave | Danny Dayan — Danny Dayan — Macro Strategist
EP 10 Hunting for Asymmetry: How to Spot Hedge Funds Mastering Market Shifts — Kieran Cavanaugh — Old Farm Partners Founder & CIO
EP 11 Markets, World Uncertainties & $2 Trillion Fund | Stoltenberg & David Solomon — Jens Stoltenberg — Norwegian Finance Minister; David Solomon — Goldman Sachs CEO
EP 12 Milken Institute Panel — Global Capital Markets: Blackstone, Apollo, BNY, Franklin Templeton, Mubadala — Jon Gray, David Rubenstein, Jenny Johnson, Robin Vince, James Zelter, Khaldoon Al Mubarak
EP 13 Warren Pies 314 Research: “I’m Scared Out of My Mind… But Very Bullish” — Warren Pies — 314 Research Founder & CEO
EP 14 Banks Won’t Touch These Loans. Meet the $2 Trillion Market That Will | Leyla Kunimoto — Leyla Kunimoto — Accredited Investor Insights Founder
Full summaries with actionable insights and investment focus for each podcast follow on the pages below.
EP 1 - The Bull Case for China: The Best Opportunity Right Now?
Louis Gave — Gavekal Research Founding Partner & CEO
Louis Gave, founding partner and CEO of Gavekal Research — one of the world’s pre-eminent macro research firms with a $6 billion AUM buy-side arm — delivered the most comprehensive bull case for China of any guest this week. Speaking against the backdrop of the Iran war, Gave argued that China enters this crisis better prepared than any other major economy, holds more oil, gas, and fertiliser in storage than the rest of the world combined, and is positioned to be the primary geopolitical winner. He also made a structurally bearish case for traditional US defence stocks, argued for a US-China grand bargain at the four scheduled Xi-Trump summits, and identified China as offering the lowest cost of capital, labour, electricity, and currency of any major economy today — conditions he compared explicitly to the conditions that drove the US equity bull market from 2009 onwards.
Actionable Bullet Points
• China Is Better Prepared Than Anyone for the Iran Shock — and Not by Design: Eight years ago, when the US blocked semiconductor exports, Chinese policymakers redirected the entire country’s savings into national resilience — stockpiling oil, gas, fertiliser, and industrial components. The result is that China enters the Iran war with more oil in storage than the rest of the world combined. Every other major importer — India, the Philippines, Thailand — is now calling Beijing and being told there is nothing to spare. Position long Chinese energy-adjacent assets and commodity-linked Chinese exporters.
• China Has the Four Conditions That Drove the US Bull Market from 2009: Lowest cost of capital in the world. Lowest cost of labour. Lowest cost of electricity. And a currency that is both cheap and, for the first time in years, appreciating with policy backing. Gave compared this explicitly to the conditions that made the US the dominant equity market from 2009 to 2024. He is long Chinese equities as a multi-year structural bull market. Own MSCI China or H-shares as the entry vehicle.
• Defence Stocks Are Structurally Overpriced — Drone Warfare Has Upended the Equation: A $50,000 drone can now sink a billion-dollar warship. A $2 million Patriot missile is being used to intercept a $50,000 drone. Aircraft carriers at $6 billion apiece cannot operate within 1,000 miles of Iran. Gave argues that the entire financial and geopolitical infrastructure of the past 80 years is being disrupted. He is bearish on traditional defence contractors — BAE, Northrop, Raytheon — whose order books are dominated by systems that are now obsolete. Go short major defence primes relative to drone-enablement and asymmetric warfare technology.
• The Inflationary Shock Is Already Baked In — But Markets Have Not Priced It: Even if the Strait reopens tomorrow, the six-week lead time for tanker voyages means the world has already lost two months of supply across oil, gas, fertiliser, and sulfuric acid. Farmers are not planting now, which means food price spikes hit in September. Gave’s framework: buy commodities, buy energy infrastructure, avoid bonds.
• US-China Grand Bargain Is the Base Case — Four Xi-Trump Meetings This Year: Trump and Xi are scheduled to meet four times in the next twelve months — unprecedented. Gave’s thesis: the US cannot simultaneously absorb an Iranian inflationary shock and maintain its trade war with China. They are condemned to cooperate. A US-China reset re-opens Chinese energy imports, reduces tariff uncertainty, and removes one of the two major bearish overhangs on global growth. Long Chinese equities and China-adjacent EM plays on any summit news.
Investment Focus
Gave’s framework is the most geopolitically grounded bull case for China presented this week. The actionable template: (1) own Chinese equities — MSCI China, H-shares, or focused China funds — as a multi-year structural long given the four-factor advantage, (2) be short traditional defence primes as drone warfare structurally disrupts their order book, (3) own agricultural commodities and fertiliser-linked equities ahead of the September harvest shock, (4) treat each Xi-Trump summit meeting as a potential re-rating catalyst for Chinese assets, and (5) watch the RMB — its appreciation is both a signal and a tailwind for the bull case.
EP 2 - Finding the Market’s Most Overlooked Macro Themes | Harris Kupperman
Harris Kupperman — Praetorian Capital CIO; Rodrik Vanzо — Nightwatch Capital CIO (Ketum Research)
Harris Kupperman, CIO of Praetorian Capital, and Rodrik Vanzо, CIO of Nightwatch Capital and co-contributors to Ketum Research, shared their framework for finding overlooked macro themes and event-driven catalysts. Their current highest-conviction themes: refiners (crack spreads up from teens to 55, structural multi-year tightness, no new refinery capacity in the pipeline), Latin America (political shift right creating an investable equity cycle, particularly Brazil), elder care (supply/demand setup with no new senior living capacity until 2030 and baby boomers turning 80), and long-volatility via commodity brokers (Marx, StoneX) benefiting from structurally elevated commodity trading volumes.
Actionable Bullet Points
• Refiners Are the Trade of the Cycle — Buy Marathon and Valero: No new refinery capacity is under construction anywhere. Current crack spreads at 55 vs teens a year ago. Even a partial year at current spreads creates massive earnings for every dollar the crack spread goes up at a billion-barrel-per-year refiner. The world does not know when Hormuz reopens, but refinery throughput lost takes months to restart regardless. Marathon and Valero are the two largest PAD 3 (Gulf Coast) refiners — buy both. PBF Energy is the high-beta play that pays down all its net debt in two quarters at current spreads.
• Latin America Is the Stealth Winner of the MAGA Trade — Own B3 and XP: For MAGA to work, the dollar has to go down. A weaker dollar means Latin America’s high-real-rate-driven capital outflows reverse. Add: political shifts right across Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Peru, Colombia, and soon Brazil. Add: commodity bull market. Add: first equity account growth in Brazil in years with retail investors returning. The way to play it: B3 (the Brazilian stock exchange) and XP (the Brazilian broker/wealth management platform) — both explosively levered to a pickup in equity trading volumes. Both were priced for zero growth.
