UBS shows, “The longest human task (by duration) that an LLM can complete with at least 50% success rate is doubling every 7 months.”
Zach Goldberg Jefferies
2. Semiconductor ETF SMH…A Couple Ticks from New Highs
StockCharts
3. Schwab vs. Robinhood
Michael Batnick
4. Market Tops Usually Preceded by IPO Boom….IPO ETF Not Booming….+1% Last 12 Months
StockCharts
5. IPO Drought ….Companies Staying Private Longer
Blackrock Institute
6. Waymo Vehicles Far Less Crashes
chartr
7. Nancy Pelosi $130M in Stock Trade Profits
Peter Mallouk
8. Pentagon Deploys Kamikaze Drones $35k
WSJ The drone is fully autonomous, meaning it can operate with little or no human interaction, relying on sensors and artificial intelligence to navigate to its target. It can fly for about six hours, according to SpektreWorks.
Each FLM 136, also known as Lucas, costs $35,000, according to Capt. Tim Hawkins, a spokesman for Central Command. The MQ-9 Reaper drones cost an estimated $16 million, according to a spokesman for General Atomics, its manufacturer. In many cases, kamikaze drones cost far less than the interceptors used to shoot them down.
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Key Takeaways
Farmland covers 876 million acres, or 39% of U.S. land.
Great Plains states dominate: Nebraska tops the list at 89.5% farmland.
Much of the vast space of the U.S. is occupied by farmland, which produces many of the most demanded commodities. But which states have the most of their area used by farms?
Envy harms well-being, especially when comparing others’ purpose to our own.
Purpose envy is fueled by social media, influencers, and unrealistic highlight reels.
You can’t co-opt someone else’s purpose; true purpose must align with your own values.
Focus on what you want and are willing to work for; envy fades when you’re embracing your path.
Envy arises when we compare ourselves to someone else and conclude they’re better off. We’ve all been there. Envy is a universal emotion, but it’s also a corrosive one. In a large longitudinal study of more than 18,000 adults, researchers found that higher levels of envy predicted poorer well-being years later. Put simply: The more envious we are, the worse we tend to feel over time.
Most of us would love to sidestep that emotion entirely. But when it comes to purpose—our sense of direction and meaning—it’s getting harder than ever to avoid.
Although psychologists haven’t yet named it formally, purpose envy is becoming a modern condition. We scroll through feeds full of people who seem to know exactly why they’re here and what they’re meant to do. They’ve branded their purpose, packaged it beautifully, and broadcast it to millions. For young people in particular, this can be intoxicating. Searching for a relatable version of purpose, they often model their lives on the influencers they follow: the entrepreneur building a seven-figure business, the traveler living out of a van, the artist who “made it” by 25.
The problem isn’t admiration. It’s imitation. When we confuse someone else’s highlight reel for a road map, we end up chasing a life that isn’t ours.
And it’s not just a Gen Z issue.
When Admiration Turns to Envy
I’ll admit it: I’ve felt purpose envy myself. I’m a fan of Scott Galloway—the professor, podcaster, and author whose work (like The Algebra of Wealth and The Prof G Pod) dives deep into ideas that matter to me. He’s articulate, accomplished, financially successful, and undeniably purposeful.
I admire him. But I also envy him.
That envy used to sting until I realized something important: As much as I admire Galloway, I don’t actually want to be him. That insight changed everything. It revealed why escaping purpose envy might be simpler than we think.
Here are three truths that helped me, and might help you, put purpose envy in its place.
1. Purpose Can’t Be Co-Opted
Everywhere you look, someone is trying to sell you a version of purpose.
Social media influencers wrap it around whatever they’re promoting. If they’re selling designer sneakers, purpose becomes fashion. If they’re promoting travel, purpose becomes seeing the world. If they’re pushing protein supplements, purpose becomes fitness.
