The forces. Not the headlines.
Analysis and commentary on markets, companies, and the forces that move them.
Base Rate Thinking in Investment Decisions
The single most useful analytical shortcut in investment analysis is asking what the base rate for a particular outcome has been historically. Most retail commentary systematically neglects base rates in favour of specific-situation reasoning.
Fiscal Dominance and the Limits of Central Banks
An educational look at fiscal dominance: when government debt levels begin to constrain what a central bank can actually do.
Brazil: Commodity Cycle and Real Yields
Brazilian equity performance is dominated by two overlapping cycles — commodities and real interest rates. Understanding both is essential to reading the market coherently.
Options Positioning Check, Mid-January 2027
A descriptive look at put-call ratios, volatility skew, and VIX term structure to see what the options market is pricing right now.
Oil, OPEC, and the Geopolitics of Energy
OPEC's ability to influence global oil pricing has shifted meaningfully with the rise of US shale production. Understanding the current dynamics is essential to reading energy markets in any macro context.
Volatility Regime Read: Mid-October 2026
The volatility environment describes the character of the market as much as any single price level does. Reading the current regime — implied, realised, and the gap between them — provides context for every other analytical frame.
Telecom: The Infrastructure Oligopoly Framework
An analytical framework for telecommunications: its subsectors, capital intensity, and the oligopoly dynamics that shape long-term returns.
The Influencer Trap: Attention as a Business Model
Investment content creators on social media platforms operate under specific economic incentives that produce content optimised for engagement rather than for investor outcomes. Understanding the structural mechanism is worth attention regardless of whether you follow any specific creator.
The Equal-Weight S&P 500 ETF Explained
A look at how equal-weighting the S&P 500 changes sector exposure, rebalancing mechanics, and historical return patterns versus the standard index.
Uranium and Nuclear: A Structural Bull Case
The nuclear power industry has been through a decade of stagnation. Multiple forces are converging to produce a structural revival — understanding the specific mechanisms is essential to any coherent view of the sector.
Alphabet: The Search Moat and Its Cracks
Alphabet's Google search franchise has been one of the most dominant business positions in modern technology. The specific ways that dominance is being tested — regulatory, competitive, and technological — deserve careful attention.
Canada's Market: Banks, Energy, and Concentration
An examination of how Canada's equity market concentrates around financials and energy, and what that structure means for global portfolio construction.
Holding Period: The Under-Discussed Alpha
The single most important predictor of retail investor returns is not stock selection or timing — it is average holding period. Longer holding periods reliably produce better outcomes for reasons that are widely observed but rarely internalised.
Mexico: Nearshoring and the Manufacturing Rebound
Mexico's manufacturing sector has been transformed by the nearshoring trend — the reorganisation of global supply chains toward geographic proximity to end markets. Understanding the pattern is essential to any coherent view of Latin American markets.
Small-Caps vs Large-Caps: A Relative Strength Read
A descriptive look at how the Russell 2000 and S&P 500 have diverged, and what that ratio has historically reflected about rates, breadth, and risk appetite.
The Dollar's Reserve Status: Overstated Threats
Predictions of imminent dollar reserve currency displacement have been persistent for decades. The empirical evidence suggests the transition is much slower and more constrained than most predictions imply.
Overconfidence After a Winning Streak
A string of successful decisions quietly recalibrates an investor's sense of skill, often right before conditions shift against that same approach.
Global Rotation Snapshot: Early October 2026
The relative strength between US, European, and emerging market equities describes which region is currently attracting marginal flows. Reading the pattern is one of the more useful quarterly disciplines.
Aerospace and Defense: Mapping the Sector
A framework for understanding aerospace and defense investing through subsectors, backlog economics, and the forces that separate durable franchises from cyclical suppliers.
The Newsletter Industry: What Sells vs What Works
The financial newsletter industry has grown enormously in the past decade. The disconnect between what sells subscriptions and what actually helps investors is worth understanding regardless of whether you subscribe.
Energy Transition: Renewables, Nuclear, Grid
The global energy transition is one of the largest capital deployment cycles in modern industrial history. Understanding the three components — renewables, nuclear, and grid infrastructure — is essential to any coherent view of the sector.
Nvidia: Beyond the AI Narrative
Nvidia is the central AI compute story of the current cycle, but the company's other businesses and the specific structure of its dominant position deserve more attention than they typically receive.
Tax-Loss Harvesting: The One Free Lunch
Tax-loss harvesting is the closest thing to a genuine free lunch in retail investing. Understanding the mechanic and its practical limits produces meaningful after-tax return improvements over long horizons.
Inflation Expectations: The Anchor That Can Drift
A look at how inflation expectations form, why central banks treat them as a policy lever, and what happens when the anchor slips.