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Many investors love recurring revenue. I love recurring customers. Earlier this month, the FTC brought an enforcement action against companies accused of making subscriptions easy to start but difficult to cancel. Earlier in the year, analysts began debating the durability of recurring revenue in certain SaaS companies as AI threatened to reduce switching costs and weaken customer lock-in. Both events invite the same question of what makes revenue truly recurring. Earli

Congratulations to the fans of the New York Knicks. Jalen Brunson, aka "Captain Clutch," and his teammates delivered the franchise's first championship since 1973, capping a memorable playoff run. The team’s 13-game playoff win streak, wild intra-game momentum swings, hot-hand shooting, and clutch play were exciting to watch. Streaks, momentum, hot hands, and clutch performance are concepts that researchers have studied not only in basketball, but also in financial markets.

Image generated by Grok With the FIFA World Cup starting on Thursday at Azteca Stadium in Mexico City, it is worth asking what lessons investors can draw from the world’s most popular sport. Three of the last eight World Cup finals have been decided by kicks from the penalty mark.* One of those occurred twenty years ago in Berlin. Italy beat France on spot kicks. In the seventh minute of the game, Zinedine Zidane scored an audacious penalty kick that drew inspiration from t

OpenAI recently announced that one of its models had disproved the “Erdős Unit Distance Conjecture,” a challenge that has stumped the world’s best mathematicians since 1946. Lateral thinking made the difference, an idea with direct application for investors. I will leave discussion of the 125-page proof to others. Ben Cohen's article in The Wall Street Journal does an excellent job of summarizing the topic. The gist of it is the search for the optimal latticework of dots, or

“Higher oil prices are driving inflation.” For many investors, this feels self-evident. Consumers spend a meaningful share of disposable income on gasoline. Nearly every physical good requires transportation by truck, rail, ship, or air. Many services, like travel, have fuel as a direct expense. Energy costs are embedded throughout the economy. Oil shocks may explain temporary changes in headline CPI. Persistent inflation regimes are a different question. The evidence l

Photo of my last trip to the gas station “Why are stocks hitting all-time highs when oil prices are above $100, consumer sentiment is at record lows, and geopolitical headlines look scary?” This is the question I have been asked more than any other in recent weeks. The answer: Because markets are forward-looking. Stocks are priced based on long-term future cash flows. A temporary spike in oil prices matters less to intrinsic value than some investors assume. Markets care mo

May 9, 2026 What do the Great Hanoi Rat Massacre of 1902 and MLB’s new ABS challenge system have in common? Both show how incentives can lead to unintended consequences. In 1902, French colonial authorities in Hanoi offered a bounty of one cent for every tail from a dead rat to control the city’s growing rat population. The program appeared to be successful with daily tails peaking at 20,000. Eventually, officials noticed many tail-less rats throughout the city. It turned o

May 4, 2026 "If I had a magic wand and could eliminate one bias, it would be overconfidence." ~ Daniel Kahneman (1934–2024) I asked AI to tell me why I was wrong about a stock I liked. It did. Most investors use AI to efficiently gather information in support of a thesis. The better investors use it to blow holes in it. I now use AI as my designated bear. I explicitly ask it for the strongest arguments against my own ideas. Some asset managers are already moving in this dir

Quarterly Investment Commentary | April 2026 "War is long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror." Anon. · WWI era, c. 1914 The Quarter the Playbook Got Shredded Markets, like war, are mostly boring … until they aren't. The first quarter of 2026 was supposed to be uneventful: earnings solid, rates drifting lower, AI humming along. Then, in four weeks, the Supreme Court struck down tariff authority under IEEPA, the U.S. and Israel conducted strikes ki

February 6, 2025 Three days from now, the Kansas City Chiefs will attempt to become the first team in NFL history to “three-peat” by winning Super Bowl LIX against the Philadelphia Eagles. The term three-peat was first coined by Los Angeles Lakers Head Coach Pat Riley in 1989 when the team was attempting to win their third consecutive title. He went as far as trademarking the term and charging royalty fees for its use. Three-peats are rare in all professional sports leagues