Latest Interviews

Must Read Research: Shifting Econ Outlook; Concentration Bubble Risk; Semis; Prediction Mkts

TJ Thornton

The BofA Global Economics team projects a hawkish pivot with three rate hikes in 2026 driven by resilient inflation and labor growth, while equity markets show early signs of rotation away from concentrated AI valuations toward cyclical sectors. Concurrently, the semiconductor industry is securing long-term contracts to underwrite a projected $2.7 trillion market by 2030, even as DraftKings absorbs hundreds of millions in losses to compete for dominance in the rapidly expanding prediction market. These divergent trends highlight a complex economic environment where central bank policy shifts, sector-specific rotation, and intense corporate competition redefine growth strategies across global assets.

Socialists Sweep NYC, China Catches Up in Coding, AI Memory Crunch, Micron's Blowout Quarter

Gavin Baker, Travis Kalanick, David Sacks

Socialist candidates secured three key New York primary victories by leveraging strong support from young, affluent voters to defeat establishment figures like Dan Goldman, driven largely by the Israel-Gaza conflict and internal Democratic fractures. Parallel to this political shift, the podcast analyzes the rapid advancement of China's open-source AI through the GLM-5.2 model trained on domestic chips and forecasts a semiconductor market constrained by record HBM demand that is reshaping data center economics. These sectors face a convergence of massive capital flows toward upcoming trillion-dollar AI IPOs and infrastructure challenges that may necessitate a pivot toward orbital compute solutions.

What does the next training paradigm look like?

Current AI labs are betting on scaling reinforcement learning to achieve AGI, though the field faces significant stagnation in "computer use" tasks due to the lack of deterministic, replayable web simulators. While proponents argue that extended context windows can substitute for weight updates, critics point to performance degradation in long-horizon scenarios and the inefficiency of discarding inference data without feedback loops. To overcome these barriers, researchers are exploring On-Policy Self-Distillation and simulated "dreaming" to accumulate tacit knowledge from real-world deployment, aiming to shift future progress from pre-training toward continuous, weight-based learning.

America at 250 – Innovation, Market Leadership and the Power of Compounding

Derek Harris, Jared Woodard

Presented on June 16, 2026, this analysis details the United States' 150-year economic dominance, driven by superior corporate earnings growth, a $1 trillion annual R&D investment, and the dollar's enduring role as the primary global reserve currency. The report challenges the traditional 60-40 portfolio strategy by demonstrating the historical lack of consistent negative correlation between U.S. equities and long-term Treasury bonds, which have often moved in tandem during recent market cycles. Ultimately, the discussion underscores structural advantages in governance and innovation efficiency that sustain U.S. outperformance despite the current challenges posed by an overvalued currency and global reindustrialization trends.

The data black hole at the center of AI

The event analyzes the prevailing AI paradigm where massive data volume and compute-intensive reinforcement learning drive progress rather than sample efficiency, creating a booming market for human expert labeling. This approach contrasts sharply with human learning capabilities, as current models require millions of times more data to master tasks like driving or robotics, yet still achieve rapid open-source convergence by leveraging public data. Looking ahead, the discussion projects that while white-collar roles will expand due to AI complementing human work, the ultimate path to solving efficiency bottlenecks may lie in automating the AI research process itself.

ITPM Flash Ep115 Defence against the Machine

Dieter Plas

Amidst a shifting AI landscape dominated by energy demands and a new agentic CPU era, a massive cybersecurity catalyst has emerged from Anthropic's internal Mythos model, which exposed thousands of critical global vulnerabilities without public release. Experts warn this creates a narrow defensive window before adversarial nations potentially replicate these capabilities, prompting a focused trade thesis on the Cyber First Trust Nasdaq Cyber Security ETF (CIBR). To capitalize on this thematic momentum, a structured options strategy involves buying 10 November $90 calls while selling 5 August $95 calls for a net debit of roughly $5,550, targeting a 3:1 return if the ETF rallies 29% by year-end.

Pick One Idea and Go Deep

Jon Xu, John

Founders must abandon the search for a theoretically perfect idea and instead commit fully to a single concept to generate reliable market data and achieve deep expertise. This approach demands a radical identity shift and a "burn the boats" mentality, ensuring leaders can run a customer's business with precision while targeting high-stakes sectors like regulated industries or hard tech. By operating at the frontier of AI capabilities and owning specific outcomes rather than just selling software, entrepreneurs validate their viability through real-world execution or acquire unambiguous failure data necessary for strategic pivots.

