AVOID BLACK BOX AI

“The University of Michigan consumer sentiment index dropped to 49.8 in April. That is the lowest reading in the seventy plus years the university has been regularly pulling American consumers lower than during the February, lower than the COVID pandemic, lower than when inflation peaked after Russia invaded the Ukraine. And the decline, it hit every demographic, all ages, all incomes, all education levels, all political affiliations. So here's the paradox. The hard data says the economy is nowhere close to recession. Retail sales were solid in March even after adjusting for higher gas prices. Jobless claims are low at 207,000.”

“IS is kinda one of those boring businesses. Right? It's a blue chip travel compounder. They have a dominant global global market share. They have massive massive free cash flow. It's supposed to be 10,000,000,000 this year. And they're trading about 20% off their peak heading into a pivotal Monday print. Now the data breach, the softening consumer data, those are all near term watch items, but there's a lot of events coming up pretty soon. FIFA World Cup, people starting to plan for the Los Angeles Olympics, and the shift to this new model away from the traditional, agent model they had, Very compelling at 15.7 times price to forward looking earnings?”

“I think that in the long term, people are underestimating the benefits of TurboTax, for example. Right? The benefit is not that they're preparing your taxes. That's easy. The benefit is audit defense. The benefit is the lines of expertise in case you get audited. That is not something that is automated away. And so in the long run, I think a lot of these software companies that are beaten down have been beaten down to an extent that is unjustified.”

“Citadel Securities, one of the most powerful trading firms in the world with 65,000,000,000 with a b, assets under management. It is publicly exploring prediction markets. The president, Jim Esposito, said last week that event event contracts are interesting to us and that there's sound industrial logic for institutional clients to use these contracts to hedge against various risks. He said if the market ramps and scales, Citadel will certainly consider getting involved. This is a landmark signal. When a firm like Citadel starts talking about a market this way, it usually means the opportunity is real and it's not just hype.”

“And so, yes, having an allocation to gold, which frankly, I think having a 10% or more allocation to gold is really important in times such such as this with dollar debasement, with the lack of, demand for US dollar denominated assets and what that's done for dollar assets. Having an allocation, albeit small, to cryptocurrency, having an allocation to traditional alternative investments. The benefits of that are not just about returns, but our overall risk level as well.”

“One thing to note, they actually have earnings coming up pretty soon. And anytime you have earnings within the next two weeks, it is just a bad idea to enter a position in a company. Why? You're paying a volatility premium that kinda drifts away from the fundamentals of the company.”

“Lueck's concern is that when you deploy these black box models at scale, managing billions of dollars of client capital and you can't explain why the model is taking a position, you've introduced a risk that is very difficult to manage. In a drawdown, you don't know whether the model is wrong because the market has changed or right because the market is temporarily irrational. The distinction is everything. It determines whether you should add to a position or cut it. The danger isn't using AI in investing. It's outsourcing the thinking to AI.”