Let's connect some dots from this week's notes... If you prefer to receive these recaps weekly instead of daily posts, you can manage your subscription preferences right by viewing this email on the web. Look for your profile icon in the top right of the browser, and you can update your settings from daily to weekly (and vice versa) there. However I can get you the full narrative arc without it feeling cluttered - I'm just happy you're here!

Two pieces on Panoptica worth your time before we get into the recap.

The first is my essay, "Nobody Wants to Earn Their S***" - it ran last week but if you missed it, well - it's my favorite thing I've written so I wanted to share it again. It’s on attention as the thing you can't fake, and why the shortcut is always more expensive than it looks. It generated more response than anything I've published in a while, including from the subject of the essay himself (more on that below).

The second is "Zlatan's Money Rules" - on what a Swedish lion with $500 million figured out about money, agency, and protecting the people you love without smothering them. If you work in finance or have people in your life you're trying to help, this one's for you.

Zlatan watched the actors and big shots in LA surrounding themselves with props - twenty people deep, stretching relevance a little longer - filed it away, and went back to Italy. Not to a superclub riding high. To AC Milan, freshly humiliated in a high profile loss, because he told his agent to find him the worst team he could save. At 38, at the onset of a pandemic, he walked back in as a problem for every other team to deal with. Same instinct, different arena, no entourage required.

Quote from the Personal Archive - Zlatan on what perfect actually looks like

"I'm not here to be beautiful or to be perfect to somebody. I think being yourself is perfect. You will do mistakes. You will learn from your mistakes. And you will still do mistakes."

Ben Hunt told me recently, on camera, in front of witnesses, that I publish too much and can't help myself. I've decided to take both as compliments. And advice, ahem, but yes, as compliments, too. The mosquito who bit my elbow - the spot you can't see, only feel, the one you scratch at knowing you're making it worse - is a pretty good stand-in for everything I've been too accommodating about, too often, (very) candidly. As Tommy’s AI would say, “The compulsion isn't the problem. The accommodation is.”

Quote from the Personal Archive - on what recalibration actually looks like

"No more Mr. Nice Guy. And honestly? That mosquito wasn't doing any of us any favors."

Tommy - the subject of the essay - found it, had his AI read it to him and summarize the key points, and wrote back to tell me the ability to leverage available tools is what separates people who adapt from people who write about adapting. He also noted I don't appear to be playing guitar professionally. I recorded a live reading of the essay partly because I love the format and partly because, well, Tommy responded. But the real beat worth writing down is this: 32 years later, the moment is permanently burned into my mind - and Tommy doesn't remember it at all. What you pay attention to is what you keep. Everything else just passes through.

Quote from the Personal Archive - the whole thing in one line

"What you pay attention to is who you are."

Eric Pachman came back on Excess Returns and said something that perfectly encapsulates what AI is doing at its core: "the crank is cheaper now." The BLS labor data - men 45 and over at their lowest labor force participation on record, 32 states with negative job growth in 2025 without the Medicaid care economy - was always there. Public, free, just clunky to deal with. AI didn't change the data, but it did change who can turn the crank. What that frees up is the part that was always the point - the story, the stakes, and the taste to know when something's off.

Quote from the Personal Archive - Eric on what actually changed

"The crank is cheaper now."

Mike Judge is the poet laureate of my generation - from the cultural awareness of Beavis and Butthead to the prescience of Idiocracy, nobody has described the last 40 years of Americana like him. The YouTube algorithm surfaced a clip of Beavis trying to rap to Fu Schnickens and I fell into it completely. Two idiots on a couch, performing for each other with zero awareness, zero audience, zero stakes. That's the thing. The performance was pure - for an audience of one, friend to friend, no plural. Not everything needs an audience, because not everything deserves an audience. Where there are anti-scaling properties, there's a scene.

Quote from the Personal Archive - the whole argument in one line

"Not everything needs an audience, because not everything deserves an audience."

Lil Jon was a punk rock skater kid in Atlanta before he was anything else - going to Faith No More and Bad Brains shows at the Metroplex, trading skate tapes, feeling the energy of a mosh pit and filing it away. By the time he's becoming Lil Jon, he's not inventing something new so much as translating values across community lines. The spirit of what H.R. did on a CBGB stage in 1982 - that unpredictable, let-the-music-take-over-you energy - ends up in a strip club in Atlanta, then on a festival stage where Travis Scott is building mosh pits, and Lil Jon is sitting there knowing he had something to do with that. It's a lineage. Think about the role you're playing in yours.

Quote from the Personal Archive - Lil Jon on what crunk actually is

"Crunk music is basically — we call it black rock and roll, or black punk-rock music, because of the energy."

Where Else I Showed Up This Week

Jack and I did our weekly wrap on Excess Returns, and this one had some real teeth to it. We brought in four perspectives - Paulsen, Stockton, Klingelhofer, and Zenz - on whether weakening mega-cap leadership, $600 billion in AI CapEx, and record earnings expectations are creating hidden risks beneath a market that looks fine on the surface. Spoiler: healthy breadth and fading momentum can absolutely coexist, and strong earnings momentum doesn't eliminate correction risk. The crank being cheaper doesn't mean the story takes care of itself - and that's as true in markets as it is anywhere else.

Also this week on Excess Returns: I sat down with Jack Schwager to discuss Market Wizards: The Next Generation - traders who turned small accounts into fortunes, survived devastating losses, and built exceptional records. The story of Kristjan Kullamägi going from security guard to over $100 million after repeated blowups alone is worth the listen.

What are you still accommodating that you know isn't doing either of you any favors?

WHAT WOULD YOU DO DIFFERENTLY IF THERE WAS NO AUDIENCE WATCHING AT ALL?

Where in your life are you surrounding yourself with props instead of showing up as the thing itself?

WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN PAYING ATTENTION TO LONG ENOUGH FOR IT TO ACTUALLY MATTER?

The crank is cheaper now - what story have you been waiting to tell that you no longer have an excuse not to?

WHO IN YOUR LINEAGE DO YOU THINK ABOUT WHEN YOU DO THE THING YOU DO BEST?

What's the one thing you keep scratching at, knowing you're making it worse, that you're finally ready to stop?

As always, I did my part, now it's your turn to write some reflections in your own Personal Archive.

(then, be sure to let me know where you're keeping it, I'm in search of the others too)

ps. Claude helped me organize and synthesize these thoughts from the week's posts. If you are curious how I use AI, read this post: Did AI Do That: Personal Rules