Mr. Melanin Cutie

I nailed all my election predictions in 2024, not so much in 2022. Here are my 2026 calls with a reminder that all of you should get out and vote. Byron Donalds wins Florida Gov comfortably. Senate: Ken Paxton wins Texas, Mike Rogers wins Michigan, Jon Husted wins Ohio, Ashley Hinson wins Iowa, Susan Collins wins Maine, the real Dan Sullivan wins Alaska, Kansas, South Carolina & Nebraska aren’t close, Republicans win senate races easily in those states. Polls are badly biased against Republicans for the 16th out of the past 17 election cycles.

In San Fran this week, a few observations: - Per head alcohol spend at the mixer 40% below NYC - Never seen traffic in the city this gnarly. 45 minute Uber from SOMA to Presidio - Real energy around AI use cases for public equity investors. This vertical is becoming real, quickly. Opus 5.5 threshold moment and people mentally preparing for Opus 6,7,8 and eventual open weight parity. Most common conversation is how you build something to stay out of the Claude path (there are lots of ideas that I believe do this) - Consensus that public equity investing is one of the hardest AI use cases to crack “if AI comes for us, imagine what has happened to accountants” - Still no one reliably arguing AI has bent the curve of alpha (but many now hopeful over next 6-12 months; particularly on short books). But broad consensus on the dramatic productivity uplift from Claude. - Fun conversations on how awful Claude is as a stock picker (despite emerging super human capabilities in the junior analyst workflow stack), and fun ideas on how to fix that - Fun conversations on the trading alpha emerging from fading “dumb Claude” - My priors shifted on the inability to reliably backtest a Digital Investor. Which has exciting implications. Post training, training data and eval dominating conversations. - The median AI conversation with investors in NYC is still “how do i set up my Skills”. The median AI conversation in SF is “how many worlds do I need to simulate to calibrate the 3 year IRR forward for a stock”. - AI smacks you in the face wherever you go. Billboards, overheard conversations at coffee shops. - This is so fun. Forgot I do this for work and feels like exciting play. Have to come back here regularly.