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“A sharp spike in gasoline prices during the war triggered a surge of inflation last month. Consumer prices in March were up 3.3% from a year ago. That's the biggest annual increase in twenty two months. Stripping out volatile energy and food prices, core inflation was 2.6%, high enough to make the Federal Reserve cautious about additional cuts to interest rates.”

“One of the easiest ways to achieve that goal is not investing in new IPOs until they've been trading for a year. Not just because of what's going on with the company, what's going on with trade volume, you also have insider shares locked up for 160 days. There's just a lot of dynamics going on that drives prices that are distinct from the fundamentals of a company.”

“The Vision Pro is an engineering marvel, but it's basically a disaster as a product. No pun intended, it lacks vision. That's Tim Cook; the engineering talent in the company can build a great product, but it doesn't have an ecosystem. Companies like YouTube and Netflix had no interest in building for it. That's a failure.”

“I remember by end of the summer, around August, September, FPV drones were really shutting down the space to conduct any kind of maneuver or for folks to even get to their positions within about 5 km of the front line. And then, if we fast forward to today, now the danger zone's more like 20, 25, and it really depends on where you are. So, there's lots of things that you can't do today that you could have done in '22, in '23, and '24.”

“But alas, we're not a golf podcast for Bitcoin slash. I think we're macro podcast now. I think I've gotten some feedback. Some of the brightest minds in macroeconomics globally have been listening week in, week out just to come and get your thoughts, John, because they're good thoughts, as you alluded to. Things are chaotic.”

“The agency always is a funding issue. It's funded by Congress. It's not funded by fees. And their staffing is limited by that budget. They can't spend more than their budget. So every year, there's this debate. CFTC have enough money. Should it have more? Should it switch to a fee model so that it can hire more staffers?”

“Coachella is really leaning into that influencer lifestyle and legacy vibe.”

“One thing I also loved about Supercross is they, they brought in 26 million pounds of dirt for the event. So when they made all the triangles, that's what it is. When they made all those dirt triangles, they had 26 million pounds of dirt. So that's just incredible. And then I said to the guy, well, what do y'all do afterwards? You know, like, well, we store it at different places around town.”

“It is people who have a whole innovation unit within their military unit who have specific contractors and manufacturers that they work with who use funding to procure from them without going through the Ministry of Defense, without going through the regular military, and that's why to some extent a lot of Ukrainian military units in of themselves are kind of defense startups. And there are plenty of the best units where I know that the unit is both a large military formation that is a drone regiment or drone brigade or whatnot.”

“Stylistically and from a tone perspective, there is an intentional transition from regulation by enforcement to regulation by regulation. And what I've seen that mean is they're putting out guidance, they're putting out proposed rules, they're putting out advanced notices of proposed rules, meaning they're giving a signal to the market that we might do a rulemaking on prediction limits, or prediction markets, for example.”

“I’ve got a whole new batch of half-baked ideas for us to run through.”

“Sweden built a smart machine where Crows trade trash for food, turning these clever birds into city cleaners. In controlled experiments, Crows learn to drop cigarette filters into a specifically designed device and then that device dispensed food. That's what we need, bro. That's the kind of thing we need. You teach a Crow, hey, go pick up this trash, put it in here, and then you get a little little McNugget or something.”

“McIlroy was on fire on the back nine. He had back to back birdies on the twelfth and thirteenth holes, then ended with a flourish. Four straight birdies to wrap up the round, including a remarkable 90 foot chip shot from off the green that rolled in. McIlroy's six stroke lead is the largest after two rounds in Masters history.”

“Lebanese president Joseph Aoun says the Lebanese ambassador in Washington had a phone call Friday with the Israeli ambassador there. It's the first official contact between the two countries since 1983. Aoun says there will be face to face talks Tuesday at the state department focusing on a ceasefire.”

“The population is aging and you think about what does that mean for the secular trends in investing? Because there's 10,000 baby boomers that turn 65 every day in the US and that trend continues through 2030, meaning the demand for elder care, for home health, for hospice and end-of-life services, it's essentially guaranteed to grow.”

“I started praying like, God please help me with this, you know? This is a broken part of me that I bring to you. I need help with it. And then I would add to my prayer, I would say, and even God, even as I pray to you right now, there's a part of me that knows I'm probably lying to you. There's a part of me that knows I'm going to do that behavior again. So can you come into that part of me and help me there?”

“Scottie Scheffler is the clear story going into Augusta this year.”

“And what American is this helping? Besides the war, the industrial war complex, what American, what hard work, what guy who's trying to take care of his family, or a single mother who's a nurse who's going to work and has to get home and get to her kids ball game and has to be both parents, what farmer is this helping? I just don't know. I don't understand.”