• Elder Care Is the Structural Supply/Demand Trade for the Next Decade: No new senior living facilities have been built since 2017. COVID killed residents and scared families away. A nursing shortage in 2022 crushed operational costs. The result: zero new supply until 2030–2031. Meanwhile, the first baby boomers are turning 80 this year. Rodrik’s specific play: Brookdale Senior Living with a new management team post-activist campaign, new CEO, first investor day in five years — all classic event-driven setup for a rerating. Buy the beaten-down operators, not the REITs.
• Marx and StoneX Are Long-Volatility Plays on the Structural Rise of Commodity Trading: Commodity trading volumes are exploding — not just because of Iran, but structurally because the 60/40 portfolio is broken, bonds don’t hedge inflation, and every CFO who got burned by unhedged commodity risk is going to hedge. Marx and StoneX are the infrastructure of commodity futures clearing — sticky, tech-enabled, regulatory-moat businesses. Marx is trading at 7x PE with 30% ROE. Every elevated-volatility period prints money for them. Buy on any pullback.
• The Fallen Angels Monitor: Buy Decent Businesses That Just Got Too Cheap: Icon PLC, a CRO business, sold off 40% in a day on a revenue restatement (2% overstatement, free cash flow intact). Ketum’s Fallen Angels monitor tracks high-quality businesses that have leaked lower without a fundamental reason. The statistical record shows that buying on announcement day of accounting misstatements — not fraud, but restatements — has been profitable in most cases over the past three years. This is a repeatable edge.
Investment Focus
The Kupperman/Vanzо framework is one of the most operationally specific in the market: (1) go long Marathon and Valero as the structural refinery tightness trade, (2) own B3 and XP as the pure-play Brazilian equity revival, (3) buy Brookdale Senior Living as the event-driven elder care setup, (4) hold Marx as the long-volatility infrastructure play, and (5) scan the Ketum Fallen Angels monitor for accounting-restatement-driven dislocations where free cash flow is intact.
EP 3 - Eric Nuttall (Ninepoint): $200 Oil — A Looming Energy Crisis
Eric Nuttall — Ninepoint Partners Senior Portfolio Manager
Eric Nuttall, senior portfolio manager at Ninepoint Partners and Canada’s most vocal energy bull, made his most extreme case yet for a structural oil crisis. Middle Eastern production is down 14 million barrels per day, OPEC exports are down 11 million, global inventories are being drawn at 8 million barrels per day net, and by end of May, the world will be at record-low inventories by a substantial margin. Nuttall’s path to $200 oil is mathematical: you need to reduce demand by the equivalent of COVID, and the only way to do that is price. He is 95% invested, owns 11 names, and believes generational wealth is available in Canadian and US mid-cap energy stocks today.
Actionable Bullet Points
• The Oil Shortage Is Three Times Larger Than the Russia/Ukraine Fear That Never Materialised: In 2022, the fear was a 3 million barrel per day shortage. We currently have an 8 million barrel per day net draw. That is not a risk — it is happening every day. By end of May, global inventories will be at all-time lows. By late summer, certain geographies will literally not have access to energy at any price. Buy energy stocks before this reality is priced in.
• US Shale Is Essentially Over — The Structural Underpinning of Non-OPEC Supply Has Gone: US shale production peaked in November 2025 (lower 48). The rig count continues to fall. Shale used to account for 115% of total non-OPEC global production growth over 15 years. That era is over. At 100-per-barrel oil, you get a modest supply response — 100–200k barrels per day. Meanwhile, demand growth requires 1.5 million barrels per day of new supply annually. This structural mismatch will persist regardless of Hormuz resolution.
• The UAE Departure from OPEC Does Not Solve the Problem: The UAE’s latent spare capacity is 500–800k barrels per day, assuming no damage. Against an 8 million barrel per day deficit, this is irrelevant. Additionally, UAE infrastructure has been extensively damaged by drones and missiles. Even the capacity that exists cannot simply be turned on — field restart takes months to years. The departure represents geopolitical realignment, not a market solution.
• Canadian Energy Stocks Are Trading at 5–6x Cash Flow at $80 Oil — Deeply Undervalued: The two largest Canadian oil sands companies trade at 5.9x cash flow at $80 oil, generating 12–13% free cash flow yields. Their global peers — Exxon, Chevron — trade at 8–10x. The discount exists because generalists don’t want geopolitical risk. When that discount closes via M&A or rotation, the upside is 40–70%. Nuttall’s conviction: one of his US mid-cap holdings trades at 4.3x cash flow and 17% free cash flow yield at $80 oil.
• The Path to $200 Oil Is Mathematical, Not Hyperbolic: When global GDP spending on oil reaches 5–5.5%, historical demand destruction kicks in. At current pricing trajectories, that implies $177 round number — with overshoot potential to $200 given that White House tweet suppression will cause a parabolic catch-up. The risk is not whether oil goes higher, it is how you survive the volatility on the way. Nuttall uses call spreads on USO to manage the ride while owning the underlying equities.
Investment Focus
Nuttall’s framework is the most extreme directional call in energy this week. The actionable template: (1) buy Canadian oil sands names — CNQ and SU — as the highest-conviction long at 5.9x cash flow, (2) buy US mid-cap producers trading at 3–4x forward cash flow as the highest-upside vehicle, (3) hedge the oil position with OTM call spreads on USO rather than outright futures, (4) avoid natural gas entirely — it is not the structural trade, (5) hold 5% cash for the political tweet-driven volatility spikes that create entry opportunities. The generational wealth window, in Nuttall’s view, is open today.
EP 4 - “Barbarians at the Moat”: The Investing Warning Everyone’s Ignoring
Paul Moroz — Mawer Investment Management CIO (C$65 billion AUM)
Paul Moroz, CIO of Mawer Investment Management — one of Canada’s largest and most respected independent asset managers with over C$65 billion in assets — was brought in to turn around the global equities portfolio after years of underperformance driven by defensive positioning that missed the AI-driven bull market. He introduced the concept of ‘barbarians at the moat’ to describe the AI disruption of software, argued that the winning investment style of this era is change investing (not value, growth, GARP, or quality), and provided three specific stock picks: TSMC, Amazon, and Bunzl.
Actionable Bullet Points
• The Winning Investment Style Is Change Investing — Not Value, Growth, or Quality: Moroz identified a new investment taxonomy for the current environment: change investors win. These are investors who track the delta — the rate of change in a technology, a commodity, or a sector — and position ahead of it. Nvidia’s roadmap implies more power per rack, which implies a specific increase in average selling price for power infrastructure companies. That is change investing. Every classic style — value, growth, GARP, quality — is about the lack of change or the steady state. The current environment rewards those who identify and size the delta correctly.
