The Short Version turns podcasts into what was actually said. Every
weekday we take the shows worth knowing about — macro, markets, tech,
power — and boil each episode down to the argument, the takeaways, and
the calls, if anyone was brave enough to make them. An hour of someone
talking becomes a few minutes of you reading. You listen to the episodes
that earn it and skip the rest with a clear conscience.
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Have an invite code? Sign up → This morning’s edition:
Macro Voices
Sep 25, 2026 · 1h 01m · 3 min read
Rabobank strategist Michael Every, in a bonus session recorded the day after his regular MacroVoices interview, argues nearly every 2026 flashpoint — Ukraine, the Middle East, Canada, Taiwan, AI policy — is a sub-plot of an accelerating US-China cold war in which Washington reasserts national-security control over energy, capital, technology and allies. He flags an unconfirmed but serious national-security-circle concern that Xi Jinping could move on Taiwan next year, does not rule out tactical nuclear use by the US against Iran's underground nuclear sites or by Russia as a demonstration strike in Ukraine, and expects exit taxes and unrealized capital-gains taxes to keep spreading as governments compete for AI, defense and energy funding.
This is the super-short version — click for the full summary → The Compound and Friends
Sep 25, 2026 · 1h 08m · 4 min read
Value investor Jonathan Boyar argues 2026's brutal multiple compression across quality names is mostly mechanical — Goldman-style "inertia" baskets and hedge-fund pod-shop risk limits selling stocks that AI supposedly threatens, regardless of actual fundamentals — creating entry points for patient, tax-sensitive holders. He's long-term bullish on Uber, Broadridge, Booking Holdings, Pool Corp, and MGM Resorts, warns that richly-valued "quality" names like Costco and Walmart (40-50x earnings) risk a Coca-Cola-1998-style derating even with good businesses, and is fading StubHub and passing on Nike.
This is the super-short version — click for the full summary → Odd Lots
Sep 25, 2026 · 32m · 2 min read
TV comedy writer Hayes Davenport (Family Guy, Eastbound & Down, now LA Material) argues Hollywood's contraction is currently a tax-break and cost story, not an AI story: LA shoot days have roughly halved from a 2016 peak near 40,000 to under 20,000 as production chases incentives in South Carolina, Vancouver, and Dublin. He sees AI as an immediate threat to below-the-line jobs (hair, makeup, grips) but expects writing and acting to be among the last creative categories AI displaces.
This is the super-short version — click for the full summary → Top Traders Unplugged
Sep 25, 2026 · 1h 06m · 3 min read
Nick Baltas (Goldman Sachs Asset Management, systematic/multi-asset) joins for a research-review episode rather than a single trade call: trend-following just had one of its best months and years in over a decade (SocGen Trend/CTA +3.7% in September, +15.25% YTD), driven almost entirely by short fixed income as 2-year yields backed up 75bp+ since mid-August. The substantive content is methodological: Baltas is skeptical that VIX-conditioned trend-speed models add value over a static lookback, flags recurring "V-shaped" market reversals as a growing structural risk to unconstrained trend systems, and walks through Andrew Ang's new agentic-AI asset-allocation framework (an 18-asset, 21-agent architecture that landed on 44% equities versus a 60/40 benchmark in its March-2026 test run), while warning that LLM-based backtests are fundamentally non-reproducible.
This is the super-short version — click for the full summary →