This week's easing was cyclical. The things that hardened were structural. That's the week in a sentence.

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Markets spent five days exhaling — a soft CPI, a softer PPI, the AI trade roaring back — while quietly signing up for an indefinite oil siege, a $2 trillion deficit funded at the worst prices since before the financial crisis, and a boom in structured credit that rhymes uncomfortably with 2008. This week: the stagflation trap the Fed can't lever its way out of; Nvidia becoming "the bank of mum and dad" for the AI industry as Wall Street securitises the boom; why the market celebrated a number the Fed doesn't even target; fiscal dominance on the tape; and Japan's cheap-money anchor starting to drag. Plus the cheque-writers vs the cheque-cashers, and a British silly-season coda.

Commentary and information for serious active investors — not advice. Do your own due diligence.

Keywords: stocks, markets, capital, investing, macro, stagflation, fiscal dominance, AI bubble, Nvidia, credit spreads, core PCE, Federal Reserve, Treasury yields, Bank of Japan, oil, Strait of Hormuz.

This podcast explores stocks, markets, and capital, examines the role of gold in finance, unpacks tax policy and economics, discusses pathways to financial freedom and retirement, explains how interest rates affect investing, features insights from financial advisers, analyzes inflation, recession, and market volatility, covers the actions of central banks, evaluates different assets, addresses inheritance planning, reviews portfolio construction with bonds and an isa, assesses long-term returns and allocation strategies, explores macro trends, and helps listeners understand risk and pensions.

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High Ground founder and CIO Edgar Allen joins to explain the investment philosophy behind one of Europe's fastest-growing long/short equity funds — now running roughly $3bn, up from $10m at launch in 2019.

Edgar traces his path from teenage stock-picker in Suffolk, working through FT-ordered annual reports in the school holidays, to Fidelity during the dot-com boom, shorting technology at Avocet, risk and European equities at BlackRock, six years at Chris Hohn's TCI, and the number-two seat at Naya — and how each stop shaped High Ground's approach.

The core of the conversation is duration. Equities are very long-duration assets, but the average company lives about six years. Edgar argues that discounted cash flow quietly assumes cash flows into perpetuity, and that the gap between that assumption and reality is the largest single inefficiency in the market.

His answer is to hunt for long-cycle industries where the supply response is slow and the competitive set in twenty years is already knowable: Airbus and the A320 family, Knorr-Bremse and train braking systems, city-centre property, even death care — the US industry with the lowest bankruptcy rate.

Edgar put it that:

"One thing that we know for sure about all the companies that we invest in is that they're all going to get wiped out. They're all trending to zero. It's just a matter of time."

On the short side, Edgar looks for businesses that will be worse businesses in three years than they are today, and for accounting evidence of it: widening profit-to-free-cash-flow gaps, adjusted EBITDA creep, factoring and reverse factoring, shifting LTIP goals, and margin decline masked by cuts to R&D and marketing. Consumer staples have been a fertile hunting ground as the barriers to entry that once protected big food brands have collapsed.

The conversation also covers a strong 2025 (25 positions up more than 20%, 18 down more than 20% — all of them shorts), the outlook for the UK and Europe versus an expensive US market, why China sits outside the mandate on rule-of-law grounds, declining trust and happiness as macro risks, and the case that AI — like bicycles, railways and airlines — could transform the world while destroying more shareholder value than it creates.

A fascinating conversation, from an original investment thinker and practitioner.

long/short equity, High Ground, Edgar Allen, terminal value, discounted cash flow, business duration, long-cycle industries, return on capital, quality investing, accounting risk, short selling, adjusted EBITDA, free cash flow, earnings quality, TCI, Chris Hohn, Fidelity, BlackRock, Naya, hedge fund, UK equities, European equities, US valuations, China rule of law, AI bubble, data centres, LLMs, consumer staples, Diageo, Airbus, Knorr-Bremse, Zulu principle, PEG ratio, investor psychology

This podcast explores stocks, markets, and capital, examines the role of gold in finance, unpacks tax policy and economics, discusses pathways to financial freedom and retirement, explains how interest rates affect investing, features insights from financial advisers, analyzes inflation, recession, and market volatility, covers the actions of central banks, evaluates different assets, addresses inheritance planning, reviews portfolio construction with bonds and an isa, assesses long-term returns and allocation strategies, explores macro trends, and helps listeners understand risk and pensions.

Three of the most powerful men in the global economy asked the markets to believe them, and the markets declined. On protecting capital when money, promises, and forward guidance are being printed, and gold, copper, and diesel are the only honest voices left.

