[dry-run excerpt] I’ve often been surprised when I hear from top researchers in industry that they think AI will be better than them at their job in a few years, and I didn’t really know why I doubted it. The explanation I arrived at is that researchers are seeing this massive acceleration in the infra and engineering capabilities of the models. I fully agree that the models will be superhuman distributed GPU engin…
[dry-run excerpt] This is a summary of a longer report on our website. Leading AI companies say they are building automated AI researchers . Many — including the labs themselves — say that recursively self-improving AIs could be extremely dangerous. But how close are we to actually achieving it? Existing evidence shows that AI can perform software engineering tasks relevant to AI research , dataset creation , open-…
[dry-run excerpt] Last week, I was buying a pair of shoes on my laptop, and rather than default to Grok Bot (connected to my Gmail), I went straight to Gmail to search for an old invoice. If you are a Google AI Plus user, you can access Gemini in Gmail, which allows you to ask a natural language question in the search bar like “what is my shoe size” or “what is my frequent flyer number”, or more powerfully “which h…
[dry-run excerpt] Disclaimer: This content is for informational purposes only, not investment advice. I may own equities mentioned in this article. Investing involves risk, so always do your own research before buying or selling any securities. I have a US colleague, let’s call him David, who is really really good at arbitrage investing. Lately he has been obsessed with buying public company spinoffs at the dip and…
[dry-run excerpt] Article type: Annual results Market capitalisation: $2b; source: Yahoo Finance Average daily trading volume: ~250k shares over the 90 trading days ending October 8, 2026; source: Yahoo Finance Company: IDT Corporation Ticker / exchange: IDT / NYSE Research stance: Mixed Meaning of stance: I am positive about the operations, but the valuation has risen sharply. Relevant time horizon: 12 months Prim…
[dry-run excerpt] It’s time for an update on the doValue thesis. After the CMD we got a lot of new information to reconcile, and I think the plan is now much clearer: many of our speculations are confirmed, and this leaves nice upside as they execute, plus a lot of uncapped potential if the credit cycle worsens or other optionality levers appear. At €1.84 the market cap is about €350m. The 2029 plan is €330-350m of…
[dry-run excerpt] What I have today is a Korean microcap with most of its market cap in net cash trading at <2x growing earnings that has committed to paying out at least 10% of earnings (but tax-wise 25%+ makes a lot more sense for insiders if dividends). The stock has traded down due to de-listing risks for having a market cap that is too low (under 30bn KRW) , which isn’t likely to be much of a concern given rec…
[dry-run excerpt] You’re Alphaville readers. We won’t patronise you by explaining Simpsons references, such as the one in the headline, which refers to when Homer ruined the Itchy & Scratchy cartoon by adding a hipster dog called Poochie: Homer: One, Poochie needs to be louder, angrier, and have access to a time machine. Two, whenever Poochie’s not onscreen, all the other characters should be asking “Where’s Poochi…
[dry-run excerpt] Disclaimer: This post is not financial advice, and is not a solicitation to purchase or sell any securities. For more info, please review the disclaimer . What do they do? PoolCorp (POOL) is the largest distributor of swimming pool equipment and chemicals to the companies that actually do the work on swimming pools. 93% of POOL revenue comes from the US. In 2025, 64% of sales were from recurring m…
[dry-run excerpt] Bad Process, Bad Actors, Bad Outcome Fire is catching Topics: Bad Process Hofstedter gets C$23.02 in assets Trustees & Executives Get C$12.01 cash Public Gets C$10.14 And A Huge Tax Liability I will publish another article with a proforma valuation of Lantower REIT assuming the GO/CRAL deal does not proceed. Bad Process Multiple parties conducted serious negotiations in 2025: From 2024 through Sep…
[dry-run excerpt] Welcome to the 86th investment case and 47th AI & Technology idea on Crack The Market (and the most comprehensive Ciena investment case you will find online). Join me as I dissect the company that invented commercial coherent optics, owns around 70% of the open line systems that carry the world's cloud traffic , nearly tripled its adjusted earnings per share in a year and nearly quadrupled them in…
[dry-run excerpt] It has been three-and-a-half years since I first wrote that the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) was publishing implausible estimates of American businesses’ net interest expense . I repeatedly questioned these estimates and argued that income-based measures were understating both the level and growth rate of U.S. economic activity . As recently as August 26, the official estimate of net interest…