Advertisers do the same. They frame purpose as luxury, vitality, or success. Anything that convinces you their product will complete you. Even family members can unintentionally project their version of purpose onto you (“We just want you to have the opportunities we didn’t”).
The catch? All of these versions of purpose serve their goals, not yours.
To “co-opt” means to absorb something for your own use, often in a way that dilutes its original meaning. When we internalize someone else’s idea of purpose—whether it’s an influencer’s, a brand’s, or a parent’s—the result is usually frustration, not fulfillment.
Your purpose can’t be bought, borrowed, or inherited. It’s not something you “find” by copying someone else’s story. It’s something you build by paying attention to what makes you feel alive, and what you’re willing to work for.
2. Ask Yourself: Am I Willing to Put in the Work?
It’s easy to envy someone else’s life when you’re only seeing the rewards. But purpose isn’t built on envy; it’s built on effort.
When I catch myself wishing I had Scott Galloway’s platform or career, I ask a simple question: Am I willing to do what he does to get it?Do I want to travel constantly, spend long weeks recording podcasts, running businesses, and giving talks? Do I want to live that pace, that public life?
The honest answer is no.
Many of us want the outcomes of someone else’s purpose, but not the sacrifices it requires. We envy the destination without wanting to take the journey. And that’s a sign that what we’re craving isn’t their purpose—it’s the feeling of fulfillment we imagine they have.
Once you realize that, envy starts to lose its grip.
3. You Don’t Have to Want the Whole Package
When we compare ourselves to others, we tend to fixate on the highlights: the parts of their lives that look enviable. But we rarely consider the full picture.
I might wish I had Galloway’s platform, but I don’t necessarily want his schedule, his scrutiny, or his stress. Like most people, I only envy select pieces of his life.
Purpose envy tricks us into forgetting that every life is a bundle of trade-offs. You can’t have the good parts without the costs that come with them. And when you look closely, you may find that you don’t actually want the whole package. You just want a more authentic version of your own.
When I remember that, I’m reminded that my life, as ordinary as it sometimes feels, already reflects a set of choices I value: time with family, creative autonomy, work that feels meaningful on my own terms.
The Paradox of Purpose Envy
Here’s the irony: Envy isn’t always bad. Sometimes, it’s a compass. It points to something you value but haven’t yet developed. Seeing another writer or podcaster succeed can spark the motivation to improve your craft or commit to a project you’ve been neglecting.
But if you let envy steer the ship, you’ll end up chasing other people’s dreams instead of building your own.
Purpose envy thrives on comparison. It fades when you start paying attention to your own direction.
In the End
Purpose envy is common, but it rarely serves us. It encourages us to adopt someone else’s story, complete with their costs, instead of writing our own.
The truth is, most of us are already living parts of our purpose; we just overlook them because they don’t look grand or glamorous. The envy we feel toward others can be a cue, not a curse: a reminder to get curious about what truly drives us.
Because in the end, purpose isn’t something you envy. It’s something you earn by paying attention, doing the work, and refusing to let anyone else define what it means for you.
Retail has bought as much GLD in 2025 as in the previous 5 years.
ZeroHedge
4. Open AI vs. Historical Young Start Up Cash Burners
Jim Reid Deutsche Bank On the subject of ChatGPT, it’s been eye-opening to read of the predicted losses that OpenAI will likely experience in the next few years. Based on a Wall Street Journal report, which cited company projections provided to investors over the summer, OpenAI forecasts revenue of $345 billion between 2024 and 2029. Assuming this is all cash, we then calculate $488bn of spending, mainly to pay for access to compute, to arrive at their projected cumulative free cash flow of $143bn. And that was before the most recent announcements of $1.4 trillion in data centre commitments. A broker has more recently said the cash burn could exceed $200bn by 2030.
