What we’re reading (11/11)
“Brokers And Bubbles” (Owen Lamont). “How can you tell if you’re in a speculative bubble? Well, bubbles are all about frenzied trading activity. And who benefits from frenzied trading activity? Brokers and other providers of trading services. Just as it’s profitable to sell picks and shovels during a gold rush, it’s profitable to sell trading services during a speculative bubble. Thus, when retail brokerages are extremely successful, that’s a clue that you may be in a bubble. Today, retail broker stocks are ripping. As shown in Figure 1, Robinhood is up more than 15x in the past two years, with Interactive Brokers up more than 3x. Both were added to the S&P 500 this year (Interactive Brokers in August and Robinhood in September).”
“Anthropic Is On Track To Turn A Profit Much Faster Than OpenAI” (Wall Street Journal). “The finances of Silicon Valley’s two largest artificial-intelligence startups show their diverging approaches to the AI boom, with Anthropic on a pace to turn a profit far more quickly than rival OpenAI, according to documents obtained by The Wall Street Journal. Anthropic, which has a growing number of business users because of the capabilities of its Claude chatbot in coding and other arenas, expects to break even for the first time in 2028, the documents show.”
“AI Fueled The Stock Market Rally. Earnings Are Now Giving It Staying Power.” (Yahoo! Finance). “After a year dominated by artificial intelligence headlines, Wall Street’s bull case is shifting toward something more fundamental to stocks: earnings power that’s beginning to broaden beyond Big Tech. Morgan Stanley, UBS, and other major firms are pointing to a clear throughline this earnings season: Profits are strong, margins are stabilizing, and growth, while still concentrated in AI-heavy tech, is beginning to spread.”
“SoftBank Just Sold Out Of Nvidia. Should You?” (CNBC). “Nvidia briefly tumbled nearly 4% Tuesday after the Japanese investment firm said it zeroed out its position in the AI chipmaker for $5.8 billion. That left investors wondering if SoftBank’s decision to exit the stock was a bad omen for Nvidia’s future stock performance, or if it was simply taking profits on a market leader.”
“The Roman Empire’s Entire Road Network Just Got Mapped, And It’s Mind-Blowing” (Gizmodo). “They say all roads lead to Rome—but exactly how many Roman roads were there? According to new research, potentially over 68,000 miles (over 110,000 kilometers) more than previously known. Meet Itiner-e, a new high-resolution digital dataset and map of the Roman Empire’s roads around 150 CE. A team of researchers used archaeological and historical records, topographic maps, and satellite imagery to create the behemoth, which charts 185,896 miles (299,171 km) of roads across almost 1,544,409 square miles (4,000,000 square km).”