[dry-run excerpt] Subscribe now ( I sat down today to try and work my way through the AI conundrum - below is a stream of consciousness style analysis - I suspect some with think me insane, and some will think me genius. Time will tell.) The weird thing about the AI boom is how familiar it seems to me. Back in the day, I made my name shorting mining and emerging markets, based on a very simple observation. I was lo…
[dry-run excerpt] Get more from Bob Elliott in the Substack app Available for iOS and Android Get the app
[dry-run excerpt] Share Haymaker Key Highlights – Revenue of $1.29B in FY2026, up 18% year-over-year; Q4 revenue of $373.9M (+43%) beat consensus of $359.9M – Net income of $81.2M in FY2026, up more than 1,600% from the prior year as the business normalized post-COVID insurance market disruption – Free cash flow (FCF) of $117M — approximately 70% above after-tax earnings — making the stock meaningfully cheaper on F…
[dry-run excerpt] The latest round of news about the big models over the last 24 hours further sharpens the picture of a transition from parabolic growth in revenue to linear growth. The 50bln September ARR number from… Read more
[dry-run excerpt] Markets move in cycles, but they are also forward discounting mechanisms. Investors typically look six to twelve months ahead. The crucial question therefore is not what the World economy looks like today, but what it is likely to look like in the second half of 2027. Viewed through the lens of the Investment Clock, we remain in a relatively standard fixed-income cycle. The early-cycle bull (yield…
[dry-run excerpt] The Beam · October 8, 2026 Members research. Read it in full inside Pharos , or become a member .
[dry-run excerpt] Welcome back to Marginal Matters, the free series where we take one piece of research, sit with it, and walk it through our own data until it makes sense. The Q4 offer. Through Sunday, October 11 at midnight ET, one price: $375 for the year, everything included, and the rate you join at stays yours for as long as you stay. Everything, $375 for the year. The Beacon, The Beam, The Horizon and The Ch…
[dry-run excerpt] Cartoon of the Week AI tip of the week Use your AI agent (Muse, Instinct, Grok) to snap a picture of pesky and unwanted junk mail and have the agent cancel it: Interesting Links/Reads Many links are sourced from Marginal Revolution ( bold and italics are my own to highlight what I found particularly interesting) Jokic . And another angle . Podcasts/Videos I’ve watched during the week Luis Garicano…
[dry-run excerpt] I came across this astonishing chart from Michael Batnick yesterday showing that the combined market cap of the bottom 434 companies in the S&P 500 equals that of the top 5. It is the time series, though, that drives home just how unusually concentrated the index has become over the last 30 years. Even at the height of the tech bubble, the number was below 350 and following the crash, the number w…
[dry-run excerpt] Welcome to another edition of TSOH Weekly Roundup . Each update features a Chart of the Week, along with a brief discussion on three news items relevant to companies in the TSOH investable universe. Chart Of The Week (from the Q3 2026 Portfolio Update ) Three Notable Items “Charlie Munger’s Interview with Todd Combs” A transcript from a 2022 conversation between Charlie Munger and Todd Combs. Than…
[dry-run excerpt] Each time I buy a new position or exit one completely, I will send an email and also update you in subscriber channels. See link below: I am exiting this position as the risk-reward no longer seems as favourable as when I went long on 30 July. Read more
[dry-run excerpt] I’ve written extensively about Muse and consumer agents over the past few weeks ( including a plea for people to actually try them !). I continue to experiment and play a lot with them; I will admit that my thoughts on them do wax and wane by the day from “damn, these are going to change everything” to “these are really cool, but it’s just going to make our lives a little easier, not reshape the c…
[dry-run excerpt] Going into the 2026 SmallCap Discoveries Conference, I had Rubicon Organics ranked #39 out of 45 stocks . Not exactly one of my favorite stocks. Rubicon was at last years 2025 Smallcap conference and I didn’t like them back then. After the conference I was so impressed I built an index of five cannabis companies in my portfolio, and completely left out Rubicon. I thought there were better opportun…
[dry-run excerpt] One way to be (quickly) rewarded in Deep Value investing is through a takeover bid. In our write-ups, we occasionally refer to our Deep Value Buyout Database , which tracks acquisitions of deeply undervalued companies by controlling shareholders and strategic buyers. The average takeover premiums in these two categories were 28% and 50%, respectively. This Substack is reader-supported. To receive …
