The Degenerate Economy Meets The Capex Boom/Bubble

Happy Sunday

Just a reminder that Stocktoberfest - in New York - is coming up October 5-7. Details here. I will be leading discussions about The Degenerate Economy, The Capex Boom (with Michael Parekh and Ted Seides), brokerage 2.0, the prediction markets and much more. Come join us.

Onward…

One of my favorite funny movies is ‘Let it Ride’ which covers degenerate gambler Jay Trott at the race track for one hell of a day of gambling and this hilarious climax scene…

One could argue that we are on a path of ‘pissing it all away’ as betting, leverage and degeneracy, explodes along with our debt.

We could argue over when the ‘degenerate economy’ really began, but no matter what day you choose we have come a long way since March, 2021 the day the world thought Robinhood’s confetti ‘gamified’ investing too much…

How far?

This week ‘Hockey’ ETF’s were blessed by the SEC…

Joining the degenerate economy this week are the institutions…pensions, hedge funds, banks and family offices as Nvidia ( $NVDA ( ▼ 0.06% ) ) engineers a new investable asset class (read Ben Thompson’s excellent piece on it here). Ben wrote about it here as well and Michael Parekh covered it well here.

Today, we have the government, silicon valley, the exchanges and real estate people all working together to get us more compute and more degeneracy while the government spends like a lunatic keeping rates rising. Not a cocktail that leads to the best decisions for the people.

I imagine that the SEC which has probably had it’s staff cut to three people by Trump and is soon to be sponsored by Budweiser, Kalshi and the NFL has a long list of fun degenerate etf’s in the pipeline at 4 times leverage.

I kid the SEC…but do not kid yourself. It is everyman for himself in 2026.

The piece of ‘art’ hangs above my desk at home. I bought it a few years ago because it felt so on point culturally for this era.

Not too long ago, in March 2025, Michael Saylor told his disciples to sell a kidney before they sell their Bitcoin. Today, Michael has both his kidney’s but has been selling his Bitcoin.

Jensen, Goldman and JP Morgan will not be telling you to sell your photonoic and memory stocks and your compute real estate and energy holdings at the top.

Stay alert…