The weekend is here! Pour yourself a mug of Colombia Tolima Los Brasiles Peaberry Organic coffee, grab a seat by the fire, and get ready for our longer-form weekend reads:
• The LA Fires Burned Thousands of Homes. The Data Show Insurers Saw the Risks Coming. The industry seemed to have recognized the financial risks and pulled out before disaster struck. (Barron’s)
• Everyone’s Rattled by the Rise of DeepSeek—Except Nvidia, Which Enabled It: Nvidia’s stock swooned and regulators are restricting its chip sales, but the American AI giant sees a long game in China. (Wall Street Journal) see also DeepSeek: Links and Memes (So Many Memes) How a Chinese AI lab spun out of a hedge fund shook up the entire tech industry. (SatPost by Trung Phan)
• What You Should Do About the Stock Market’s Giant Problem: More than half the S&P 500’s return last year came from just seven companies. That’s a concern—but not for the reason that market commentators claim. (Wall Street Journal)
• Going Beyond Buffett: From Stagnant Stoats to Harebrained Ideas: But the stark fact is: Charlie Munger has already passed away and Warren is ninety four. Who is Warren passing the baton to? A thousand puff pieces have been written about who might take on the mantle of his investment performance, but far fewer on who is the heir to his wisdom. (The Leading Edge)
• Cattle Gallstones, Worth Twice as Much as Gold, Drive a Global Smuggling Frenzy: A prized ingredient in China’s $60 billion traditional medicine industry, gallstones have become the must-have item among underground traders and armed robbers in Brazil. (Wall Street Journal)
• Step inside the secret lab where America tests its nukes: The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration, the civilian agency that maintains America’s nuclear stockpile, allowed a small group of journalists to tour a secretive nuclear weapons laboratory beneath the Nevada desert this winter. The effort was part of outgoing NNSA administrator Jill Hruby’s effort to display more transparency about what the U.S. is doing with its nuclear stockpile and why. (NPR)
• What’s Up With All the Sex Parties? “What we do, you can’t do onstage at Lincoln Center.” (The Atlantic)
• Living In A Lucid Dream: Recent research on lucid dreams suggests that consciousness exists along a spectrum between sleep and waking, between hallucination and revelation, between dreamworlds and reality. (NOEMA)
• How My Trip to Quit Sugar Became a Journey Into Hell: For my whole life, I’ve been a hard-core sweets junkie. Could a spa help me quit in a week? (New York Times)
• 50 Saturday Night Live Cast Members Recall Their Most Unbelievable, Thrilling, and Embarrassing Guest-Host Encounters Tales of celebrity eye contact, disrespect, approachability, and mistaken identity, featuring Kurt Cobain, Sarah Palin, Beyoncé, Mick Jagger, Kendrick Lamar and more. (GQ)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business this week with Sahil Bloom, entrepreneur and content creator. His twice weekly newsletter, The Curiosity Chronicles, reaches a million people. He is Managing Partner of SRB Ventures, a venture investment firm focusing on early stage start ups. His first book, “The 5 Types of Wealth: A Transformative Guide to Design Your Dream Life“ was published this week.
Electoral College Was Decided By Just 250k Voters In Three States
Source: 2025 Policy & Investment Outlook by Daniel Clifton, Strategas Securities
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