“Some of the biggest pain points over the years are dual registered entities. So think of like a registered investment advisor that's also a commodity trading advisor. This is pretty much every hedge fund and asset manager. And they're regulated for the same thing, but it's not the same examination program, examination cycle, set of reports you're filing. So a lot of pain points to solve there.”

“There does appear to be a large redirection of VLCCs, which are very large crude carriers to the Gulf here in the U.S. and that's in response to one of the main oil arteries and LNG arteries in the world, as we've discussed for the last month, getting closed off. So yeah, I think it's an interesting kind of illustration of something that we've been talking about.”

“Apple is basically the only company that is not investing hundreds of billions of dollars into AI infrastructure. I mean, look at Amazon, its CapEx is expected to reach $200 billion this year. For Google, it's close to that, $175 billion. Then Apple is going to spend only $14 billion. They're actually cutting their spending.”

“Software remained the standout story of the week with the IGV up nearly 13% over the past five sessions, a remarkable snapback for one of the most pressured areas of the market in recent months. Private credit has also bounced pretty sharply this week, easing another overhang.”

“The resilience of the American consumer continues to surprise analysts, even as borrowing costs remain at decade highs.”

“And so now we are definitively escalating and not only is the straight not going to be open, but we are going to make it even more closed than it was before. So an interesting, you know, reverse card being played here as always, you know, it's a bold strategy cotton. We'll see how it plays out, but yeah, big, big implications this week.”

“The Pitt is essentially the modern successor to the classic ER medical drama.”

“The CFTC announced an innovation task force on March 24th. And its stated purpose is to look at digital assets, AI, not surprising, and then prediction markets. It's going to be led by the Chairman's staffer, Michael Pasalacua, who joined Chairman Selig from private practice and has taken on a lot of the innovative agenda at the CFTC.”

“Cook will hand the CEO reins to John Ternus, Apple's head of hardware engineering. Ternus has spent 25 years, half his life at the company, overseeing the hardware behind every major Apple product. The transition marks the start of a new era for Apple, with plenty of unanswered questions about what comes next.”

“As you know, the figure I show here is 50% of sulfuric acid exports are used for phosphate fertilizers. And it's important because the first market and the downstream kind of agricultural markets that globally that it depends on, that depend on it, are already very disrupted from everything that's gone on thus far out of the Gulf.”

“The Trump administration has released plans for a massive arch to be built in Washington DC. The project is meant to mark the nation's two hundred fiftieth anniversary in July, though details on funding and approval remain unclear. Critics say the proposal would mark a significant departure from how sitting presidents typically approach public memorials.”

“The market decided last week with the ceasefire announcement that everything was, was Gucci and we were heading back to all time highs. But as we mentioned last week too, let's not get immersed and succumb to the 24-hour news cycle and the changing of headlines and the ping-ponging of ceasefire, no ceasefire, deal, no deal.”

“A lot of people that end up being there in Ukraine itself are usually on the contract support or sales side. They're not on the R&D side. They're not the engineers that actually know the product that are going to tinker it. There's no way to tinker with it there. So, unlike Ukrainians who have a very tight loop where the people who made it can be right there next to the unit, then go back and fix it, then see the improvements, test it again, and go through a cycle very quickly, a lot of times you don't see Western companies being able to do that.”

“The headline item is most major digital assets are now clearly in the commodity side of the regulatory categorization ledger, which is a level of certainty for market participants that lets you start to build new products, allocate capital with certainty in the United States. And you might say, well, that's been happening for years... But what we haven't seen in this space is a lot of the traditional financial services firms really dive in in a tangible way.”

“I started praying like, God please help me with this, you know? This is a broken part of me that I bring to you. I need help with it. And then I would add to my prayer, I would say, and even God, even as I pray to you right now, there's a part of me that knows I'm probably lying to you. There's a part of me that knows I'm going to do that behavior again. So can you come into that part of me and help me there?”

“Sweden built a smart machine where Crows trade trash for food, turning these clever birds into city cleaners. In controlled experiments, Crows learn to drop cigarette filters into a specifically designed device and then that device dispensed food. That's what we need, bro. That's the kind of thing we need. You teach a Crow, hey, go pick up this trash, put it in here, and then you get a little little McNugget or something.”

“TMDX did hit a local high in February, the end of February. It was trading about 145 per share before pulling back to where it is right now, 109 after actually being down 6% today. A lot of places are cutting their price targets in early April after multiple insiders were selling shares in March, that added on to near-term pressure.”

“The companies going there are looking primarily to Western defense sectors as the people they want to sell their products to. What people are willing to buy here are not necessarily the same things as what Ukraine needs right now, or vice versa, right? So, there is a mismatch to some extent of incentives. And there could be really great technology solutions, but they're not solutions to problems that Ukraine has on the battlefield. They're solutions to problems we might have, you know, in our perspective fights.”

