@AravSrinivas Do hedge fund analysts just put market share on line graphs and pie charts?
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Jake Randall
1.4K posts
Jake Randall
@randalljm2
Investing in marketplaces, fin-tech, health-tech, and more. Committed to incremental self-improvement. All views expressed are my own.
Austin, TX Katılım Haziran 2013
437 Takip Edilen380 Takipçiler
@kennandavison Icon just changed the game for brands looking to scale ad creation. Big moves happening.
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@BasedTorba The rift explained:
Jake Randall@randalljm2
Trump’s Fracturing Coalition In 2024, Trump rode an unlikely alliance to victory. Working-class populists and a small group of influential technocrats banded together to deliver a MAGA mandate. This coalition swept Trump back into the White House. But months into his term, the seams are splitting. Aggressive tariffs, pressure on NATO, and a flood of executive orders targeting deregulation and austerity measures have sparked tension within his ranks. The real fight isn’t with Democrats, who remain adrift. It’s inside Trump’s own coalition. Two factions, the Carhartt Army and the Barbour Brigade, are attempting to pull the country in opposite directions. This piece dissects their makeup, motivations, and the fault lines threatening to break them apart. It ends with a contentious prediction.
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@JosephPolitano Explanation below:
Jake Randall@randalljm2
Trump’s Fracturing Coalition In 2024, Trump rode an unlikely alliance to victory. Working-class populists and a small group of influential technocrats banded together to deliver a MAGA mandate. This coalition swept Trump back into the White House. But months into his term, the seams are splitting. Aggressive tariffs, pressure on NATO, and a flood of executive orders targeting deregulation and austerity measures have sparked tension within his ranks. The real fight isn’t with Democrats, who remain adrift. It’s inside Trump’s own coalition. Two factions, the Carhartt Army and the Barbour Brigade, are attempting to pull the country in opposite directions. This piece dissects their makeup, motivations, and the fault lines threatening to break them apart. It ends with a contentious prediction.
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@balajis My take on the divide driving discord on the American right - trying to please two factions at once.
Jake Randall@randalljm2
Trump’s Fracturing Coalition In 2024, Trump rode an unlikely alliance to victory. Working-class populists and a small group of influential technocrats banded together to deliver a MAGA mandate. This coalition swept Trump back into the White House. But months into his term, the seams are splitting. Aggressive tariffs, pressure on NATO, and a flood of executive orders targeting deregulation and austerity measures have sparked tension within his ranks. The real fight isn’t with Democrats, who remain adrift. It’s inside Trump’s own coalition. Two factions, the Carhartt Army and the Barbour Brigade, are attempting to pull the country in opposite directions. This piece dissects their makeup, motivations, and the fault lines threatening to break them apart. It ends with a contentious prediction.
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FROM MAGA TO CHINA
Here are four things MAGA is getting wrong, and why it's handing over the world to China.
(1) First, MAGA correctly understands that America’s economic position is in decline but thinks this is due to economic competition itself, rather than lack of competitiveness.
(2) Second, MAGA also understands that the US has wasted trillions abroad in foreign wars, but thinks the problem is global leadership itself rather than poor leadership.
(3) Third, MAGA knows that their Blue American enemies have allies abroad, but has incorrectly overreacted to this by treating every non-Red-American as an enemy.
(4) Fourth, MAGA sees the billions of dollars flowing from the US to foreign recipients, but isn't grasping that the US can only print those dollars in the first place so long as it's the hub of a global empire.
When you put these together you can both understand MAGA's actions and understand why they will not lead to the intended result.
Basically: MAGA is hyperfocused on cutting off any apparent flow of funds from Red Americans to Blue Americans and non-Americans. And they only have ~500 days in power. So they're trying to quickly shut off imports, close down institutions, and exit all wars.
OK.
Except the reason the imports exist in the first place is because US products aren't competitive relative to Chinese products (or Fed printing). The reason those institutions exist is because the US set them up to run the world. And the reason those wars are happening is not because of American leadership per se, but because of the absence of good leadership.
If you shut all of that down at once — if you abandon global competition and global leadership — you shut down American Empire, and with it the ability to print money. And then everyone in that empire has a very bad time.
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[6] Personal Prediction: Bet on the Evil Empire
In the long history of battles between the wealthy and powerful minority vs. the poor and meek majority, the elite have dominated the matchup thus far.
I don't think the decision-making apparatuses that operate around the Presidency and government are built to tolerate successive multi-trillion-dollar downward swings in the economy for long.
If Trump's populist experiment causes too much damage to equity markets and the real economy, incumbent elites (with vested interests worth gargantuan sums of money) will exert maximal influence to put a stop to asset holders' pain.
My bet is that 10% further down on the SPY and Trump's coalition will fracture to a nightmarish degree.
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[5] The Breaking Point: A Coalition on the Edge
Donald Trump’s presidency rests on a fragile alliance between Populists and Technocrats, two factions with irreconcilable visions. Populists demand tariffs, border security, and economic nationalism to shield working-class Americans from globalization’s fallout. Technocrats, wealthy innovators like Elon Musk, push for free markets, deregulation, and policies favoring growth over protectionism. These aren’t just policy rifts, they’re clashing worldviews: government as savior versus government as obstacle.
