โOne of the things that we've been pointing to, which was very much a contrarian view back January 1, was that yield curves would basically begin to flatten by the middle of the year. That was a very different view than the consensus, which was basically wedded to the idea that yield curves would steepen, and probably steepen significantly because of inflation problems at the long end.โ
The US-Iran conflict is escalating toward critical civilian infrastructure - New threats to target Iranian power plants cross a strategic red line that could trigger retaliatory strikes against regional desalination and nuclear facilities, destabilizing global energy markets.
โThe US plans include targeting all of Iran's civilian electric power generation plants, probably simultaneously. That's exactly the red line that Iran has previously said would cause it to retaliate by targeting desalination plants.โ
OpenAI's record-breaking fundraise is driven by circular vendor financing - The $122 billion round is largely comprised of in-kind compute credits and contingent loans from partners like Amazon and Nvidia rather than pure cash, effectively creating a procurement-based circular economy.
โIt's actually a $25 billion round of cash is sort of up front... the rest is in kind. So it seems from looking at this... it's a bit like a procurement round.โ
Accelerating real economy sucks liquidity from financial markets
โThe reason for that is not because central banks are tightening and withdrawing liquidity, it's because the real economy is actually accelerating or increasing its appetite to be more correct. It's working capital demands and that is sucking liquidity out of markets. Now, whether that is because of higher oil and energy costs, or whether it's because there's more inventory build, more capex spend, more economic activity going on, is kind of a moot point.โ
Global liquidity is inflecting lower toward turbulence phase
โThe liquidity cycle, which dominates market movements, is basically inflicting lower. And we're in the season that we currently call speculation, which is a late one, take that as the autumn, precedes what we call turbulence. And turbulence is probably, as the name suggests, a very difficult time for risk assets.โ
Financial markets today act as debt refinancing mechanisms
โAnd we've made the case for some time that financial markets today are debt refinancing mechanisms and you need balance sheet capacity to roll over debt. And that balance sheet capacity you can measure with global liquidity. Real economy liquidity is something different. And that is much more measuring the transactions in the real economy.โ
Investors should transition to defensive risk-off positioning now
โEffectively, what these things are, they're moving counter cyclically. When you get a strong economy, that's absorbing liquidity and financial markets tend to lose out because financial liquidity is depressed. Our view has been basically to pay back risk during this period. I mean, not get out of markets entirely, but we're basically moving more risk off, that's for sure.โ
The AI business model faces a fundamental unit economics crisis - High inference costs mean that companies currently lose money on every query, making the venture-subsidized $20-per-month subscription model unsustainable without a massive shift in pricing or hardware efficiency.
โThe rest of the space is actually negative on using the product in terms of the unit economics. So the more you use the product, the more you lose the money.โ