• Vertical Market Software and System-of-Record Enterprise Software Will Survive the Barbarians: Not all software is dead. Moroz owns Microsoft (enterprise privacy moat), SAP (system of record, no one rips it out), and Constellation Software (infrastructure-like vertical market software for utilities and transit that no one will vibe-code a replacement for). The barbarian metaphor: some barbarians will cross the moat (convenience SaaS, aggregators, low-switching-cost horizontal tools); others will not. The distinction is mission-critical versus nice-to-have.
• TSMC Is the Defining Compounder of This Era — All Roads Lead to It: Every AI chip runs through TSMC. The competitive moat — a thousand-step manufacturing process, full ASML EUV machine allocation, embedded in every hyperscaler’s supply chain — has actually improved during the AI boom because compute constraints mean TSMC’s lock-in is tighter than ever. The risk is Taiwan geopolitical, but Moroz notes the mutual-assured-destruction dynamic that limits probability. Own TSMC as the number-one position.
• Amazon’s Culture Is the Reason to Own It, Not Its Business Lines: Moroz frames Amazon through the lens of the Bezos letter to shareholders: long-term free cash flow focus, return on invested capital discipline, relentless reinvestment. The business lines — cloud, advertising, logistics, Whole Foods, now parcel delivery for third parties — all come from a culture that invents things no analyst predicted. You cannot underwrite which specific service will be worth the most in 10 years; you can underwrite the culture that keeps creating them. Own Amazon on culture, not on a DCF.
• Bunzl Is the Boring Compounder That Earns Its Place in a Volatile Portfolio: Bunzl distributes essential non-core goods (straws, napkins, cleaning supplies) to businesses globally. It trades at 13x earnings, is not cyclical, is not disruptable by AI (physical last-mile distribution is real), and has pulled back meaningfully. In a portfolio that is heavily weighted to AI change investing, Bunzl is the ballast. It provides yield, stability, and allows concentration elsewhere. Own it as portfolio construction, not as an exciting thesis.
Investment Focus
Moroz’s framework for the current environment: (1) identify yourself as a change investor and size your positions accordingly — bet on the delta, (2) own TSMC as the highest-conviction compounder of the AI era, (3) own Amazon on culture rather than any specific business line, (4) own Bunzl as a structural portfolio anchor in an otherwise high-volatility book, (5) be selective in software — own vertical market and system-of-record names, avoid horizontal convenience SaaS. The goal is to ‘stay in the middle of the net’ — capture the AI upside without being fully exposed to a sudden AI sentiment reversal.
EP 5 - The Last Moat | Chris Mayer and Ian Cassel on the Stock Picking Edge AI Can’t Replicate
Chris Mayer — Woodlock House Family Capital; Ian Cassel — MicroCap Club Founder
Chris Mayer, author of 100 Baggers and co-founder of Woodlock House Family Capital, and Ian Cassel, founder of MicroCap Club and author of the forthcoming Stockpicker, joined Bogumil Baronowski for the Excess Returns podcast’s first 100-Year Thinkers episode. Their central thesis: as AI flattens the information playing field, the last remaining investment edge is presence — being in the room, on the factory floor, on the call, and building multi-year relationships with management teams. They also discussed the Tom Brady thesis for micro caps, the analyst-versus-investor distinction, and why selling losers remains the hardest skill in stock picking.
Actionable Bullet Points
• The Last Moat Is Presence — Being in the Room, Not in the Terminal: AI will ingest all available public data. The edge that cannot be replicated is the relational — showing up in person over multi-year periods, building the kind of relationship where a CEO pops out of his chair and draws on a whiteboard. Ian Cassel’s twenty-five years of management meetings have taught him that the real value is not informational (they rarely tell you secrets); it is operational — a deeper understanding of how the business actually works, enabling conviction to hold through 50% drawdowns when others sell on headlines.
• Buy the Proven Leader, Not the Pre-Draft Prospect — The Tom Brady Framework: Cassel’s micro cap framework: Tom Brady was drafted in the sixth round, sat on the bench for a year, went 11-5 in his second season, and won the Super Bowl. Chris Mayer would have bought the stock after that Super Bowl — a proven leader. Cassel is trying to find Brady in fifth-grade football. Most won’t make it across the chasm from entrepreneur to business operator. Know your own framework and apply it consistently.
• The Analyst-Investor Gap: Six Skills Beyond Finding an Idea: Finding an idea is one of seven investment skills. The others — initial position sizing, adding to winners, averaging down correctly, holding through volatility, sizing up at conviction peaks, and selling — are what separate skilled investors from merely skilled analysts. Lee Freeman-Shore’s research found that even the best investors were right only 49% of the time; much of their outperformance came from holding Costco or a great compounder for decades, not from superior hit rates. Master the non-analytical skills.
• Start Small and Let Positions Earn Their Right to Be Large: Both Mayer and Cassel emphasised that overconfidence in initial position sizing is a perennial mistake. The framework: start with a position small enough to learn without catastrophic consequences, add as the business proves your thesis, and let the compounding do the work of making the position large. Forcing a large position at cost is declaring certainty that the market hasn’t confirmed. The best large positions started as small positions that earned the right to grow.
• Owner-Operators and Repeat Winners Are the Highest-Quality Leadership Signals: Mayer owns owner-operated companies with proven track records of capital allocation — the counterpart to Brady’s Super Bowls. Cassel looks for two types: first-time founders who’ve solved the early chaos, and repeat winners — people who’ve built and exited a company before and are now running something small again. Repeat winners often have lower insider ownership but are fiercely motivated to prove themselves. Both types, when combined with management transitions and skin in the game, are actionable catalyst signals.
Investment Focus
The Mayer/Cassel framework is the most intellectually grounded stock-picking thesis this week. The actionable template: (1) prioritise presence — physically visit management over multi-year periods rather than relying on transcripts and AI summaries, (2) buy proven leaders with at least one Super Bowl (demonstrated business track record) rather than pre-draft prospects, (3) develop the six non-analytical investment skills — especially holding through drawdowns and selling losers early, (4) start positions small and let them earn the right to be large, (5) look for management transitions — new CEO with pedigree stepping into a beaten-down situation — as the highest-asymmetry entry point in small and micro caps.
EP 6 - Professor Jiang: World War 3 Has Already Begun, Let Me Explain!
Professor Jiang — Geopolitical Commentator & YouTuber
Professor Jiang, the geopolitical commentator who correctly predicted Trump’s 2024 election win, the Iran war, and the US’s strategic failure in the conflict, appeared on the Diary of a CEO to outline eight new predictions for the next three to five years. His framework — drawn from the National Defense Strategy, game theory, and historical analogies including Plato’s Allegory of the Cave — makes the case that the US is already in World War III, that the American empire will collapse within five to ten years, and that the world is moving toward an AI civilian surveillance state. Provocative and geopolitically sophisticated, this episode distils the deepest macro-political framework available for investors thinking beyond the next quarter.
