Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Oct 4th, 2026
"Autumn carries more gold in its pocket than all the other seasons"--Jim Bishop
"Ironically, AI is creating an absurd conundrum. If it creates significant revenue, that would mean mass layoffs. If AI does not create significant revenue, there is going to be a large slow down in Chip/AI Data Center spending as the Return on Invested Capital isn’t showing up.
Air Pocket: Once again, we’re extremely bullish on the long-term future of AI/Tech. That said, every single industry has air pockets and times where expectations far exceed reality. We don’t really see a way out of this one since you’re either going to hit the air pocket, create a lot of unemployment or see rapid slow down in debt based spending.
As you can see from that, there is no real ideal scenario built in.
Most Likely Case? Spending slows due to much higher debt terms, capital stack becomes a real conversation for the first time in mega cap history, live through a drawdown/airpocket and wait for AI to deliver some real use case and we go back to building.
How long this process takes is any guess, if you want the standard technology air-pocket it’s probably ~3 years before hype comes back."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/oil-and-fed-ai-debt-and-general-investing
2."What happens next may not be decided by Barron or any of the entrepreneurs who spent a decade trying to convince the world the ocean floor was worth developing. Rio Tinto, Glencore, and BHP — the companies with the capital and operational scale to run deep-sea mining at volume — have watched from a careful distance. If the executive orders succeed in validating the legal framework and de-risking the first commercial licenses, the likely outcome is that major industrial players absorb or displace the startups that proved the concept.
Who extracts these minerals, and under what legal framework, will determine more about the next century than most of the decisions being made in Washington right now. A CCZ developed under American legal frameworks produces a different world than one developed under Chinese state direction, with output flowing into Chinese refineries, Chinese battery factories, and Chinese defense supply chains.
The floor of the Pacific is the last great untapped resource extraction prize on Earth. Gerard Barron had to carry a rock to the Oval Office to make that case. China will be mining the sea floor next to Japan’s continental shelf later this year."
https://arenamag.com/articles/treasure-hunting
3.A quick dose of Peter Zeihan's latest geopolitical thinking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aOnMVrhTO0
4."Oil explains part of the outperformance but the real rotation from Tech went into industrials. It also lines up with the mandate. You can argue that industrials are “technology in heavy machinery form”. Much easier spin vs. saying you invested into natural gas and oil.
Major holdings here are: Caterpillar, GE Vernova, GE Aerospace, RTX, Eaton and Boeing. In fact, we’d argue that the Space related sell off probably went a bit into here.
This means? The same people who sold in June (the tech stuff) believe Industrials are the best place to park money."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/mega-cap-tech-sell-off-means-money
5."We certainly think it’s going to be a long-term secular shift. The world has changed. Regardless of which administration is in power in the US, what’s happened in the last year or two has been a real wake-up call for Europe. And it’s not just political — there’s a recognition that Europe has begun to fall behind in some really critical areas. The AI boom is another example, where so much of the innovation has been centered in the Bay Area. What’s happened geopolitically has created an urgency that I hope is going to persist for some time.
I also think this is a category where Europe really has a right to win. So many of the European resilience businesses that have gotten started here have unique capabilities that give them that right to win at home — and I don’t see comparable US competitors necessarily coming here to unseat them.
Another factor is the recognition of just how much dependence there is on the US. We see it everywhere — from our payment systems, where we depend on the Visa, American Express, and Mastercard networks, to certain areas of defense tech, which will always be the case. But there are subsectors where Europe really should build out its own capabilities. Also in space: space sovereignty is increasingly critical for national security, and there’s been a recognition that it’s an integral part of defense tech as well.
So the hope is that it will be long-term secular. And I’m hopeful that a lot of the innovations we’re seeing today around defense — and in some cases offensive capabilities — will be grounded in technologies with dual-use potential, and that much like we saw in the US in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, they’ll spawn additional technologies used in commercial industry rather than just defense."
https://defensebrief.substack.com/p/going-all-in-on-european-defense
6.The mega bull case for AI and American innovation. I hope he is right.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agIvg0DkW50
7."Meanwhile, every month of debasement makes the treadmill faster. The maths only moves in one direction. This is the part people miss, a dying system doesn’t loosen its grip as it fails, it only tightens. It reaches for capital controls, for surveillance, for your savings, for your movement. The exit is open today precisely because the end hasn’t fully arrived. That is exactly why waiting is the most expensive decision you can make.