[dry-run excerpt] For those busy subscribers that didn’t have much time to read, watch, or listen during the week, and that like to catch up on the weekend, here are some of the links from this week that stood out to me, in case you don’t have the time to go through all of the weekly posts. Max Olson has put all of his Berkshire Hathaway archive material and data in one place, which can be found HERE . The Fireside…
[dry-run excerpt] I’ll be blunt: Lower 48 natural gas production is too high going into 2027. No, I’m not talking about today’s Lower 48 production because of outages, but the peak production rate of ~113 Bcf/d is something the market will not be able to handle in 2027. The issue for natural gas producers this year isn’t that the producers themselves are producing more. No. In fact, I would argue that natural gas p…
[dry-run excerpt] There is a lot of talk about using AI in investing, but people are missing where the real competitive advantage lies. There is too much emphasis on aspects of the investment process that are already commoditized or are likely to become commoditized quickly. Instead, the focus should be on building defensible, durable systems that directly contribute to alpha generation. Take modeling, where invest…
[dry-run excerpt] Cheyenne, Wyoming, is booming again. Eight miles south of town, Google is building a 716-acre data center campus. It’s designed to draw 2.7 gigawatts. That’s more electricity than every home in Wyoming combined. The price tag could reach $50 billion. The land used to be cattle pasture. That’s fitting. Cheyenne has boomed before. In the 1880s it boomed on cattle, with money from London and Edinburg…
[dry-run excerpt] Dear compounders, This post contains no valuation model, no moat analysis, and not a single mention of free cash flow conversion. Twelve days ago my wife and I welcomed our daughter into the world, and I want to write about the first two weeks of being a father. Before I do, I owe you a short explanation of why a blog called Compound with René suddenly turns into a parenting diary (at least for th…
[dry-run excerpt] I’ve often been surprised when I hear from top researchers in industry that they think AI will be better than them at their job in a few years, and I didn’t really know why I doubted it. The explanation I arrived at is that researchers are seeing this massive acceleration in the infra and engineering capabilities of the models. I fully agree that the models will be superhuman distributed GPU engin…
[dry-run excerpt] Every market cycle gets its word. In 2021 it was “metaverse,” in 2023 it was “generative AI,” and if you’ve spent any time on financial Twitter, Substack Notes or earnings calls this autumn, you already know the word of 2026: Agentic. Agentic “AI,” more specifically. Chatbots answered our questions. Agents go off and do things for us – book the hotel, compare the insurance quotes, pay the bill, ca…
[dry-run excerpt] Giovanni Bellini, Saint Francis in the Desert (1480) The fourth-century Greek ascetic Evagrius Ponticus described how monks would be beset by a “noonday demon” between the hours of 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. This demon would make the monk feel the drudgery of his work so intensely it was as though the sun had slowed down. The monk would “hate the place and his way of life and his manual work” and “desire …
[dry-run excerpt] Three themes pulled this past week’s Daily Updates . A Watch List Is Not a Commitment Putting a stock on your watch list is not a promise to buy it. It’s a decision to pay attention because something about the chart might develop into an opportunity. That distinction becomes especially important when the market turns ugly. A stock can look promising one afternoon and gap sharply lower the next mor…
[dry-run excerpt] Week of October 12, 2026 Weekly Rebalance picks, updated strategy numbers and all the setups and levels ready for the new trading week. A new trading week is about to begin, and everything we need to follow it is already taking shape. The Weekly Rebalance selection is ready, the October Monthly Momentum Basket has its first active setup, new TNTW levels are available, and several Daily Swing chart…
[dry-run excerpt] October 9, 2026 Another trading week is in the books, and there’s plenty to cover across TizyCharts, including the first Weekly Rebalance results, the latest Daily Swing numbers and another round of technical setups. Some setups have completed their tracking, others are still active, and while this recap shows where everything stands today, PRO members can follow the full sequence as it unfolds. 🔖…
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[dry-run excerpt] The IRGC hit at least one more tanker in the Strait Friday, while Ansar Allah hit more Saudi oil facilities and airlines cancelled flights. Combat raged in Yemen with with both sides claiming territorial gans.