Actionable Bullet Points
• World War III Has Already Begun — China Is the Primary Strategic Winner: Every week the US is committed to the Gulf of Hormuz is a week China operates unchallenged in the Western Pacific. China has no incentive to end the Iran war quickly. It is gaining strategic breathing room, observing US weapons systems in real conditions, and watching US allies become estranged. This confirms the strategic thesis from last week’s Jon Alterman: position for a prolonged US-China rivalry, not a resolution. Long defence, energy independence, non-China semiconductor supply chains.
• Trump Will Seek a Third Term — Two Pathways, Both Plausible: Pathway one: Don Jr. runs for president in 2028 with Trump as VP; Don Jr. abdicates. Pathway two: Emergency war powers and delayed election under the precedent of the Iran war. Professor Jiang assigns a significant probability to either path materialising. The investment implication: do not model a standard 2028 political transition. US political risk is higher than markets price. Own assets that benefit from executive power concentration and defence spending regardless of electoral cycle.
• The US-China Grand Bargain Is Coming — And It Benefits Both Sides: Contrary to the WWIII thesis, Jiang predicts a grand bargain between the US and China this year: Trump gets continued Chinese Treasury purchases to finance the American debt, China gets energy access from the Western Hemisphere and maintained market access. China will remain friends with both Russia and the US — the strategic posture of the non-aligned movement reborn. This confirms Gave’s thesis from Episode 1: treat Xi-Trump summits as re-rating catalysts for Chinese assets.
• The AI Civilian State Is Coming — Digital ID and Programmable Money Are the Mechanisms: Every action online will be monitored, scored, and used to control behaviour — as already exists in China. The Genius Act (US stable coin legislation) missed the privacy opportunity. The investment implication: own companies building AI authentication, content verification, and privacy-preserving infrastructure. These will become regulated requirements. Also long enterprise platforms with government-grade security and compliance infrastructure — they benefit from the regulatory mandate regardless of the political regime.
• The American Empire Collapses in Five to Ten Years — Historical Pattern Is Consistent: 200-year empire lifecycle. Too much debt. Too much inequality. Too much political polarisation. The Bronze Age Collapse is the historical analogue: multiple simultaneous crises (climate, war, trade disruption, political instability) that overwhelm even sophisticated civilisations. The investment prescription: geographic diversification away from US-centric supply chains and financial systems, long non-US developed market equities that benefit from rebuilding relationships, and own hard assets that survive systemic monetary uncertainty.
Investment Focus
Jiang’s framework is the most macro-structurally provocative this week. For investors whose mandate allows very long-term positioning: (1) own assets that benefit from US-China rivalry intensification regardless of which side ‘wins’, (2) own gold, real assets, and hard commodity exporters as empire-cycle hedges, (3) begin geographic diversification away from purely US-centric portfolios, (4) own companies building AI compliance infrastructure — surveillance states need auditable AI, (5) treat any Xi-Trump meeting as a positive catalyst for Chinese assets given the grand bargain thesis.
EP 7 - George Friedman on Why Putin Is Running Out of Time
George Friedman — Geopolitical Futures Founder & Chairman
George Friedman, founder and chairman of Geopolitical Futures, broke down the significance of Putin’s unusual decision to initiate a phone call to Trump — the first major leader-to-leader contact in months — and what it signals about Russia’s deteriorating position. Friedman’s central thesis: Russia is running out of time. The economy is in structural deterioration (not collapse, which is more dangerous because it is sustained), the FSB may be turning against Putin, Ukraine has survived militarily far beyond all Russian expectations, and Putin is now clearly seeking economic accommodation with the US. Friedman also addressed what Europe must become now that its security assumptions have been shattered.
Actionable Bullet Points
• Putin’s Phone Call Signals Desperation, Not Strength — Economic Accommodation Is the Ask: Putin initiated contact. The first thing he raised was economic cooperation with the United States — the exact proposal Trump had put on the table earlier that Putin had rejected. This is a significant reversal. Russia’s economy is in prolonged deterioration: labour shortage, goods scarcity, price inflation, and the FSB (Russia’s own intelligence agency) is reportedly growing hostile toward Putin. Model for a Russian leadership transition and a post-Putin accommodation with the West — long European companies positioned to benefit from a Russia re-integration scenario.
• Ukraine Has Demonstrated Military Equality with Russia — A Strategic Shock to Russian Identity: Ukraine is still hitting Moscow with drones. Russia’s military, which was supposed to overrun Ukraine in weeks, is in year five. The Russian public has been forced to reckon with the idea that Ukraine — a country they did not consider a serious military power — has held them to a standstill. This is a civilisational identity crisis for a country that has defined itself as a great power since the Soviet era. The political implications of this failure will outlast Putin’s presidency.
• Russia’s Oil Windfall From the Iran War Is Limited — They Are at Maximum Production: Russia cannot take meaningful advantage of elevated oil prices because they are already pumping at maximum capacity. Increasing production requires years of new technology investment. The Iran war’s oil price benefit has already been largely captured. Do not model Russia as a major oil supply source for the next two years. The structural energy trade remains long Canadian producers, long LNG infrastructure, and long renewable energy European grid buildout.
• The Future Is a US-Russia Accommodation and Europe’s Existential Question: If Putin falls, a new Russian leadership will be focused on economic recovery, not imperial expansion. That Russia will want economic relations with both the US and Europe. For Europe, this creates an existential question: what is Europe for? NATO without a Russian threat? An economic bloc that can finally complete its internal market? Friedman argues this is the most important question in geopolitics over the next decade. Long European financial institutions positioned to benefit from cross-border consolidation if a single market finally comes together.
• Trump’s Withdrawal From Germany Is a Signal, Not a Strategy — Watch Economic Consequences: 5,000 troops pulled from Germany — a symbolic signal, not a military rebalancing. But the economic consequence was unanticipated: towns near US bases that depended on the economic activity of stationed soldiers are now facing real hardship. This is a preview of what a more significant US military drawdown in Europe would mean. Long European defence companies and domestic manufacturing beneficiaries if US forces continue to retract.
Investment Focus
Friedman’s framework is the clearest geopolitical calendar for the next twelve to eighteen months: (1) model a Russian leadership transition and position European companies for a post-Putin commercial re-engagement scenario, (2) avoid betting on Russia as a structural energy beneficiary — they are already at capacity, (3) long European defence and infrastructure as the continent is forced to take its own security seriously, (4) watch the FSB narrative closely — if the intelligence agency turns on Putin, the transition accelerates dramatically, (5) long European financial institutions positioned for cross-border M&A in a potential internal market completion scenario.
