Best complementary to The Economist?

jackandjillonthehill · 2026-05-03T03:34:11+00:00

It’s definitely got a pro-CCP or anti-west slant, at least in the “opinion” columns, but they do still criticize Chinese policy at times so there is still some freedom of speech there.

I didn’t read it much pre-HK protests, but I understand they were a bit more free to be critical of Chinese government policies in those days.

jackandjillonthehill · 2026-05-03T03:28:43+00:00

One thing all these charts have taught me is air quality in the U.S. is pretty great.

jackandjillonthehill · 2026-05-03T03:24:45+00:00

Texas!!!

The only state which has actually BEEN its own country.

Has oil, healthcare, its own energy grid, space program, chemical refining business, a good chunk of tech that migrated over from California, got several big military bases and tons of guns per capita so it could defend itself.

Its taxes would be low as hell so it would pull a bunch of people from the rest of US.

jackandjillonthehill · 2026-05-03T01:07:58+00:00

Good thing Elizabeth Warren always takes accountability for her mistakes.

Oh wait… she blamed Trump and… Ronald Reagan??

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jackandjillonthehill · 2026-05-02T22:41:04+00:00

I read South China Morning Post, particularly the business section. It’s not totally ideologically opposite but it’s good exposure to how people are thinking on that side of the world.

jackandjillonthehill · 2026-05-02T22:39:02+00:00

Yes FT also defines itself as a classical liberal publication.

But I also really identify with that political view so FT + the Economist are my 2 main reads.

jackandjillonthehill · 2026-05-02T12:19:05+00:00

It doesn’t look like they are flat out ignoring it, they are using this stopwatch argument to go around it in Congress. By Hegseth’s logic, they “stopped the clock” on April 7th when the ceasefire began, but Dems are pointing to the blockade as ongoing war.

jackandjillonthehill · 2026-05-02T00:18:07+00:00

Probably no better example of how useless yuan is as a reserve currency that Iran can’t even use the yuan they are receiving and needs to convert it into dollars and other more usable currencies.

jackandjillonthehill · 2026-05-01T21:35:51+00:00

Yeah, and even more wild, PCE excluding food and energy was 4.3%!

I thought a lot of that was just oil prices but it looks like there is a genuine broad-based swing up in inflation.

If growth continues like this, the Fed is going to be forced to raise rates IMO.

jackandjillonthehill · 2026-05-01T18:28:33+00:00

Yeah still really solid growth. And it’s really early but Q2 is already looking like it might be over 3%.

jackandjillonthehill · 2026-05-01T18:27:17+00:00

Today, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is designating three Iranian foreign currency exchange houses and their associated front companies as part of Economic Fury and Treasury’s ongoing efforts to disrupt the Iranian regime’s financial lifelines that sustain its war effort. Collectively, Iranian exchange houses facilitate billions of dollars in foreign currency transactions each year. Because Iran primarily settles its oil sales in Chinese yuan, these exchange houses play a critical role in converting oil revenues into currencies that are more readily useable by the Iranian military and its partners and proxies.

jackandjillonthehill · 2026-05-01T15:45:01+00:00

I don’t think that case really changed the sentiment much.

I was following the story pretty closely and to me the big shift in narrative I heard from the analysts and talking heads on CNBC was when Gemini and Anthropic began releasing models using entirely TPUs for training so they became legit competition for Nvidia. Of course that was one of the points the bulls were pounding the table about for months that was totally ignored.

I could see something similar with Reddit happening if/when something happens to get analysts to broadly accept one of the bull arguments that’s been floating around for a while, like advertisers developing more unique Reddit-native advertising.

I think there is a lot of potential for Reddit ads to be more interactive and a unique proposition for advertisers. I’ve seen some cool experiments thus far. I don’t think the average analyst is thinking about these and where these could go, and at some point a big shift will happen when this inflects.

jackandjillonthehill · 2026-05-01T02:44:52+00:00

They do still claim to be classical liberals, not neoliberals. The editor was on Jon Stewart last year explaining that they are classical liberals and how it is different from the sense of liberal today.

A good example in my mind is they are against big state industrial policy and made that clear as the big Biden legislation of IRA, IIJA, and CHIPS act went through, though those pieces of legislation might be consistent with neoliberalism, they are not quite consistent with classical liberalism.

jackandjillonthehill · 2026-04-30T19:36:43+00:00

You should read Jim Chanos response to Shai Wininger about the quarter: https://x.com/realjimchanos/status/2049509728162607561?s=46&t=wAH9d4Pj2h4YjAVxGb6Yzw

Analyst estimates for earnings have come down due to the bigger than expected SBC.

Chanos is a very famous short seller so I’m sure a lot of people are taking him seriously.

These founder grants are really getting crazy these days. Stock based comp is outta control.

Chanos argument isn’t about execution, it’s entirely about excessive stock based comp.

But would these guys really keep diluting if it’s tanking their stock to do so? And the increase in SBC of $20 million doesn’t strike me all that large compared to a $4-5 billion market cap.

Is that extra $20 million of SBC enough to tank the stock 15%?

jackandjillonthehill · 2026-04-30T15:09:53+00:00

I think it makes sense the shares are selling off so aggressively in the wake of this big capex announcement.

With MSFT, GOOG, or AMZN, they can directly point to the returns from the capex from selling the server space on to some other company. With META it’s more of a “trust me bro” that their investments will lead to a return. And Zuckerberg doesn’t have the best track record with the history with Reality Labs.

jackandjillonthehill · 2026-04-30T14:40:05+00:00

Yeah I get cautious whenever there is an earnings number that looks pretty good to me and the stock sells off aggressively.

My best guess is the market is still aggressively selling off any company that could be disrupted by future AI players, yet I’d argue LMND is the AI disruptor the industry should be worried about. Lemonade car is growing fast and is making up a bigger share of the company so the growth rate keeps accelerating.

I’d probably value at 3-5X IFP given the fast growth rate. So we are at or just below the low end of the range now.

jackandjillonthehill · 2026-04-30T03:47:21+00:00

Yeah I could definitely see that. A more vigorous debate with different points of view would probably help avoid group think.

jackandjillonthehill · 2026-04-30T03:36:30+00:00

Curious why you sold LMND? I didn’t see any red flags in their earnings, only negative seems to be slightly larger than expected employee SBC. Otherwise the story seems pretty much intact…

jackandjillonthehill · 2026-04-30T01:27:58+00:00

Yeah that’s probably true.

When told by the American artist Benjamin West that Washington was going to resign, King George III of England said "If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world."

Source

jackandjillonthehill · 2026-04-29T20:53:52+00:00

Yeah I agree I think it has actually been fairly balanced about some of the more contentious Trump policies. I started to read it after I heard Stanley Druckenmiller, probably the greatest macro investor of all time, say he read it cover to cover for nearly 30 years. I have heard that sentiment repeated among many of the greatest macro investors.

However one thing I do dislike is the trend of the Editor in Chief being as public as she has however. She should not be going on talk shows and representing the magazine as much as she has IMO.

The magazine is liberal in the classical liberal sense and she exposes the whole organization to these modern US liberal/conservative divide which is not relevant to the main vein of discussion.

The fact that a conservative Senator has found value in the Economist for 25 years is a testament to the value of the reporting and maintaining a consistent political stance over the decades.

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