Markets, Meditations, and Mental Models

Brief: Demand Eats Share

A Commerce Department directive shuts down Anthropic's most powerful models overnight. The Iran deal reaches the signing table, the densest central-bank week of 2026 begins, and the real lesson hides in an energy milestone everyone is reading backwards.

Super Brief: First Orbit — Super Brief

First Orbit. The loud event was the largest IPO in history. The structural one happened underneath it. Tokenized US equities, blockchain wrappers on Nvidia, Tesla, and the S&P 500, quietly became the most widely held real-world asset on public chains: roughly $1.6 billion, up 60x in a year, with about 90% of vol

Brief: Priced Before Signed

The market front-ran a peace deal that hasn't been signed, crashing oil and pushing the dollar below 100, while May wholesale inflation came in hot for the second consecutive day, turning "rate hikes" from tail risk into the base-case debate ahead of next week's FOMC. SpaceX begins trading today, an

Brief: Best Quarter, Worst Print

May's CPI came in at 4.2%, the hottest headline reading since early 2023, but nearly all the acceleration is war-driven energy, with core prices at a tame 2.9% and the Fed caught between a headline it cannot ignore and an economy it does not need to cool. Oracle reported its best quarter after the c

Super Brief: Best Quarter, Worst Print — Super Brief

Best Quarter, Worst Print. May CPI printed 4.2%, the hottest headline since early 2023, and the two markets that read it reached opposite conclusions. Energy did the damage, up 3.9% in May alone and over 60% of the monthly increase, while core sat at 2.9% and shelter posted its softest month since late 2021. Trump named the t