EP 8 - Why Banks Are Lobbying Against Your Financial Freedom — Former CFTC Chair
J. Christopher Giancarlo — Former CFTC Chairman, 13th; Digital Dollar Project Executive Chairman
J. Christopher Giancarlo, the 13th Chairman of the CFTC and known as ‘Crypto Dad’ for championing the first regulated Bitcoin derivative market, provided the most technically detailed and investment-relevant analysis of the digital dollar, stable coins, and financial system transformation available this week. His central argument: the Genius Act (US stable coin legislation) was a historic missed opportunity to encode privacy rights into digital money — a failure that leaves Americans vulnerable to the same financial surveillance they criticise China for. He also explained the DTCC’s move to tokenised securities infrastructure as the most important financial plumbing event in decades.
Actionable Bullet Points
• The Genius Act Missed the Privacy Opportunity — Stable Coins Are Not Private: The existing Bank Secrecy Act surveillance regime has been placed on top of stable coin innovation. Stable coin holders have no privacy rights. The data will be mined. Giancarlo’s prescription: the US should trademark the word ‘dollar’ and make privacy protection a licensing requirement for any digital dollar. Companies that build privacy-preserving digital money will win globally — the world aspires to hold dollars that protect freedom. Own companies building privacy infrastructure for digital finance.
• Banks Are Lobbying Against Your Financial Freedom — Again: Every wave of financial innovation — ATMs, branch banking, mobile apps, chip cards — has seen incumbent banks lobby to slow it down. Stable coins are the latest. The banks are afraid of losing deposit-funded income and yield. Giancarlo argues this is a repeat of historical patterns and the banks will lose again. The innovation will happen offshore first (as with Tether’s $6.3 billion annual transactions at 9 cents per transfer), return onshore, and the banks will have to adopt it anyway. Long fintech infrastructure; short the business model of traditional banks.
• DTCC Tokenisation of Securities Is the Most Important Plumbing Event in Decades: The Depository Trust Clearing Corporation — the entity that processes over $100 trillion in securities transactions annually — is targeting a tokenised securities platform by October 2026. This is not a crypto startup; it is the core infrastructure of Wall Street, built and owned by every major global bank. Moving from analog ledger entries to digital network-based ownership and transfer fundamentally changes finance in the same way photography was transformed by the internet. Long blockchain infrastructure, tokenisation platforms, and the settlement layer of digital securities.
• Tether’s Physical Gold Accumulation Proves the Enduring Value of Hard Assets: The largest private stable coin issuer is aggressively building physical gold reserves — 130+ tons — while simultaneously being a pioneer of digital dollars. This is not a contradiction; it is sophisticated. Even as digital networks disrupt settlement, the world continues to reach for gold as the stable store of value it has always been. The investment implication: gold’s role as a reserve asset is structurally intact regardless of technological change. Own gold alongside digital infrastructure — not instead of it.
• Intermediaries Will Evolve, Not Disappear — But the Specific Intermediaries Will Change: Giancarlo’s historical framework: brokers have existed since they put their marks on the blocks of the Egyptian pyramids. Technology changes who the intermediary is, not whether one exists. The danger is being the intermediary that fails to adapt — like Kodak to digital photography. The opportunity is being the new intermediary — like Amazon to retail. In finance, the new intermediaries are tokenisation platforms, digital asset custodians, and AI-powered portfolio management services. Own the new intermediaries; avoid the legacy ones.
Investment Focus
Giancarlo’s framework is the most technically precise on digital money this week. The actionable template: (1) own companies building privacy-preserving digital finance infrastructure — this will become a regulatory requirement, (2) long fintech infrastructure and tokenisation platforms as the DTCC move signals systemic adoption, (3) own physical gold as a complement to digital asset exposure — the two are not in conflict, (4) avoid business models predicated on capturing the spread between deposit costs and lending rates — that model is being disintermediated by stable coin yield, and (5) watch the DTCC October 2026 pilot as the most important financial infrastructure event of the year.
EP 9 - Passive Easing Is Fueling The Next Inflation Wave | Danny Dayan
Danny Dayan — Macro Strategist & Founder, Macro Musings by Danny D
Danny Dayan, a data-driven macro strategist with proprietary financial conditions and inflation models built over a career at major hedge funds, delivered the most technically rigorous inflation warning of this week’s lineup. His central thesis: the Fed made a policy error in 2024 by cutting rates below neutral (which Dayan estimates at 4.5%, versus the Fed’s broken model estimate of 3.1%), financial conditions have been excessively loose for years, the Iran war supply shock has been met with looser — not tighter — financial conditions, and core inflation on a three-month annualised basis was already running at 4.4% before the war began. He now calls every day the Fed does not hike ‘passive easing.’
Actionable Bullet Points
• The Fed Is Behind the Curve — Every Day They Don’t Hike, They Ease: Dayan’s neutral rate estimate: 4.5% (not 3.1% as the Fed’s broken HLW model implies). At current Fed funds rate, they are below neutral. The Taylor Rule and Dayan’s financial conditions model both imply the Fed funds rate should be 100–200 bps higher than where it is. Core inflation was already 4.4% annualised before the Iran war. The war has added a supply shock on top of a cyclical overheating. The Fed is passively easing every day. Be short long-duration government bonds.
• M2 Growth at 11% Annualised and Commercial Loan Growth at 12% Are Demand-Based Inflation Signals: These are the fastest growth rates in fifteen years. Unlike the supply-shock component of inflation (which passes), demand-based inflation driven by monetary expansion requires tighter policy to arrest. The new Fed Chair Worsh is a monetarist — he will see this data and eventually be forced to act. Position for rate hikes in the second half of 2026, not cuts.
• The Demographics Story Is Why the Fed Keeps Getting It Wrong: The Fed systematically misunderstands labour supply. Immigration drove unemployment higher in 2023–2024, leading the Fed to cut rates. Trump shut down immigration in 2025 — labour supply is now zero to negative, the breakeven employment level has collapsed to 30k jobs per month. The unemployment mandate is effectively on autopilot. The Fed does not need to cut for employment reasons. But they keep acting as if they do. This error compounds inflation. Own businesses with pricing power that can pass through structurally elevated costs.
• Financial Conditions Have Loosened Since the Iran War — Not Tightened: Commodity traders know: to rebalance a supply disruption, you need demand destruction. Demand destruction requires tighter financial conditions. Instead, financial conditions loosened after the Iran war began (equity markets rallied, the dollar weakened). This means you are adding a demand impulse to a contracting supply — the recipe for sustained, higher-volatility inflation. The most dangerous scenario: a cycle where you get both the oil shock and the demand boom simultaneously.
• Buy Every Risk Asset Dip Until Oil Breaks, the Bond Market Breaks, or the Fed Gets Serious: Dayan’s tactical overlay for the inflation-driven bull market: as long as the Fed stays passive, financial conditions remain loose, earnings estimates keep rising (up 25% on a 252-day basis — 99th percentile), risk assets go parabolic. The three exit signals: WTI breaks to 150+, the 10-year Treasury hits 5.5%, or the Fed delivers a genuinely hawkish surprise (not language — actual hikes). Until then, buy dips in risk assets and hedge with oil upside and bond shorts.
