Fun Fact: Mag 7 Stocks Were Responsible For 24% Of All Stock Market Wealth Creation Since 1926 (Apple and Nvidia alone equal 10+%)

The numbers are through December 31, 2025 so with MSFT in a bear market, GOOG getting hit by recent AI researcher defections, AMZN and NVDA being down over 10% this year, all while the S&P 500 trades just under new highs, the percentage of all wealth creation has shifted (slightly) away from the Magnificent 7. But not all that much. 

Past performance is no guarantee...your mileage may vary...close cover before striking...etc.

From the New York Times, June 26:

Best Investments Over the Last 100 Years? Almost All Are Tech Companies.
What’s most surprising is that Tesla and SpaceX have entered that elite group. A vast majority of companies weren’t worth owning, a long-running study shows. 

When you step back and look at the stock market over the last 100 years, what you will find is that a tiny group of publicly traded companies has accounted for nearly all of the profits for investors over the entire century.

Most of the top performers are tech companies, headed by Apple, Nvidia and Microsoft. What’s startling is that both Tesla and, if only briefly, SpaceX, two of Elon Musk’s companies, have muscled their way onto that list of superb performers.

While these elite stocks churned out spectacular returns, more than 96 percent of the stock market did virtually nothing for investors over long periods. This vast majority of stocks couldn’t even match the 3.3 percent average return of one-month Treasury bills — basically, the return you could get month-by-month over those 100 years, without taking any appreciable risk.

These findings come from the latest update to a long-running study by Hendrik Bessembinder, a finance professor at Arizona State University who has provided a trove of essential and provocative data about stock market investing. The study has aimed to ferret out long-term wealth creators since 1926, when the data available to Professor Bessembinder begins. The rise of the tech giants, and the relative decline of every other sector of the market, has radically changed the rankings over the last decade, and over shorter periods as well.

For example, Tesla didn’t make the list of top wealth creators nine years ago, when an earlier version of the study ended. The firm now ranks ninth among all publicly traded companies over the century. Even more striking, when Professor Bessembinder ran the numbers at my request on June 16, a few days after SpaceX’s initial public offering, the company made the top 30 all-time list, though its falling share price has since moved it out of that rarefied world.

“We’ve had very high returns for extraordinarily large firms in recent years, and the first few days of SpaceX as a public company were a case study of that,” he said. “To me, the most striking thing over the last nine years is that not only is wealth creation highly concentrated in just a few companies, but that the trend has been accelerating.”

The Implications
Back in 2017, I wrote about the first version of Professor Bessembinder’s work on investing. It showed then that the obstacles facing individual stock pickers were formidable. Most companies’ shares failed to outperform basic Treasury bills. A small proportion of great performers buoyed the entire market, but knowing in advance which stocks would be the winners was a difficult feat.

So I concluded that for a great majority of investors, it was much less risky to avoid stock picking entirely and instead invest with diversified low-cost mutual funds, particularly index funds mirroring the entire market.

But Professor Bessembinder’s findings also made it clear that there were vast riches to be made for those skilled or lucky enough to make the right choices: If you picked the very best performers, and avoided most losers, you would do extraordinarily well.

Those two insights remain true today, and perhaps even more so. I still think most people will be better off buying a small part of the entire stock market, a practice that I continue to follow myself. But the potential for gaining enormous wealth tempts millions of investors who scoop up shares of hot individual stocks like SpaceX. You will have to decide what’s best for you.

Defining Terms
In the first study, Exxon Mobil was the top performer from 1926 through 2016, followed by Apple, Microsoft, General Electric, IBM, Altria Group, Johnson & Johnson, General Motors and Walmart. That list depicted a diverse mosaic of the economy, with old companies dominating, aside from two upstarts, Apple and Microsoft, which had I.P.O.s in the 1980s.

Now Professor Bessembinder has 100 years of data, with returns from 1926 through December.

Just to put the SpaceX I.P.O. in perspective, he has updated the returns, applying the same methods he has used for all publicly traded stocks tracked over the last century. His approach accounts for stock dividends and buyouts, and the comparison with Treasury bills includes an inflation adjustment.

“Lifetime wealth creation,” as Professor Bessembinder defines it, is connected not just to share performance but also to a company’s total market valuation. This means that an increase of 10 percent in the share price for a giant has a far greater effect on total wealth creation than a 10 percent increase by a company with a small value in the market.

That’s important because tech companies have become giants, including SpaceX, which has been publicly traded only since June 12 but has a market capitalization of more than $2 trillion. When tech shares make big moves, 100 years of market returns need realignment.

An Entire Century
The economy has changed in the nine years since the first study. More than ever before, the pack of leaders is dominated by tech stocks, with only two traditional companies, Exxon Mobil and Walmart, remaining in the top 10 for the entire century.

Here are the leaders from 1926 through December, including their lifetime wealth creation and the percentage of the $91 trillion in total stock market wealth for which each was responsible...

....MUCH MORE 

Here's Professor Bessembinder's latest paper at the Social Science Research Network:

One Hundred Years in the U.S. Stock Markets 

Abstract 
This study summarizes investment outcomes for 29,754 common stocks listed on the public U.S. stock markets over the 100-year period from 1926 to 2025, reporting on both compound (buy-and-hold) percentage returns and shareholder wealth enhancement measured in dollars. While the cross-stock mean buy-and-hold return is over 30,000%, the median is -6.9%. Shareholders’ wealth was enhanced by $91 trillion over the century, but long-term investors in nearly 60% of stocks incurred wealth reductions. The degree to which wealth creation is concentrated in a few firms has increased sharply in recent years. Over the 1926 to 2016 period studied in Bessembinder (2018), 89 firms accounted for half of the $43 trillion in net wealth creation. After including outcomes for the most recent nine years, just 46 firms account for half of the $91 trillion in net wealth creation over the full century.  

....MUCH MORE (SSRN download or view-in-browser page) 

"Nuclear Stocks And Small Modular Reactors Ace Big Wins. A DOE Deadline Looms."

A no-nonsense overview from Investor's Business Daily, June 26: 

Three massive C-17 Globemaster aircraft flew out of Southern California in February hauling an experimental 5-megawatt nuclear reactor, disassembled into three pieces, to Utah for testing. On June 18, the Department of Energy announced the eagerly anticipated results.

The microreactor, it said, had become the second advanced nuclear technology to reach "criticality" — an independently sustained nuclear reaction. That put the industry in spitting distance of the Trump administration's goal of three successful criticality tests by July 4.

Now, as that target date looms in the coming week, all eyes are on the third test, involving Santa Clara, Calif.-based Oklo's (OKLO) Groves microreactor. If, as many observers expect, it succeeds, the industry will take a big step forward in earning credibility for the innovative reactors. The new technologies promise independent electrical power generation for everything from remote military bases to massive AI data center campuses.

Though not necessarily less expensive to operate, they pledge to be faster and cheaper to build than full-scale nuclear power plants. And they could propel growth of a long list of companies developing nuclear technologies, ranging from small privately held startups to publicly traded nuclear stocks.

