strategy
- A Bruise or a Break?
The September Fed hike changes the price of money, but inflation and earnings will decide whether stocks recover.
- Ninety Days of Cash
Everyone remembers Apple's comeback. Almost nobody remembers that in 1997 it was about ninety days from running out of money. That gap, not the genius that came later, is where a turnaround is actually won or lost.
- Rent the Model, Own the Exit
Enterprise AI looks like an arms race, but the best defense is to own the ability to switch.
- The Pyramid and the Exits
Nearly thirty years around markets and the same few kinds of investor keep walking in the door. Here is the whole pyramid — the careless, the wanderers, the cautious builders, the adventurers, the young titans — with the mistake that defines each rung and the one exit that leads up.
- To Grit or Not to Grit
When persistence becomes loyalty to a failing method, quitting can preserve the goal that made the effort worthwhile.
- The Gate Behind the Gate
Cloudflare's crawler rules show how a monopoly can be pressured without winning its customers, and why that still does not make the web decentralized.
- When It Looks Cheapest
For almost every stock a low price-to-earnings ratio flags a bargain. For one whole category it means the opposite, and the moment the number looks most reassuring is usually the moment the floor is about to give way.
- The Motor Never Followed You Home
AI may repeat electrification's slow redesign, but consumer access creates pressure that old factories never faced.
- Same Crime, Same Sentence?
Two identical cases can get wildly different verdicts with no bias anywhere. Why we obsess over the flaw with a villain and ignore the one without.
- Why Very Smart People Get It Wrong
A decade after the 2016 election needle swung from 80% Clinton to >95% Trump in one night, we've built a whole industry that turns every question into a confident percentage. The lesson from that night is worth more now than it was then.
- The String Under the Table
Psychology can explain why we warm to some people. The awkward part is that honest rapport and manipulation use much of the same machinery.
- No Stop-Loss on a Forecast
In April 2014 every single economist in a 67-person survey said bond yields would rise. Yields fell. The problem isn't that the experts are stupid — it's that their opinion reaches you stripped of the only things that would let you act on it.
- The Revolution Can Be a Bubble
Apple reached $5 trillion partly by sitting out the AI spending race. That is not a verdict on whether AI is real. It is a warning that a technology can change the world while the companies financing it still destroy capital.
- All In, and Grinning
A whole generation of investors has never traded through a bear market. Here is the one trick that matters — and why even Druckenmiller, running the best fund of his era, couldn't dodge it.
- The $200 Barrel That Never Comes
Iran and America are now shooting across the Strait of Hormuz, the exact scenario a year of forecasts said would send oil to $200. Brent is at $88. The gap between the prophecy and the price is the most instructive thing in the market right now.
- When Winning Stopped Meaning What It Used To
Two great powers, two wars, the same shock — overwhelming force that refuses to turn into victory. What actually changed, and what leaders have to learn again.
- The Team That Never Let You Breathe
When two evenly matched sides meet and one dominates completely, individual talent isn't the variable. So where does the surplus come from — and does it transfer to anything outside a football pitch?
