Thursday, August 27, 2026

"The $2 Billion Brawl Over a Ruinous Wood-Pellet Trade" ("one of the most disastrous commodity trades of the decade")

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Iceland thinks they have sagas. Pshaw.  This one has executives fearing for their bonuses, Drax * , Germans, subsidies, Putin, paleolithic f...

Followup: "More than 100 water systems were hit in July cyberattacks

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From The Register, August 26:  'These are test runs for a larger-scale attack'  The US government disclosed that crims targeted more...

The U.S. Consulate In Wuhan China Knew Covid-19 Was Spreading In OCTOBER 2019

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Of course at that time it hadn't been named  Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) but it was spreading and obvious to the folks at the Co...

"Earnings call transcript: NVIDIA beats Q2 2026 estimates as AI demand stays hot" (NVDA)

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First up, from Barron's Adam Levine who is obviously not a member of the NVDA obsessive-compulsive club, August 26: These Two Sentences ...

"Michael Burry Says Nvidia Is ‘Wildly Undervalued,’ Buys Calls as ‘Hedge’" (NVDA)

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From TipRanks, August 26:  Ahead of Nvidia’s NVDA -1.59% ▼ Q2 results, Big Short investor Michael Burry added to his short position despi...

Capital Markets: "Greenback Edges Higher"

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From Marc to Market: In the relatively quiet conditions that have prevailed this week, the US dollar is trading with a mostly firmer bias. ...
Wednesday, August 26, 2026

The S.E.C. Would Like To Know Just What Was Going On At Situational Awareness

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A diagnosis-and-prognosis are usually more helpful than an autopsy but you take what you can get. From United Press International, August 25...

Inflation: PCE Price Index Up 0.2% In July; Up 3.7% Year-over-Year

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From the Bureau of Economic Analysis, August 26:  .... From the preceding month, the PCE price index for July increased 0.2 percent . Excl...

"Citi raises corn, soybean, wheat price targets on El Niño risks"

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They note, almost as a throwaway line, that coffee and cocoa have historically been affected when in fact that is where the action has been....

Capital Markets: "Consolidation Persists in the FX Market"

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From Marc Chandler at Bannockburn Global Forex: The US dollar is enjoying a slightly firmer tone against most of the G10 currencies. Howeve...

Mo' Money: "SoftBank mulls up to US$20 bil bond sale for OpenAI financing"

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From Bloomberg via The Edge, Singapore, August 26: SoftBank Group Corp is talking with investment banks about a potential US$10 billion to ...
Tuesday, August 25, 2026

"Anthropic Expected to Tell Investors It Sees Over $30 Trillion in Potential Revenue"

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For comparison the IMF is forecasting the world's Gross Domestic Product for 2026 at $126 trillion so ~24% of global GDP or 92.6% of th...

BondVigilantes: "Of Anchovies and Blueberries – why El Niño matters"

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From M&G's Bond Vigilantes, August 17: Why aren’t we talking more about El Niño? After an exceptionally hot, dry summer in West...

El Niño—"ENSO Forecast: August 2026 Quick Look"

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This site, the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia University is one of our go-to info sources on the El Ni...

"VCs are starting to rely on AI to predict the future."

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From Beijing's 36Kr European Central Station, August 24: In July, DigClaw's forecasting framework Rhizome v1 secured three spots at ...
Monday, August 24, 2026

Trading The British Bicycle Bubble

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From The Journal of Economic History, Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 July 2025 Who Wins and Loses in a Bubble? Evidence...

Keep An Eye On Norway's Next Oil Production Report

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Two from OilPrice. First up, August 20:  Norway’s crude output fell nearly 10% year-over-year to 1.776 million bpd in July, while total liqu...

"Nvidia’s $20 billion bet on Groq’s LPU tech sure looks like it was a good one."

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 From The Register, August 24: What Nvidia's first Groq 3 LPU benchmarks tell us about its $20B gamble Gemma 4 31B performance tests off...

"Broadcom Credit Risk Soars on Mega AI Debt Financing Backstops" (AVGO)

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From Bloomberg, August 24: Bond traders have ramped up measures of credit risk associated with Broadcom Inc. as it backstops mega financing...

"Hedge Funds’ Cash Treasury Holdings Reach $2 Trillion"

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Any forced unwind of those positions could cause some serious ructions. From the blog of the U.S. Treasury's Office of Financial Researc...