Excess Returns

Joseph Shaposhnik, Rainwater Equity ETF portfolio manager who focuses on long-term, recurring-revenue businesses. He discusses how durable cash-flow compounding firms weather geopolitical shocks. He maps AI winners and losers across semiconductors, software, hyperscalers, and industrials. He also covers capital intensity, concentration risk, and what traits make companies anti-fragile in an AI-driven world.

Vitaliy Katsenelson, CEO of Investment Management Associates and author known for Soul in the Game, offers a concise investing philosophy rooted in humility. He discusses how high valuations and AI-driven change reshape returns. Short sentences cover diversification, shifting from cheap-stock screens to business quality, management integrity as a red line, faster selling when theses break, and treating investing as creative work.

Rob Arnott, founder of Research Affiliates and value-investing veteran, and Andy Constan, an investment practitioner with a credibility-assessment framework. They discuss how to judge expert commentary, why war-after-market charts mislead, separating belief in AI technology from belief in AI stocks, defining bubbles via implausible growth assumptions, and why small-cap value may rebound after long slumps.

Jim Paulsen, veteran macro strategist and market analyst, argues that small tech-led growth masks a weak, jobless broader economy. He discusses how AI and tech investment hide underlying weakness, why market leadership is narrow and shifting, and how geopolitics, oil, and policy interact with markets. He also outlines his 11% new-era versus 89% old-era framework and why that gap matters.

Rob Arnott, founder of Research Affiliates and pioneer of fundamental indexing, returns to discuss market extremes. He examines the huge U.S. vs global valuation gap. He warns many AI stocks price implausible growth while AI itself is real. He highlights why small caps and value look compelling and why broad international diversification matters.

Andy Constan, founder of Damped Spring Advisors and macro strategist focused on geopolitics and credit, discusses evaluating geopolitical shocks with skeptical, low‑confidence thinking. He explores how markets price the Iran conflict, the funding challenge of massive AI capex, shifts from US to international markets, and why credit and funding conditions are the near‑term risks to watch.

They break down the viral AI doom loop idea and why it rattled markets. They debate whether AI will replace workers or amplify them using a people × productivity lens. They weigh real adoption limits like compute, energy, and trust. They discuss risks to software margins, market incumbents, and how policy or natural constraints might slow disruption.

Meb Faber, curator of The Idea Farm who frames investment base rates and historical bubbles. Rupert Mitchell, macro commentator exploring equity rotations and gold/miners. Ben Hunt, narrative analyst focused on credit cycles and refinancing stress. Brent Kochuba, options expert decoding put/call flows and investor fear. They discuss a viral AI doomsday narrative, options-driven software swings, private credit strain, and rotations into international stocks and gold.

Cullen Roche, author and ETF strategist focused on pragmatic portfolio construction, offers a time-horizon and asset-liability approach to investing. He reframes risk as lifetime consumption uncertainty. Short, punchy takes cover human capital, when 100% stocks make sense, rethinking 60/40, international diversification, factor investing as a horizon tool, inflation hedges, risk parity tradeoffs, countercyclical rebalancing, and defined-duration funds.

Matt Russell, founder of Business Breakdowns and Colossus, is an investor known for deep investment analysis. He discusses how AI moved from hype to practical tools for research and monitoring. Short takes cover agentic AI vs LLMs, AI in due diligence and earnings monitoring, prompt engineering, encoding mental models, and how AI reshapes workflows and team structures.