Hypernormal Times on Substack.

This week, a president's peace, a Fed chairman's credibility and a currency's floor all turned out to be things you can print a promise about but cannot manufacture. Trump called off "the biggest strike since WWII," then announced talks Iran said weren't happening, before the Hormuz "deal" morphed into a surrender document. The US Treasury raided a Fed facility to print dollars so Japan could buy yen, fiscal dominance, in plain sight, while the president phoned Chairman Warsh and Warsh apologised through anonymous friends.

Meanwhile the honest voices spoke: gold to $4,300, copper to a record, and a refining shock (it's the fuel, not the crude) that a ceasefire can fix.

We cover the AI sorting. Situational Awareness, the model that escaped its box, SpaceX's cheque-writer earnings and the take-forward into next week: jobs, the BoJ, Hormuz and the AI supply tide.

The takeaway suggestion for serious active investors is to own the unprintable. Not investment advice, natch.

If only Kev had levers that printed oil refineries and copper wire. He doesn't. Nobody does.

This podcast explores stocks, markets, and capital, examines the role of gold in finance, unpacks tax policy and economics, discusses pathways to financial freedom and retirement, explains how interest rates affect investing, features insights from financial advisers, analyzes inflation, recession, and market volatility, covers the actions of central banks, evaluates different assets, addresses inheritance planning, reviews portfolio construction with bonds and an isa, assesses long-term returns and allocation strategies, explores macro trends, and helps listeners understand risk and pensions.

Erik of Your Weekend Reading returns from three weeks in China with a conclusion that will surprise anyone who has written the country off. Then: the 8% consumer inflation expectation the Fed is forecasting away, why bond yields are heading to 5–6%, and why he thinks the energy story could end up bigger than AI.

For your information. Never advice of any kind.

Visit Hypernormal Times.

This podcast explores stocks, markets, and capital, examines the role of gold in finance, unpacks tax policy and economics, discusses pathways to financial freedom and retirement, explains how interest rates affect investing, features insights from financial advisers, analyzes inflation, recession, and market volatility, covers the actions of central banks, evaluates different assets, addresses inheritance planning, reviews portfolio construction with bonds and an isa, assesses long-term returns and allocation strategies, explores macro trends, and helps listeners understand risk and pensions.

China investing outlook 2026. Consumer inflation expectations, University of Michigan survey, 10-year Treasury yield forecast, Fed rate policy midterms, Strait of Hormuz oil price, natural gas data centres, LNG export terminals, contrarian energy stocks, Project Zimbabwe, Chinese consumer

Oil crashed on peace, stocks crashed anyway, a 557% profit was a "miss," and a hedge fund called Situational Awareness got blindsided. A week of maximum noise — and the three signals underneath that actually matter.

Hypernormal Times on Substack.

The market fell a fifth and rose a fifth in the same week, on no change in the facts — so this episode strains out the churn and holds up what actually changed.

We start with the noise: a ceasefire nobody signed, "peace broke out and stocks crashed anyway," and the record round-trip driven by a leverage unwind — including the week's best story, the hedge fund Situational Awareness, run by the ex-OpenAI author of the famous "see-it-coming" AI essay, getting caught spectacularly unaware and dumping its book to Citadel at the bottom, right before those shares ripped. Then the three signals worth keeping: the AI reckoning turned out to be a sorting, not a crash (Microsoft and Amazon proved the return; Meta didn't); the feared AI glut is, at the physical level, a shortage — one now capping Apple's revenue and turning the Bank of Japan hawkish; and the great bifurcation went concrete, with China floating its own memory champion (CXMT, +472%), building its own chip-making machines, and pulling a piece of Tesla across the US–China line. Plus a Fed chair whose silence the bond market repriced as a credibility shock.

Never investment advice.

• Why the week's violent round-trip was noise, not signal — and how to tell
• Situational Awareness vs Citadel: a thesis meets a balance sheet at the bottom
• The 557% profit that counted as a miss — and the bar detaching from reality
• The reckoning as a sorting: Microsoft/Amazon prove the return, Meta doesn't; "free cash flow" runs the tape
• The AI glut that's actually a shortage — Apple can't get chips, and the BoJ turns hawkish
• The great bifurcation: CXMT +472%, China's own lithography, Tesla splitting off China
• Warsh holds, the 30-year hits a 19-year high, and the market calls his bluff

AI bubble, AI reckoning, is AI a bubble, AI 2008 vs dot-com, Situational Awareness hedge fund, Leopold Aschenbrenner, Citadel, SK Hynix earnings, 557% profit, Microsoft Azure earnings, Amazon cloud, Meta capex, Apple chip shortage, memory shortage 2028, Samsung, CXMT IPO, China semiconductors, ASML lithography, Tesla SpaceX merger, Kevin Warsh Fed, 30-year Treasury yield, Bank of Japan hawkish, macro podcast, markets podcast, HyperNormal Report, Jeremy McKeown.