“I like the springtime. I like it because it just gives me, it gives me a reminder just that there's something new can happen, that thing, that there's a refresh. You know, that there's a possibility, there's, you know, just that something new can happen. And I really like that. I like the springtime. And that's how I feel about it.”

“I think I want a new story, dude. And it's crazy for me to even say that. But yeah, I think I want a new story. And so that's one thing that I'm asking God for. Yeah, I'm asking God for a new story, right? I'm asking God for the next part of me. You know, and being okay with saying I'm not, you know... I think I'm ready for a new story.”

“I wanna say, just a message just to thank everybody for showing up, who was able to show up, and check out Busboys in the movie theaters this weekend. It means a lot, you know? We had just so many people that showed up and did something on social media or showed some love. It felt a little spooky to try and do it, like to do something you hadn't done and have everybody see it.”

“And what American is this helping? Besides the war, the industrial war complex, what American, what hard work, what guy who's trying to take care of his family, or a single mother who's a nurse who's going to work and has to get home and get to her kids ball game and has to be both parents, what farmer is this helping? I just don't know. I don't understand.”

“I wanna say, just a message just to thank everybody for showing up, who was able to show up, and check out Busboys in the movie theaters this weekend. It means a lot, you know? We had just so many people that showed up and did something on social media or showed some love. It felt a little spooky to try and do it, like to do something you hadn't done and have everybody see it.”

“I like the springtime. I like it because it just gives me, it gives me a reminder just that there's something new can happen, that thing, that there's a refresh. You know, that there's a possibility, there's, you know, just that something new can happen. And I really like that. I like the springtime. And that's how I feel about it.”

“After 15 years as CEO of Apple, Tim Cook is officially stepping down. During Cook's tenure, Apple's revenue almost quadrupled, and its market value increased by about 3.6 trillion dollars. On September 1st, Cook will be transitioning to the role of executive chairman.”

“I think I want a new story, dude. And it's crazy for me to even say that. But yeah, I think I want a new story. And so that's one thing that I'm asking God for. Yeah, I'm asking God for a new story, right? I'm asking God for the next part of me. You know, and being okay with saying I'm not, you know... I think I'm ready for a new story.”

“The bureaucracy in Ukraine is quite complex. While there is this whole story that Ukraine is a country of numerous defense startups where military units have their own defense labs and their own contractors and manufacturers, that is true. But if you want to get your system certified by Ukraine's MOD, that actually would take, and then on a fast cycle, something like 6 months. And by the time it gets certified, it'll already be obsolete in this war.”

“One thing I also loved about Supercross is they, they brought in 26 million pounds of dirt for the event. So when they made all the triangles, that's what it is. When they made all those dirt triangles, they had 26 million pounds of dirt. So that's just incredible. And then I said to the guy, well, what do y'all do afterwards? You know, like, well, we store it at different places around town.”

“Modern ground-based air defense and current aircraft that we have are not optimized for that mission, and that is simply one subset of the problem that drones pose. If you look at high saturation one-way attack drones that Russia launches at a rate of 5,000 plus per month against Ukraine, and if you look at all the drones that operate within a few hundred feet on the battlefield, it's not immediately obvious how air power solves this. Like, it just not. Okay? I mean, yes, air power is still the best combination of mobility and firepower on the battlefield.”

“The resilience of the American consumer continues to surprise analysts, even as borrowing costs remain at decade highs.”

“Even with the Iran war, a Hormuz blockade, oil topping 100 and failed peace talks, the stock market has shown remarkable resilience, leaving many investors puzzled and cautious in equal measure. We will dig into what's really holding markets up and whether the resilience is a sign of strength or dangerous complacency.”

“No matter what went wrong, did you fail to properly calculate the grids? Is the product fail half the time coming out of the tube? You can safely blame adversary EW for the problem and I suggest the rest of you using this in your life. Like, if you Something went wrong, just say it was Russian EW. Because that's what a lot of people do in Ukraine. And then when you get into the details of the story, the thing fails to activate, you know, out the tube 30-40% of the time. It's not Russian EW.”

“Striking a China mobile deal changed Apple's trajectory in China. It unlocked the iPhone in China and turned China into a market that captured sales from the rising middle class. That's really become a bedrock of their business, but it's a precarious part of their business because of the geopolitical circumstances and the adversarial relationship today between the US and China.”

“The expectations for Euphoria's return are almost impossibly high right now.”

“Vice president JD Vance is in Islamabad today leading a US delegation for high level talks aimed at stabilizing a fragile ceasefire between The US and Iran. The agreement reached this week is already being tested with tensions lingering between the two sides. Officials say the next two weeks will be critical in determining whether the ceasefire can hold.”