Quick Notes – Reflections From This Week   Public + Private The equity market is more or less unchanged from one week ago despite falling over -12% over a few days and recovering the entire drop in a single day. Yesterday was one of largest single day rallies in over 15 years. As enthralling as that was, it’s not a…

It’s difficult to analyze the new tariff data when it is likely to change again in the near future. Trump’s Liberation Day tariff speech focused on a 10% general tariff and a series of reciprocal tariffs. Despite the supposed clarity of the numbers shown on the tariff chart, there are still many unanswered questions. We don’t know all of the…

There is a big difference between markets falling under stress from a single clear variable vs risk spread across many different narratives. It is worse to have a market focused on a single variable, like rapid rate hikes to cool inflation in ‘22 or the onset of Covid. Today there are many negative narratives in markets. The reversal of globalization,…

Volatility This most recent market correction (10% decline) was one of the fastest in S&P 500 history at just twenty days. The Covid “correction” was eight days and the ‘growth scare’ in 2018 was thirteen days. Rapid market declines like these are most often related to panic selling or forced selling. Panics can’t last forever by definition. Of course this…

When Trump and Secretary of The Treasury Scott Bessent talk about reducing rates or rates that need to come down, they are referring to the 10 year Treasury rate more than the short term rate that the Fed sets. As a quick refresher, the Federal Reserve meets eight times per year to adjust short term interest rates. By comparison, market…

US Sovereign Wealth Fund President Trump recently announced an executive order to create a US Sovereign Wealth Fund. I don’t think this is necessarily a bad idea, but I don’t think it’s a particularly good idea either. Norway’s sovereign wealth fund is the world’s largest thanks to surplus revenues from its oil and gas industry. Typically sovereign wealth funds are…

DeepSeek Reflection Straight to the point: competition is a good thing. This DeepSeek episode has re-established a certain level of confidence that we can improve AI models through algorithmic breakthroughs. We don’t have to rely only on astronomically increasing budgets, like $500B for Stargate. Knowledgeable people have said the model did not cost $6m and was not trained on old…