Energy Demand Growing At Full Tilt 
"The demand for energy is growing so rapidly right now, above historical norms, that it is forcing people to choose nuclear power," said Erik Nygaard, who leads research and engineering for BWX Technologies' (BWXT) advanced technologies unit, which is working on a microreactor and next-gen nuclear fuels.

Advanced nuclear technologies, primarily microreactors and small modular reactors, or SMRs, are still in the experimental stages. None are in commercial operation in the U.S. Some forecasts see commercial viability sometime next year, though other nuclear experts see those views as far too optimistic.

The July 4 target for successful tests, set out in a May 2025 White House order, reflects the Trump administration's push to expand the nation's energy system. Leading hyperscalers, including Meta Platforms (META), Alphabet (GOOGL) and Amazon (AMZN), have backed the industry's development with major investments.

Among the nuclear stocks in the spotlight are SMR developers Oklo and X-Energy (XE), as well as BWX Technologies and NuScale Power (SMR). All are vying to bring the first small reactors out of development and into commercial operation.

GE Vernova (GEV) also is developing SMR technology through its GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy venture with Japan's Hitachi (HTHIY). Through Global Nuclear Fuel, another joint venture, Hitachi and GE Vernova also control a large piece of the industry's nuclear fuel production.

Trump's July 4 SMR Reactor Criticality Test Deadline 
The latest advances in small modular reactors show strides across fuels, coolants and housing designs. In a sign of progress, the focus is now shifting from innovation to deployment.

The first criticality success came from Torrance, Calif.-based startup Antares. It achieved the goal a month ahead of schedule, on June 4, at the Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory.

A DOE statement touted the Antares test as "one of the most significant technological achievements in nuclear energy in over 40 years." It said the test confirmed that "the reactor can operate safely and establishes a basis that would allow subsequent reactors to produce electricity in 2027."

The Antares test used advanced fuel supplied by BWX Technologies. Antares now says it's targeting the first advanced reactor operating in the U.S. by 2027, and commercial deployments in 2028....

....MUCH MORE 

The Father Of Modern Singapore On Air Conditioning

Via Trung Phan's Xitter feed: 

Lee Kuan Yew:

“Air conditioning was a most important invention for us, perhaps one of the signal inventions of history. It changed the nature of civilization by making development possible in the tropics. Without air conditioning you can work only in the cool early-morning… https://t.co/VV6wOQG1jZ pic.twitter.com/f0Uil7bJAc

— Trung Phan (@TrungTPhan) June 23, 2026

Trung Phan's SatPost substack:

https://www.readtrung.com/ 

"People’s Bank of China injects $44B in debut overnight reverse repo"

From Crypto Briefing, June 28/29:

China's central bank launches a new short-term liquidity tool, initially withholding the interest rate in a move that caught markets off guard  

The People’s Bank of China just added a new weapon to its monetary policy arsenal. On June 29, the PBOC executed its first-ever overnight reverse repo operation, pumping 300 billion yuan, roughly $44 billion, into China’s financial system.

Here’s the thing that rattled traders: the central bank didn’t specify the interest rate. Market observers had been expecting something in the 1.25% to 1.35% range, so the silence was, to put it mildly, conspicuous. The rate was later set at 1.25%, according to Reuters, landing at the floor of analyst expectations.

What an overnight reverse repo actually means 
Think of a reverse repo as the central bank lending money to commercial banks for a very short period, using government bonds as collateral. The “overnight” part is new here. Previously, the PBOC’s shortest standard tool was its seven-day reverse repo, which it also conducted on June 29 at a steady rate of 1.4%, injecting an additional 157.5 billion yuan....

....MUCH MORE 

"US and Iran agree to halt Hormuz attacks, will reportedly hold talks about strait in Qatar on Tuesday"

Two from the Times of Israel. First up the headliner, June 29:

US official says sides to stand down ‘for now’ after Tehran skips technical talks scheduled for Sunday; Iran’s FM threatens to ‘increase tensions’ if ships don’t traverse route it controls 

Iran and the United States have agreed to halt attacks, a US official said Sunday, and will reportedly meet again on Tuesday in Doha to discuss the Strait of Hormuz.

The Axios news site, citing US officials and a source with knowledge of the details, reported that Tuesday’s talks were originally planned to take place in Switzerland, but the flareup caused them to be moved to Qatar’s capital and the topic was changed to the Hormuz standoff, as disputes and gaps remain despite the memorandum of understanding reached earlier this month.

“We decided to stop all the kinetic activity,” one of the US officials was quoted as saying....

....MUCH MORE

Both Brent and WTI futures are still up a bit. 

Asian equity markets reversed their earlier declines though the KOSPI did close down 0.2% (vs the earlier -2.0%) 

And from Reuters via the ToI liveblog:

Iran, Oman hold first meeting of joint committee on Hormuz, Iranian deputy FM says 

The talks were apparently held this earlier morning, Tehran time.

"Baidu's AI chip unit Kunlunxin targets $50 billion Hong Kong IPO, The Information reports"

The linking of chip purchases to IPO allocation is probably not a good sign.

From Reuters, June 28: 

Baidu's (9888.HK) AI chip unit, Kunlunxin, is planning to go public in Hong ​Kong at a target valuation of $50 billion, The ‌Information reported on Sunday, citing two sources.

Investors have been asked to buy chips with a value three to seven ​times the worth of their planned subscription ​in Kunlunxin’s initial public offering shares, the report ⁠said.

 

Reuters could not immediately verify the report. Baidu did ​not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

  

TikTok ​parent ByteDance was considering using Baidu's Kunlunxin chips, Reuters had reported this month, citing sources.

Tencent (0700.HK), is already a Kunlunxin chip customer, ​according to one of the sources....

....MUCH MORE 

 

Asian markets are trading down one-to-two percent. 

The Bank For International Settlements Has Issued A Warning: "AI boom risks global financial crash..."

We take the Bank for International Settlements very seriously, links below. 

It's those effects beyond the AI ecosystem that get one's attention. 

(looking at you, SoftBank)

 

Best guess, six to twelve months to a big crack-up. The timer has been set. 

From The Telegraph, June 28:

 

AI boom risks global financial crash, warn central bankers
Reversal of ‘excessive’ tech investments could have serious economic consequences, report finds  

Debt-fuelled spending on AI is driving up the risk of a global financial crisis, central bankers have warned.

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) said on Sunday that “excessive” spending on new AI data centres and opaque transactions risked a financial meltdown similar to the global credit crunch nearly two decades ago.

The BIS, known as the bank for central banks, said there was growing “peril” in financial markets from the complex web of financial ties between AI giants, shadow banks and data centre builders unravelling.

“Financial stability could ... be at risk in the event of an AI bust,” the BIS said. “Should hyperscalers slow or halt the aggressive pace of capex deployment, many borrowers across the supply chain could struggle to replace lost revenue and service their debt.

