1. Small Cap Hits Record 960 Days Without Reaching All-Time Highs
DC Lite Blog R2K vs. ATHs. The Russell 2000 has now gone a record 960 days without reaching a new all-time high, surpassing the streak that followed the GFC.
DAILY CHARTBOOK
2. Only 1/3 of Stocks Outperforming Index
Jurrien Timmer
3. IPO Market Picking Up…Average Age of Firms 14 Years
Torsten Slok Apollo There are fewer public companies to invest in, and firms that decide to do an IPO are getting older and older. In 1999, the median age of IPOs was five years. In 2022, it was eight years, and today, the median age of IPOs has increased to 14 years, see chart below. The rise in the age of companies going public is not only a result of the Fed raising interest rates in 2022, but also the consequence of more companies wanting to stay private for longer to avoid the burdens of being public. Combined with the domination of passive investing, failure of active managers and high correlation in public markets, and high concentration in a few stocks, the reality is that there is no alpha left in public markets.
Apollo
4. Robinhood Going All-In on Tokenization
Crypto Advisor–Robinhood is also making a major push. At its Cannes event Robinhood Presents: To Catch a Token, the firm unveiled products targeting 400 million users across 30 EU and EEA countries, including stock and ETF tokens. These moves reflect a broader push to make investing simpler and more accessible on a global scale. https://thecryptoadvisor.substack.com/
StockCharts
5. Who Owns Bitcoin?
Crypto Advisor Blog Here’s the breakdown of who owns what:
Over the last year, gold has gained 45.9% while platinum and silver have rallied 47.9% and 46.1%, respectively. Their paths haven’t necessarily been identical, but they’ve ended up at the same place.
Bespoke
7. Stock Market Record Share of American Net-Worth
SherwoodNews
8. Open AI Projects $20B in Annualized Revenue
OpenAI Raises $8.3 billion, Projects $20 Billion in Annualized Revenue By Year-End By Sri Muppidi
OpenAI has secured $8.3 billion of new commitments from investors such as hedge funds Dragoneer, Altimeter Capital and D1 Capital Partners, exceeding its earlier goal of $7.5 billion, according to a person with knowledge of the fundraise, confirming earlier reporting from The Information about the round.
The fundraise comes as ChatGPT continues to anchor OpenAI’s business, which is generating $12 billion in annualized revenue, roughly doubling from the start of the year. OpenAI expects to hit $20 billion in annualized revenue by the end of the year, meaning it would be generating about $1.7 billion in revenue per month, according to the same person, up from practically no revenue three years earlier. The company has over 700 million ChatGPT users across both consumer and business customers.
The new capital is part of an unprecedented $40 billion funding round that values the ChatGPT maker at $260 billion before the investment. OpenAI received $10 billion of that amount in June, and the new commitments means that the $40 billion round will increase by about $1 billion. SoftBank, which is leading the fundraise, has committed to funding $22.5 billion of the round, provided that OpenAI successfully reorganizes its corporate structure this year or early next year.
Dragoneer committed $2.8 billion to OpenAI, and other investors in the round include existing shareholders Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Founders Fund, Fidelity Management, Tiger Global Management and Thrive Capital. New OpenAI investors in the round include TPG, T. Rowe Price and Blackstone.
1. Largest Top 10 U.S. Stocks vs. World-Prof G Markets
Prof G Markets
2. Private Equity/Alts Charts from Michael Batnick
The Irrelevant Investor
3. RobinHood +197% 2025…New Highs
Robinhood Markets Inc
4. Election Setback in Argentina…ETF Pulls Back to April Lows
50day thru 200day to downside.
