Nine years ago the fastest way to draw a crowd at a tech conference was a folding table, a box of phone-slot headsets and a pile of over-ear cans. People queued for it. Samsung's Gear VR, with Oculus software inside and a Galaxy handset dropped into the front, was the cheap on-ramp everybody used to explain what the next platform would feel like. That product line is gone, … [Read more...] about VR Status Report 2026: Quest Sales Keep Falling While Smart Glasses Take the Money
Reports
The Case That the US Can Grow Out of $40 Trillion in Debt: Three Conditions the Clinton Surpluses Actually Met
The consensus response to the administration's growth argument is that it is arithmetically impossible. That response is too quick. The arithmetic is not impossible. It has been done before, within living memory, in this country, and the mechanism that did it was mostly not legislation. What makes the current version unlikely is not the math. It is that the math requires three … [Read more...] about The Case That the US Can Grow Out of $40 Trillion in Debt: Three Conditions the Clinton Surpluses Actually Met
The $40 Trillion Debt: Why AI Capex Raises Treasury Borrowing Costs Faster Than It Raises the Tax Base
Gross federal debt crossed $40 trillion on August 19, months ahead of the forecast path, in part because the revenue from the invalidated tariffs never arrived. The administration's answer is growth. "The way you take care of debt is with growth," Trump said. Bessent, on CNBC: there is nothing magic about the number, and the economy can grow out of it. Kent Smetters, who runs … [Read more...] about The $40 Trillion Debt: Why AI Capex Raises Treasury Borrowing Costs Faster Than It Raises the Tax Base
Rockefeller Center Has Been a Credit Instrument for Forty Years: From the 1985 REIT to the $3.5 Billion 2024 CMBS
Most people looking at Rockefeller Center see a landmark. The more useful way to read it is as collateral. Since 1985 the complex has been financed, defaulted on, seized, resold and refinanced through a sequence of increasingly large debt structures, and in almost every cycle the equity holder has been the one who got hurt while the paper written against the building did what … [Read more...] about Rockefeller Center Has Been a Credit Instrument for Forty Years: From the 1985 REIT to the $3.5 Billion 2024 CMBS
Who Insures the AI Buildout? $30 Billion Campuses Meet a $3.5 Billion Ceiling
The five largest cloud providers are on track to spend roughly $600 billion on infrastructure this year, and the broader hyperscaler group closer to $710 billion. Every dollar of that lands somewhere physical: a building, a transformer yard, a battery room, a rack of GPUs worth more than the concrete around them. Someone has to insure it. Increasingly, nobody … [Read more...] about Who Insures the AI Buildout? $30 Billion Campuses Meet a $3.5 Billion Ceiling
Retail Earnings Week: The 1.65% Real Sales Number Behind the 5% Headline
Retail sales fell 0.6% in July against a consensus of plus 0.1%, the steepest monthly decline since May 2025, and the tape read it on Friday as evidence of a consumer finally cracking. The composition says something narrower and more useful. Non-store retail fell 2.2%, the largest drop of any category, because Prime Day, Walmart+ Week and Target Circle promotions ran in June … [Read more...] about Retail Earnings Week: The 1.65% Real Sales Number Behind the 5% Headline
SanDisk and Marvell Top Our Hot Stocks List: Two-Thirds of FY2028 NAND Bits Are Already Contracted
The two names at the top of our list are SanDisk (SNDK) and Marvell (MRVL), and the reason is the same in both cases even though the businesses look nothing alike. Each one has spent the past year converting a cyclical, spot-priced position into contracted or attached revenue. That conversion, not the AI headline, is what justifies the multiple. The ceiling on both is now set … [Read more...] about SanDisk and Marvell Top Our Hot Stocks List: Two-Thirds of FY2028 NAND Bits Are Already Contracted
US Market Cap at $74 Trillion: Why the Market Has Room to Grow Without Repricing
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
Buffett Indicator at 230%: Why the Labor Share Makes Market Cap to GDP Unreadable
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
60-Month Transformer Lead Times Are a Bigger AI Constraint Than the Copper Deficit
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
