gscanlon.lrn

🚨 Do you understand what happened in the last 24 hours? > Zuckerberg killed the Metaverse after burning $80 billion on cartoon avatars nobody used > Sam Altman took $13 billion from Microsoft then sold OpenAI's cloud to Amazon for $50 billion.. Microsoft just found out they funded their own competition > Anthropic made an AI that takes orders from your phone and does your work while you sleep.. > X dropped a dislike button AND a mute-entire-countries button in the same week.. > YouTube asking you to flag AI slop is just Google getting 2 billion people to train their next model for free > 93% of US jobs can now be partly done by AI.. Same week companies started giving the weakest raises since 2008 > Apple started rejecting vibe-coded apps from the App Store > xAI is paying Wall Street bankers $100/hour to teach Grok how to replace Wall Street bankers.. They're taking the money.. > A mystery AI model appeared on benchmarks beating everything.. Developers think DeepSeek is quietly testing their next weapon > Bloomberg asked "Is the AI bubble about to burst" the same day Nvidia said the chip market will hit $1 trillion.. One of them is dead wrong.. > The UK government backed down on AI copyright after artists revolted.. First government to flinch > The Fed said rate hikes are back on the table and blamed AI data centers for making inflation worse And it's only Wednesday. See you tomorrow. It'll be worse. If you're not following me you're finding out about this stuff 48 hours late from someone who read my post

The Oracle situation: Oracle, $ORCL, is down over -11% after hours following earnings results which have sent the entire AI trade lower. Futures are down -1% right now. But, is it warranted? First, Oracle RAISED CapEx estimates by $15 BILLION for 2026. Raising CapEx guidance has been rewarded by investors all year, so what changed? The biggest concern right now is Oracle's debt situation; investors are worried about how this CapEx will be financed. The important point here is that Oracle is borrowing because DEMAND is skyrocketing, and debt is cheaper than missing the AI Revolution. This is the exact playbook that both Microsoft and Amazon used in 2012-2017. Furthermore, Oracle's debt load is still manageable with leverage multiples below a lot of its peers. In our view, this is just another case of the sentiment pendulum swinging back in the direction of "AI is a bubble" after a hot rally and a dovish Fed meeting. The after hours move in tech stocks seems to be an overreaction. We still expect asset owners to win.

DISCUSSION: CHINA, DYNAMICS, & COMPOUNDING People think statically abt things dynamic. A tiny difference in growth compounds (just as with invts). This means that one needs a miracle for China, India, & S-E Asia to not run the world economy (and accordingly, geopolitics) in 1-2 decades! Over my adult lifetime, I saw China's GDP experience a 30 fold multiplication, while the US 3x, Europe so-so, etc. Past 15 y, US 1.8x, China >3x, India ~2x Europe ~0 (Constant $, some variations PPP)

President Trump effectively announces that Kevin Hassett will be the next Fed Chair. 2026 is going to be a wild year.

The US wealth gap is widening: Americans aged 70+ now own a record 38.9% of all US equities held by households. The percentage has surged +10 percentage points since 2020, and has doubled since 2008. As a result, these individuals currently own $19.9 trillion of equities and mutual funds. At the same time, they own a record 32.0% of all US household wealth, or $53.1 trillion. By comparison, this percentage was ~20.0% between 2006-2010. The wealth gap across generations is widening at a record pace.

🚨 VANECK: BITCOIN MAXIS ARE LOOKING AT ZCASH $ZEC. VanEck CEO said quantum threats and traceability concerns have Bitcoin OGs exploring $ZEC for its much stronger privacy.

All it took was a 5% pullback in the S&P 500 to set the plunge protection team in motion. It's a stock market that's become addicted to easy money. With inflation where it is (4%/year over last 5 years) the Fed should be hiking rates, not cutting. They have lost all credibility.

The quantum FUD has gone mainstream This will be a cap on upside until definitively addressed

The qualified buyer pool for housing has shrunk immensely in recent years.

It is hard to argue this. Guidance can change but that doesn’t seem likely given the language used today.