Investment Focus
Dayan’s playbook for the current environment: (1) be short long-duration government bonds — the Fed is passively easing and inflation is re-accelerating, (2) own risk assets on every dip until one of the three breaking points (oil 150, 10yr 5.5%, real Fed hawkishness) materialises, (3) long oil via August Brent calls as an inflation hedge and equity portfolio hedge simultaneously, (4) own businesses with strong pricing power that can sustain margins through 4–6% structural inflation, and (5) track M2 growth and commercial loan growth monthly — these are your leading indicators for when the Fed finally acts.
EP 10 - Hunting for Asymmetry: How to Spot Hedge Funds Mastering Market Shifts
Kieran Cavanaugh — Old Farm Partners Founder & CIO ($700M AUM)
Kieran Cavanaugh, founder and CIO of Old Farm Partners and host of the Thematic Investors podcast, previously ran external manager programs at Soros Fund Management under Scott Bessant. Old Farm invests in approximately $700 million via a blend of fund-of-funds allocations and public market co-investments — a model championed by Bessant. Cavanaugh shared his manager selection process, his highest-conviction current themes (AI capex, defence tech, semicap equipment), and his framework for finding asymmetric opportunities at the intersection of macro thematics and event-driven catalysts.
Actionable Bullet Points
• The Main Thing Is AI Capex — Own It Through Power, Uranium, Optical Networking, and Infrastructure: Cavanaugh’s Pat Riley quote, repeated by Bessant weekly: ‘Make sure the main thing is the main thing.’ AI capex is the main thing for markets for the next three to four years. Old Farm does not own Nvidia directly but owns power infrastructure, uranium miners (nuclear power for data centres), optical networking companies (Ciena, Viavi, Lumentum — up 250–300% in his strategy over twelve months), and memory semiconductor cap equipment for the memory fab buildout. This is the way to be in the AI trade without paying Nvidia multiples.
• Optical Networking Was the Best Asymmetric Trade of the Cycle — Still Has Legs: Twelve months ago, Ciena, Viavi, and Lumentum traded at market-level valuations. Today they are up 250–300%. The thesis was simple: every hyperscaler data centre rack needs optical connections as you scale beyond copper’s limitations. The company managements themselves were surprised by the demand step-change — a great signal. The trade has been ‘chipped away’ as it ran, but the underlying demand is still there: more racks, bigger racks, more fibre. Still a position.
• Defence Tech Is the Next Thematic Co-Investment — Software-Defined Warfare Is the Structural Driver: Xi Jinping explicitly said technology is the offensive weapon of our time. US DoD is fundamentally changing procurement — away from legacy systems toward software-defined, AI-enabled, drone-centric platforms. Old Farm is working with a manager focused on defence technology companies that supply this transition. The event catalyst: the national defence budget reallocation from legacy platforms to technology procurement is a multi-year structural spending driver. Own the software-defined warfare enablers, not the traditional defence primes (consistent with Gave’s thesis from Episode 1).
• Find Managers With a Chip on Their Shoulder Who Value Independence Over Fees: Cavanaugh’s manager selection framework: intellectual curiosity, passion for markets (not just desire for wealth), a chip on their shoulder (proving something, not protecting a franchise), and genuine independence. His best allocations are in Jackson Hole, Wyoming; Charlottesville, Virginia; and Puerto Rico — not midtown Manhattan. The guy managing $150 million of his own money and his mother’s savings is motivated differently than the guy at a large multi-strat. That incentive structure matters more than pedigree.
• The Open Architecture Model Is the Future of Institutional Investing: The old world: fund managers compete. The new world: Goldman Sachs lends to Blackstone, Apollo securitises loans for insurance companies, Mubadala co-invests with Blackstone and Apollo in the same deal. Cavanaugh sees this convergence everywhere. The actionable investment implication: own the asset managers who are building open-architecture infrastructure — those who can source, structure, and distribute across public, private, and alternative channels simultaneously will compound assets at higher rates than those operating in silos.
Investment Focus
Cavanaugh’s framework for finding asymmetric opportunities: (1) stay long AI capex via power, uranium, optical networking, and semicap equipment — avoid paying Nvidia multiples for the same exposure, (2) position in defence tech as the DoD procurement revolution unfolds, (3) look for co-investment opportunities with small, high-conviction managers who are asymmetrically motivated, (4) favour the open-architecture multi-manager model over single-strategy concentration, and (5) use the convergence of public and private markets as a source of alpha — the managers who spot the arbitrage across both have the structural edge.
EP 11 - Markets, World Uncertainties & $2 Trillion Fund | Jens Stoltenberg & David Solomon
Jens Stoltenberg — Norwegian Finance Minister; David Solomon — Goldman Sachs CEO
The Norwegian Government Pension Fund’s annual conference brought together Finance Minister Jens Stoltenberg — who invented the fund’s spending rule in 1996 — and Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, who has one of the deepest relationships with the $2 trillion fund, for a wide-ranging conversation on global capital allocation, Europe’s structural decline, AI, and the geopolitical consequences of the Iran war. The most investable insights came from Solomon’s real-time read on CEO behaviour and capital allocation — and both men’s shared bewilderment that equity markets have not re-rated meaningfully despite the Hormuz closure.
Actionable Bullet Points
• Goldman Had Its Second-Best Revenue Quarter Ever — And the Stock Fell 30 Points on It: Solomon’s framing: the market is pricing a worse forward, not rewarding the extraordinary trailing quarter. The implicit message: if you can get Goldman Sachs at a discount during the second-best revenue quarter in its history, that is an entry point. The bar for disappointment in the next quarter is now high, but the underlying drivers — M&A, capital markets, trading — are all running with tailwinds that CEO front-footedness will sustain.
• CEOs Are Blocking Out Geopolitical Noise and Investing Aggressively in Scale and Technology: Solomon’s direct read from CEO conversations: no one is standing still. The regulatory environment allows consolidation. The technology acceleration makes inaction a competitive risk. CEOs who spend time being cautious, not investing, not gaining scale, risk weakening their competitive position in ways that take years to recover from. This is the same read as Blackstone and Apollo at the Milken panel (Episode 12) — the forward investment cycle is very real regardless of the Iran war.
• Europe Has Lost Half Its Share of Global Equity Market Cap in Ten Years — And It Will Keep Losing: The Norwegian fund’s European allocation has fallen from 42% to 21% over ten years — driven entirely by differential earnings growth. The US went from 37% to 55%. Solomon’s directional call: 0.7% European trend growth versus 2% US trend growth will keep compounding this divergence. Europe needs banking consolidation across borders, a capital markets union, and a risk-taking culture it has not shown the ability to develop. Without those changes, the shift continues. Underweight European equities relative to benchmark.