I thought it would be interesting to look at the largest cumulative losses in history from a young company or a start-up before they turned in a profit. So I asked ChatGPT to give me a table of these companies, detailing the total losses and over which years. We used this to create today’s CoTD. We added in OpenAI’s expected cash burn and also included its rival Anthropic, also using data from the Journal. I double-checked the historic numbers against Bloomberg data and they were broadly in line.
ChatGPT also pointed out that some companies had reported larger annual losses, citing AOL Time Warner’s $99 billion loss in 2002 and a similar size loss for AIG in 2008. Meanwhile, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac lost $77bn and $59bn respectively within only three quarters when the GFC struck. However, these were well established companies with long track records of profitability before huge troubles hit.
5. Mag 7 Outperforms QQQ and SPY 9 of Last 10 Years
Koyfin
6. Quality Stock Factor Underperforming 2025
Quality Underperformance…BofA noted, Globally, the Quality style has underperformed by 5.5% YTD, and the Global Steady Compounders have experienced the worst 12-month relative return in 25 years. 3 reasons stand out. Firstly, the global earnings cycle is improving, and earnings stable Quality stocks tend to lag in upturns. Secondly, the Risk style – almost the opposite of Quality – has had one of the best years on record. Thirdly, a few themes have driven market performance this year (including AI, Defense, Gold, Rare Earth, Nuclear Energy, and Quantum Computing) and these stocks have a high average beta (1.28).
Zachary Goldberg-Jefferies
7. American Eagle Stock One Tick from New Highs
StockCharts
8. Japanese Government Bond Yields Highest in 20 Years
Mohamed A. El-Erian
9. International Stocks on Track for First Outperformance vs. U.S. in 16 Years
If you randomly picked a trading day for the Dow Jones Industrial Average between 1930-2020, there is over a 95% chance that the Dow would close lower on some trading day in the future. That means that roughly 1 in 20 trading days would provide you with an absolute bargain. The other 19 would give you the feeling of buyer’s remorse at some point in the future. Link
More than 10 funds will distribute at least 25% in capital gains this year. Link
Since the 1990s, the World Portfolio has grown from 75% to over 200% of world GDP. Link
Of the largest 10 stocks in the S&P 500 Index in 1985, none are still in the top 10.Link
The Thiel Fellowship has a 5.9% Unicorn hit rate. Link
Just 3% of companies generated all the shareholder wealth in the US stock market from 1926-2022. Source: Bessembinder
If you break down the distribution of cumulative returns for stocks in the S&P 500 for the past 25 years:
The median/arithmetic return was 59%/452%.
The average return has been greater than the median for The S&P 500’s constituents in 20 out of the past 24 years. Source: S&P Dow Jones Indices
In 1812, financial stocks—banks and insurance companies—constituted an estimated 71% of total U.S. stock-market capitalization. No other sector even amounted to 14%. Link
Alternative Investing
There are more private equity funds than McDonald’s restaurants in the world. Link
Nearly half of gold production is used for jewelry. Link
39% of U.S. land area is used by farms, totaling 876 million acres of farmland. Link
On Jan. 1, 2015, there were 1,345 alternative mutual funds in existence. Only 341 still existed on June 30, 2025 – a 75% mortality rate. Link
In 2021 alone, 478 (30.7%) of all U.S. unicorns hit the $1B mark. Link
Most unicorns exit after a median (average) of 8 (9) years, counting from founding. “Exit” means going public, acquisition, or liquidation/bankruptcy. Link
3. Gas Helping Transports…Good for Economic Outlook…Transports Breaking Out to New Highs
StockCharts
4. Netflix -22% from Highs…50day Close to Crossing Below 200day on Chart
StockCharts
5. The Market is Bearish on Netflix Buying Warner Bros…What Would They Be Gaining?
chartr
6. Another $1 Trillion Bump in Money Markets
The Big Picture
7. Interesting Chart on from Callum Thomas Blog on Bond Bear Market
Bonds Basing? It’s a question many are pondering, and while TLT is still basically in bear market, we’re also seeing a clear basing process in progress.
