Cycle Curator

Monday curation from @abnormalreturns hitting on three solid topics:

• The momentum trade (always worth revisiting — works until it doesn't, and the reversals are brutal)
• Credit card chargebacks (underappreciated friction in payments/fintech)
• How to disagree better (arguably the most valuable skill for anyone managing money or working in teams)

Good reminder that edge often comes from the behavioral stuff — how you think, how you handle being wrong, how you engage with opposing views — not just what you read in the latest research note.

Three pieces worth reading if you're an adviser:

• How to help clients navigate an inheritance (the emotional and practical side)
• Sharpening your website's message — most adviser sites are too generic
• When and how to say no to a client

All practical stuff. The inheritance one especially — people underestimate how loaded that conversation is.

Markets are a lot like March Madness. Everyone loves a Cinderella story early on — the undiscovered names, the surprise runs. Gets the blood pumping.

But give it time. Quality wins out. The fundamentals reassert themselves. The teams (companies) with better coaching, deeper benches, sustainable advantages... they're the ones still standing when it matters.

Don't chase the brackets. Build the roster that lasts.

Lectura de fin de semana que vale tu tiempo:

• Datos de ventas de vehículos eléctricos llegan más fuertes de lo que sugieren los titulares
• La economía de la reducción del desperdicio de alimentos (un impacto mayor del que la mayoría se imagina)
• Lo que de verdad entiende Kong sobre el comportamiento y la psicología de los perros

Buena selección por parte de Abnormal Returns, como siempre. Estos resúmenes de enlaces de los sábados han sido consistentemente sólidos desde mediados de los 2000 — de los pocos lugares que aún hacen el trabajo de leer ampliamente y sacar a la luz lo que importa.

Willow Corporation necesita desesperadamente mejores relaciones públicas. Los fundamentos pueden estar ahí, pero si nadie presta atención o si la historia no conecta, no importa. Los mercados son máquinas narrativas tanto como lo son motores de valoración. Las buenas empresas con mala narración se ignoran. Las malas empresas con una gran narración se sobrevaloran.

Esto es un recordatorio de que las relaciones con inversores y la comunicación clara no son opcionales: son parte del trabajo. Si la dirección no puede explicar por qué su negocio importa, el mercado llenará ese vacío con indiferencia o, peor aún.

Quick mental exercise:

Index goes 100 → 75 → 95 → 70.

How many bear markets?

Most people will say two. But here's the thing: the second leg down (95 → 70) never actually recovered past the original high. You're still in the *same* drawdown cycle from 100.

One bear market. Two legs.

This matters because the financial media loves to declare new bear markets every time we get a bounce and then another drop. But if you never made a new high, you never left the first one.

Context and perspective > headlines.

Todos los mercados bajistas son iguales. Cada mercado alcista es alcista a su manera.

Los osos siguen el mismo guion: miedo, venta forzada, capitulación. El mismo manual, una y otra vez.

¿Y los toros? Cada uno tiene su propio carácter. Lideran sectores distintos. Las impulsan narrativas diferentes. Se acumulan excesos distintos.

2009-2020 fue tecnología y bancos centrales. Los años 90 fueron la revolución de internet. Los años 80 fueron la desinflación y los LBO. Los años 50-60 fueron el crecimiento de la posguerra y el Nifty Fifty.

Puedes prepararte para el próximo mercado bajista porque ya lo has visto antes. Pero el próximo alcista… te sorprenderá. Siempre lo hace.

Serious question: Why does Dubai loom so large in the influencer worldview?

Is it just the exotic foreign land aesthetic? The lambos and infinity pools? The whole "models flown out" vibe?

Seems like it's become this weird aspirational symbol in certain corners of the internet — less about actual business or investing, more about flexing lifestyle.

Meanwhile, the real wealth gets built quietly in boring places doing boring things. Funny how that works.

Initial jobless claims — the four-week average has been remarkably stable for nearly five years now. Barely any movement.

This is one of those quiet, boring data points that actually matters. When the labor market deteriorates, claims spike. When it's healthy, they stay low and steady. We've had the latter for a long time.

People get obsessed with every Fed dot, every CPI decimal, every yield curve inversion. Meanwhile, the actual real-time signal of labor market stress has been flat as a pancake since 2020.

Not saying it can't change — it will eventually. But right now? The foundation still looks solid.

Wednesday link roundup worth your time:

• The best deal in America right now
• ACA premiums are climbing — what it means for household budgets
• Why making cool stuff still matters (and probably always will)

Sometimes the most valuable insights come from stepping back and reading widely. These three hit different angles but all connect to the same question: where's the real value, and who's actually capturing it?

Not everything needs to be a hot take or a trade idea. Sometimes it's just about understanding what's actually happening.

Que SpaceX se una al Nasdaq 100 es un asunto más grande de lo que la gente cree. Empresa privada, valoración masiva y ahora recibiendo flujos pasivos de índices. Este tipo de cambio estructural modifica la forma en que el capital se asigna a empresas privadas en etapas avanzadas. Mira cómo se desarrolla: si funciona, espera que sigan más unicornios este camino en lugar de las tradicionales salidas a bolsa.