You don’t need to do everything at once. You need to redirect the flow. The next time extra income lands in your account, a bonus, a client payment, a windfall, run it through one filter before the consumer programming kicks in:
Does this purchase make me more free, or more comfortable in the cage?
Skills before status. Land before luxury. Optionality before ornaments. Community before consumption.
Make every spare dollar/euro/pound a brick in the wall of your exit, not theirs."
https://substack.com/@theparallelsovereign/p-205732892
8."As complex systems won’t survive the competence crisis, high trust societies continue to corrode in the era of mass diversity.
That is, the social fabric of high trust societies is being profoundly transformed as reciprocal bonds and once unspoken norms are trampled upon and begin to retreat from civic life.
The cause?
The cultural hostility and wide-ranging criminality arising from the embrace of mass migration and balkanising ethnic communities, a result of the governing political ideology of ‘diversity-at-any-cost’. This is a disastrous and rapidly escalating process, which we argue is best characterised and most accurately understood as hostile diversity.
Said in the most basic terms: people make the place.
Take the preparedness challenge: do just one action listed here every week for a year. Start wherever you are, using whatever you have. But do start. Preparedness compounds."
https://metropolized.substack.com/p/foundational-preparedness
9.AI & Bitcoin is the pair trade. I always enjoy Pomp's takes on investing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZRvfZGpQZ4
10.Menlo has been crushing in the AI age. The venture world has changed. Multistage funds are dominating in this new world. Very few clear swim lanes now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIYWWDUKmUI&t=5s
11.Stratfor alumni reunion and discussion on geopolitics. Lots of interesting takes here. These guys are among the top geopolitical analysts on the market right now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9zH8CJTPS8
12."So it’s not that you can’t raise a round of funding in the summer. But it is logistically harder:
It takes longer to schedule initial meetings with a VC
The time between meetings increases
The amount of time needed for a VC to complete their diligence takes longer (as analysts and others at the firm also take vacations)
The result is that running a fundraising process in the summer takes longer than at other times of the year. Not only that, if you are able to successfully raise a round, you will very likely end up with a lower valuation due to the lack of competition."
https://chrisneumann.com/archives/should-i-fundraise-in-the-summer
13.Plenty of great topics is tech business here. I always get great insights from these guys. Agree that Tech PE is done IMHO.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oWgE5ph9r4
14."Anyway, that’s the financial story. It’s a very old story — financial leverage plus unsophisticated new buyers plus a strong fundamental story often produces a bubble and crash, or exacerbates one that was already in progress. No wonder Korea is now moving — a little belatedly — to restrict leveraged ETFs.
But while financial factors affected the timing and the size of the stock price boom and bust, the fundamental story is more interesting. Fears of an AI bubble are quietly creeping back."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/why-did-south-korean-stocks-just
15. Love these Q&A sessions with Tim Ferriss. Lots of tips and good learnings to make your life healthier and better.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRjgAC-EcsY
16. Jordi Visser is one of the best global macro dudes around. True bona fides but also has strong experience in tech too. A rare combo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yg1YzZU9X8
17."We’re not sure what game political leaders in Washington, London, and Brussels are playing as they navigate World War III, but nobody would confuse it with chess. On their board, opponents not only don’t matter, but how they might respond to a move seems a foreign thought, brushed aside as the stuff of so-called “panicans.”
For a crushing example, consider what could possibly have been going through the minds of European Union (EU) leaders when they decided to include 14 large Chinese businesses in the bloc’s 21st sanctions package against Russia, ostensibly for providing dual-use goods that feed Moscow’s war machine. It didn’t take long for Beijing to hit back where it hurts."
https://newsletter.doomberg.com/p/geopolitical-checkers
18."You don’t build hard things without the right blend of mission alignment, seriousness, and fun."
https://www.alsoblogposts.com/p/building-the-thing-you-promised
19. "The pitch of the book, which you can tell from the title and first chapter, is to buy real things. Things that can’t go to zero. Things that humans must have to live. Things that are not part of a speculative boom.
