Below Consensus @BelowConsensus

Insane take from Gemini 4 Argon

Claude, describe the biggest misconception about hedge funds. Make no mistake. Incredibly spot on.

The reason things I predict keep happening is not because I’m some sort of savant. I simply have a robust theory of mind for the current admin and therefore have a better read of their strategic objectives and risk-tolerance. And because the United States is still hegemon (for now) the people we elect have a lot more say in how the world turns than you might think. That does not mean they are infallible. The reason why underneath everything is an obsession with China is that their rise inherently challenges the power that Washington has and that you all consistently underestimate. But you underestimate it by design. You don’t tell vassals they are vassals. You let them believe in platitudes about democracy and globalized harmony…. Until they step out of line. Most of you would be well served to study the life and foibles of Kissinger. Hard men built constructs of power that most of you are sweetly and innocently blind to.

It might seem like people in tech and investing have lost their minds. And in some sense that is true. But a lot of the behavior is rational in some sense, even if it’s not “honorable” Why is it happening now? Yes, some people have AI psychosis. But something deeper is happening In life, there are two types of games. Single turn and multi turn games. Single turn, or one-shot, games are just what they sound like. One turn and the game is over. No more turns. Multi turn, or sequential, games have multiple turns. Which means history, reputation, and consequences for your actions have a large impact. You expect to see the players on the board multiple times in the future Most things in the game of life are multi turn. Careers are long. Investments take time to come to fruition, and you will want to redeploy the capital But when the stakes get high enough, people start to squint at the board and see that they can end the game in one turn. Or at least they think they can. I’ve talked a lot about how AI is the big one. So it’s not crazy to me that some people are looking at the board and thinking there might be only one turn left, and they are just going for it.

Day in the life of a L/S Equity PM 3:30am - wake up in a cold sweat from the memory of your IB VP calling you a fucking retard 5:30am - get to the office and plug into bloomberg. Investor relations girlies are doing the firm sponsored pilates class in the firm owned gym. You ask yourself why you chose this career 8:30am - finish reading your emails. Sell-side has downgraded your entire long book and upgraded your entire short book. Excellent 12:30pm - stare into the bathroom mirror and contemplate killing yourself 12:35pm - take the 2nd biggest shit of your life 1:30pm - risk reaches out reminding you that you have too much exposure to the dividend yield factor. Thank you 2:30pm - head out to grab lunch. Homeless man with an iPhone and gucci sweatshirt pisses on your Sperrys. Good reminder to vote for Mamdani, he’ll fix this 4:15pm - reviewing exposures and performance, realize you made 1.5bps today. Sweet 7:00pm - yell into the abyss (Murray Hill) on your way home 10:30pm - go to bed. Dream of ways to acquire MNPI without getting flagged by compliance

"Hey Dario, congrats again on the great quarter. Nice to see the Enterprise re-acceleration. Hoping you could provide a little color on that 10% extinction # and some of the puts and takes that might have on further enterprise adoption. And then just a quick follow-up after"

Evan Hubinger @EvanHub

2 months ago

Jacob is correct here—we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10% within the next decade. I believe Anthropic is trying its best, but we do not yet have a plan to solve alignment for superintelligence and are not clearly on track to.

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"It's the Industrial Revolution, should the U.S. stop building Railways??"

Ryan | Don't Fear AI @DontFearAI

2 months ago

"Should the U.S. stop building data centers?" This was a real question. On national TV. During the AI race. We are not a serious country.

