Reports

The total US market index sits near $74.7 trillion, which is about 230% of domestic GDP and the reason every valuation screen currently reads red. Divide the same numerator by world GDP of roughly $115 trillion and you get something closer to 65%. Neither number is wrong. They answer different questions, and the second one is closer to the question an owner of the index is … [Read more...] about US Market Cap at $74 Trillion: Why the Market Has Room to Grow Without Repricing

The reading is not in dispute. On the Wilshire-to-GDP construction the ratio printed 219% for Q1 2026, roughly two standard deviations above its trendline. On the broader total-market-cap version it sits near 230%. The long-run median is about 84%. The dot-com peak was 172%. The ratio first crossed 200% in 2021 and has not been below it since. Three prior instances of this … [Read more...] about Buffett Indicator at 230%: Why the Labor Share Makes Market Cap to GDP Unreadable

Start with the arithmetic, because it settles most of the argument before the narrative gets going. The refined copper market runs somewhere around 28 million tonnes a year. Deficit projections for 2026 cluster between 124,000 and 400,000 tonnes depending on whose balance sheet you read, with 150,000 the most commonly cited figure for 2027. Call it one percent, give or take. … [Read more...] about 60-Month Transformer Lead Times Are a Bigger AI Constraint Than the Copper Deficit

In February 2024 a Belgian mining company signed a roughly $350 million long-term supply agreement with a Chinese manufacturer in Inner Mongolia. The material was high-purity quartz sand. The mine was in Spruce Pine, North Carolina. The buyer makes the fused quartz crucibles that Chinese semiconductor and solar producers use to grow silicon ingots. No export licence was … [Read more...] about America Mines the World’s Semiconductor Quartz and Has No Export Controls on It

President Trump told a room of roughly 200 mining executives at the State Department on Friday that America is reclaiming its rightful place as the minerals superpower of the world. The announcement behind the line was about $3 billion in federal money spread across critical minerals and battery projects: a $1.4 billion Office of Strategic Capital loan to Sila Nanotechnologies, … [Read more...] about China’s Equipment Export Controls Are the Real Threat to America’s 2028 Magnet Timeline

The most useful fact about this week is that Datadog beat revenue estimates by 4.3%, beat on earnings by nearly 38%, raised full-year guidance, guided the third quarter 3.2% above consensus, and lost 15% in a single session. That is close to the best quarter a software company can deliver, and the market took it apart anyway. Nothing about this week is explained by weak … [Read more...] about Earnings Recap August 3-7, 2026: AMD, Datadog and SanDisk All Beat and All Fell

Nonfarm payrolls fell by 23,000 in July against a consensus looking for somewhere between 80,000 and 83,000. That is the number the wires led with, and it is the least interesting number in the release. The Bureau of Labor Statistics also revised May down from 129,000 to 63,000 and June down from 57,000 to 20,000, removing 103,000 jobs from a two-month window that had already … [Read more...] about July Jobs Report: The 103,000 Revised Away Matters More Than the 23,000 Lost

The interesting number isn't the $1.1 trillion. It's what happens when you put the two figures next to each other. Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta have spent $1.1 trillion on capex since the AI boom began in 2023. They plan to spend $745 billion of it this year. So one calendar year is going to come close to matching the three that preceded it, combined. That's the whole … [Read more...] about Big Tech Capex Reaches $1.1 Trillion Since 2023, With $745 Billion Planned for 2026

Amphenol reported record second quarter 2026 results. Benchmark reported a strong second quarter. Littelfuse and Sensata Technologies reported the same day. Four component and electronics manufacturing names, no AI accelerators between them, and collectively a better read on datacenter buildout than most of the companies that talk about it. The reason is structural. … [Read more...] about Amphenol’s Record Quarter Shows Where AI Capex Actually Lands

Paper announced a $34 million Series A on Wednesday, led by Accel and ICONIQ, with Designer Fund, Michael Grinich of WorkOS, Anton Osika of Lovable, and individual engineers and designers from Anthropic and OpenAI participating. Thirty-four million dollars is a rounding error in the current funding environment. Figma booked $333.4 million of revenue in the first quarter of 2026 … [Read more...] about Paper Raises $34 Million and Figma (FIG) Has Already Lost Half Its Value on the Thesis