“The opacity of AI-sector financing compounds these vulnerabilities.”

Pablo Hernández de Cos, the BIS general manager, said there were major questions about whether the boom would benefit the wider economy and warned a reversal of “AI exuberance” could have serious economic consequences.

“One risk is that large-scale investment in AI infrastructure becomes excessive, as each firm tries to outcompete rivals and dominate market share,” he said.

“This could leave the sector more vulnerable if AI underdelivers, possibly bringing the current investment boom to an abrupt end, with large macroeconomic consequences.”

The BIS warning is one of the strongest yet on risks lurking in the AI boom. The Bank of England warned in December that share prices were now the “most stretched” they had been since the 2008 crisis....

....MUCH MORE 

 

Here's the BIS press release with links to the Annual Economic Report, June 28: 

Global economic pressure points call for policy discipline: BIS

*On June 26, 2007 (i.e. pre-"Quant-quake", pre-Bear Stearns, pre-ought-eight-near-catastrohe) we posted a short little piece:
"(Off-topic) Banks' banker warns of downturn":

THE risk of a 1930s-style economic slump has been heightened by "euphoric" markets tapping cheap global credit, one of the world's pre-eminent financial institutions has said.

In its annual report, the Bank for International Settlements noted that the conditions that led to the Great Depression of the 1930s and the Asian crises in the 1990s reflected the current environment.

From The Age

June 2008
BIS: Don't Worry, Inflation Not a Problem Because Global Economy Will Crash  

May 23, 2013
Evans-Pritchard: "BIS and IMF attacks on quantitative easing deeply misguided warn monetarists" 
I didn't see the BIS comments as an attack, just a heads up on what's going on.* I don't really care what the IMF says....

So yes, we listen, even if, as in that last case they can be early, the BIS seems to understand this central banking stuff.  

"A new Harvard study advises couples to wear masks and avoid kissing while having sex"

Now I'm as open to a little cosplay as anyone but looking back, this was nuts. 

From Timeout, June 8 2020:

If you're not in quarantine together, whip that mask out. 

Turns out that the only fool-proof way to avoid contracting COVID-19 while having sex is abstinence. No surprise there, of course. 

But that's not the only suggestion made by Harvard University researchers following a new study they conducted about sexual health in the coronavirus era.

"On the basis of existing data, it appears all forms of in-person sexual contact carry risk for viral transmission, because the virus is readily transmitted by aerosols and fomites," reads the study, confirming that intimacy does, indeed, carry along with it a risk of exposure.

The researchers offer a broad range of recommendations for couples who are not quarantining together and want to avoid the spread of the disease while having sex. The suggestions include wearing masks, avoiding kissing, showering before and after sex and "cleaning of the physical space with soap or alcohol wipes." 

The experts actually go a step further, ranking sexual scenarios based on how likely it is you'd catch the virus while partaking in them....

....MUCH MORE 

The study, published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine can be found at the National Library of Medicine (link above).

Ann Intern Med. 2020 May 8:M20-2004. doi: 10.7326/M20-2004

Sexual Health in the SARS-CoV-2 

Era Jack L Turban 1, Alex S Keuroghlian 2, Kenneth H Mayer 3
PMCID: PMC7233185 PMID: 32384139

Big Money: UAE AI Investor MGX May Make A Run At Singapore's DayOne To Head Off A $20 Billion IPO

From the property mavens at Mingtiandi, June 22:

Abu Dhabi’s MGX Weighs DayOne Buyout as GDS Spin-Off Pursues $20B IPO

Artificial intelligence investor MGX is exploring a multibillion-dollar acquisition of data centre operator DayOne, according to a media report, in a potential twist for the Singapore-based operator after the overseas spin-off of China’s GDS Holdings had appeared headed for a $20 billion public listing.

Abu Dhabi-owned MGX is working with an investment bank in preparation for a potential transaction, Reuters said Friday, citing sources familiar with the matter. The deal would mark the firm’s first Asia acquisition if it proceeds.

DayOne has been preparing for a US initial public offering targeting a valuation of $20 billion, though Reuters reported that MGX may not be willing to match that price. The takeover chatter comes two weeks after DayOne closed a $4.5 billion Series C equity round led by existing investors Coatue Management and Hillhouse Investment. 

“The sources cautioned that a deal may not proceed and that the firm may still opt to pursue an IPO,” the news agency said.

Potential Pivot 
DayOne’s final Series C close more than doubled the size of the fundraising from its initial close in January, with new investors including the Indonesia Investment Authority and Achi Capital Partners joining the pre-IPO round.

The June fundraising brought total equity secured by DayOne since its 2022 inception to around $6.4 billion, according to Mingtiandi calculations. The company said the capital would support expansion in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Japan, Hong Kong, Finland and Spain.

DayOne had selected JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Citigroup to work on the planned US listing, which Bloomberg reported in February could raise as much as $5 billion. The operator was also said to be considering a dual listing in the US and Singapore.

DayOne Data Centers was established in 2022 as the overseas arm of Shanghai-based GDS under the GDS International name before rebranding in January 2025. Analysts described the relaunch as a move to distance the platform from its Chinese parent amid geopolitical tensions and position it for a public listing.

GDS founder William Huang stepped down as executive chairman of DayOne in April, with former Olam Group chairman Lim Ah Doo now serving as non-executive chairman after having been named co-chairman during the rebrand.

GDS has been paring its exposure to DayOne. The mainland data centre giant held 19.9 percent of the platform as of late April after DayOne repurchased $385 million in ordinary shares from its former parent at the Series C new issue price. Originally, it wholly owned the company, reducing its stake to 52.7 percent at the Series A funding, then to 35.6 percent at the Series B.

DayOne said earlier this month that it had secured more than 1.5 gigawatts of total bookings across Asia Pacific and Europe, up from around 1GW of customer commitments reported at the initial close of the Series C in January.

Gulf AI Push 
MGX was established in March 2024 with Abu Dhabi sovereign fund Mubadala Investment Company and Abu Dhabi-based tech firm G42 as foundational partners, with a mandate to invest across AI infrastructure, semiconductors and AI-enabled technologies.

The firm is chaired by Tahnoon bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, deputy ruler of Abu Dhabi and national security advisor of the United Arab Emirates. Tahnoon, a brother of UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, also chairs the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, the emirate’s trillion-dollar sovereign fund....

....MUCH MORE 

The sovereign fund is now up to $1.1 trillion. As noted in the introduction to March 2024's "ICYMI: "Abu Dhabi Targets $100 Billion AUM for AI Investment Firm""

Probably the reason OpenAI's Sam Altman was in the UAE talking about raising $7 trillion for chips and cheese or something. A big ask in anybody's book.

Here's hoping it doesn't become another SoftBank Vision Fund which was the same $100 billion size and for the first few years of its life mainly succeeded in jacking up the price of speculative private investments before roller-coastering into a profitable position this year.

Abu Dhabi had a hand in that one and went on one heck of a ride with Mr. Son....

