Latest Interviews

David Solomon’s Remarks at the 2026 FDNY Foundation Dinner

David Solomon

Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon accepted an award from the FDNY Foundation at "The Rock" training academy, using the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks to honor the 343 firefighters who died while prioritizing community service over self-interest. The speech highlighted the enduring resilience of New Yorkers and emphasized the department's ongoing mission to support the next generation of first responders through both material resources and a philosophy of citizenship. This address underscored the symbiotic relationship between the financial firm and the city, celebrating a legacy of bravery where individuals are urged to ask who needs them rather than what they can gain.

Signals & Noise: When Income Became an Outcome

Abhinandan Deb, Nitin Saksena

Driven by demographic shifts toward income generation and elevated volatility regimes, global retail issuance of equity-linked structured products and income-focused ETFs has surged, reaching $320 billion annually with five-year growth rates outpacing the broader market. Regulatory innovations and digital brokerages have further accelerated this adoption as retail participants capitalize on higher option premiums to supplement traditional bond yields. Despite these gains, the event highlights inherent capital preservation and tail risks, urging investors to employ multi-asset strategies while anticipating continued expansion fueled by persistent market uncertainty.

Brad Gerstner: No AI Bubble, Semis Eat the Nasdaq & AI's Take Off Problem

Brad Gerstner, Chamath, Jason, DavidSacks, friedberg

Current market gains are driven by a narrow AI infrastructure supercycle where semiconductor earnings have surged despite contracting valuations, raising questions about whether revenue can justify trillions in capital expenditure. While top AI labs project massive revenue growth to sustain this build-out, the speaker warns that permitting delays, power grid constraints, and potential interest rate hikes create significant risks to the 2026 capacity forecasts. Consequently, the investment strategy has shifted from a broad supercycle bet to a conditional stance that adjusts exposure based on actual lab revenue execution and macroeconomic stability.

Must Read Research: Walmart & Ads; Quantum, Computing Power Trading; Lodging Demand

Candace Browning

Walmart's advertising segment has grown to $6.4 billion in fiscal 2026 with 70% operating margins, leveraging 150 million weekly customers to outpace traditional media through strategic partnerships. Parallel to this commercial expansion, the technology sector is accelerating quantum computing applications while transforming compute into a tradable asset class, evidenced by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange's planned launch of GPU rental futures. Meanwhile, hospitality executives report a robust C-shaped recovery driven by improved travel demand, as media developers increasingly prioritize labor costs over equipment expenses in their infrastructure planning.

Signals & Noise: Four Themes Driving Emerging Markets

David Hauner

David Hauner of BofA Securities outlines a constructive outlook for emerging market carry trades in September 2026, driven by high global rates and a range-bound dollar despite risks from rising inflation and geopolitical tensions. The strategy favors high-yield assets in Brazil, Turkey, and frontier markets while avoiding sovereign credit spreads, viewing Treasury buybacks and a potential three-rate hike cycle as catalysts for dollar weakness that support EM currencies. Key catalysts include the US midterms delaying a September rate decision, a constructive Trump-Xi summit aiding the offshore Renminbi, and Brazil's upcoming elections, though persistent inflation remains a primary constraint on fixed income returns.

Signals & Noise: AI Exposure, Less Volatility? Enter Converts

Michael Youngworth

The global convertible bond market has surged to $600 billion, driven by $175 billion in year-to-date issuance as artificial intelligence companies transition from adjacent players to primary financing engines. Despite a July 2026 correction that reduced valuations to their most attractive levels of the year, the asset class outperformed equities on risk-adjusted bases by limiting drawdowns to 11% while capturing 80% of AI theme correlation. This performance, supported by a shift toward investment-grade issuers and over $2 billion in recent retail inflows, signals strong institutional confidence in convertibles as a strategic vehicle for AI capital formation.

Shaky ‘26 for alt asset manager stocks, but steady asset inflows

TJ Thornton, Craig Siegenthaler

Following a decade of outperformance, alternative asset manager stocks face 2025–2026 headwinds from private credit concerns and AI-driven market disruption, yet have rebounded recently as valuations hit historical discounts and short positions unwind. Industry analysis identifies private credit fears as largely manufactured with returns forecast at 6%, while projecting that superior managers will capture future capital flows amid an expected bifurcation in performance. Despite private equity maturing, the sector retains defensive "never-for-seller" characteristics and significant long-term upside driven by retail adoption, operating leverage, and a future bear market that is projected to generate massive alpha through negative covariance with public equities.

Must Read Research: Fund Manager Survey; Our New AI Tracker; Gold’s Rally and K-shape Convergence

Candace Browning

The August 2026 Monthly Fund Manager Survey reveals a record bullish consensus with managers projecting no economic downturn and equity allocations at multi-year highs despite concerns over AI as a primary tail risk. Concurrently, the Frontier AI Tracker documents intensifying competition through significant model pricing cuts and falling token costs, even as hardware demand and memory prices remain robust. In parallel, gold prices face support from central bank accumulation and dollar weakness, while U.S. consumer spending data indicates a K-shaped convergence where lower-income households are closing the gap with higher earners.

