Here are some of the posts that caught my eye recently. Hope you find something interesting.
March 09, 2025
March 08, 2025
March 02, 2025
Are we in a Stock Market Bubble?
The S&P 500's price-to-earnings ratio (CAPE) has recently been nearing historic highs. Traders think that signals that market valuations might be overheated.
In December of last year, it hit 37.9, over double its long-term average of 17.6. For context, it has only exceeded that level during the Dot-Com bubble and in 2021.
via visualcapitalist
Overheated prices mean that there's a significant gap between company earnings and stock prices. That disparity translates to speculation and hope driving the stock price instead of more quantitative data.
For some historical perspective, after the Dot-Com bubble, the S&P declined by 40% in the following two years. And after its 2021 peak, the S&P sank almost 20%.
While AI enthusiasm has brought a spark to the markets, the question is, is that hype hiding deeper issues?
On a broader note, my message to you would be that if you don't know what your edge is, you don't have one. Investors and traders should understand market indicators, economic trends, and other world factors – mainly because it's important to be educated (or at least informed). Of course, merely understanding these things does not translate to a reliable trading strategy or an edge in today's environment.
Lastly, just because something has been true in the past does not mean it predicts the future. In trading, we use the phrase "past performance is not indicative of future results" to remind us that there is a difference between a coincidence and a correlation. Indicators like CAPE study the past, so it is dangerous to assume you can use them to predict the future. For better or worse, whether markets go up or down is based on much more than earnings and stock prices.
But, with that said, Warren Buffett just did something worth noting ... He sold his holdings in the S&P 500 index funds he tells everyone to buy. So why did Buffett just sell them himself?
We live in interesting times.
Onwards!
Is The NYSE Moving To Texas?
While I mainly discuss entrepreneurship and technology trends, I still have a soft spot for trading, which remains a large part of what we do at Capitalogix. While we've broadened the industries in which we use our Capitalogix Insight Engine, it was originally built with trading technologies in mind. We have exciting new partnerships there, including a new fund.
As we look forward, I thought it was a good time to look back as well.
I'm sure you have heard about open outcry trading pits in Chicago and New York—where traders flashed hand signals lightning quick to buy and sell commodities like cattle, corn, gold, and pork bellies. Those pits, which were made famous in the movie Trading Places, thrived for decades. Nevertheless, the practice has lost out to a faster, cheaper, and quieter competitor: the computer and electronic trading.
In 2016, I visited the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and took this video in front of the S&P trading pit during live trading hours.
via my YouTube Channel.
In the video, I remarked that even though it looked empty - trading volume was higher than ever. Meaning that trading had once again evolved beyond the way it used to happen. According to the CME Group, by 2015, public outcry had fallen to 1% of total volume. Here is a video of what the S&P trading pit used to look like.
"...the change in the pit isn't a harbinger of death for futures trading; it's the signal of a new era."
At the time, it didn't feel like a bold statement to me – because what was coming felt inevitable. And it has proven to be true. Markets have changed radically since 2016. And you can bet that the changes aren't done, as AI and exponential technologies promise to transform markets and trading again.
The process of trading and clearing is moving beyond human capabilities. As the old duties of the Exchange fade away, the focus must be on the dangers, opportunities, and strengths of a bigger future. That means new games to play, new risks to navigate, and a new set of rewards to capture.
Nearly empty CME trading pits in 2016 (specifically, the S&P and Eurodollar)
The new game involves not only new players, methods, and markets ... but also a new geography.
Yes, as more things become digital, geography still matters.
In 2018, the Intercontinental Exchange acquired CHX and rebranded it to the NYSE Chicago. Now, that branch of the NYSE is moving to Dallas.
This follows announcements in 2024 of the launch of the Texas Stock Exchange, which has backing from people like Rick Perry.
Texas is rapidly becoming an even larger economic hub. It boasts the highest number of NYSE listings, Nasdaq recently established a large base here, and companies representing more than $3.7 trillion in market value list Texas as their headquarters.
Meanwhile, lawmakers are pushing to make Texas even more business-friendly. With no corporate or personal income tax, Texas has one of the lowest tax burdens in the nation. The state also offers incentives for corporations to relocate.
All of this can be taken as a reminder that opportunities, talent, and resources concentrate where energy and funds flow.
If you want to talk more about how to launch a business in Texas or anything Capitalogix is working on, reach out.
Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - March 2nd, 2025
Here are some of the posts that caught my eye recently. Hope you find something interesting.
- We've Figured Out the Basics of a Shape-Shifting, A Pack of Small Robots Can Do Liquid/Solid Transitions and Adopt Different Shapes. (ArsTechnica)
- Google Co-Founder Says 60-Hour Weeks Needed to Achieve AGI. (PCMag)
- What Fully Automated Firms Will Look Like. (DwarkeshPatel)
- Forget Startups – Maybe the Most Adaptable Companies Are Those That Last Centuries. (Crunchbase)
- The Science of Becoming an Elite Special Forces Solider: New Study Reveals What It Takes to Make the Cut. (TheDebrief)
- Billionaires Earning $10 Billion Per Day in January are Suddenly Watching Their Net Worth Get Wiped Out—Elon Musk Has Lost $90 Billion Alone. (Fortune)
- Warren Buffett Makes Stunning Move by Selling S&P 500 Funds He Told Everyone to Buy (DailyMail)
- Are the Financial Markets the Only Real Check on Trump? (Forbes)
- AI Will Upend a Basic Assumption About How Companies are Organized. (Bloomberg)
- Everything Old Is New Again. They Crashed the Economy in 2008 – Now They're Back and Bigger Than Ever. Wall Street Expects to Sell More Than $335 Billion in Asset-Backed Debt This Year. (Wall Street Journal)
February 23, 2025
A Look At Last Week's Tech Breakthroughs
We live in exciting times!
No, I'm not talking about how fast the DOGE team is terraforming government.
I'm talking about how fast the insights of exponential technologies are compounding the real-world implications of where we are and where we are going.
In past issues, we've talked about how quickly the world is changing, how fast innovations happen, and why it's not about today's tools but rather the value and capabilities of the foundational assets we build upon ... and, ultimately, the things that makes possible.
Today's commentary is different from our usual posts. Yes, the inspiration came from my weekly curation of links selected based on what captured my attention or imagination. However, today's post is about the sheer volume and density of groundbreaking innovations competing for mindshare and investment dollars. And while commercial success is a great way to keep score, we'll explore what this accelerating pace of innovation means for our future and the world.
So, here is a list of some of the things that made headlines this week.
- After 17 years of research, Microsoft has announced a massive breakthrough in quantum computing, resulting in a new state of matter and their new Majorana 1 chip.
- Google announced its new AI co-scientist to help accelerate research for scientists ... and it's already finding novel breakthroughs on decade-long problems.
- xAI released Grok 3, a significant advancement in the reasoning and performance of their LLM and a competitor to other top models like DeepSeek-R1.
- Clone Robotics unveiled a video of "ProtoClone," a faceless musculoskeletal android robot with 1000 muscles and over 200 degrees of freedom.
- Nvidia and Arc Institute launched a new AI Bio model - Evo 2 - trained on over 100k species. This doesn't just analyze genomes ... it creates them.
- Sakana.AI introduced the AI CUDA Engineer, an agentic AI system that automates the production of CUDA kernels 10-100x faster than with common machine learning,
- Claude announced their intention to include reasoning and web search in Claude 4.
- France sustained a Nuclear Fusion plasma reaction for 1,337 seconds - a 25% improvement over the previous record.
Some may not matter to you now. Try re-reading the list while letting yourself be amazed at what is happening!
Any one of these is a momentous achievement that would have sounded like science fiction even 10 years ago. Now, that's one week of achievement.
As someone whose company invents things for a living, I understand that none of these breakthroughs were actually invented last week. Obviously, a long and winding road leads to each of those announcements. However, it's remarkable to see so many significant innovations reaching the stage of public announcement simultaneously.
It's hard to quantify the impact of these innovations on not only the tech industry - but the world.
Think about the implications. Google's co-scientist is already solving problems that humans haven't been able to solve for decades. Clone is building robots that will use the next generations of AI to transform how we think about what artificial intelligence looks like.
Not to mention the improvement in quantum computing and nuclear fusion, industries that I've been paying attention to since the 90s.
While any of these topics would have made a good article, in my opinion, the whole is more impressive than the sum of its parts.
If I had to pick one of those topics to highlight, I think it's now time to start focusing more on quantum computing.
To start, here's an hour-long interview with Satya Nadella about Microsoft's new quantum chip - and what it means for AI & business.
via Dwarkesh Patel
Most of you probably aren't interested in watching the whole thing, but here are some of the highlights.