• AI Will Remake Operating Processes, Not Just Automate Tasks — The Efficiency Gains Are Real: Solomon’s Goldman AI framework: not just giving tools to smart people, but rewriting operating processes on a blank sheet of paper. The result is efficiency gains that create capacity to invest in growth rather than just cost savings. Every major CEO conversation is now centred on this. The investment implication: companies with the culture to actually rewrite processes (not just deploy AI tools) will create non-linear productivity advantages. This is a management quality screen, not just a technology selection.
• Equity Risk Premia Have Not Repriced for the Iran War — Both Stoltenberg and Solomon Are Surprised: Both agreed: rate markets and commodity markets have repriced. Equity risk premia have not. The market is saying the conflict will resolve. Both men believe the distribution of outcomes includes a much longer conflict as a non-trivial probability. If equity markets are wrong on this, the repricing could be significant. Maintain the oil hedge that Dayan recommended in Episode 9 — it is the instrument that will pay if the equity complacency is wrong.
Investment Focus
The Stoltenberg/Solomon conversation confirms the consensus at the top of the financial establishment: (1) be long quality US equities with CEOs who are investing aggressively in scale and technology, (2) structurally underweight European equities relative to benchmark — the earnings growth divergence will continue compounding, (3) own Goldman Sachs at any correction — the underlying franchise has never been stronger, (4) maintain equity risk premium hedges (oil calls, long VIX) as both men are surprised by the equity market’s complacency on Hormuz, and (5) use management quality — specifically the ability to rewrite operating processes with AI rather than just deploy tools — as a stock selection filter.
EP 12 - Milken Institute Panel — Global Capital Markets: Blackstone, Apollo, BNY, Franklin Templeton, Mubadala
Jon Gray (Blackstone CEO), James Zelter (Apollo President), Jenny Johnson (Franklin Templeton CEO), Robin Vince (BNY CEO), Khaldoon Al Mubarak (Mubadala Deputy Group CEO)
The most powerful capital markets panel of 2026 assembled the CEOs of Blackstone, Apollo, BNY, Franklin Templeton, and Mubadala Investment Company for a frank discussion at the Milken Institute Global Conference. Five themes dominated: the unprecedented scale of AI capex and its funding requirements ($750 billion in announced data centre investment requiring every debt and equity market simultaneously), the coming real estate recovery, private credit’s intersection with insurance (the bigger concern than banks), the public-private market convergence, and Mubadala’s extraordinary resilience after sustaining 94% of all incoming missiles and drones while delivering two of its best post-crisis performance years.
Actionable Bullet Points
• The AI Capex Cycle Is Too Large for Any Single Market — It Requires Open Architecture Across All Debt and Equity Markets: Net IG market issuance north of $1.1 trillion this year will exceed net US Treasury issuance for the first time. The $750 billion in hyperscaler capex is being funded across excess cash flows, public investment grade debt, infrastructure credit, private credit, and equity markets simultaneously. The investment implication: every participant in this ecosystem — large banks, private credit managers, infrastructure funds, equipment lessors — benefits. The trade is as wide as the capex cycle itself.
• Real Estate Is the Most Contrarian Opportunity in Institutional Allocations Right Now: Gray’s thesis: new supply of buildings, warehouses, hotels, and housing is down 50–75% from peak. Cost of capital has fallen. Passive investors are underweight real estate because it has underperformed the S&P for nine of ten years. Public REIT market has underperformed S&P for nine of ten years. But prior to those nine years, it outperformed for six of seven. Fundamentals are improving: less supply, lower cost of capital, investor rotation toward hard assets. Gray’s prediction: real estate will surprise investors in the next two years. Long diversified REITs and real estate operating companies.
• Private Credit’s Intersection With Insurance Is a Larger Systemic Concern Than Bank Exposure: Al Mubarak and Zelter both noted that the bank/private credit relationship is manageable and transparent. The insurance/private credit/CLO equity loop is more opaque. Insurance companies hold CLO equity that is rated at the state level with significant variance, some of it parked offshore for additional opacity. If the underlying loans get rerated — the real risk — it triggers a cascade of reserve capital requirements that none of the state regulators are fully equipped to manage. This is the risk to monitor, not the bank-credit relationship.
• The Public-Private Market Convergence Is Accelerating — Open Architecture Is the Structural Winner: The old world: banks lend, asset managers invest, insurance companies underwrite. The new world: Goldman lends to Blackstone, Apollo securitises insurance liabilities, BNY clears everything, and Mubadala co-invests with all of them simultaneously in the same deal. The firms that survive and grow are those with the open-architecture capability to sit at every point of the capital stack. Own the multi-strategy asset managers (Blackstone, Apollo, Ares, Blue Owl) over single-asset managers.
• Mubadala’s Post-Crisis V-Shape Is the Blueprint for Abu Dhabi’s Resilience — Own Gulf Infrastructure: Mubadala’s CEO: after both the GFC and COVID, Mubadala delivered its best performance years. The same will happen again. Abu Dhabi’s society and institutions came together with extraordinary resilience. The 44% US allocation and the strategic long-term vision remain intact. The investment implication: Gulf sovereign wealth funds are structural buyers of US equities, private credit, and infrastructure on any price disruption. This provides a structural bid that most retail investors underestimate.
Investment Focus
The Milken panel establishes the consensus view of the world’s largest capital allocators: (1) be long the AI capex ecosystem — all debt and equity markets are being called upon, (2) buy diversified REITs and real estate operating companies as the most contrarian institutional trade, (3) monitor insurance/CLO equity exposure as the systemic risk that banks are not (the concern is state-level regulatory variance and opacity), (4) own multi-strategy asset managers over single-asset managers — open architecture is the structural winner, and (5) treat Gulf sovereign wealth fund buying as a structural backstop for quality US assets on any material correction.
EP 13 - Warren Pies 314 Research: “I’m Scared Out of My Mind… But Very Bullish”
Warren Pies — 314 Research Founder & CEO, Caliban AI
Warren Pies, founder of 314 Research and creator of the Caliban AI charting and research tool, delivered the most data-rich bull/bear synthesis of the week. The man who called S&P 7,000 by 2026 (it happened) now sees a path to 8,000 in 2027 as earnings estimates are rising at a 99th-percentile pace on a 252-day basis. His two-wolves framework: the extraordinary GPU availability collapse confirming the AI step-change (bullish) versus the oil crisis that is drawing global inventories at 8 million barrels per day net (terrifying). His conclusion: buy every equity dip until the oil market actually breaks something, hedge with Brent oil exposure, and recognise that the equity market is looking into the distant future while oil is the spot market.
Actionable Bullet Points
• Earnings Estimates Are Rising at the 99th Percentile on a 252-Day Basis — This Is Unprecedented Outside of Recoveries: Year-to-date, earnings estimates are up 11% at the index level and 25% on a 252-day basis. Historically, you only see this pace of estimate revision coming out of a recession or a shock (GFC, COVID). To see it without a preceding earnings draw down is unprecedented. Pies’ read: this is a genuine earnings boom driven by the AI capex cycle feeding through to semiconductor and memory company earnings. The lumpiness (concentrated in memory and oil) does not invalidate the signal.