StockCharts
5. 10-Year Treasury Chart Approaching 4% Levels
Barchart
6. Housing Needs Lower Rates….Three Years of Pending Sales Index Down
Wolf Street-Demand in the housing market sagged further: Pending home sales dropped by 0.4% in July from June, seasonally adjusted. They have now spent nearly three years crawling along, or setting, record lows, according to data going back to 2010 from the National Association of Realtors today (historic data in the chart via YCharts):
Buyers Strike
7. U.S. Most Important Ally vs. Threat
People in Many Countries Consider the U.S. an Important Ally; Others See It as a Top Threat
The Big Picture Blog
8. 90% of Americans Largest Asset is Social Security
Americans’ Most Valuable Asset Isn’t Stocks or a Home. It’s Social Security.
For the vast majority of people, the stream of promised retirement checks is worth more than anything else, our columnist says. By Jeff Sommer
Jeff Sommer writes Strategies, a weekly column on markets, finance and the economy. Social Security is the most valuable thing most Americans have.
I don’t mean this in an abstract sense. In purely financial terms, the Social Security check that you are getting now or have a right to receive when you are older is your most valuable financial asset.
That statement is true for nearly everyone except those in the top 10 percent of the wealth distribution in the United States. And for people right in the middle, Social Security amounts to roughly one-third of their total wealth, on average, according to an eye-opening study by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
For poorer people, Social Security isn’t just the most valuable asset they’ve got. It can be absolutely crucial — the difference in old age between destitution and a bare modicum of survival. And it helps people with disabilities and children as well as older Americans. Social Security lifts more people out of poverty than any government program, according to a separate study by an independent research institute the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Anything this important ought to receive far more attention and respect than it has been getting. Instead, Social Security is a neglected responsibility of the political classes — a precious 90-year-old legacy that has been allowed to fall into disrepair.
Consider this: If Social Security is your most valuable asset — and it is, for nine out of 10 households, according to the budget office — protecting Social Security ranks among the most important things that will help you financially.
Welcome to Young Money! If you’re new here, you can join the tens of thousands of subscribers receiving my essays each week by adding your email below.
A quick PSA: 1) several of you have sent me some very cool leads / intros of different creators / entrepreneurs to chat with, thank you I love you all. 2) I do read all of my email replies and try to respond to as many as I can, so if you have someone you think I should meet, def shoot me a note!
Write it down, write it down, write it down.
As a “non-technical” San Francisco resident (a slur used by software engineers and programmers to describe normies like me who weren’t building React apps pre-ChatGPT) during an AI boom, I think it’s important to ramp up my knowledge base on how all of these AI tools work under the hood. This would, of course, make me better at my job as an investor, but it’s also a hubris thing. It annoys me when I’m interested in a thing, or I use it a lot, and I don’t really know it works.
My method for speed-running this knowledge acquisition has increasingly been to build things using the technology that I’m interested in. Pre-AI coding assistants, this would have been difficult to do without a programming background, but now with Claude Code / Cursor / ChatGPT, you really can “just do things.”
My most recent interest was learning how to fine-tune a model. You hear about “fine-tuning” and “training” models all the time, but what does that actually mean? Like, what are you, the “fine-tuner,” actually doing? So I decided to fine-tune one of OpenAI’s models by training it on all of my travel blogs to create an chat model that can generate “Jack Raines-style travel blogs” on a whim.
The whole process only took a few hours, and after taking it live, I took another hour or two to document the whole process for future record.
I’ve always been a big proponent of “writing is thinking,” and I have always thought process documentation was important, which shouldn’t be a surprise considering that I am a writer. But I think the importance of slowing down and writing out your thoughts and processes has increased 10x now that AI tools are so prevalent.
Why?
Because knowledge acquisition used to be an automatic consequence of doing or researching anything, but thanks to AI, the end result the the knowledge formerly created by reaching the end result have become decoupled. Writing is the forcing function to ensure that you actually retain knowledge from AI-enabled projects.
Pre-ChatGPT, it was pretty difficult to reach your end result or ideal output without learning how the thing you’re trying to build, or the idea you’re trying to research, works along the way. Three years ago, if you wanted to create a simple python tool that allowed you to forward emails to a particular address and receive Spanish translations of those emails a few seconds later (I spun this up a few weeks ago), you would have had to understand the logic of the code itself and be very intentional about the software stack you used to connect all of the pieces for it to work. Your intuition was being refined the entire time you were building the thing.