- They've created a new state of matter called a topological superconductor.
- The qubits created with topological superconductors are fast, reliable, and small ... very small.
- These new qubits are 1/100th of a millimeter, meaning we now have a clear path to a million-qubit processor.
- To put that in perspective, imagine a chip that can fit in the palm of your hand yet can solve problems that even all the computers on Earth today combined can't!
- Satya doesn't believe in making claims about how quickly AGI is coming.
- However, he believes it is useful and productive to set a benchmark of making the world 10% better.
- He also believes the topological superconductor breakthrough makes quantum computing a practical reality that can happen in a few years - not decades +.
Prepare for things to get more interesting.
We do live in exciting times!
Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - February 23rd, 2025
Here are some of the posts that caught my eye recently. Hope you find something interesting.
Investment in AI is Rising ...
It’s no surprise that capital raising is moving toward AI - and often generative AI.
via visualcapitalist
From 2023-2024, over $26 billion flowed into the sector - including big deals like Inflection, xAI, and Anthropic.
While many of the biggest investments were in foundational models and infrastructure, some money is now moving into targeted AI applications.
AI isn’t just for researchers and the tech giants anymore ... it’s becoming more commercial.
Realistically, AI is overhyped – and there is a lot of competition. Yet, few firms have operationalized AI in a meaningful way.
With that said, here is a question worth considering.
Where are the AI applications capable of generating returns that justify the infrastructure, investment, and focus?
The next battle will likely be in the AI Applications space. To keep it short, why hasn’t it happened yet ... and what will likely create the value we’re looking for?
Why Haven’t AI Apps Taken Off Yet?
• Cost vs. Value Gap: Many AI applications are still experimental or add only incremental value.
• Compute Bottlenecks: AI compute costs remain expensive, limiting broader adoption.
• Enterprise Hesitation: Many companies are still figuring out how to integrate AI into their operations in a way that delivers real ROI.
Where Might the Value Come From?
For AI investments to pay off, applications must solve big problems, not just serve as experimental tools. The highest-value areas likely include:
• AI copilots and automation (Enterprise AI reducing labor costs and bottlenecks)
• Autonomous systems (AI for analytics, compliance, and logistics)
• AI-driven discovery (Accelerating breakthroughs in capabilities and performance)
• Next-gen digital assistants (LLMs with memory, context, and long-term utility)
Right now, AI apps are where mobile apps were in 2008 — there is plenty of potential, but only a handful of genuinely indispensable use cases.
Companies like Capitalogix that crack the code on industrial-grade AI applications, will drive the next wave of value creation.
It’s fun and rewarding to watch artificial intelligence become available to everyone.
As the cost of “intelligence” decreases, let’s hope more people take advantage of the opportunity.
However, the sad truth is the opposite is also more likely. As AI becomes more available, it becomes easier for it to become a distraction.
Remember the Internet? When it first started, most of the uses were academic. Now, despite there being functionally infinite ways to use the internet to improve your life and make you smarter, most people use it for memes and distractions.
When you think about AI, don’t just think about artificial intelligence ... Think about amplified intelligence. That is the term I use to distinguish between the technology and what people really want ... which is the ability to make better decisions, take smarter actions, and continuously improve performance.
AI isn’t about taking away the humanity from your business or automating away the things you love. It’s about allowing you to be more human – doing more of the things you’re best at - that give you energy and bring you joy.
February 16, 2025
Your Three Word Strategy
A few years ago, I shared a presentation called Mindset Matters that I had given to a small mastermind group.
This past week, I briefly revisited that content in a different group. It reminded me that some ideas are “Timeless” and worth revisiting.
So, my hope is that this post sparks some interesting ideas and discussions.
Energy Is One of the Most Important Things to Measure.
One of my core beliefs is that energy is one of the most important things we can measure.
I believe it so strongly I paid Gaping Void to put it on my wall.
via GapingVoid
It means exactly what it sounds like – but probably also a lot more than that.
On a personal level, energy affects how you feel, what you focus on (and what you make that mean), and, consequently, what you choose to do. That means it is a great way to measure your values, too.
On a business level, energy impacts more than you might recognize. It has a lot to do with who you hire and fire, where you spend your time, the target markets or segments you pursue, and even your company’s long-term vision.
Ultimately, if something brings profit and energy, it is probably worth pursuing.
In contrast, fighting your energy is one of the quickest ways to burn out. Figuring out who and what to say “no” to is crucial to estaying on track and reachingyour goals. This is where mindset and mindset scales apply.