Our most recent mention of MGX was October 2025's "BlackRock's Global Infrastructure Partners Circling $40 Billion Data Center Purchase (BLK)"

Also May 2025's "French Tech: France To Host Europe's Largest Data Center (UAE's MGX; EDF; NVDA; Bpifrance; Mistral AI)" 

And for fellow members of the Short Attention Span Finance Fraternity, a flashback to all that gallivanting in the Gulf we saw in 2025:

"Trump’s Road to Riyadh: The Geopolitics of AI and Energy Infrastructure"

More Ways To Play! "Citigroup Is Rolling Out Tokenized Shares of Private Companies"

Citi can have the tagline gratis if they are going for the middle-market casino vibe. 

For bespoke marketing to the higher-end Casino de Monte-Carlo à Monaco crowd, pricing available upon request.

From the Wall Street Journal, June 11:

Citigroup is establishing a way for its wealthy and institutional clients to trade shares of private companies through a blockchain, a venture it hopes will be adopted by other banks across Wall Street.

The bank said it is in discussions with some of the largest private companies to get involved. The venture is intended to broaden access to private firms at the same time companies are taking longer to go public, and Wall Street has been in a frenzy over the coming blockbuster stock-market debuts of SpaceX, Anthropic and others.

 

The venture lets clients put private-company shares essentially “right next to their Apple stock,” said Artem Korenyuk, Citi’s global lead for digital assets enterprise alignment and services enablement.It is initially open to only foreign investors, with a transaction- and maintenance-based fee, but Citi plans to make it available to U.S. investors later. The infrastructure can be used by other banks, Citi said.

 

The venture works through depositary receipts—or securities that allow investors to buy stakes in foreign companies—that are authorized and tokenized. Citi will issue those securities and act as a custodian for them....

....MUCH MORE 

Here's Citigroup's press release, also June 11:

Citi Launches Market-First Tokenized Depositary Receipts to Connect Private Companies and Investors

"From Space to the Polar Depths: China Aims for a Three-Dimensional Presence in the Arctic"

From The Diplomat - Flashpoints, June 19: 

The Arctic – where polar, deep sea, and space intersect – offers a particularly revealing case for China’s ambitions in the “strategic new frontiers.”

Last year, as part of China’s 15th Arctic expedition, two of China’s manned submersibles, the Fendouzhe and Jiaolong, conducted what Chinese news agency Xinhua described as “joint underwater operations” or manned dives under the Arctic ice. This was the first time that China had done anything like this. For the purposes of these dives, China brought to the region two of its deep-sea research vessels, which acted as motherships for the submersibles. These submersibles then conducted more than 40 dives over a 56-day period in the Central Arctic Ocean, some together and some separately.

As we discussed in a longer brief on the topic, these tests were just the latest sign of the growing scope of China’s scientific activities in the Arctic. Many signs point toward China increasingly seeking, among other goals, to develop reliable means to operate, communicate, and navigate within the Arctic region, both below the surface and above it. The manned submersible experiments can be seen as just one important milestone to this end, reflecting China’s growing ambition and capability to expand its presence within its self-defined “strategic new frontiers.”

Towards the “Strategic New Frontiers”

Polar regions (meaning both the Arctic and Antarctica) and deep seas are both part of what in the Chinese political vocabulary is sometimes referred to as the “strategic new frontiers” (战略新疆域). These are strategically important regions or domains that are opening up for exploitation due to advances in technology, and toward which China is already envisioning the next phase of its economic expansion. In addition to polar and deep-sea regions, they typically also include space, cyberspace, and artificial intelligence.

While primarily valued due to their economic prospects, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) sees the new frontiers as potential future domains of “military struggle” between great powers. The PLA views recent technological advances in unmanned submersibles and undersea communications as opening the deep seas for military operations – perhaps even in a transformative way. The Arctic, meanwhile, is often defined in PLA assessments as a crossroads of aviation and maritime power projection – a “strategic commanding height” from which the whole northern hemisphere can be brought within strategic reach.

Overall, China views the strategic new frontiers as future theaters of great power competition, where it needs to preemptively establish a strong presence and secure its interests....

....MUCH MORE 

For some reason bringing to mind Robert W. Service:

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
      By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
      That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
      But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
      I cremated Sam McGee.... 

"Short Squeeze as a Service"

Matt Levine at Bloomberg, June 23:

Avis, SpaceX ESG, carried interest loans, Bain vibecoding and a prediction market index. 

Matt Levine is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A former investment banker at Goldman Sachs, he was a mergers and acquisitions lawyer at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz; a clerk for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit; and an editor of Dealbreaker.

Avis/Pentwater

If you run a public company and you want to raise money, you can sell stock, but you probably won’t. Many companies feel a certain squeamishness about selling stock, and we have talked a couple of times recently about the “de-equitization” of public companies over the last few decades. Companies mostly buy back stock; they don’t sell it.

One problem with selling stock is the price. If you run a public company, you probably think your stock price is too low. If you sell stock to new shareholders, you are diluting your existing shareholders: You are selling too cheap, transferring some of the company’s existing value to new shareholders at the expense of old ones.

Occasionally, though, a public company will think its stock price is too high: The stock price is above the present value of all the cash flows that management expects the company to have. This is a more pleasant problem: If you sell overpriced stock to new shareholders, that is accretive for your existing shareholders.1 But it is still, I think, a problem. You are in some sense ripping off the new shareholders, selling them stock for more than it is worth. You might feel some sense of fiduciary duty to them too, and feel bad about giving them a bad deal. In the big meme-stock wave of 2021, companies were initially nervous about selling stock into meme frenzies: Are you even allowed to sell stock at prices you know are too high?2

The ideal, most pleasant solution would be to sell overpriced stock to non-shareholders, people to whom you have no fiduciary responsibilities and whom you don’t mind ripping off. (“I would tax foreigners living abroad” is Monty Python’s ideal tax policy.)

For instance: Your stock is trading at around $100 per share, though you think it’s really worth more like $200. Then magic occurs, and for a little while you have the opportunity to sell stock at $700 per share. If you sold stock at $700 to nice enthusiastic retail investors who love your company, you’d feel bad: They’re overpaying for the stock and will lose a lot of money when the magic ceases and the stock reverts to $100, or perhaps to $200. But what if you sold stock at $700 to evil hedge funds who hate your company? Evil hedge funds who have shorted your stock to bet that it will go down: They’re not shareholders; they’re the opposite of shareholders. Wouldn’t that be nice? You’d get money by selling stock at high prices, which is accretive to your real long-term shareholders. The short-selling hedge funds would lose money by buying the stock at high prices, but you want that. Everybody wins, except the people who should lose. It’s a perfect trade. All you have to do is figure out how to make the magic occur.