Signals & Noise: Why small & mid-caps are leading the 2026 market rally – and what’s next

Jill Hall

Bank of America economists project that U.S. small and mid-cap equities will outperform mega-caps in 2026 as earnings growth from manufacturing recovery and capital expenditure cycles drives returns, aided by a significant valuation gap where the Russell 2000 trades at 17 times forward earnings compared to the Russell 1000's 21 times. While these smaller indices face heightened sensitivity to Federal Reserve rate decisions due to greater leverage and refinancing risks, the firm anticipates steady rates through 2026 followed by cuts that could boost operating earnings by approximately 2% per quarter. Consequently, the investment strategy prioritizes less levered small-cap financials and energy stocks alongside maturing healthcare biotechs, focusing on companies positioned to benefit from reshoring trends and AI-driven efficiency gains.

We just launched Paxel!

Paxil is a locally executed tool that generates a five-dimensional builder profile analyzing how developers utilize AI coding agents like Cursor within their own Docker environments. Y Combinator encourages Startup School applicants to integrate this data into their submissions to identify high-potential "no-resume" talent by shifting evaluation focus from final outputs to specific building methodologies. Developed to aggregate global patterns on AI-assisted software creation, the service remains free for developers seeking actionable insights into their engineering workflows.

Will European Equities Outperform the S&P?

Sharon Bell, Chris Hussey

European equities have surged to near all-time highs driven by a 6–7% average upgrade in earnings estimates within the commodity and financial sectors, supported by resilient economic growth and planned German fiscal spending. Goldman Sachs has raised its 12-month Euro Stoxx 600 forecast to 660, citing the region's broader market breadth and the underappreciated potential of heavy asset companies in defense, aerospace, and utilities that are benefiting from global infrastructure and defense spending. While analysts project high single-digit returns for Europe over the coming year, the market is expected to trail U.S. and Asian performance due to lower energy independence and the concentration of tech dominance in American hyperscalers.

The AI Investment Boom: When Will It Pay Off?

Jim Covello, Alison Nathan, George Lee

In a Goldman Sachs Exchanges episode recorded on May 26, 2026, Jim Cabello and George Lee analyze the divergence between surging AI technology and unproven economic returns. Cabello admits previous misjudgments regarding consumer adoption and hyperscaler spending patterns while warning that the current exclusive profitability of semiconductor firms creates an unsustainable market dynamic. The dialogue concludes that without evidence of enterprise-scale profitability within the next two years, the industry faces a potential correction where hyperscaler stocks are poised to outperform if capital expenditure moderates or profit distribution shifts upstream.

The Career Advice That's Quietly Ruining People's Lives

Benjamin Todd, Rob, Milo McGuire, Elizabeth Cox, Katy Moore

Eighty-thousand Hours challenges the conventional career advice to "follow your passion" by revealing through three decades of research that passion is often a result of meaningful work rather than a pre-existing guide. The organization proposes an alternative framework centered on five structural drivers—engaging work, helping others, competence, supportive colleagues, and basic needs—to systematically achieve career fulfillment without relying on unstable personal intuitions. By prioritizing skills that aid others over high-interest niches, individuals can avoid the stress of intense competition and secure greater long-term satisfaction regardless of income level.

ITPM Flash Ep113 Standing on the Edge

Edward Shek

Current market analysis indicates the S&P 500 is historically overvalued by traditional metrics, driven instead by a $737 billion annualized capital expenditure boom centered on AI infrastructure and the disproportionate earnings growth of the Magnificent 7. Despite macro headwinds like rising bond yields, institutional strategists recommend maintaining an overweight position in this Capex trade for the next 18 months, monitoring specific sell signals such as a convergence of spending with demand or deterioration in unit economics. Investors are advised to employ active risk management through strict position sizing and hedging, as a significant correction is projected only if hyperscaler spending halts rather than based on valuation multiples alone.

Must Read Research: Weather & Commodity Risks; Fed Hikes; EU Trade Dynamics and Evolving Consumers

Candace Browning, Mark Cabana, Horst Schneider, Lorraine Hutchinson

A 2026 market analysis highlights severe El Niño-driven disruptions to global grain and sugar supplies alongside tightening U.S. corn balances that could push prices above $6 per bushel. Concurrently, resilient payroll growth and accelerating inflation suggest the Federal Reserve must raise rates to approximately 4% by year-end, a move likely underpriced by current market expectations. In global trade, Chinese automakers doubled their European market share to 8% in Q1 2026 while second-hand apparel spending surged 38%, reflecting shifting consumer dynamics and intensified geopolitical trade flows.

A Tale of Two Markets

Shawn Tuteja, Chris Hussey, Sean Tatasia

As of May 13, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq have rallied significantly driven by a 17% year-over-year earnings growth surge and concentrated capital expenditure of $755 billion in the AI sector. This performance has created a divergence where hyperscalers and semiconductor equipment outpace cyclical equities amid inflation shocks that have shifted Federal Reserve expectations from rate cuts to potential hikes. While Goldman Sachs rules out a bubble due to earnings-backed fundamentals, the market faces heightened volatility risks from systemic leverage and potential macro triggers like 30-year Treasury yields breaching 5%.