This podcast explores stocks, markets, and capital, examines the role of gold in finance, unpacks tax policy and economics, discusses pathways to financial freedom and retirement, explains how interest rates affect investing, features insights from financial advisers, analyzes inflation, recession, and market volatility, covers the actions of central banks, evaluates different assets, addresses inheritance planning, reviews portfolio construction with bonds and an isa, assesses long-term returns and allocation strategies, explores macro trends, and helps listeners understand risk and pensions.

This is just a trailer to let you know about the podcast name change. In The Company of Mavericks will be renamed Hypernormal Investing from the next episode.

Practically, apart from the new name and some new cover art, nothing else changes. There is no need to change any settings to continue to listen on your podcast app.

I am doing this to align the podcast more closely to the writing I do on Substack. Please check it out at: Hypernormal Times.

If you have found this podcast useful or interesting, then please rate and review. It is now more helpful than usual to let the podcast algorithms find new listeners, which allows us to attract new guests.

And please keep your fantastic feedback and guest recommendations coming either via Substack or to me at: [email protected].

Thanks for listening.

This podcast explores stocks, markets, and capital, examines the role of gold in finance, unpacks tax policy and economics, discusses pathways to financial freedom and retirement, explains how interest rates affect investing, features insights from financial advisers, analyzes inflation, recession, and market volatility, covers the actions of central banks, evaluates different assets, addresses inheritance planning, reviews portfolio construction with bonds and an isa, assesses long-term returns and allocation strategies, explores macro trends, and helps listeners understand risk and pensions.

Subscribe at Hypernormal Times.

Oil hit $100, Alphabet posted its first-ever negative cash flow, Bubba and the Fed disagreed about inflation by 470 basis points, and the President started selling his tweets for $100k a month. A normal week in HyperNormal investing.

This podcast explores stocks, markets, and capital, examines the role of gold in finance, unpacks tax policy and economics, discusses pathways to financial freedom and retirement, explains how interest rates affect investing, features insights from financial advisers, analyzes inflation, recession, and market volatility, covers the actions of central banks, evaluates different assets, addresses inheritance planning, reviews portfolio construction with bonds and an isa, assesses long-term returns and allocation strategies, explores macro trends, and helps listeners understand risk and pensions.

Follow me on Substack: https://substack.com/@jeremymckeown

For your capital markets training needs, contact Finance Talking: https://bit.ly/48NLioZ

Paul Pindar built Capita from a £330,000 management buyout into a £7.5 billion outsourcing giant, delivering a 480x total shareholder return between its 1989 listing and his departure in 2014. Now Chairman of Literacy Capital plc (LSE: BOOK), the listed private equity investment trust he co-founded with his son Richard, Paul joins Jeremy to share the lessons of a remarkable career in UK plc — and a very different second act.

Paul explains how Capita rode the wave of government outsourcing in the 1990s and 2000s, why culture and cheap, disciplined M&A drove 25 consecutive years of record results, and what changed after he left in 2014. He gives a candid assessment of UK corporate governance — 300-page board packs, six-hour board meetings — and why London's shrinking stock market is a "real shame for the UK economy."

On Literacy Capital, Paul opens up about the trust's unusual model: permanent capital, no carried interest, no performance fee, and nearly 40% founder ownership — plus £13 million donated to the Bookmark Reading charity, which tackles child literacy. He addresses the elephant in the room head-on: a NAV near all-time highs but a share price discount at its widest ever, the impact of the Budget and employers' NI rises on small UK businesses, and why exits at 10x, 10x and 15x money suggest the portfolio is conservatively valued at 9.2x EBITDA.

Whether you invest in investment trusts, private equity, UK small caps, or simply want a masterclass in building businesses, this conversation delivers.

