Once the hyperscalers went FCF -ve, the search for capital was on. Started in credit, moved to eq and now we're seeing the sellers of shortage invest back into the buyers of shortage (NVDA into META). The system is fighting to keep the lane of capital access as open as possible.
The insurance angles on AI are fascinating to me
One of the more consequential disclosures in Anthropic’s S-1:
“With the scale of harm that could result from a catastrophic AI-related incident, no single insurer, and potentially the insurance industry in the aggregate, may have sufficient capacity or expertise to underwrite insurance commensurate with such exposure.”
If the whole insurance industry may not be able to underwrite frontier Al risk, we probably need something new: pooled, public-private, or built from scratch. Would love to meet anyone thinking seriously about this.
Tracy Alloway retweeted
As @tracyalloway writes in today's Odd Lots newsletter... The logical endpoint is my agent battles some company’s algorithm until they reach the same equilibrium we would reached before AI, except we both spent a lot on tokens and the whole thing is value destroying.
wrote about AI AS THE INFINITE WORK MACHINE, creating a world where we're all just constantly deploying agents to fight against everyone else's agents, running constantly to end up in the same place:
bloomberg.com/news/newslette…
Has an S-1 filing ever included "existential risks to humanity" before?
sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/…
Tracy Alloway retweeted
NEW ODD LOTS:
@tracyalloway and I talk to @owenslindsay1 about the state of the art technology that companies are finding to figuring the maximum price you will pay for something. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas…
Helium added to the list of critical materials:
energy.gov/sites/default/fil…
NEW ODD LOTS - The FORGOTTEN GODMOTHER OF MODERN ECONOMICS
In this episode, @TheStalwart & I talk to @jeannasmialek about her new book on Maria Edgworth, a largely forgotten Regency-era novelist who was a major contributor to early economics
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas…
Tracy Alloway retweeted
NEW ODD LOTS:
Jacobin founder @sunraysunray tells me and @tracyalloway that after the socialists take over, we don’t have to worry. Markets will still have a major role to play in the economy open.spotify.com/episode/1cv…
Tracy Alloway retweeted
THIS IS WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE WHEN NATION'S FAILE
On the new Odd Lots, @tracyalloway and I talked to Nobel Prize winning economist James Robinson -- co-author of Why Nations Fail -- to tell us about the state of the US and what would be the signs of failure.
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas…
There's something that really irks me about people describing the market reaction to the 2023 collapse of Silicon Valley Bank as "overblown."
The selloff was overblown because we ended up getting an SVB 'fix' in the form of a complete transformation of the US banking system with an unlimited bailout of depositors (above the $250k FDIC cap) and a new liquidity program from the Fed (the BTFP).
If your preferred analogy for the CoreWeave selloff is 'Oh, it's like SVB, it's not systemic' then you need to at least acknowledge the systemic changes that stopped SVB from becoming a much bigger deal.
NEW ODD LOTS
It's the one and only Terry Duffy, @CMEGroup Chairman and CEO, on the disconcerting state of market regulation.
@TheStalwart & I talk to him about insider trading, prediction markets, perpetual futures, and how to make an exit.
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas…
Business Insider confirms it: Amazon has warehouses of GPUs that can’t be installed, and is buying them so far in advance that a supply chain team said they “didn’t have a clear forecasted path” to installing them.
businessinsider.com/amazon-2…
Free newsletter: I estimate that ~50% of AI chip sales - $200bn to $300bn+ - are sitting in warehouses, with NVIDIA selling hundreds of billions of GPUs years in advance. Data centers take way longer to build than hyperscalers are leading us to believe.
wheresyoured.at/wherere-all-…
Tracy Alloway retweeted
Really enjoyed being back on Odd Lots with @TheStalwart and @tracyalloway. Would indeed have been fun to debate perps with Terry Duffy. We clearly have different views…
Following my prediction on last year's recording that in 10 years compute will be bigger than oil, this year I revealed the name we use at DRW for the profit margin between tokens and GPUs: the crunch spread.
Oil into fuel: crack spread. Soybeans into meal and oil: crush spread. Nat gas into power: spark spread. As with those markets, futures on both the GPU hours and tokens eventually will let you trade—and hedge—the crunch.
Listen to Odd Lots on Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/1te7oS…
Listen to Odd Lots on YouTube: youtube.com/playlist?list=PL…
Listen to Odd Lots on Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas…
Tracy Alloway retweeted
NEW ODD LOTS:
@tracyalloway and I speak with Talking Heads frontman David Byrne open.spotify.com/episode/593…
Tracy Alloway retweeted
Thank you to @TheStalwart and @tracyalloway for having me on! Appreciate the research that went into the thoughtful questions and discussion.
We derived some interesting results live about how mechanisms such as HIP-3* ought to work. This wasn't scripted and reflects close listening and quick learning by the hosts. I was impressed and enjoyed the conversation.
NEW ODD LOTS:
It’s the podcast debut for Jeff Yan
@tracyalloway and I have an ultra-rare interview with the CEO and co-founder of Hyperliquid Labs about his plan to house the world’s entire financial system
open.spotify.com/episode/5Aq…
Tracy Alloway retweeted
NEW ODD LOTS;
The French political crisis that’s turning into a debt crisis.
@tracyalloway and I talk to Shahin Vallée, member of the German Council on Foreign Relations and onetime advisor to Emmanuel Macron, about risk of Euro Crisis 2.0 podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas…
Tracy Alloway retweeted
people asked me if I converted @TheStalwart into a HYPE maxi. In fact, one of the reasons I accidentally became the Hyperliquid reporter was bc @tracyalloway - when she and Joe still sat behind me - asked if we were writing about this startup called Hyperliquid
Obviously you should listen to the whole thing but:
Summary of @chameleon_jeff key points with @TheStalwart & @tracyalloway on Odd Lots:
- Tracy says she approves of companies with a great mascot like Hypurr
- Joe says moderators deleted Hyperliquid's Wikipedia page calling it "crypto spam" & "definitely not something notable"
- Jeff is very serious about Hyperliquid being a protocol to house all of finance (even housing 90% of finance would be a huge success)
- Hyperliquid is a step function improvement over fragmented electronic markets just as those electronic markets were to pit trading
- Hyperliquid isn't trying to displace anything, the technology can benefit anyone who operates markets
- Jeff doesn't view Wall Street as "legacy institutions", they're businesses that provide a service that their users love, they will though adopt new technology that comes along
- Trace asks if there's a world where it's the deployers on Hyperliquid who become regulated rather than Hyperliquid itself, Jeff smiles & says that's a very astute question




