Now? You can hack the whole thing together in a few hours with coding assistants without having any idea how the backend that you just built “works.” The result? You have a functional tool, but your actual “learnings” from building that tool are minimal. If you spend an hour or two after building the tool to document your process, however, you’ll retain much more knowledge of “how” you built the whole thing, which will allow you to move faster and more purposefully on future projects, and if you take the time to read through the script(s) and analyze what the code is actually doing, your intuition about coding logic will improve. Again, pre-AI, your intuition was strengthened simply by doing the work. But now that you can streamline 90% of the labor, you have to be intentional about the learning.
The same is true for anything “research-y.” Say I’m digging into the marine robotics space as diligence for a couple of investment opportunities. I could almost-certainly offload most of the cognitive load of the “research” to a Gemini deep research report, and read through a thorough, well-written, AI-generated report after. The problem is that your fully-AI-generated report will be logically sound, and while reading it will obviously inform you about your topic of interest, reading without writing won’t reveal to you all of the things you don’t know.
The process of writing about a topic makes the holes in your knowledge base immediately obvious because you’ll be stopped mid-sentence when you’re working through an idea as you encounter an information gap. Those information gaps inform the direction of your research, and you accumulate more and more knowledge as you seek to fill those information gaps. You have to do the writing yourself to retain the lion’s share of the ideas, and more importantly, to strengthen your intuition over time.
Writing is also powerful reinforcement learning: ideas stick with you better when you write them out and read them. That’s not to say that we shouldn’t use AI assistants. Claude Code is fantastic, and my ChatGPT usage is absolutely contributing to global warming. But if you aren’t retaining the knowledge related to your work, AI isn’t giving you leverage. It’s turning you into a commodity.
1. Second Largest Weekly Inflow into Small Caps Ever
David Marlin
2. Gold to S&P Historical Correlation Shift
The Kobeissi Letter
3. Chineses Internet Stocks KWEB Breaks Above 2022 Levels
StockCharts
4. Chinese Margin Balances Break Above 2014 Levels
ZeroHedge
5. Trump Media DJT -50% for 2025
Trump Media & Technology Group Corp
6. Ethereum Reserves Lowest Level in 3 Years
Zerohedge–Ether (ETH) reserves on centralized exchanges have fallen to the lowest level in three years as demand grows from investment funds and corporate buyers.
According to data from CryptoQuant, reserves have dropped by nearly 10.7 million ETH since peaking at around 28.8 million in September 2022. Holdings now stand at about 17.4 million ETH, with roughly 2.5 million ETH leaving exchanges in the past three months alone.
The shrinking supply comes as new channels for Ether exposure have gained traction. Spot ETH exchange-traded funds (ETFs), launched in July 2024, have since attracted net inflows of more than $13 billion, according to CoinGlass data. Between June and August, the funds pulled in over $10 billion in net inflows, led by a record $5.4 billion in July alone.
Corporate treasuries are also driving demand. Several publicly traded companies have announced ETH treasuries over the past few months, with regular corporate purchases affecting the token’s supply on exchanges.
ZeroHedge
Ethereum exchange reserves – All exchanges. Source: CryptoQuant
7. Bitcoin held by public companies passes 1 million BTC amid asset’s rising popularity
The total amount of bitcoin held by public companies has surpassed 1 million BTC, according to BitcoinTreasuries data.
Companies eager to capitalize on Bitcoin’s steady price growth have been accumulating the cryptocurrency.
The total amount of bitcoin held by public companies surpassed 1 million BTC-1.68% on Thursday, according to BitcoinTreasuries data.Over the past year, the number of companies seeking to capitalize on bitcoin’s steady price growth has been increasing rapidly. Michael Saylor’s Strategy is considered the pioneer of the trend, with many other companies also deciding to hold the cryptocurrency, including Bitcoin miners like Mara Holdings and firms such as Metaplanet, Semler Scientific, and GameStop all holding BTC on their balance sheets.
