David Merkel

Black Sea is now the world’s deadliest shipping route ft.com/content/8c874f60-0041… No surprise, given the war between Russia & Ukraine, & Russia taunting NATO.

Why Meta Platforms’ $27 Billion Data Center Bond Is Slumping barrons.com/articles/meta-pl… I do not get the willingness to invest in companies where governance rights are limited. One day, that will come back to bite.

Micron Stock Pops as Rival SK Hynix Fuels AI Frenzy With Two Bombshells barrons.com/articles/micron-… Be wary when the forecast horizon gets long, even if the revenues are under contract. Promises can be broken; firms can default.

It’s the most brutal class at Harvard—and suddenly everyone wants in wsj.com/lifestyle/harvard-cl… It is best to be balanced in your learning. The "classics" are good, but you need history, civics, math, science, etc. And if you haven't read the Bible, you don't know much.

AI Talent War Drives Quant Firms to Invest in Labs, University Sponsorships bloomberg.com/news/articles/… AI and quantitative finance have "jumped the shark." What is the purpose of math? Making money? Explaining the created world?

GM to Leave NYSE for Stock Listing on Tech-Focused Nasdaq bloomberg.com/news/articles/… You can dress yourself in new clothes. You are still the same person.

Behind ‘Mad Money’ was a brilliant writer viewers never saw. We lost him too soon cnb.cx/3UlKUKi Interesting take on Cliff Mason, Jim Cramer's nephew. who boiled down concepts in Jim's tone of voice to make them shorter & punchier. Died at the age of 41.

There is no getting around this reality (but people don't want to hear it).

California’s Next Insurance Commissioner Faces a Dystopian Future bloomberg.com/news/features/… It's tough, but whatever method you choose either creates subsidies and involuntary subsidy-funders, or it leads to pressure for people to move out of loss-intensive areas.

If correlations were higher, individual stock volatilities would likely fall, which would leave the VIX closer to a small change of higher.

This implies that the risks are getting concentrated into a small number of creditors.

$AVGO Broadcom CEO held 11th-hour talks w/bank executives over the weekend to get them to finalize their commitment to an Anthropic debt deal wsj.com/finance/broadcom-ceo… Really seems like most AI datacenter financing has to have a strong guarantor if they want to get the deal done.

The U.S. helped Canada build an aluminum-production juggernaut during WWII. In Trump’s trade war, those smelters are the enemy—and American businesses are paying a price. wsj.com/business/aluminum-ta… More US jobs have been harmed from the Aluminum tariffs than have benefited.

3 Charts on Anthropic’s Historic IPO Filing morningstar.com/stocks/3-cha… It is technically correct to say Anthropic has free cash flow now, but neglects the many financing commitments that will kick in later. All the cash $ANT has, has already been spoken for.

The Shoe Leather Edition whyisthisinteresting.substac… How one clever short made money shorting LVMH.

In Trump's pardon economy, crime victims lost out on at least $119 million in restitution cbsnews.com/projects/2026/tr… Do not forget those who were harmed, and will get little to no compensation for that harm.

Mbappé sorry for 'ill-judged' Mao remark after backlash in China bbc.com/news/articles/cv62yg… All that said, Mao was very much a villain in many ways. Had he been less clever at retaining power, he would have likely been sidelined many aggressive leftist CCP members were.

There’s a flip side to Anthropic’s $80.7 billion net loss for the first half: $AMZN and $GOOGL booked large paper gains on many of the same financing deals wsj.com/finance/investing/an… This is one aspect of GAAP that doesn't make sense: do we use entry values or exit values?

A Requiem for Ukraine—and America aei.org/foreign-and-defense-… Before Trump, some nations of the world did not like the US, but at least we were principled

In the 1970s I often corrected my math teachers, and almost all of them accepted it because they knew I was well ahead of the curriculum. If a culture says that teachers are perfect it has a problem.