Avis Budget Group Inc. figured it out! I mean, by accident; the magic here is less “they did deep research into dusty old spellbooks and found the right incantations to say” and more “an itinerant wizard showed up at their front gate.” But that did happen. Bloomberg’s Jordan Fitzgerald reports:

Avis Budget Group Inc. is set to receive $650 million in cash as part of a settlement agreement with Pentwater Capital Management to resolve a lawsuit regarding short-swing profits, according to a filing. Shares in the car rental company gained 6.5% in postmarket trading Monday. Payment is subject to court approval, based on the filing. Earlier this year, Avis surged more than 600% across one month to a record high, after Pentwater Capital disclosed that it had amassed a large stake. But shares fell quicker than they went up, wiping out roughly 70% of that rally in just two days, which Avis leadership attributed to sales action from Pentwater.

We talked about Avis’s rally in April, and then a few weeks later we talked about Pentwater’s sales. The bones of the story are:

• Avis’s stock traded down from around $130 at the start of the year to around $100 in mid-March.
• Pentwater had been buying Avis stock for a while; it was a 6.8% shareholder last year. This April, it announced that, between its stock and derivative positions, Pentwater owned a bit more than 50% of Avis’s stock, around 18 million shares.
• Another big shareholder — SRS Investment Management, a fund run by an Avis board member — also owned more than 50% of the stock. So more than 100% of the stock was owned by two big insiders.
• How is this possible? There were a lot of short sellers who were betting against the stock; something like 49% of the float was shorted as of mid-March. Pentwater and SRS owned, roughly speaking, all of the outstanding shares plus some of the shares that had been borrowed and shorted.
• This was alarming news for short sellers: If all of the stock is owned by a few big insiders, there could be a short squeeze in which stock lenders demand their stock back and short sellers have to buy it back at any price.
• And so, in fact, Avis’s stock shot up, closing as high as $713.97 on April 21, as short sellers bought back stock.
• Then Pentwater, over a few days at the height of the short squeeze, sold about 4.3 million shares for about $1.75 billion, an average price of around $400 per share. If you assume that its average purchase price was $100 per share or so, then it made a profit of more than $1 billion on those 4.3 million shares.
• The stock dropped as Pentwater sold; it ended April at $180.67, and has mostly been in the $145 to $190 range since. (It closed yesterday at $186.28 and was up this morning.)

One somewhat perverse thing to take from this story might be that Pentwater caused Avis’s stock price to drop, from the $700s to the $180s. That is Avis’s takeaway, Fitzgerald notes:

“Given the quantum of shares sold in such a short span of time, our stock price experienced a significant decline,” Avis CEO Brian Choi said on the in April. “It seems the only insider active during this period of excess volatility was Pentwater Capital.”

Another, more informative thing to take from this story is that Pentwater caused Avis’s stock price to rise, from the $100s to the $700s. It’s still in the $180s! Avis’s stock price is durably higher than it was before Pentwater’s intervention. Seems weird for Avis to be like “ugh they drove down our stock price.”

But as we also discussed, there is a problem with these trades. The problem is that US securities law — the “short-swing profit rules” of Section 16 — do not allow Pentwater to (1) buy a ton of stock in Avis, (2) sell it a few weeks later at a profit and (3) keep the profit. Once Pentwater became a 10% holder of Avis’s stock, it was an “insider” for purposes of these rules, and it could not keep any profit it made on “short-swing” trades (buying and selling within six months). It could make the profit — it could buy at $100, or $200, and sell at $400, or $700 — but it would have to give up the profit to the company.

Still, you can work with that. Pentwater bought a bunch of stock in the $100 to $200 range, which had the effect of igniting a short squeeze and pushing the stock to $700. Then it sold a bunch of stock in the $400 range, which had the effect of defusing the short squeeze and making, like, a billion dollars of profit. So far, so good. And then the third stage of the trade is returning the profit to Avis.

But, you know. For one thing, the Section 16 rules are sort of complicated, and Pentwater had an argument that it didn’t actually owe Avis much of its profits. It argued that it bought the stock in some funds and accounts that it managed, and sold the stock out of other funds and accounts that it managed, and you couldn’t “match” most of the buys and sells under the Section 16 rules. When it initially announced its sales, Pentwater said that it was “engaged in discussion with the Issuer and [has] agreed to voluntarily disgorge to the Issuer any short-swing profits realized from these matchable transactions.” But it also said that most of its trades were not matchable transactions: Only about 94,000 shares, in its telling, violated the short-swing profit rules and thus had to give up their profits — on the order of tens of millions of dollars — to Avis. The rest— on the order of $1 billion of profits — were Pentwater’s to keep. Avis apparently disagreed, but that was a starting point for negotiations.

For another thing, Pentwater’s pitch, in those negotiations, was pretty good. It goes something like this: “Hi. We have created a billion dollars of profit from nothing. We did it by trading your stock, buying it low and selling it high. But we sold it high to short sellers, whom you should hate. This trade cost you nothing: no money, no dilution. And it cost your shareholders nothing: When we sold at $700, it was to evil short sellers who got squeezed, not to your good and loyal long-term shareholders. This is just a free transfer of a billion dollars from your enemies to … well, to us. And you. We’ll give you most of it. But we want a few hundred million dollars as a tip for raising all this free money for you.”

This pitch is not entirely provably true: Who knows who was buying at $700? Every “short squeeze” is some combination of (1) short sellers actually feeling squeezed and being forced to buy back stock and (2) retail traders (and momentum-trading professionals) betting that short sellers will get squeezed and buying stock themselves. But the pitch is probably roughly true and quite appealing. “Short squeeze as a service,” a reader called it in an email to me in April; I think that’s right.

Anyway Avis said in April that it “will go after every last dollar that our shareholders are owed,” and it said yesterday that the $650 million settlement “is subject to court approval,” which will require a court to find that “the Company has diligently pursued the claims raised in the Section 16(b) Action and that the Settlement Amount is fair, reasonable and adequate.”3

Is $650 million every dollar of profit that Pentwater made on this trade? I hope not! It’s a great trade and they deserve to make money from it. Is $650 million a good and fair result for Avis? Absolutely! That’s like 10% of its market capitalization! Avis didn’t even do anything! Pentwater just extracted a billion dollars from short sellers and gave Avis some of it. A perfect financing trade, a non-dilutive sale of overpriced stock to short sellers. I don’t know if Pentwater is going to run this trade for (on?) other companies, or if bankers are going around pitching it to other companies, but they should.

SpaceX ESG....

....MUCH MORE

Also from the mind of Matt: 

June 24 - Insider Trading Isn't Romantic

June 25 - There’s a SpaceX Treasury Company 

"Enter Helios: quantum computer sets high watermark for accuracy"

Quantinuum, recently public as a spin-out of Honeywell, and PsiQuantum, still private, are two of the more interesting entrants in the quantum computing races. Here's the former, symbol QNT via Asia Times, June 27:

Helios quantum computer brings together scale, accuracy, connectivity and programmability in a near revolutionary advance  

In a laboratory in Broomfield, Colorado, 98 atoms are suspended in mid-air, held in place by electric fields and cooled to temperatures close to absolute zero.

