Month: April 2026

1. Oil prices surge, and stocks make new highs nevertheless. It looks like I was right (so far) on all counts: (a) The strait remaining in some Schrodinger-like state of being blockaded or opened, possibly until 2028, as I wrote here. At this point the stock market has stopped caring, as I also correctly predicted.… Continue reading The Daily View 4/30/2026: Stocks ignore oil prices, GLP-1s and Walmart, and Blackpilling

The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner shooting is scarcely worth mentioning. Unlike the Pennsylvania shooter, Mathew Cooke, the assailant, Cole Tomas Allen, didn’t even get past security–let alone take aim at the president. So in this sense, security was a success. I disagree with some commenters online who say that the Secret Service failed. The… Continue reading Cole Tomas Allen: Why There Is No Profile for Premeditated Violence

Why does dieting have such a high failure rate, and what can be done about it? To the answer the second question, fortunately, GLP-1 drugs are highly effective, and better drugs are on the horizon. It’s possible obesity may be curable. But for the first question, the high failure rate of dieting is commonly blamed… Continue reading “Slow Metabolism” May Help Explain High Dieting Failure Rates

Today’s big story: “U.S. soldier involved in Maduro raid charged with betting on the operation:” The soldier was identified as Gannon Ken Van Dyke in a news release announcing the indictment. Van Dyke “bet a total of approximately $33,034” on the Maduro operation on the prediction market platform Polymarket, federal authorities said. He ultimately made… Continue reading U.S. Soldier Charged in Insider Trading Case: A Convenient Fall Guy Amid Widespread Fraud

The topic of UBI has yet again gained traction after Elon Musk floated what he calls “Universal High Income”. “Universal HIGH INCOME via checks issued by the Federal government is the best way to deal with unemployment caused by AI,” Musk said in a post on his own X platform shortly after midnight Friday morning.… Continue reading AI-based unemployment and UBI: my thoughts

Over the weekend, the U.S. blockaded Iranian ports and seized an Iranian ship. As I correctly wrote 1-2 weeks ago, the stock market has already decided Iran no longer matters despite the situation nowhere near being resolved. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq were only down slightly Monday morning. Here is what I wrote: Like Iraq… Continue reading The daily view: Iran blockade, AI and labor, Palantir’s bad manifesto

I want to revisit my 2024 post, “Optimality“. The idea is that everyone is, in some sense, optimized for their roles. Additionally, the kinds of people who end up in certain roles are more or less what you’d expect based on a combination of attributes–physical appearance, temperament, intellect, attractiveness, and so on. Consider physiognomy. It’s… Continue reading Optimality, revisited

Time for another bulletin or transaction. Tweets from 1-2 weeks ago that expressed skepticism about Trump or falling support, are already aging badly, as the stock market makes new highs and Iran is already in the rearview mirror: You can probably put this in this same category as his promise to end Iranian civilization. More… Continue reading The ‘MAGA divorce’ does not matter

Trump is facing manufactured controversy after depicting himself as Jesus in a (now-deleted) tweet. The always-wrong loser media is trying to foment division within Trump supporters again by creating controversy where there otherwise wouldn’t be any. The media scours Twitter or other social media for Republicans (typically, never-Trumpers or “Groyper types”) who were offended by… Continue reading The Trump-Jesus non-controversy

The big story is Trump threatening to blockade the Strait of Hormuz after peace talks collapse. Yet again, when I claim to be the best macro forecaster, trader, and money manager, it’s all backed by quantifiable evidence and results. I was short Bitcoin, as per my usual method, which predicably collapsed after the story broke:… Continue reading Trump threatens Strait of Hormuz blockade, Bitcoin crashes