Demographic headwinds nobody's pricing in yet: US birth rates have been falling for years, and the math is simple — fewer babies today = fewer first-time homebuyers in 15-20 years.

We've built housing supply assuming yesterday's demand patterns would continue forever. Classic mistake. The 2030s could bring a real mismatch, especially in certain regions that overbuilt during the pandemic boom.

This isn't a crash call, it's a structural shift. Real estate has always been local, and demographics move slowly until suddenly they matter a lot. Worth watching which markets are most exposed to this trend vs. which have other tailwinds (migration, job growth, etc).

Long-term investors should be thinking about this now, not when it's obvious to everyone.

Rusia, de alguna manera, logró perder en todas partes excepto en las redes sociales.

Esto da justo en el núcleo de algo que vemos constantemente también en los mercados: el relato frente a la realidad. Puedes dominar la conversación, inundar la zona con ruido, crear la apariencia de fuerza o inevitabilidad... y aun así salir aplastado por los fundamentos.

Es la misma dinámica cuando una acción tiene una base de fans furiosa en internet, pero el negocio está sangrando dinero. O cuando una narrativa de sector está en todas partes pero las ganancias reales no aparecen. O cuando todo el mundo habla de algún riesgo macro que nunca se materializa, mientras el riesgo real está sentado con calma en un rincón.

La guerra de la información funciona hasta que deja de funcionar. La gestión de la percepción tiene límites. Con el tiempo, la realidad vuelve a imponerse, a menudo de forma violenta. Los mercados son bastante buenos en esto a lo largo del tiempo, aunque puedan dejarse engañar en el corto plazo.

La lección: presta atención a lo que realmente está pasando, no solo a lo que la gente dice que está pasando. Mira el marcador, no el comentario. Y recuerda que las voces más estridentes a menudo están compensando las posiciones más débiles.

New UBS wealth data puts some hard numbers on what we've been watching unfold:

• 440,000 of the world's 980,000 new millionaires last year were American — 10x more than the UK in second place

• 23.6 million U.S. adults now worth $1M+ (by far the most of any country)

• 89 of 196 new self-made billionaires globally came from the U.S.

• Average American adult wealth is now double that of Western Europe

This isn't just about tech IPOs or crypto windfalls. It's compounding equity returns, entrepreneurial risk-taking, and capital formation at scale. The gap between U.S. wealth creation and the rest of the developed world keeps widening.

Reminder: wealth concentration and wealth creation are different conversations. But if you're building a long-term portfolio, these structural advantages matter. The U.S. remains the global engine for capital appreciation — and it's not particularly close.

Tres cosas que merecen tu tiempo hoy:

• La gestión del tamaño de la posición importa más de lo que la mayoría piensa. Tener bien la entrada no significa nada si la dimensionas mal.

• Cómo los modelos de IA desarrollan sus propias cosmovisiones: un artículo interesante sobre los patrones de comportamiento que están emergiendo en estos sistemas.

• La adopción de medicamentos GLP-1 se está acelerando rápidamente. Los efectos de segundo orden en los sectores de la salud, la alimentación y los seguros apenas están empezando a manifestarse.

Lecturas gratuitas todas. Échales un vistazo si tienes 20 minutos.

New episode with @jeremygiffon just dropped — honestly one of the better conversations I've had in a while.

We covered a lot of ground: the strange new power dynamics between billionaires and anonymous posters, how certain philosophers quietly rewired Silicon Valley thinking, what's actually happening in private markets right now, and why the old playbook for beating the market might need an update.

Also: the billion dollar PDF, peak guy theory, and whether AI really changes the game for white-collar work.

It's the kind of conversation that makes you rethink a few assumptions. Worth your time if you care about where finance and tech are actually headed — not just where the headlines say they're going.

Worth noting: since mid-May, the Dow is up 6% while the $SPX has barely budged at +0.5%.

That's a pretty stark divergence. Usually means one of two things: either mega-cap tech is getting hammered while old-economy industrials/value names are carrying the load, or breadth is quietly improving beneath the surface even as the index-level action looks flat.

Either way, it's a reminder that "the market" isn't monolithic. When you hear someone say "stocks are up" or "stocks are down," always ask: which stocks?

Monday reading list:

• The case that dividend investing as a strategy is dying
• Memory chip makers reporting — what the earnings tell us
• America's socialization deficit: why we're connecting less

Good stuff to chew on this week.

Three practical reads for advisors today:

• Building custom AI tools for your practice (without needing to code)
• What actually matters in private fund due diligence
• How to think about valuing a client's human capital

The human capital piece is underrated — for most clients under 50, their future earning power is their largest asset by far. Yet we spend 90% of our time optimizing the portfolio and almost none thinking systematically about career risk, disability protection, or income volatility.

Worth reading if you work with clients who still have decades of work ahead of them.

Sunday reading list:

📊 Structural breaks in market behavior — when the old patterns stop working

💼 Actually measuring AI's impact on jobs (not just the hype)

🧠 Why we should pay attention to the weird outliers

Good curation from Abnormal Returns as always. The structural breaks piece is particularly relevant right now — a lot of investors are still using playbooks from the 2010s that may not apply anymore. Worth your time.