• GPU Availability Collapsed in Mid-March — The Mythos Signal Confirmed the Compute Scramble: 314 Research tracks GPU availability daily across Neoclouds. In mid-March, availability went to near-zero across all Nvidia vintages including Blackwell (the most advanced). This preceded the SMH breakout by weeks. When the Mythos model leaked — the best frontier model leap in years that cannot be released due to cybersecurity concerns — the compute-is-king trade exploded. This is the internal signal Pies uses: when GPU availability collapses and a frontier model leap is confirmed simultaneously, the AI trade accelerates.
• The Market Leadership That Takes You to 8,000 Is Tech and Mag 7 — Not Energy and Staples: Pies’ internal market framework: if Staples and Energy lead, the market is faltering. If Financials, Tech, and Mag 7 lead with equal weight eventually confirming, the bull market is sustainable. Equal weight needs to confirm a new high within 90 days of the cap-weighted index. It is currently 1–1.5% below its highs. Pies has strong confidence it will confirm. The leadership is the best possible — the exact mirror image of the worst-possible leadership seen in February.
• The Oil Market Has Not Broken Equities — But Three Exit Signals Will Change That: Pies’ three exit signals for the equity overweight: (1) Brent breaks 150, (2) the 10-year Treasury hits 5.5%, or (3) the Fed delivers real hawkish action (hikes, not language). Until one of these three, buy every dip. The reason: the equity market is discounting the distant future (AI productivity, earnings boom); oil is the spot physical market that cannot discount anything. These two instruments are allowed to diverge until a real economic break occurs.
• Managed Demand Destruction Has Extended the Runway — But Inventories Are Now Drawing in the US: Pies estimated that 4–6 million barrels per day of demand has been destroyed through government restrictions, flight cancellations, and rationing — not price. This extended the time to inventory crisis from the originally feared two months to approximately May–June. US inventory draws are now starting to accelerate. When these show up in the weekly petroleum data, the market will sit up and take notice. Oil has not topped; the high is still ahead.
Investment Focus
Pies’ tactical playbook: (1) buy every equity dip until oil breaks to 150, the 10-year hits 5.5%, or the Fed hikes — none of these has happened yet, (2) pair the equity overweight with a long August Brent call position to hedge and profit from the inevitable oil move, (3) underweight long-duration fixed income — the passive easing thesis (Dayan, Episode 9) and the supply shock are both inflationary, (4) track the three exit signals in real time — when one triggers, act immediately, and (5) watch GPU availability data as the leading indicator for the AI trade — if availability starts to normalise, it is the first warning that the compute scramble is easing.
EP 14 - Banks Won’t Touch These Loans. Meet the $2 Trillion Market That Will | Leyla Kunimoto
Leyla Kunimoto — Accredited Investor Insights Founder
Leyla Kunimoto, founder of Accredited Investor Insights — a newsletter read by 16,000 subscribers including every major asset manager, ratings agency, and investment bank — provided the most granular analysis of the $2 trillion private credit market available to retail and professional investors. Her background: 20 years in public markets, discovered private credit in 2020, and began publishing because she could not find honest investor-perspective analysis of the space. Her central warnings: marks are unreliable, the insurance/CLO equity loop is the real systemic risk, and headline yield is the most misleading number in private credit marketing.
Actionable Bullet Points
• Headline Yield Is the Most Misleading Number in Private Credit Marketing: A fund advertising 9–12% yield does not mean borrowers are paying 9–12% in cash. Pick (payment in kind) is accruing interest to loan balance rather than paying it in cash. PIK toggle — where borrowers can switch from cash to PIK at any time — is now growing and is a direct signal of borrower distress. PIK is not zero recovery; it is deferred recovery. But if the business deteriorates during the deferral period, the accrued interest never gets collected. Demand full cash interest breakdowns from any private credit manager you allocate to.
• Marks Are Not Objective — The Medallia Example Shows 20%+ Variance on the Same Loan: The same Medallia loan (taken private by PE, now defaulting with lenders receiving the keys) was marked at materially different values by five or six different private credit lenders — all at the same time, for the same loan. No one had visibility into Medallia’s EBITDA post-privatisation. This is systemic: private credit portfolios contain hundreds of companies where investors have no financials, no coverage, and no independent mark validation. A publicly traded BDC discount of 18–20% to NAV is the market’s best estimate of the actual mark error.
• The Evergreen Fund Redemption Problem Is Structural — Not Temporary: Evergreen funds (the retail-accessible vehicles sold through wealth advisors) offer up to 5% quarterly redemption — but the underlying assets have 5–7 year lifecycles. When redemption requests exceed 5%, funds prorate. This is not a crisis — yet. But for private equity evergreen funds (not private credit), where assets generate no cash flow and are far harder to sell, the structural mismatch is more acute. Monitor private equity evergreen fund redemption rates, not just private credit.
• The Insurance/CLO Equity Exposure Is the Real Systemic Risk — Not the Bank Credit Relationship: Major asset managers (Apollo/Athene, Blue Owl/Kuvari) have bought or taken control of insurance companies, creating a self-referential loop: generate loans, securitise them as CLOs, sell the CLO equity to affiliated insurance companies, and use the affiliated insurance capital to generate more loans. The insurance companies hold CLO equity that is rated at the state level with significant variance. If the underlying loans get rerated, reserve capital requirements cascade. This is the mechanism that could amplify a private credit correction into a systemic event. Monitor CLO equity rerate risk, not direct loan default rates.
• Read the Financial Statements — The Information Is There If You Know Where to Look: Kunimoto’s practical prescription: BDC quarterly financials are publicly available. They show borrower name, interest rate, maturity, pick status, and cost versus fair value. Comparing a portfolio from quarter to quarter reveals which borrowers switched from cash to pick (distress signal), which are being written down, and which have already defaulted. This information is not hidden — it just requires reading the filing rather than the marketing deck. Any investor in a private credit vehicle who cannot access these statements should treat that opacity as a red flag.
Investment Focus
Kunimoto’s framework is the most practically useful risk management tool for anyone with private credit exposure: (1) demand full cash interest breakdowns from every private credit manager — headline yield is meaningless without this, (2) treat the 18–20% BDC public market discount to NAV as the best available estimate of mark error in private evergreen vehicles, (3) monitor pick toggle rates quarterly — a rising pick toggle percentage is the leading indicator of borrower distress, not lagging default rates, (4) prioritise private credit managers with transparent quarterly financials and mark-to-market processes, and (5) watch CLO equity rerate risk — this is the mechanism through which private credit could become a systemic concern rather than a contained credit cycle.