[dry-run excerpt] 1. Thanks to inflation global debt burdens have been declining , falling by 27 percentage points between early 2021 and end of 2023. 2. Rent controls may do more harm than good , except in controlled apartments. And Spain is a good illustration that immigration is adversely impacting the housing market. 3. Excellent article on ASML , 42-year old, Veldhoven-based, Dutch maker of the $400 million ex…
[dry-run excerpt] Share For decades, the standard response to Malaysia’s stray animal crisis has relied on a repetitive cycle: catch, impound, and cull. Yet, despite years of aggressive municipal sweeps, stray populations remain high, and public tolerance for inhumane handling has reached a breaking point. Fueled by mounting grief and viral footage of aggressive dog-catching operations, a coalition of 29 animal wel…
[dry-run excerpt] I play my life and decisions in my mind often. I guess it’s true, too much introspection can be a detriment. Some introspection is good though. I have definitely realized I have played it safe through many aspects of my financial life. I was too conservative. Frankly, I was a gutless coward. Too scared of risk. Played it way too safe. Not taking the higher risk job offers in early Klipmart, Google…
[dry-run excerpt] Michael Hudson gives an immediate and longer-term take on the state of the oil market.
[dry-run excerpt] What I have today is a Korean microcap with most of its market cap in net cash trading at <2x growing earnings that has committed to paying out at least 10% of earnings (but tax-wise 25%+ makes a lot more sense for insiders if dividends). The stock has traded down due to de-listing risks for having a market cap that is too low (under 30bn KRW) , which isn’t likely to be much of a concern given rec…
[dry-run excerpt] [ This is one of the finalists in the 2026 book review contest, written by an ACX reader who will remain anonymous until after voting is done. I’ll be posting about one of these a week for several months. When you’ve read them all, I’ll ask you to vote for a favorite, so remember which ones you liked ] In 1940 the Empire State Building was the tallest man-made structure in the world, and if you st…
[dry-run excerpt] Share Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s Budget 2027 is a measured, continuity-focused document that prioritises targeted support for households, modest fiscal consolidation, and maintenance of existing systems over sweeping structural change. Total federal government allocation stands at RM459.84 billion (or about RM459.8 billion), up roughly RM40 billion from the original 2026 tabled figure of RM419…
[dry-run excerpt] Can you sort 8 historical events?
[dry-run excerpt] As enrollment for Medicare Advantage begins this month, older Americans are confronting fewer options because insurers are discontinuing coverage in many areas.