Co-Founder & Chief Medical Officer of Function Health
September 3, 2025
We’re living through a mental health crisis of unprecedented scale. The WHO reports that one out of every two people will have a psychiatric diagnosis at some point in their lifetime. Let that sink in: half of humanity will struggle with mental illness.
Our current psychiatric treatments aren’t meeting this challenge.
When you look at the pivotal trials that led to Prozac’s approval, the difference between the active drug and placebo was just 2-3 points on a 60-point scale. The noise between different raters evaluating patients was the same magnitude as the treatment effect. We’re essentially treating people with tools that barely outperform chance.
But there’s a compound that’s changing everything we thought we knew about treating mental illness, and it comes from the bark of an African tree.
The Ibogaine Revolution
I recently interviewed Dr. Nolan Williams from Stanford, whose groundbreaking research on ibogaine is rewriting the rules of psychiatry. This compound, used ceremonially for centuries by the Bwiti people of Gabon, doesn’t work like anything in our current psychiatric arsenal.
The results from Dr. Williams’ study with 30 special operations veterans suffering from traumatic brain injury were staggering:
88% reduction in PTSD symptoms
87% reduction in depression
81% reduction in anxiety
Dramatic improvement in cognitive function
Disability ratings dropped from moderate to essentially none
When Dr. Williams first saw these results, he didn’t believe them. He made his postdoc reanalyze the data multiple times.
How It Actually Works
Unlike our crude “single key, single lock” approach to psychiatric medication, ibogaine acts on virtually every neurotransmitter system in the brain simultaneously. It’s what we call a “pleiotropic” compound, one that works through multiple pathways.
The mechanism is revolutionary:
Dopamine System Reset: Ibogaine upregulates glial-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF), which restores dopamine neuron health. In animal studies, mice trained to self-administer alcohol until death would completely stop after a single ibogaine dose.
Brain Plasticity Enhancement: It increases brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), promoting neurogenesis and neuroplasticity, literally growing new brain cells and connections.
Life Review Process: Unlike MDMA, which requires guided therapy, ibogaine automatically puts the brain into a state where people review traumatic memories from a position of emotional neutrality. They reconsolidate these memories without the overwhelming emotional charge.
Brain Age Reversal: Perhaps most remarkably, AI analysis of brain scans showed participants’ brains appeared 1.5 years younger one month after treatment. We’re talking about neurological age reversal from a single dose.
The Addiction Breakthrough
The anti-addiction effects are perhaps the most dramatic. Veterans in the study weren’t seeking addiction treatment, yet nearly all reported their alcohol consumption dropped to almost zero. They didn’t expect this outcome, it was an “off-target” effect that speaks to ibogaine’s broad reset of the reward system.
This mirrors the original discovery story: fifty years ago, a heroin addict in Amsterdam tried some pills, and the next day his addiction and withdrawal symptoms were completely gone. That launched decades of underground research.
The Safety Question
Yes, ibogaine has cardiac risks. It can cause dangerous heart rhythm abnormalities. But here’s the crucial context: many FDA-approved drugs carry similar or greater cardiac risks. The difference is stigma around mental illness versus “real” medical conditions.
We use a cardiac drug called Tikosyn that has a 1 in 100 risk of life-threatening arrhythmias to treat atrial fibrillation. We justify this risk because untreated A-fib can cause fatal strokes. Yet we resist studying ibogaine for severe PTSD or addiction, conditions with extremely high mortality rates, because of similar cardiac risks.
The solution isn’t to ignore the risk but to manage it properly. Prophylactic intravenous magnesium appears to prevent these cardiac complications entirely. Dr. Williams reports that clinics using this protocol haven’t had cardiac events.
Beyond Current Applications
The implications extend far beyond PTSD and addiction. With 75% of Americans overweight and 14% of the global population addicted to food (the same rate as alcohol addiction), could ibogaine address food addiction? The dopamine system reset that eliminates drug cravings might work for sugar and processed food cravings too.
