TRENDS

“Additionally, the latter half of the year saw many large mergers and acquisitions, some of the largest announcements being in oil and gas with ExxonMobil's purchase of Pioneer Natural Resources for nearly $60 billion and Chevron's acquisition of Hess Corporation for $50 billion, both in October and pending regulatory approval prior to closure.”

“So tonight, as a friend of mine pointed out, the infection rate on just the White House campus at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is currently 23 times the entire country of New Zealand. Think about that. Just that block. I could not imagine a more miserable place to work now.”

“The value of labor is reaching zero because I think technology as a whole is deflationary. I think that's the punchline. If technology works the way that is allowing for productivity growth that resets the jump to universality in ways that is unimaginable, it's really deflationary. And so you should expect a lot of things to maybe go down in price.”

“2021's inflation surge moderated in 2023, while the Federal Reserve continued to raise its interest rates in the first half of the year. On February 1, the Federal Reserve raises interest rates by 0.25% from 4.5% to 4.75% as part of the ongoing effort to manage the economy.”

“When France was at .83, they started separating people from their heads, and we're at .85.”

“In 1960, health care was only about 5% of US GDP, but we now know today it's over 20% of US GDP. That number alone kind of tells you people are living longer and health care is getting more expensive, which means that consumption actually has to be fulfilled. This will probably come from some kind of asset disposition that the older generation has acquired throughout their working years.”

“And that's part of this homogenisation that social media brings, that the kids are using the same slang globally. When I was at school, the words that we would use to describe a really bright person or a less bright person might be different from the words used by someone who was brought up in a different part of the same country.”

“If you're planning to register to vote by mail, you may want to avoid waiting until the last minute to send your application by a postmark deadline. Changes at the US Postal Service mean that your mail may not get a postmark on the same day you drop it off. USPS says if you want to make sure it gets a postmark, stop by a post office and ask for one.”

“A third of the world by countries that represent about a third of the world's population, they are all in declining mode. That's a fact. And if you look at the top ten first wave economies, they account for about 30% of the global population and about 70% of the world economy GDP; they are all declining. This is a slow moving train wreck that we have to be cognizant for.”

“The first one was John Cronin, the Republican incumbent in Texas, went to the Houston Chronicle and criticized Trump's response to the virus. That immediately tells you he's getting slaughtered on the west side of Houston and woodlands and these kinds of places. In Arizona, Martha McSally refused to kind of say nice things about Trump.”

“I'm kind of in shock. I wanted to feed Mundy and Tara close together. And so I fed Tara over here. She picked up her food and brought it right over to the fence line here so she could be eating with Mundy. So you tell me what that means. I think that is really good.”

“The states say the data collection effort threatens student privacy and could lead to baseless investigations. The judge says the government likely has the authority to collect the data, but that it was done in a rushed, chaotic manner.”

“If you look at, if you produce this result, if you took the CNN poll, NBC Wall Street Journal poll, and they're both telephone polls... Trump said, he said 40. Now that's a ridiculously low number. If we think the third party vote is 2, then that produces a result of, you ready? 58, 40. Way bigger than Reagan, I think.”

“It's evolving really quickly. And if you think about in the past how languages developed and changed, a language will always change because our needs as people change and different and new things happen. Today, if you're consuming mass media in social media, you're actually seeing a very diverse array of different voices from around the world.”

“2023 also saw the roots of a global banking crisis arise out of four American regional banks, the two largest being Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic Bank. These developments occurred alongside a moderation of the 2021 inflation surge, while the Federal Reserve continued to raise its interest rates in the first half of the year.”

“The rise of artificial intelligence and large language models dominated not only the economy but has also been at the root of a Hollywood double strike conducted by Writers Guild of America and a SAG APTRA strike. These were part of a larger phenomenon of labor strikes across the country, in which such large diverse groups, such as Teamsters and Auto Workers won new contracts.”

“Eligible voters in Indiana and Ohio who want to cast ballots in the May primaries have until the end of Monday to register. And there's still at least a week left to register in time for the primaries in Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, and West Virginia.”

“But it also strikes me, you know, in all that I've covered, that when it's really close at the end, the vast majority of times it breaks against the incumbent. That's a pretty general but accurate rule to make about American politics.”