Each atom is far smaller than anything the naked eye could ever see, yet each carries information in a form that has no counterpart in classical physics.

Together, they form Helios, a new quantum computer built by the British-American company Quantinuum. Quantum computers use the power of quantum mechanics, the rules that govern how physics operates at atomic and sub-atomic scales. Those that use Helios’ model of suspended atoms are known as trapped-ion.

A paper published in Nature describes it as a 98-qubit processor with very high accuracy and performance that pushes beyond what can easily be simulated on classical machines. That sounds impressive, but the important question is not simply whether this is a bigger quantum computer (the previous biggest, System Model H2, had 56 qubits). It is whether it is a better one.

Quantum computers are not just faster versions of ordinary computers. The qubits (quantum bits) that they use to process information can exist in quantum states that do not behave like the ones and zeroes of conventional digital technology.

This allows some calculations to be arranged in ways that may eventually outperform even the largest supercomputers. The possible applications are fascinating: new materials, better optimization methods, improved chemistry simulations and new approaches to cryptography.

The difficulty is that qubits are extremely fragile. They are disturbed by temperature variations, imperfect control, unwanted interactions with the environment and, in some systems, even the act of moving information around the device. 

For this reason, the race in quantum computing is not only about having more qubits. It is about having more good qubits, controlled accurately enough to perform long and meaningful calculations....

....MUCH MORE 

Previously:

January 2024 - "JPMorgan latest to pile into quantum upstart with $5B valuation"

June 3 - "Quantinuum Prices IPO at $60 a Share. It’s Slated to Go Public Thursday" (QNT)

Here's the amended S-1 dated June 1. 

And the upsize dated June 3 - Registration adding securities to prior Form S-1 registration [Rule 462(b)] 

And on PsiQuantum:

March 11 - Quantum Computing Startup Backed By Nvidia, Lockheed Martin, Breaks Ground On Major Chicago Computing Center

As the young people say: "Shit just got real." 

....Seven acres under roof is pretty big for a startup.

PsiQuantum is different. March 24, 2025 -  "Quantum computing startup PsiQuantum raising at least $750 million, sources say"

September 11, 2025 - A Name To Know: "PsiQuantum Raises $1 Billion, Says Its Computer Will Be Ready in Two Years" 

November 7, 2025 - "Quantum Leap: Lockheed Martin & PsiQuantum"

November 17, 2025 - "Former Top [Australian] Spy, Nick Warner Sounds Warning On Quantum Arms Race In Defence Tech"

If PsiQuantum's approach works, this is the one to decrypt Bitcoin and other blockchain based systems. From CoinTelegraph, March 5:

Construction begins at quantum facility big enough to break Bitcoin

April 27 - "Quantum photonics roadmap — how Xanadu and PsiQuantum are looking to transfer qubits through beams of light" 

Possibly also of interest, at Barron's:

"...How to Pretend You Understand Quantum Computing."

"Keynes, Minsky, and the Economics of Uncertainty"

William Janeway writing at Project Syndicate, May 22:

Although Hyman Minsky’s version of John Maynard Keynes’s economics had a minimal impact on the mainstream during his own lifetime and in the years following, its central insights remain as relevant as ever. Both men understood that economic theory cannot get away with ignoring the fact of uncertainty. 

CAMBRIDGE—Consideration of economic and financial conditions today calls to mind the economic theorists who most influenced my own thinking, as an academic and as a venture capitalist: John Maynard Keynes and Hyman Minsky. Their relationship, though virtual, is essential. It was Minsky who revealed the profound conflict between “the economics of Keynes” and the “Keynesian economics” that dominated the teaching and practice of macroeconomics for at least a generation, and which remains embedded in contemporary “New Keynesian” models of the economy.  

Minsky completed his doctorate at Harvard under the supervision of Joseph Schumpeter, whose concept of “creative destruction” illuminated how technological innovation drives economic transformation, and emerged as a “heterodox economist”—a dissident from the prevailing Keynesian doctrine developed at MIT by the Nobel laureates Paul Samuelson and Robert Solow.

Based at Washington University in St. Louis for much of his career, Minsky developed a reading of Keynes’s work that contrasts fundamentally with that formulated by Samuelson and Solow. In their Neoclassical Synthesis, Keynesian macroeconomic policy would ensure that resources are fully employed. Then the traditional neoclassical microeconomics of efficient markets could be deployed, devoid of the uncertainty that pervades Keynes’s own work. The economist Joan Robinson called this “Bastard Keynesianism.”

I myself was sufficiently immersed in Keynes’s own thinking that, rather than teach the Neoclassical Synthesis, I embarked on a 35-year sabbatical as a venture capitalist. My one significant brush with academia in these years was when I met Minsky in the mid-1980s. The relationship deepened when he joined the Levy Economics Institute, conveniently close to New York City. Minsky sponsored a paper I presented to the Annual Meeting of the Association for Evolutionary Economics in December 1985.

That paper, “Doing Capitalism: Notes on the Practice of Venture Capitalism,” examined the differing profiles of the “financial agent” in the works of Fernand Braudel, Karl Marx, Schumpeter, and Keynes, drawing parallels between each and the role of the modern professional VC investor. It served as the seed that would grow into Doing Capitalism in the Innovation Economy, which I published almost 30 years later, in 2012. Still following where Keynes had led, I focused on the economics of innovation, where investment at the frontier of technology necessarily takes place under conditions of radical uncertainty and volatile financial conditions.

As L. Randall Wray shows in his excellent 2015 book, Why Minsky Matters, Minsky’s most important message is that economists’ fixation on defining equilibrium conditions evades a central, existential truth: stability is itself destabilizing. Minsky set out to explain what he identified as Keynes’s “investment theory of fluctuations in real demand and a financial theory of fluctuations in real investment.” He began by walking carefully through “the conventional wisdom, the standard interpretation of Keynes,” which had served to obscure what Keynes had achieved and derailed the revolution in economic theory he had launched.

Throughout his 1975 book, John Maynard Keynes, Minsky repeatedly cites Keynes’s invocation of uncertainty as the fundamental factor conditioning economic and financial decisions. “Keynes without uncertainty is something like Hamlet without the Prince,” he observed. As Keynes himself had emphasized in a 1937 commentary for the Quarterly Journal of Economics, uncertainty is effectively an ontological condition of the universe:

“By ‘uncertain’ knowledge … I do not mean merely to distinguish what is known for certain from what is only probable. … The sense in which I am using the term is that in which the prospect of a European war is uncertain, or the price of copper and the rate of interest twenty years hence, or the obsolescence of a new invention, or the position of private wealth owners in the social system in 1970. About these matters there is no scientific basis on which to form any calculable probability whatever. We simply do not know.”

What Money Does

This argument moves from metaphysics to the sublunary plane of financial economics as soon as Keynes (and Minsky) turns to money. It is all very well to note the convenience that money offers as a medium of exchange, eliminating the simultaneous “coincidence of wants” that would otherwise be necessary to motivate trade. But why hold money as an asset, as something to hoard, when it yields no income? “Why,” Keynes asked, “should anyone outside a lunatic asylum wish to use money as a store of wealth?” The answer, of course, is that it provides insurance against all that cannot be known in advance.