We’re also seeing signals for traumatic brain injury recovery, cognitive enhancement, and even potential applications in neurodegenerative diseases through its effects on neuroplasticity.
The Path Forward
We’re entering “Psychiatry 3.0” moving from talk therapy (1.0) and crude pharmacology (2.0) to circuit-based interventions that can rapidly reset dysfunctional brain networks.
Dr. Williams expects FDA approval for human trials soon, with Texas allocating $50 million for ibogaine research. Within 5-10 years, we might have safe, monitored protocols available in the US.
But we also need to combine these breakthroughs with metabolic psychiatry, addressing the inflammation, nutrient deficiencies, and metabolic dysfunction that underlie many mental health issues. Ibogaine might provide the neurological reset that makes other therapeutic interventions more effective.
The Bigger Picture
We’re at an inflection point in medicine. For too long, we’ve treated mental illness as somehow less “real” than physical illness, stigmatizing conditions that are literally structural and functional problems in the brain.
Imagine if someone was limping from a torn meniscus and we said, “You’re just weak, think positive thoughts.” That’s essentially how we’ve approached depression, PTSD, and addiction. But these are measurable, physical brain dysfunctions that we can now see on scans and treat with precision.
The ibogaine revolution represents hope for millions suffering from treatment-resistant mental illness. It’s not just about incremental improvement, it’s about fundamental brain repair and reset.
As we move forward, we need courage from researchers like Dr. Williams, support for rigorous clinical trials, and a willingness to challenge our assumptions about what’s possible in mental healthcare.
The future of psychiatry isn’t about managing symptoms with daily pills that barely work. It’s about profound healing through compounds that have co-evolved with human consciousness for millennia.
This article is based on my recent podcast interview with Dr. Nolan Williams from Stanford University. For complete scientific references and the full conversation, listen to The Doctor Hyman Show: https://youtu.be/qwFhTkcUXog?si=5bPIRooZ89uWiy16
6. S&P vs. Commodity Index 25-Year Valuation Spread
7. Average Price of Used Tesla vs. Used Car Market
@Charlie Bilello 3 years ago, the average price of a used Tesla was over $36k higher than the average price of all used cars. Today, the average price of a used Tesla is lower than than the average price of all used cars.
When we fall behind, it’s tempting to hustle to catch up.
When the competition heats up, it’s imperative we hustle to get ahead.
Hustle is a particular kind of shortcut. Hustle is pushing the boundaries of cultural expectation, creating pressure and discomfort to make a sale. Hustle pushes us to cut corners, cut the line and cut down trust.
And it quickly becomes the new normal. Hustling is a race to the bottom, and our competitors lean and hustle in response… which means that we’re now under pressure to hustle more than we think is appropriate, driven by the same forces that led us to hustle in the first place.
The alternative is to lean into better. To find the space and the guts to do breakthrough work, work that others are afraid to do. Instead of causing discomfort and cutting, we’re building something worth following and talking about.
Zach Goldberg Jefferies …. The US M2 money supply surged +4.8% YoY in July, to a record $22.12 trillion. This also marks the 21st consecutive monthly increase.
In 2000, at the height of the dot-com bubble, revenue from internet subscriptions, e-commerce and PCs (which many bought to access the internet) was about $1.5 trillion (in 2024 dollars), which is orders of magnitude larger than the $20 to $30 billion in revenue likely to be generated this year for AI software. It is hard to imagine AI users paying more for services that can’t be used, in situations where the costs of mistakes are substantial.
Jeffrey Funk is a retired professor, tech consultant and the author of “Unicorns, Hype and Bubbles: A guide to spotting, avoiding, and exploiting investment bubbles in tech.”
Gary Smith is the author of more than 100 academic papers and 20 books, including “Standard Deviations: The truth about flawed statistics, AI and big data” (Duckworth, 2024) and (co-authored with Margaret Smith): “The Power of Modern Value Investing: Beyond Indexing, Algos and Alpha” (PalgraveMacmillan, 2024).