“I'm kind of in shock. I wanted to feed Mundy and Tara close together. And so I fed Tara over here. She picked up her food and brought it right over to the fence line here so she could be eating with Mundy. So you tell me what that means. I think that is really good.”

“Oil is a globally priced commodity, so even though we won't have a physical shortage here because we've got Canada for heavy oil and we produce our own, the reality is that the price is global, and there's a real physical shortage. And so we don't escape that price impact, and that translates to what it costs a refiner to buy the crude and therefore what you pay for gasoline at the pump.”

“The dominant political story of the year has been the 270-day-long speakership of Representative Kevin McCarthy, whose slim majority in the House of Representatives has enabled a far-right rebellion to exert more weight over the lower chamber. The battle between the rebellious Freedom Caucus and McCarthy has been at the heart of an averted debt ceiling crisis and the annual budget debate nearly devolving into a government shutdown.”

“What's happening though is that's not what we're seeing in actual price because we live also in a credit world, where credit inflation and credit creation is a big driver of our growth model. Technology as a whole is deflationary, but these compounding things like unprecedented levels of debt make the equation harder to reason about unless you anchor to the certain truths of demographics and labor.”

“Once something has its own momentum and its own identity, we spin it out and try and create it as a distinct asset.”

“Together, they pushed 2026 to the best start of any year since the pandemic, and if blockbusters inspire people to come back to the movies, that bodes well for the next few weeks' openings, which include Mortal Kombat 2, a Michael Jackson biopic, and the first Star Wars movie in seven years.”

“I think of all of the things I've heard recently, the most fascinating is this word, skibidi. That was the first one that came up at my dinner table as well. Rizzler is connected to this word rizz. But skibidi seems to be able to be thrown in almost anywhere. And nobody, including my kids, can tell me what it really means. I think that's part of the whole sort of exclusivity of each generation's use of language.”

“The dominant political story of the year has been the 270-day-long speakership of Representative Kevin McCarthy, whose slim majority in the House of Representatives has enabled a far-right rebellion to exert more weight over the lower chamber. The battle between the rebellious Freedom Caucus and McCarthy has been at the heart of an averted debt ceiling crisis and the annual budget debate nearly devolving into a government shutdown.”

“A lot of the words are being innovated within in-groups and then they get introduced to the mainstream. We're seeing a lot of vocabulary coming from black and Latino LGBT culture in the US. We're seeing loads of expressions coming from that, like 'it's giving', 'slay', all come from those spaces. We see the words leave these peripheries and leave these subgroups they become mainstream and it's these words that then become more widely adopted.”

“Wealth concentration now exceeds even the Gilded Age, and when you bring in the lens of AI, the fog of war is so thick that it prevents us from being able to see into the future. I was inspired to seek truth by trying to anchor what you at least know for sure, because it gives me great peace when I can underwrite the things I know with certainty and reorient my entire investing mindset.”

“I'm doing a panel tonight with Chris Evans... they're going to have me in to talk about affordability issues for young people.”

“I feel very optimistic that we'll be well over, you know, I think we'll be closer to 55, to 50 I really do. Because I just can't see how, given the current environment and the current national mood, and, you know, you just keep hearing Republican posters telling people we're doomed.”

“The rise of artificial intelligence and large language models dominated not only the economy but has also been at the root of a Hollywood double strike conducted by Writers Guild of America and a SAG APTRA strike. These were part of a larger phenomenon of labor strikes across the country, in which such large diverse groups, such as Teamsters and Auto Workers won new contracts.”

“Another theory is that I'm keeping you listening. The rising intonation suggests there's more to come. Hooking people in. When it comes to social media video, if I can complete a video retaining someone's attention, it's more likely to perform better on the algorithm. So actually what's possibly happening is creators are furthering linguistic innovation based on algorithmic direction, which is fascinating.”

“All the ways in which regular Americans and voters actually experience the economy through their job, through their housing... all of those signals are flashing bright red.”

“2023 also saw the roots of a global banking crisis arise out of four American regional banks, the two largest being Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic Bank. 2021's inflation surge moderated in 2023, while the Federal Reserve continued to raise its interest rates in the first half of the year.”