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there are no more moats anymore. moats are dead. was talking to a friend of mine who's a CEO of a rapidly growing startup (~$1B revenue). we're small investors. He told me that he has only taken one one-week vacation in the last eight years of his startup. I was like, "Hey this is crazy. You're gonna burn out. This is pretty serious." he said, "Auren, I don't know what to do. We don't have no moat." am like, "What are you talking about? The business is going great!" he said, "We have incredible competitors. We sell AI products and so we're selling to the smartest people in the world. If we don't have the best product that week, they won't buy us. If we don't have the best product for two weeks, our customers will churn. We don't have a moat." I started thinking about it: who does have a moat? There are just no moats anymore. Nobody has a moat. Everyone will switch their software providers in a heartbeat for better product or for cheaper product or for faster product. Anyone will switch. We looked at our 200 companies at Flex Capital and how they're buying software and AI services today. Almost all of their vendors are on month-to-month contracts or on usage-based contracts. That means they can switch immediately. The reason they have everyone on month-to-month is that they have no idea if they're going to be using those tools two months from now. They may not even be using those tools two weeks from now. Everything is changing so fast all the time. The only moat you have in software is that you have the best product. There are just no other moats. It used to be back in the day that you have a mediocre product and you'd be using it for years. we just dealt with all these of mediocre software systems, mediocre cloud providers, mediocre data providers, mediocre APIs. we dealt with it because the switching costs are really hard. Nowadays it's really easy to change software. It's really easy to change APIs. it's really easy to change AI infrastructure. It's super easy. You can change it in a heartbeat and every other vendor will help you switch. Of course, your AI tools will help you switch as well. All these things that used to give very high customer lock-in just don't exist anymore and so they're just no more moats. Moats are dead.  you just need to work insane hours all the time because the only thing you have is your product. goodbye moat, goodbye predictable revenues, goodbye 2010s era.

OPENAI JALAPEÑO USES STANDARD CELLS 😫😫😫😫😫😫🫵🫵🫵🫵😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 NGMI!!!!

lol

@PythiaR What does it mean when they become CFO

Matchmaking client in NYC, he’s 712, heir to wealth, higher-class, vampire, only 6’5” but funny, recluse who’s very popular, all-around normal run-of-the-mill. I think I’ve found his looksmatch: she’s 36, has a family, and looks exactly like You, the girl reading this. She’s down to meet him if he asks “Hello, may I meet you?” and pays her 1,000,000,000 (one billion, 8 zeros). I make the introduction, then… he sends me a postcard by pigeon saying she didn’t show. I check in with her. She responds a week later. She says he showed up riding a fly and shirtless, based on that alone, she thinks he’s not a fit. Obviously I feel bad, and yeah it’s lame to be judgy about his ride, but… I actually agree with her on this one. The problem has nothing to do with wanting a ‘better ride’ or ‘more sophisticated vibes’. This woman just knows her vibe, and his abs weren’t toned enough while he was riding the fly. Our billionaire vampire werewolf playboy recluse either needs to tighten up his fly-riding skills or order a ride-share.

The reason you do not verbally attack a dead person, no matter how vile and morally offensive he was, has to do with you & not with him. He is no threat to mankind any longer; have some skin in the game & go focus on living assholes.

Rumors Swirl Around Local Cinnamon Roll Shop As Owners Find Themselves In A Sticky Situation

THIS FUND'S ABOUT TO BLOW

The Kobeissi Letter @KobeissiLetter

3 months ago

BREAKING: Situational Awareness sold "the bulk" of its stock portfolio to Citadel after "big losses in AI," per WSJ. The hedge fund, which reportedly had a net asset value of $45 billion on July 1st, is now in "crisis mode," WSJ reports.

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The actual memory bear thesis is that there's like a trillion dollar incentive for the world's smartest people, that's invented magic already, equipped with unlimited frontier tokens to solve this problem

Every pro athlete talking about money is like, “the thing you don’t get, is that $35 million is really not a lot of money once you’ve spent it all”

Value investor son or low float pumpjob trillionaire daughter

@compoundpapi Idk man, crying in the casino and personal attacks on the ‘activists’ is gross and missing the point. All the red flags were there from the start. Bad mgmt incentives and leverage into bad macro. Everyone had a million chances to get out, too much love for the assets

the cheapest humor usually punches at obvious weakness. the best humor usually punches at concealed absurdity.