Mindset Matters.
Watch this short video on Mindset Scales. It’s packed with insights and tools you can use as targets and filters.
Subscribe to Howard Getson’s YouTube Channel
The video highlights the critical role that specific values and mindsets play in business success. It goes over a few easy exercises (including how to create a Mindset Scale) to help identify and assess the path to desired outcomes.
One of the techniques I’ve developed is called the “Three Word Strategy”. It’s based on the idea that people, capabilities, products, and even companies can be described in a three-word strategy (think of it as a “recipe for success”). By understanding this process, you not only can help choose the right people, but it might also help to create the right technology to achieve that (think of this as a digital WHO to do the HOW) in a way that helps and supports the humans involved in the process.
Three-Word Strategies.
I believe that words have power. Specifically, the words you use to describe your identity and your priorities change your reality.
First, some background. Your Roles and Goals are nouns. That means “a person, place, or thing.” Let’s examine some sample roles (like father, entrepreneur, visionary, etc.) and goals (like amplified intelligence, autonomous platform, and sustainable edge). As expected, they are all nouns.
Next, we’ll examine your default strategies. You use these to create or be the things you want. The strategies you use are verbs. That means they define an action you take. Action words include: connect, communicate, contribute, collaborate, protect, serve, evaluate, curate, share … and love. On the other end of the spectrum, you could complain, retreat, blame, or block.
People have habitual strategies. I often say happy people find ways to be happy – while frustrated people find ways to be frustrated. This is true for many things.
Seen a different way, people expect and trust that you will act according to how they perceive you.
Meanwhile, you are the most important perceiver. Think about that for a moment!
Another distinction worth making is that the nouns and verbs we use range from timely to timeless. Timely words relate to what you are doing now. Timeless words are chunked higher and relate to what you have done, what you are doing, and what you will do.
The trick is to chunk high enough to focus on words that link your timeless Roles, Goals, and Strategies. When done right, you know that these are a part of what makes you … “You”.
My favorite way to do this is through three-word strategies.
These work for your business, priorities, identity, and more.
I’ll introduce the idea to you by sharing my own to start.
Understand. Challenge. Transform.
The actual words are less important than what they mean to me.
What’s also important is that not only do these words mean something to me, but I’ve put them in a specific order, and I’ve made these words “commands” in my life. They’re specific, measurable, and actionable. They remind me what to do. They give me direction. And, together, they are a strategy (or process) that creates a reliable result.
First, I understand, because I want to make sure I consider the big picture and the possible paths from where I am to the bigger future possibility that I want. Then, I challenge situations, people, norms, and more. I don’t challenge to tear down. I challenge to find strengths … to figure out what to trust and rely upon. Finally, I transform things to make them better. Insanity is doing what you always do and expecting a different result. This is about finding where small shifts create massive consequences. It is about committing to the result rather than how we have done things till now.
If I challenged before I knew the situation, or I tried to transform something without properly doing my research, I’d risk causing more damage than good.
Likewise, imagine the life of someone who protects, serves, and loves. Compare that to the life of someone who loves, serves, and protects. The order matters!
One more, just to get you thinking about it ... Connect, Engage, Contribute!
There is an art and a science to it. But it starts by taking the first step.
Try to find your three words.
Once you do, remember to use them. Over time, I’ve set daily alarms on my phone to remind me of them. I use them when I’m in meetings (to help orient, reflect, or inspire), and I often use them to evaluate whether I’m showing up as my best self.
You can also create three words that are different for the different hats you wear, the products in your business, or how your team collaborates.
Finding Your Three Words
Everyone feels a range of emotions. It helps if you can express them. This emotional word wheel might help. It isn’t exhaustive ... but it should give you some ideas.
via FlowingData
Like recipes, these three-word strategies have ingredients, orders, and intensities. As you use your words more, the intensities might change. For example, when my son was just getting out of college, one of his words was contented because he was focused on all the things he missed from college - instead of being appreciative of the things he had. Later, his words switched to grateful and then loving. These evolutions coincided with his personal journey ... and represented his ability and desire to take stronger actions.
Realize that we create what we want by doing. As such, choose words that inform or spark the right actions. You can see that in my son’s words. As he grew, he became more comfortable actively prompting the actions he wanted to approach life with instead of just passively hoping for a feeling.