It all makes sense, but it requires you to go against the herd. That’s something that most people don’t have the stomach for… Unless they are forced to."
https://www.codyshirk.com/p/the-next-new-thing-is-things
20."Mode push comes from Formula 1. There are moments you push, moments you preserve your tires, moments you cruise so you don’t burn yourself out. Push is the gear the pit wall calls for over the radio. The driver holds it for a few laps and backs off.
It’s a gear most people never reach in their lives. They push when something forces them to, then settle back down. Inertia.
For a long time I thought the difference was discipline. Some people force themselves and some don’t. I don’t believe that anymore. The people in that gear aren’t forcing anything. They just can’t sit still. They’re constantly tinkering, constantly making something, and nobody is making them.
My industry thinks it knows why. VCs secretly want to back founders with a troubled childhood or a chip on their shoulder. The pain supposedly keeps the foot on the gas.
The first people I ever saw in that gear had none of that."
https://writing.nikunjk.com/p/mode-push
21."Americans love a self-made success story. The operative word, however, is … story. In his book Born on Third Base, Chuck Collins analyzed the economic backgrounds of the people on the Forbes 400 list. He concluded that, while media accounts labeled 70% of the wealthiest Americans “self-made,” in reality only about one-third came from a poor, working-class, or middle-class family with no significant family capital. Two-thirds of the people on the list stood on the shoulders of a giant named generational wealth."
https://www.profgmedia.com/p/shoulders-of-giants
22.Learning geopolitics and the “why geopolitics is critical” in this changing world. Learning from Stratfor alumni.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKXPHniBj2k
23.Super helpful discussion on how hedge funds actually work. Prestigious but awful business to be in.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJdgh9eEZvw&t=890s
24."The ultimate status symbol in 2026 is not a busy calendar; it is an entirely blank one. It is the ability to show a dashboard that cleared $50,000 in a week alongside a screen time report that shows zero hours spent in the backend. It signals that your technical leverage is so absolute, your infrastructure is so flawless, that your presence is mathematically irrelevant to your cash flow. While others are “hustling,” the Sovereign is Living."
https://luxlifestylelab.substack.com/p/the-hustle-delusion
25.The strong case still for Bitcoin. Big fan of Jordi Visser.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03S1ECNLBnA
26."The middle powers are caught in a contradiction. Their whole predicament comes from the fact that America is fading in power while China is gaining clout. But they can’t make the mental adjustment to take this into account. It’s hard to stand up to America, and perhaps equally hard to see China as anything more than a giant mall and ATM.
I wonder if the Europeans even thought to themselves…hmm…if China can go toe to toe with Trump after Liberation Day but we just got whacked with tariffs, what does that say about our ability to declare trade war on China?
I bet they didn’t think like that, because they are still Magic Pudding-brained. They remember when China was passive or impotent and they can rely on America for security basically for free. They had the best of both worlds. And now they find themselves the uncomfortable filling in a superpower sandwich."
https://taipology.substack.com/p/the-disappearing-magic-pudding-for
27."I would claim that what distinguishes the Mittelstand falls broadly into three causally related categories: (1) ownership structure, (2) values-based culture, and (3) industrial significance.
Within the Mittelstand, this structural separation is eliminated because shareholders and managers are often one and the same. Owners commonly remain involved in the day-to-day operations of the business as multi-generational managers. Decision-making is therefore not dictated by earnings reports or swayed by external market pressure, but exercised prudently by families that think in decades.
This mindset profoundly influences the internal character of the firm. Gantzel posited that the Mittelstand is driven not solely by bottom-line performance, but by fundamental values such as solidarity, stewardship, and trust. A proverb shared with me by one Geschäftsführer sums this up well: “Kultur ist der gute Geist im Haus”—roughly, “Culture is the guiding spirit of the house.”