Money is unique among assets for its extreme liquidity, which complements its lack of return....

....MUCH MORE
*For what it's worth, we are fans of Janeway:

William Janeway: "Productive Bubbles" 

"The Rise of Mesoeconomics" - William H. Janeway

In our last visit with Bill Janeway, "The Forgotten Origins of Silicon Valley" - William H. Janeway, I didn't mention that he is not your typical pointy-headed academic. Here's his mini-bio at Cambridge Uni.:

Ambassador for Cambridge Judge Business School

Senior Advisor & Managing Director, Warburg Pincus

Dr William H Janeway is a Senior Advisor and Managing Director of Warburg Pincus. He joined Warburg Pincus in 1988 and was responsible for building the information technology investment practice. Previously, he was Executive Vice President and Director at Eberstadt Fleming. Dr Janeway is a director of Magnet Systems, Nuance Communications, O’Reilly Media, and a member of the Board of Managers of Roubini Global Economics. He is a Visiting Lecturer in Economics at the University of Cambridge and Princeton University.....

Also November 2025's ""In Search of the AI Bubble’s Economic Fundamentals" by William H. Janeway". 

"Time runs out for thousands missing after Venezuela earthquakes"

We've seen survivors of other earthquakes rescued after a week under the rubble but it really is the first three days that matter most. Additionally, if people have suffered crushing injuries* even getting un-trapped is only the start of their recovery. 

From the South China Morning Post, June 27: 

With at least 920 dead and more than 51,000 missing, a critical 72-hour window for rescuing survivors has almost closed 

The situation has grown more desperate by the hour in Venezuela as people dig through the rubble of collapsed homes and flat blocks three days after the devastating one-two punch of 7.2 and 7.5-magnitude earthquakes, knowing time is running out to find survivors.

Authorities announced on Friday night that they would block access to La Guaira, the epicentre of the destruction, as chaos and traffic began to hamper search efforts. Officials said anyone who wanted to enter would now have to seek official permits, but provided few details of who would be allowed in.

Venezuelans took the search for missing loved ones into their own hands, citing a scarcity of government rescuers, as the human toll of Wednesday’s quakes climbed to at least 920 dead and more than 51,000 missing. People reported seeing few state rescue teams in the hardest-hit areas, despite authorities projecting an image of a robust government response.

Aid agencies consider the first 48 to 72 hours to be a crucial time frame to retrieve people alive, though that can be extended if they have access to food and water.

“Each person saved is a miracle,” said Jorge Rodriguez, president of the National Assembly. “We are not going to hide absolutely anything about the magnitude of this tragedy.”....

....MUCH MORE 

*Via a 2023 earthquake post:

Crush injuries of soft tissues release fat, plasma and other liquids, and toxins which head for the kidneys. From Wolters Kluwer's UpToDate... 

"What is it like to live in a world you believe is about to end?"

Beats me, I'm pretty optimistic. 

From Asterisk Magazine, Issue 14, June 2026:

The Doomers Are All Right
What is it like to live in a world you believe is about to end?

I opened my interviews for this article with a simple question: “How long do we have?”

Five years, or five to 10, or five to 20. One person said eight, then corrected herself to six; one said eight and stuck to it.

In this, they aren't that far off from many estimates made by experts. The bluntly titled If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies has hit bestseller lists by warning of the imminent risks of artificial general intelligence (AGI). The scenario AI 2027, written by a former OpenAI employee, predicts AGI within the next few years. The AI company Anthropic consistently predicts AGI by early 2027. 

“I think that in most timelines, humans will simply be irrelevant and extinct,” one interviewee said. 

I heard that a lot. A few interviewees — mostly employed by frontier AI labs — expected the world to become unimaginably strange in a good way. One put a 30% chance on utopia, a 30% chance on dystopia, a 30% chance on extinction, and a 10% chance on something too weird to imagine. Several refused to make any prediction; several more said only that they still had hope. About half echoed one of my most blunt respondents: “I don't think humanity is going to make it.”

What is it like to live in a world you believe is about to end? 

Death was already inevitable 
“I was born with a terminal condition,” said Matthew Gray, a board member at the existential risk community-building nonprofit Lightcone Infrastructure. "We call it aging. I've since picked up another. We call it multiple sclerosis. And AI is a third one on top. I'm not very worried about degenerating from multiple sclerosis because I'm pretty sure the robots will kill me first, just like I wasn't that worried about aging-related deterioration because multiple sclerosis will get me first."From this perspective, AI doomers don't face a new problem; they face the oldest problem humanity has ever faced. 

I pushed back. If I look at an actuarial table, I can expect another 47 years of life. I'd be pretty upset to discover I had only five. 

This, my interviewees thought, was naive. Even without AI risk, I could have been hit by a car; I could have gotten cancer; I could have been nuked in a hot war between Russia and the United States. It’s not that the difference in probability doesn’t matter. It's worse to be certain that I'll die in five years than to have a 50% chance of not hitting my allotted 47. But because my death has always been an inevitability, I have been coping all along with the precarity of my existence. From this perspective, AI risk isn’t shocking and unfamiliar; it’s a significantly worse version of a problem I already know I have to deal with. 

"I was never guaranteed that I was going to get a long life and a long future and a chance to meet my grandchildren,” said Gretta Duleba, an independent technical AI safety researcher and former communications manager at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute. “Those were never my right. Across human history, no one has ever been entitled to the future.”....

....MUCH MORE 

Most recently from Asterisk:

"The Institute Behind Taiwan’s Chip Dominance"

Google vs Tesla: "Waymos and Cybercabs see the world through very different sensors" (now with more DARPA)

Your Mission: "place all major technological innovations in history on a timeline, together with the connections between them"

"Are Prediction Markets Good for Anything?"

"Shall We Play a Game?" (from India with love)

Silicon Dreams: That One Day, Should All Humanity Die In A Plague, That AI Will Be Able To Harness The Energy And Extract The Physical Resources To Go On Forever

"After decades of warnings, new data suggest the Atlantic’s vital circulation may withstand climate warming better than feared"

And now for some good news. From the journal Science, June 11: 

Shifting currents 

Off the coast of the Canary Islands—In calm waters here off the northwestern coast of Africa, the crew of the RRS Discovery, a U.K. research ship, was scanning the horizon, waiting for a sentinel to return from the deep. An acoustic ping had triggered the release of a mooring holding 2 years of precious ocean measurements from its anchor 2000 meters below. More than 20 minutes had elapsed, and there was still no sign of the bright orange float that would lift the mooring to the surface. But Ben Moat, the cruise’s chief scientist and an oceanographer at the United Kingdom’s National Oceanography Centre (NOC), wasn’t worried. He had been here before.