You can apply these simple three-word strategies almost everywhere once you learn how to create them.
It’s your life. It’s your choice.
What are your words?
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Moving the Markets
Lighter Links
Recent Posts
- Skype's Kodak Moment: Remnants of a Past Era
- Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - March 9th, 2025
- Triumph Through Trials: Becoming Anti-Fragile
- Are we in a Stock Market Bubble?
- Is The NYSE Moving To Texas?
- Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - March 2nd, 2025
- A Look At Last Week's Tech Breakthroughs
- Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - February 23rd, 2025
- Investment in AI is Rising ...
- Your Three Word Strategy
Skype's Kodak Moment: Remnants of a Past Era
Last week, Microsoft announced that Skype would shut down in May ... after over two decades of service.
Hydrox existed before Oreo, and Betamax before VHS.
But Skype might be even more surprising. Skype was so ubiquitous that it became a verb and eponymous with video calling. As a world traveler, Skype also used to be the go-to international calling app.
Imagine if Kleenex, Jell-O, or Band-Aids went out of business.
That’s what Skype did - and it’s not the first tech business to fail similarly...
Thinking Linearly in an Exponential Age
Humans can’t do a lot of things. Honestly, the fact that we’re at the top of the food chain is pretty miraculous.
We’re slow, weak, and famously bad at understanding large numbers or exponential growth.
Making matters worse, our brains are hardwired to think locally and linearly.
It’s a monumental task for us to fathom exponential growth … let alone its implications.
Think how many companies have failed due to that inability … RadioShack couldn’t understand a future where shopping was done online – and Kodak didn’t think digital cameras would replace good ol’ film. Blockbuster couldn’t foresee a future where people would want movies in their mailboxes because “part of the joy is seeing all your options!” They didn’t even make it long enough to see “Netflix and Chill” become a thing. The list goes on.
via Diamandis
Human perception is linear. Technological growth is exponential.
There are many examples. Here is one Peter Diamandis calls “The Kodak Moment” (a play on words of “a Kodak Moment”... the phrase Kodak used in advertising to mean a “special moment that’s worth capturing with a camera”).
In 1996, Kodak was at the top of its game, with a market cap of over $28 billion and 140,000 employees.
Few people know that 20 years earlier, in 1976, Kodak had invented the digital camera. It had the patents and the first-mover advantage.
But that first digital camera was a baby that only its inventor could love and appreciate.
That first camera took .01 megapixel photos, took 23 seconds to record the image to a tape drive, and only shot in black and white.
Not surprisingly, Kodak ignored the technology and its implications.
Fast forward to 2012, when Kodak filed for bankruptcy – disrupted by the very technology that they invented and subsequently ignored.
via Diamandis
Innovation is a reminder that you can’t be medium-obsessed. Kodak’s goal was to preserve memories. It wasn’t to sell film. Blockbuster’s goal wasn’t to get people in their stores, it was to get movies in homes.
Henry Ford famously said: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” Steve Jobs was famous for spending all his time with customers, but never asking them what they wanted.
Two of our greatest innovators realized something that many never do. Being conscientious of your consumers doesn’t necessarily mean listening to them. It means thinking about and anticipating their wants and future needs.
Meanwhile, despite Skype having several features that Zoom still hasn’t implemented, Zoom recognized an opportunity during COVID and capitalized. When Microsoft bought Skype, they focused on adding several new features and expanding the range of services instead of improving the quality of their audio or video. Meanwhile, when Zoom entered the space, they brought much better servers and the ability to have much larger rooms. More attendees meant a wider variety of use cases and quicker adoption and referral cycles. They also made it easy to join a Zoom room. Instead of getting your e-mail up front and forcing you to create an account to use it, they let you join a meeting without an account. You only needed an account to host a meeting.
They focused on making it easy to use their service and on having a clear identity instead of trying to ride every wave and become unfocused. Of course, at the same time, Microsoft stopped focusing on the tool, with an increased focus on their new competitor to Zoom, Teams.
Tech and AI are creating tectonic forces throughout industry and the world. It is time to embrace and leverage what that makes possible. History has many prior examples of Creative Destruction (and what gets left in the dust).
Opportunity or Chaos … You get to decide.
Don’t forget ... you don’t have to be the first mover to win in the end.
Onwards!
Posted at 04:37 PM in Business, Current Affairs, Film, Gadgets, Ideas, Just for Fun, Market Commentary, Personal Development, Pictures, Science, Trading, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)
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