Together, these principles underpin the extraordinary significance these companies have attained within the German economy. The Mittelstand accounts for roughly 55% of Germany’s GDP and 70% of its exports, with many firms generating revenues ranging from hundreds of millions to billions of euros. Their economic footprint is so substantial that, on a one-to-one basis, Mittelstand firms employ roughly twice as many people as Germany’s publicly listed, non-family corporations; when taken as a whole, they employ roughly five times as many.”
https://substack.com/home/post/p-194158756
28.The future of autonomous ground warfare.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LJyFyZrSls&list=PLaNJvIROC31rDHAkEIi0lg9XojhMVuDdy
29. Vertical Autonomy Group 3 drones.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9E5YaPvxpJI&list=PLaNJvIROC31rDHAkEIi0lg9XojhMVuDdy&index=3
30."And for Russians things are only going to get worse - a lot worse - as Ukraine not only has the innovation advantage in this war, but also now has unlimited European finance behind it and deepening integration into Europe’s now growing/fast track military industrial complex. This will give Ukraine scale. Russia’s $2 trillion, and declining economy, where finance is in short supply just cannot compete with Ukraine, backstopped by Europe’s $25 trillion economy even with Trump’s USA, literally MIA. And why has Europe now got Ukraine’s back? Because they realise Russia is the greatest existential threat to their survival, the U.S. cannot be trusted to support them, and Ukraine’s drones and defence tech are the key to moon shooting their own defence to be able to stop Russia.
It is not longer relevant for Ukraine whether they join NATO, NATO is not key to Ukraine’s defence, but Ukraine is now key to Europe’s defence. Ukraine has the leverage through its defence tech lead and advantage. Hence European countries are now queuing up to sign defence tech deals with Ukraine, to leverage up and lock in Ukrainian expertise for their own future defence. And they know that Russia is coming for them, unless Ukraine is given the tools - cash and scale - to defeat Russia. And it will.
The writing is on the wall for Russia. The recent imposition of social media bans in Russia means the authorities know a social and political exclusion is looming on the back of the looming defeat in war and a worsening economic situation."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/russia-the-war-is-coming-home-to
31.Investing and operating legend. Micky Malka of Ribbit Capital. Playing the infinite game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjLhd1WZwTE
32.The man behind the growth of one of the big 5 Mega VC Funds (aka Multistage VC) and how scaling works in this new environment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4PQ0GkkP7o
33.A splash of much needed skepticism and reality on the geopolitical news in the world. It is not looking good for the West if we don't get our act together soon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYm60V_yXyg
34.Some of the best global macro from an international investor. Learned alot about non-US & Asian stock markets here. Beware Bondzilla from Japan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LskbCCyshdU
35."Be curious — sit at the stall, ask the real question, be interested in the human in front of you. Be present — bring all of yourself to the table you’re already at, and remember the evening because you were in it. Be kind to the people who can do nothing for you — because that, more than anything you’ll ever own, is what people feel and what they keep.
Bourdain didn’t have a richer life than you because he had a television show. He had a richer life than you because he was more curious, more present, and more decent to strangers than you’re currently being — and every one of those is available to you this week, at the caff on the corner, with the people already in your life.
You won’t be remembered for a single thing you own. You’ll be remembered for the tables you sat at and how awake you were while you sat there.
So go and sit at one. Properly. Tonight."
https://lifemaxxers.substack.com/p/lifemaxxing-icons-anthony-bourdain
36."Contrary to popular myths, the US only became a world leader after it unified our identity and slowed immigration to a crawl. Now, as that identity fractures and immigration hits unprecedented levels, the only thing preventing chaos and radicalism is the slowly degrading legacy of norms, trust, and cohesion of that Century."
https://substack.com/inbox/post/209516614
37."What unmanned systems can provide is acceptable losses and speed, and thereby solve the problems of ‘concentration of forces’ and ‘surprise’ on a highly visible battlefield. Concentration is not a problem if you are willing to sacrifice machines. Surprise on the other hand can only be achieved when you use these new technologies decisively, rather than deploying them piecemeal."
https://democura.substack.com/p/achtung-drones
38."The Spartans went on to subjugate Athens during the Peloponnesian War, but their hegemony was not to last. Sparta began a rapid decline after the city-state of Thebes inflicted a shocking defeat at the Battle of Leuctra.
But how did Sparta emerge into the power that it did? A curious group of geographical, social and political circumstances created the city-state’s legendary military culture and propelled its expansion around the 6th century B.C.
But its explosive growth—and oligarchical society—contained a hidden demographic time bomb which would contribute to its later eclipse.”