On the bridge, Moat glanced at a black Casio watch attached to his clipboard: 22 minutes. There was more competition than usual to be the first to spot the float. Moat, the captain, and the third officer were joined by NOC’s CEO, as well as several members of a U.K. TV news crew. “Is it still off to port?” Moat asked, peering through binoculars for a mote of orange against a sea of azure.

The crowd on the bridge reflected the importance of the mooring, one of 10 in a vital climate observatory called the RAPID array. For more than 2 decades, RAPID’s instrument-packed moorings, spaced across the Atlantic Ocean at 26°N between the Bahamas and the Canary Islands, have monitored the changing strength of ocean currents called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC. The currents usher tropical waters and heat to the northeastern Atlantic, allowing cabbage palms to flourish in Ireland and keeping Norwegian ports ice-free in winter. As the waters move north, they cool and become saltier as sea ice forms and rejects brine. The resulting cold, salty water becomes dense enough to sink to the abyss, carrying heat and carbon dioxide down with it. The water returns south along the floor of the Atlantic, heading to the Southern Ocean and beyond.

Climate models have long warned that global warming could weaken “deep-water formation”—the density-driven sinking that is the engine of the AMOC. The logic is straightforward: As Greenland’s ice sheets melt and sea ice formation declines, North Atlantic waters will freshen. Combined with warmer sea temperatures, the freshening makes surface waters more buoyant. The AMOC was thought to have shut down abruptly during past climate warmings, and a handful of researchers now argue such a tipping point could occur this century. A sputtering AMOC could trigger a sharp cooldown in northwestern Europe, rising seas along the U.S. east coast, and shifts in tropical rainfall. “It is a risk that would really have severe impacts,” says Stefan Rahmstorf, a climate scientist at Potsdam University and a prominent voice warning of the threat.

Yet for all the alarming headlines, most climate researchers think the AMOC is more resilient than these worst case scenarios make it seem. Emerging evidence suggests the AMOC may not have actually collapsed in the warm climates following ice ages. More detailed climate models suggest it could weaken but not collapse in the current surge of warming. And studies of the AMOC’s present behavior do not yet show any clear signs of trouble. They’re also exposing new facets of the circulation that could buffer any eventual weakening.

“The paradigm has been, if we warm and freshen these areas, we’ll get less dense water and AMOC will slow down,” says Susan Lozier, an oceanographer at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “That paradigm isn’t holding up.”....

....MUCH MORE 

If interested see also:

October 2013 - A Table From The UN's IPCC AR5 Climate Change Report

Just some off the cuff factoids, we'll put it together into a coherent (I hope) investment framework between now and the big Paris meeting coming up in 2015.
If you are going to bet real money on this stuff, learn everything and trust no one....

April 2021 - "Rethinking Oceanic Overturning in the Nordic Seas"

The Arctic ocean is weird.
Because of the basin shape and the fact that, whereas in most of the rest of the oceans the temperature gradients, the thermoclines, play the biggest role in mixing/non-mixing of various waters, in the Arctic it's the halocline, the salinity gradient that you have to pay attention to.
And then there are the currents.... 

From the American Geophysical Union's EOS...

August 2023 - The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation Collapses, Plunging Europe Into An Ice Age: WHAT IS YOUR TRADING RESPONSE?

Your financial counsel should be able to immediately answer this query upon being awakened from the deepest delta-wave slumber at 3:30 in the AM. Try it tomorrow. Go to his/her/ze/zir's house and scream the question.

If he/she/ze/zir can't return the correct response the charlatan should be subjected to an unmerciful dressing-down. Or worse....

"Venezuela earthquakes latest: Death toll soars to 589 with over 50,000 missing and US military arrives for aid efforts"

From The Independent, June 26 15:34 BST:

At least 589 people have been confirmed dead in Venezuela after two devastating earthquakes struck overnight on Wednesday.

The US military arrived on Thursday to assist with coordinating aid efforts in the country, the military said.

US southern command said it was supporting relief operations on Friday, adding that the interim government of Venezuela had formally requested American support. The military is to provide specialised equipment and assist with search and rescue efforts. 

Acting president Delcy Rodriguez said on Friday that at least 2,980 people were injured in the double earthquake, while nearly 50,000 are missing....

....MUCH MORE 

"VW weighs up to 100,000 job cuts, four plant closures in biggest overhaul yet, sources say"

 This follows on March 12's Signposts: "Volkswagen slashes 50,000 jobs after profits collapse by nearly half".

From Reuters, June 26: 

• Restructuring could be biggest in auto industry history
• CEO Blume tried to enforce major cuts in 2024, but faced union resistance
• Shutting Hanover, Zwickau, Emden and Audi's Neckarsulm could axe more than 45,000 jobs
• Supervisory board members to discuss restructuring on July 9, sources say
• VW's works council, IG Metall and Lower Saxony vow to resist cuts 

Volkswagen is considering shutting four German factories and ramping up job cuts to as many as 100,000, two people familiar with ‌the matter said on Friday, in what could be the biggest ever overhaul in the industry. 

Members of VW's supervisory board have been informed of the plans, which are due to be discussed at a July 9 meeting, the people said. 

The move comes as the carmaker faces mounting pressure from Chinese rivals, stiff tariffs on car imports into the United States, as well as dwindling demand in Europe, which the company has said makes its business model unsustainable.

Closing the plants at Hanover, Zwickau, Emden and Audi's ​Neckarsulm site would put more than 45,000 jobs at risk, according to the people. That would add to the 50,000 cuts that are currently planned. 

In absolute terms, laying off 100,000 people and ​axing four assembly plants would be the largest restructuring in automotive industry history.

It would be comparable to major shake-ups by GM leading up to and during its ⁠2009 bankruptcy and in the early 1990s when it cut as many as 74,000 jobs over four years and shut or idled 21 plants. 

Volkswagen CEO Oliver Blume presented the plans to senior executives earlier this week ​to rally support for deep cuts likely to face fierce resistance from unions and the state of Lower Saxony, the carmaker's second-largest shareholder.

The overhaul was first reported by Manager Magazin, which also said the world's ​No. 2 automaker would cut investment by about 15% to just over €130 billion ($148 billion) over the next five years. 

Blume and Chief Financial Officer Arno Antlitz aim to fundamentally restructure the 89-year-old company, including spinning off the core VW brand and parts operations into separate entities, the magazine added, citing sources.

Volkswagen shares were trading at 16-year lows on Friday, down 3.4% at 1335 GMT, suggesting investors were sceptical the plan would succeed. 

“The high costs are merely a symptom, not the cause. ​They do not address the root cause, which is weak sales," Ingo Speich of Volkswagen shareholder Deka told Reuters. 

"VW must bring attractive products to market that are in high demand; that would put an ​end to the debate over costs.”....

....MUCH MORE 

And on one of Doktor P's namesakes (the other, the Ferdinand, was a tank-destroyer, not nearly as well-engineered), March 10/11:

Porsche's €3.9bn writedown cuts automotive profit by 98% in EV retreat