Recent multi-trillion-dollar market drops have tilted the balance toward the Technocrats. Each dip amplifies their influence, nudging Trump toward market-friendly moves over populist promises. Their ambition goes further: they aim to swap old corporate giants, Boeing and Raytheon, for disruptors like SpaceX and Anduril. It’s a slick power play, less about public good than replacing one elite with another.
Trump’s instincts lean populist, directing his early-term energy towards immigration and protectionism, but market pressures test his resolve. With Democrats sidelined, the real fight is internal. His coalition, held together by the President's forceful personality, teeters on this fault line.
Whether it holds or fractures will shape his presidency and American conservatism’s future.
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Trump’s Fracturing Coalition
In 2024, Trump rode an unlikely alliance to victory. Working-class populists and a small group of influential technocrats banded together to deliver a MAGA mandate.
This coalition swept Trump back into the White House. But months into his term, the seams are splitting. Aggressive tariffs, pressure on NATO, and a flood of executive orders targeting deregulation and austerity measures have sparked tension within his ranks.
The real fight isn’t with Democrats, who remain adrift. It’s inside Trump’s own coalition. Two factions, the Carhartt Army and the Barbour Brigade, are attempting to pull the country in opposite directions.
This piece dissects their makeup, motivations, and the fault lines threatening to break them apart.
It ends with a contentious prediction.
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Light rail is almost always the wrong transit option but American cities are addicted to building it.
YIMBYLAND@YIMBYLAND
Austin's light rail is going to have green tracks like New Orleans!?
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It grew exponentially because the main thing that determines whether someone puts pronouns in their bio or switches from "slave" to "enslaved person" is how many other people are doing it. But that also works in reverse.
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People seem to be surprised that wokeness is collapsing so fast. But what grows exponentially shrinks exponentially too.
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I view use of LLMs for knowledge work like use of an exoskeleton for physical work.
You can achieve more using technology but the natural muscles underlying the technical exterior will atrophy.
Sometimes, I think you have to tackle a problem without LLM-guidance in order to actually learn something.
Also LLMs take you along highly-probable chains of logic, so maybe they naturally prevent you from arriving at contrarian and/or ground-breaking perspectives.
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The idea that you don't need to memorize things anymore is nonsense, and here's why.
It boils down to this: Memorization is necessary for clear and fast thinking. Imagine trying to speak English without knowing common words by heart — you’d be stuck looking up every other word. It would be impossible to have a conversation.
Thinking is the same way. In theory, you could look up anything online. But in practice, speed matters. You can only move fast when you know things off the top of your head. Experts are useful to consult because they’re fluent in their topic, which is why they can make connections so quickly.
Don't get me wrong — I understand the argument against memorization: in a world where every piece of information is at your fingertips, why would you need to memorize anything? And LLMs are only going to increase access to information.
(For the record, my definition of memorization is knowing something so well that it requires no mental effort to remember).
But even prompting is way more effective when you have domain expertise. Asking good questions isn't going to become a commodity anytime soon, and knowing things is one way to ask better questions.
The more you know, the faster you can learn things. Every person has a finite capacity of working memory. The more you know about a topic, the easier it is to handle complexity.
Take nuclear energy, for example. If you're starting from scratch, you'd have to painstakingly look up terms like "fission" and "moderator." This lack of knowledge is why learning new things can feel so exhausting. But learning becomes fun (and fast) once you know a lot about a topic. Being able to make cross-references makes the information stickier.
The rise of LLMs doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to memorize things anymore. Instead, a better question is: How can we use LLMs to get better at memorizing things?
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@growing_daniel Also maybe private fire prevention and fire fighting services are warranted in a state as defunct as California.
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Idk this just seems normal. If you’re about to lose your family home of course you’d be scrambling to do whatever you can.
Spitfire@RealSpitfire
The disconnect is jaw dropping. Just wow.
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@levelsio I'm a massive advocate of the white shoe but I don't know why they seem to work so well.
When you say "they are the secret trick" are you alluding to any scientific rationale?
Curious why the white shoe is such a staple for men across class and culture.
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Yes, white NIKE Air Force 1's
Because:
- Air Force 1's are a classic, unlike other models, they never go out of style
- they're relatively flat, so I can use them in the gym for lifting weights
- they're white, so it's nice for date night (white shoes are the secret trick, changes a guy's appearance completely, I discovered way too late)
I don't like have many pairs of shoes, so I have just these
👾@jazzplane
@levelsio weird question, but do you have a shoe preference
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Reporter: Can you assure the world that as you try to get control of Greenland and the Panama Canal, that you won't use military or economic coercion?
Trump: "No."
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Deer Valley does an incredible job managing daily skier populations. They also prevent the scourge of snowboarders from entering the resort (a wise and brave choice).
However, they also charge $300-600 per day during peak season for a lift ticket. Season passes are ~$3K. With an Ikon pass, you can get 7 days in at DV (and ski elsewhere) for ~$1.5K.
I hope the future of American skiing is not one where only the exorbitantly wealthy can attend. Pricing out normal people to prevent lines is not the answer and is not what skiing is about.
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Skied @Deer_Valley nearly every day this break and aside from the occasional 15-20 min backups at Quincy and Carpenter, this is what lift lines have looked like…
RIP @PCski. Long live DV Alpha…
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Petition to create a walkable NYC-density urban center somewhere near San Diego.
An American Tel Aviv that produces elite startups, while simultaneously de-nerdifying the technology industry due to high proximity to some of the most attractive women on the face of the Earth.
Endless possibilities.
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