9. Members of House are Quitting Congress at Record Rate-AXIOS
Axios
10. 7 Ways to Learn Faster and Improve Your Memory, Backed by Neuroscience-Inc.
1. Test yourself.
A classic study published in Psychological Science in the Public Interest shows self-testing is an extremely effective way to speed up the learning process.
Partly that’s because of the additional context you create. Test yourself and answer incorrectly and not only are you more likely to remember the right answer after you look it up, but you’ll also remember the fact you didn’t remember. (Especially if you tend to be hard on yourself.)
So, don’t just rehearse your sales pitch. Test yourself on what comes after your intro. Test yourself by listing the four main points you want to make. Test your ability to remember cost savings figures, or price schedules, or how you will respond to the most common questions or types of customer resistance.
Not only will you gain confidence in how much you do know, but you’ll also more quickly learn the things you don’t know — at least not yet.
2. Learn two or three things at (nearly) the same time.
The process is called interleaving: studying related concepts or skills in parallel. Instead of focusing on one subject, one task, or one skill during a learning session, purposely learn or practice several subjects or skills in succession.
One theory proposed in a study published in Educational Psychology Review is that interleaving improves your brain’s ability to differentiate between concepts or skills. When you block practice one skill, you can drill down until muscle memory takes over and the skill becomes more or less automatic. When you interleave several skills, any one skill can’t become mindless.
And that’s a good thing, because you’re instead constantly forced to adapt and adjust. You’re constantly forced to see, feel, and discriminate between different movements or different concepts.
And that helps you really learn what you’re trying to learn, because it helps you gain understanding at a deeper level.
Speaking of adapting …
3. Change the way you study or practice.
Repeating anything over and over again in the hopes you will master that task will not only keep you from improving as quickly as you could; in some cases, it may actually decrease your skill as well.
According to research published in Johns Hopkins Medicine, practicing a slightly modified version of a task you want to master helps you “actually learn more and faster than if you just keep practicing the exact same thing multiple times in a row.” The most likely cause is reconsolidation, a process where existing memories are recalled and modified with new knowledge.
Say you want to master an investor pitch. Do this:
Rehearse the basic skill. Run through your pitch a couple of times under the same conditions you’ll eventually face when you do it live. Naturally, the second time through will be better than the first; that’s how practice works. But then, instead of going through it a third time …
Wait. Give yourself at least six hours so your memory can consolidate. (Meaning that you may need to wait until tomorrow before you practice again, which, as you’ll see in a moment, is a great approach.)
Practice again, but this time:
Go a little faster. Speak a little — just a little — faster than you normally do. Run through your slides slightly faster. Increasing your speed means you’ll make more mistakes, but that’s OK — in the process, you’ll modify old knowledge with new knowledge, and lay the groundwork for improvement. Or …
Go a little slower. The same thing will happen. (Plus, you can experiment with new techniques — including the use of silence for effect — that aren’t apparent when you present at your normal speed.) Or …
Break your presentation into smaller chunks. Almost every task includes a series of discrete steps. That’s definitely true for presentations. Pick one section of your pitch. Deconstruct it. Master it. Then put the whole presentation back together. Or …
Change the conditions. Use a different projector. Or a different remote. Or a lavaliere instead of a headset mic. Switch up the conditions slightly; not only will that help you modify an existing memory, but it will also make you better prepared for the unexpected.
4. And keep modifying the conditions.
You can extend the process to almost anything. While it’s clearly effective for learning motor skills, the process can also be applied to learning almost anything.
4. Say it out loud.
Mentally rehearsing is good. Rehearsing out loud is better.
Research published in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition found that compared with reading or thinking silently (as if there’s another way to think), the act of speech is a “quite powerful mechanism for improving memory for selected information.”
According to the researchers, “Learning and memory benefit from active involvement. When we add an active measure or a production element to a word, that word becomes more distinct in long-term memory, and hence more memorable.”