Must Read Research: AI Financing, Convertibles, AI and Labor, Australian LNGs

Candace Browning, Yuri Seliger, Michael Youngworth, Stephen Juno

Analysts project hyperscalers and NVIDIA will trigger a surge in AI infrastructure financing, potentially doubling total debt issuance to $659 billion by late 2027 while convertible bonds increasingly link to AI themes. Despite high adoption rates in finance and information sectors, data indicates minimal correlation between AI exposure and overall employment growth, though construction and manufacturing roles added nearly 130,000 jobs through capital expenditures. Concurrently, Australian LNG producers face reserve replacement challenges amid constrained export volumes, prompting strategic shifts toward infrastructure efficiency as supply is expected to outpace global demand.

Must Read Research: Earnings; European Energy Markets; Memory Demand; MSCI EM Reshuffle

Candace Browning

Nearly 90% of S&P 500 companies have reported Q2 2026 earnings, delivering a 30% year-over-year EPS growth and a 76% beat rate while AI-related stocks outperformed the broader market despite decelerating future forecasts. Simultaneously, Europe's record-breaking summer temperatures have strained power grids and driven gas price volatility, prompting analysts to favor renewable energy investments over new nuclear projects due to falling technology costs. In the semiconductor sector, SK Hynix capitalizes on surging hyperscaler demand with a projected $300 trillion annualized operating profit by 2026, while the MSCI Emerging Markets Index prepares for a 2027 reshuffle that may reclassify South Korea and Greece into developed status.

8 Predictions for the Era of Continual Learning

Dwarkesh

The discussion argues that transitioning from static to continual learning is essential for AI to perform complex tasks and maintain safety through ongoing adaptation rather than pre-deployment checks. This shift is expected to fragment the current market of identical models into diverse, experience-driven systems while creating high switching costs that allow providers to secure substantial profit margins. Consequently, major labs face intense pressure to deploy functional models immediately to leverage live data feedback, which will accelerate development cycles and reshape the economics of AI inference.

Why US Stocks May ‘Grind Higher’

Ashok Varadhan, Mike Washington

Goldman Sachs co-head Ashok Baradhan forecasts equities will continue to "grind higher" despite recent volatility driven by war tensions, Fed rate concerns, and AI leverage unwinding, predicting a V-shaped tech recovery and S&P 500 new highs. Baradhan diverges from current market pricing by asserting interest rates will remain on hold through year-end as inflation recedes, while maintaining a constructive outlook on credit spreads and dismissing short-term currency interventions. The firm recommends investors stay fully invested with a target energy price below $70 per barrel to support U.S. yields and productivity gains, pending validation from upcoming jobs and inflation data.

Must Read Research: Russell Concentration, Hazardous Trash is the New Treasure; AI Financing

Russell, Candace Browning, Savita Subramanian, Nandita Nayar, Neha Kota

Savita Subramanian warns that passive indices face extreme concentration risks as the top ten Russell 1000 stocks command 35% of the index, while leveraged ETFs now hold over $75 billion to amplify volatility. Amidst this market structure shift, Nandita Nayar highlights a critical scarcity in hazardous waste disposal infrastructure where zero new landfills have been permitted since 1996, leaving Clean Harbors with over 65% of North American incineration capacity. Simultaneously, Neha Kota analyzes a divergence in AI-linked credit markets where high-yield spreads have widened due to data center stress, prompting a strategy to leg into the remaining $92 billion in expected 2026 supply.

Why compute prices might 10x as AI gets smarter

Anthropic's projected tenfold revenue growth outpaces the industry's threefold compute expansion, forcing a shift toward higher inference margins, increased spot prices, and a reallocation of hardware to inference workloads. This economic divergence is exacerbated by hard supply constraints in Moore's Law, fab construction, and wafer allocation, which concentrate pricing power among frontier labs capable of charging significant premiums for compute-efficient models. Consequently, the market faces a pre-singularity regime where inelastic compute supply drives sustained price increases and intelligence concentration until automated manufacturing potentially resolves future scarcity.

Why knowing the future doesn't always help predict markets | The Economist

Joshua Roberts, Rosie Blau

Elm Wealth's study compared the performance of laypeople, artificial intelligence models, and professional macro traders by simulating 15 days of trading with perfect future news on historical market data. While professionals doubled their starting capital by dynamically adjusting leverage based on confidence, average human and AI participants barely broke even or lost their entire stake due to poor bet sizing. The findings highlight that successful investing relies more on capital allocation and risk management than on superior directional prediction accuracy.