[dry-run excerpt] I recently had the pleasure of spending a couple days with one of the best executives I’ve ever met, Roberto Cingolani. I’ve never gotten to spend so much time with him, as when he was on the job, he always had far more important people waiting on him. It was such a great couple days, I’ve decided to write up all of the wisdom that he has shared with me about life, leadership, and value creation. …
[dry-run excerpt] At this writing three Nobel Prizes of 2026 have been awarded, so this is a good time to think about those who did not win a Nobel Prize but should have. Science has done this in Six biology breakthroughs that should have won a Nobel Prize – but didn’t (archived link). The list of misses […]
[dry-run excerpt] (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) Welcome back to This Week in Stratechery! As a reminder, each week, every Friday, we’re sending out this overview of content in the Stratechery bundle; highlighted links are free for everyone . Additionally, you have complete control over what we send to you. If you don’t want to receive This Week in Stratechery emails (there is no podcast), please uncheck t…
[dry-run excerpt] I asked Miles after the gig, “Miles, what am I supposed to be doing up there?” He said, “When they play fast, you play slow. When they play slow, you play fast.” —Buster Williams, recalling advice from Miles Davis 💾🖥️🚀 the first real computer I used was my dad’s 386 DX/25 MHz. It had 8 megs of RAM and the optional 387 floating-point coprocessor. It was just powerful enough to play Doom at somethin…
[dry-run excerpt] Ethiopia Things are moving very fast between Ethiopia and Eritrea and a disastrous war may be looming. Ethiopia today informed the U.N. Security Council that Eritrea was conducting an “all-out invasion” of its territory to which it had no choice but to respond, according to a letter seen by Reuters. The letter follows two weeks of fighting between Ethiopian government forces and the Tigray People’…
[dry-run excerpt] When I write and talk about how many Chinese are struggling, people often ask me why when China’s economy is doing so well. As a famous British author once wrote, “ it is the best of times, it is the worst of times, we have everything before us, we have nothing before us, it is the spring of hope, it is the winter of despair. ” A bit of hyperbole, but China is a Tale of Two Economies, with both th…
[dry-run excerpt] The UN is a dead man walking, yet BRICS members unrealistically hope for reform. What organizations could be models for moving forward?
[dry-run excerpt] I’ve written extensively about Muse and consumer agents over the past few weeks ( including a plea for people to actually try them !). I continue to experiment and play a lot with them; I will admit that my thoughts on them do wax and wane by the day from “damn, these are going to change everything” to “these are really cool, but it’s just going to make our lives a little easier, not reshape the c…
[dry-run excerpt] It is kind of a huge deal. OpenAI dumped a broad range of huge new mathematical results produced by an internal frontier model. They just put it all on GitHub. This included 90 of the top 500 open problems in all of math , as per Proof of Atlas . In total there were 722 manuscripts (now 719 after three withdraws from the cluster that did not have Lean proofs) organized into 372 families. This was …
[dry-run excerpt] 📰 Kelowna News - 10_09_26 The mayoral race heats up, a million-dollar gift brings a medical clinic closer, and a Kelowna band earns a big win. Plus, what a bridge closure costs beyond a late arrival. Mayoral debate: roads, staffing and street safety At the October 7 debate, Ron Cannan favoured delaying the Clement extension and cutting communications staffing. Tom Dyas backed the road project and …
[dry-run excerpt] If you were looking for evidence that the United States was seriously considering revaluing its gold reserves, or potentially moving toward some form of gold-linked monetary system, the appointment of Judy Shelton to advise Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is almost exactly what you would expect to see. News this morning reports that Shelton, a longtime advocate of monetary reform and former Trump…
[dry-run excerpt] One piece of news yesterday has me looking closely at a sector I’ve never really highlighted before, but one that I think could become interesting as I search for defensive opportunities heading into 2027. I’ve spent much of this year arguing that the market has become dangerously dependent on an increasingly narrow group of growth narratives, most notably artificial intelligence . I’ve also been …
[dry-run excerpt] Corporations in the United States pay federal corporate income taxes levied at a 21 percent rate. Forty-four states and D.C. also levy taxes on corporate income, with top marginal rates ranging from 2.5 percent in North Carolina to 11.5 percent in New Jersey.