So don’t just practice that investor pitch in your head. Rehearse out loud. That way you’ll remember what you thought, and also what you heard yourself say.
5. Learn in bursts.
Once you’ve drafted that pitch, run through it once. Then take a few minutes to make corrections and revisions.
Then step away for a few hours, or even for a day, before you repeat the process, because a study published in Psychological Science shows “distributed practice” is a much more effective way to learn. Why?
The study-phase retrieval theory says each time you attempt to retrieve something from memory and the retrieval is more successful, that memory becomes harder to forget. If you go over your pitch back to back to back, much of your presentation is still top of mind — which means you don’t have to retrieve it from memory.
Another theory regards contextual variability. When information gets encoded into memory, some of the context is also encoded. That’s why listening to an old song can cause you to remember where you were, what you were feeling, etc., when you first heard that song. The additional context creates useful cues for retrieving information.
Either way, distributed practice definitely works. So give yourself enough time to space out your learning sessions. You’ll learn more efficiently and more effectively.
Why? One factor is what psychologists call sleep-dependent memory consolidation. As the researchers write:
Converging evidence, from the molecular to the phenomenological, leaves little doubt that offline memory reprocessing during sleep is an important component of how our memories are formed and ultimately shaped.
Sleeping after learning is definitely a good strategy, but sleeping between two learning sessions is a better strategy.
Or in non-researcher-speak, sleeping on it not only helps your brain file away what you’ve learned, but it also makes that information easier to access — especially if you chunk your learning sessions by studying a little the next morning.
7. Exercise.
Want to learn information faster? A study published in Scientific Reports found that moderate-intensity workouts — keeping your heart rate between 50 and 80 percent of max — dramatically improve recall and associative learning and increase your brain’s ability to absorb and retain information.
Want to learn or improve a task where motor skills are involved? According to a different study published in Scientific Reports, 15 minutes of cycling at 80 percent of max heart rate (“intense” exercise) resulted in better memory performance than 30 minutes of moderate exercise, which was better than no exercise at all.
In other words, exercising hard for 15 minutes “fired up” participants’ brains and allowed them to learn motor skills better and faster. To a lesser degree, so did 30 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise.
And then there’s this. A study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows exercise can increase the size of your hippocampus, even if you’re in your 60s or 70s, helping to mitigate the impact of age-related memory loss.
Yep: Exercise helps make your brain healthier, too — which helps you be smarter and stay smarter.
1. Investor Allocation to Bonds Hit Previous Lows…Internet Bubble and GFC
Topdown Charts
2. Investment Grade Corporate. Bonds AI Exposure-WSJ
WSJ
3. Tether Gold Buying
Tether vs. gold. “Even the crypto world itself is warming to gold. As the chart shows, Tether has been steadily buying more of it over the last 18 months. It now owns about the same amount as Mexico or South Africa … If even DeFi is buying it, the case for gold’s bull market remaining intact is quite hard to refute.”
Daily Chartbook
4. Vanguard Allows Investors to Buy IBIT
Vanguard finally dips a toe into crypto waters as bitcoin’s bounce goes past $91,000
Vanguard began allowing clients to purchase third-party crypto exchange-traded funds, including BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF.
Bitcoin increased approximately 6%, to over $91,000 on Tuesday, despite a 31% decline from its record high, reached in October.
The average cost basis for U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs since January 2024 was around $84,000 — a level that could indicate further selling if breached.
Vanguard on Tuesday for the first time started letting clients buy crypto exchange-traded funds managed by third parties — just in time for a bounce in the beleaguered digital asset.
The news, first reported by Bloomberg, was confirmed by Vanguard on Tuesday. The company noted that its clients could buy products like BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF
, other third-party cryptocurrency ETFs and mutual funds for purchase through its brokerage platform.
5. Healthcare Stocks Have Biggest One Month Outperformance in 25 Years
Bespoke Investment Group. So far this month, the Health Care sector is outperforming the broad S&P 500 by more than ten percentage points. As shown below, that hasn’t happened since November 2000!
Bespoke
6. CSCO Stock About to Get Back to Internet Bubble Highs 25 Years Ago
The Return of Cisco
7. Holiday E-Commerce Has Tripled in 10 Years
In 2015, just 17% of American online holiday shopping took place on smartphones — a share that’s expected to hit 57% this year, per Adobe estimates. Total online spending has surged more than 3x over the same period and now, with some shoppers turning to AI for product discovery and recommendations, that growth seems likely to continue.
Indeed, from November 1 through 28, AI-referred traffic to retail sites was up 805% from the same period last year. More than 4 in 10 consumers already use AI to shop, a survey from Mastercard found— led by 61% of Gen Z, who rely on it for deal-checking and filtering out bogus reviews. www.chartr.com
8. Ecommerce vs. Department Store
Jack Ablin Cresset Capital In-store traffic continued its long decline, though the drop was moderate. This year recorded a 3.6% year-over-year decline in Black Friday foot traffic according to RetailNext, while Sensormatic reported a 2.1% slide. These numbers represented an improvement relative to earlier weeks, suggesting that meaningful in-store demand persists, particularly in higher-quality malls and value-focused stores. Observations from multiple malls across the country described steady crowds, even if consumers were more cautious once inside.
Cresset
9. New York City Increasing Apartment Supply Thru Office Conversions
About thirty years ago, Jerry Shereshewsky invented “Cyber Monday” as an alternative to Black Friday. The idea was that you’d wait until you got to work on Monday after the Thanksgiving break (where there was high speed internet and you wanted to avoid doing drudge work) to do your shopping from your desk. After all, who wants to get trampled at a big box store?
Of course, since then, the hype machine that is Black Friday has shifted its focus from mobs in the store to mobs online. And the media is still all in in promoting the orgy of consumption and fake deals that happens today.
We’re still going to shop for the holidays. A blog post probably isn’t going to change that. But perhaps we can counter the downward spiral of Amazon’s recommendations, fake reviews and search ads with some AI oomph of our own.
With Claude’s help I built a simple “project” that lets me automatically do powerful research and searches with no junk or distractions. Here’s a bit of what it gave me when I asked it for ‘healthy dog chews’:
If you have a claude.ai account, here’s how to do it. It takes about a minute to set it up. You’ll find that the searches are way slower than the instant overoptimized Amazon results, and the pause is worth it.
Open your Claude account on the web or in their app and look for PROJECTS on the left hand column. Until Claude taught me about this, I had no idea it existed.
Start a new project. Name it something fun and then hit Create Project to save it.
On the next page, it will ask you to “add instructions”. Hit the plus sign to the right…
Copy what’s below and you’re done. Now, every time you do a search with this project, you’ll find thoughtfully researched results. As a bonus, I’ve added a line that adds my affiliate code, which generates royalties for charity (this year, it’s buildon.org.) Feel free to delete that or substitute your own.
All you need to do is hit the + sign in the basic Claude user text entry box every time you want to use it. The first choice is “use a project”.
One other benefit: when it finds something great that’s not on Amazon, you’ll know it when you click through and it’s not there. Then you can go buy it somewhere else…
Okay, here’s the text to copy and paste:
You help people find products worth buying by cutting through Amazon’s ad-filled, fake-review-laden search results. When someone tells you what they’re looking for, do actual research and recommend 4-5 genuinely good options.
How to research:
Use web search for every query. Check multiple source types:
Be opinionated. If something is the clear winner, say so. If a category has safety issues or scams, warn them. You’re a knowledgeable friend who actually did the homework—not a hedging AI or a generic listicle.
Don’t recommend anything you couldn’t verify across multiple sources. If you can’t research a category well, say so.