• From Coopers & Lybrand and 3i to the £330,000 buyout of CIPFA Computer Services — the business that became Capita
• Listing on the USM in 1989 at an £8m market cap — and winning a £13m contract with £2.6m of turnover
• Visionary or lucky? Management, market tailwinds, and the 10 Golden Rules behind a 480x shareholder return
• Capita's M&A playbook: high volume, small deals, never overpay
• What went wrong at Capita — and in UK outsourcing — after 2014
• Why 200-page annual reports and six-hour board meetings destroy value rather than protect it
• The origin of Literacy Capital: a husband-and-wife conversation and a mission to teach every child to read
• Bookmark Reading charity: £13m donated, half a million children to be helped
• Inside the LitCap model: permanent capital, zero carry, and total alignment
• Five exits at 10x, 10x, 15x, 5.2x and 2.5x money
• The discount debate: NAV vs share price, CGT speculation, and the cost of neglecting investor relations
• How the Budget and employers' NI hit small UK businesses
• Why good £100m companies can no longer IPO in London
• Working with family: father and son at the helm
• Advice for the new Prime Minister: debt, the triple lock, stamp duty, and CGT

Paul Pindar is Chairman and co-founder of Literacy Capital plc (LSE: BOOK), a listed closed-end investment fund backing small UK businesses. He joined Capita as CFO in 1987 — eight months after backing its buyout as an investor at 3i — became Managing Director 18 months later, and led the business until 2014, growing it into one of the UK's largest outsourcing companies with 62,000 employees and a £7.5bn market cap. He co-founded Literacy Capital in 2018 with his son Richard; the fund donates a portion of net assets each year to Bookmark Reading, the child literacy charity founded by his wife, Sharon Pindar.

Paul Pindar, Literacy Capital, LSE BOOK, Capita, UK outsourcing, private equity, investment trust, listed private equity, closed-end fund, permanent capital, carried interest, NAV discount, UK small caps, management buyout, London Stock Exchange, IPO drought, Bookmark Reading, child literacy, shareholder value, M&A strategy, founder succession, UK stock market, corporate governance, capital gains tax, employers' national insurance

This podcast explores stocks, markets, and capital, examines the role of gold in finance, unpacks tax policy and economics, discusses pathways to financial freedom and retirement, explains how interest rates affect investing, features insights from financial advisers, analyzes inflation, recession, and market volatility, covers the actions of central banks, evaluates different assets, addresses inheritance planning, reviews portfolio construction with bonds and an isa, assesses long-term returns and allocation strategies, explores macro trends, and helps listeners understand risk and pensions.

For more, see Hypernormal Times on Substack.

In this episode.

Inflation vs the oil war — why June's CPI and PPI prints are already out of date, and what new Fed chair Kevin Warsh's "plenty of work to do" really signals

The AI repricing — Korea's Kospi jumps 8% in a day, SK Hynix trades at a 50% premium to itself, then TSMC delivers a fifth straight record quarter (profits +59%) and the stock has its worst day in over a year. The question is no longer "is AI real?" but "what are you prepared to pay for it?"

The issuance flood — $345bn of new US stock this year, hyperscaler CapEx heading past $1 trillion, widening tech bond spreads, and why late-cycle bull markets tend to drown in exactly this kind of paper

IBM's worst day on record — down 25% as customers cannibalise legacy IT budgets to pay their AI bills

Hormuz and the Tanker Wars playbook — why crude is calm, why the real tightness is in refined products and crack spreads, and why energy is now a cheap tail-risk hedge

Gold falls 3% with a war on — the safe-haven bid goes to the dollar and energy instead

Chip diplomacy — Xi Jinping's open-source AI coalition of 29 countries, the UAE's airstrikes-for-semiconductors upgrade, and the bifurcation of AI into a Western proprietary stack vs a Chinese open-source one

Britain's car boot sale — 154 takeover bids worth £165bn since 2023, Rotork gone at a 73% premium, just 11 IPOs restocking the shelves, and the pound rallying on hopes of a fiscally conservative chancellor under PM-in-waiting Andy Burnham.

This podcast explores stocks, markets, and capital, examines the role of gold in finance, unpacks tax policy and economics, discusses pathways to financial freedom and retirement, explains how interest rates affect investing, features insights from financial advisers, analyzes inflation, recession, and market volatility, covers the actions of central banks, evaluates different assets, addresses inheritance planning, reviews portfolio construction with bonds and an isa, assesses long-term returns and allocation strategies, explores macro trends, and helps listeners understand risk and pensions.

You've done the work, bought the stock, and now it's down 20%. Do you tell yourself it's now cheaper and buy more, or accept you got it wrong, take the loss, and move on? That decision, as Jeremy puts it, is the one that defines you as an investor.

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In this episode, Jeremy McKeown is joined by two friends of the pod: Substacker and author Rob Marstrand dialling in from Buenos Aires, and podcaster Mark Atkinson, this week broadcasting from Lancashire rather than his usual desert island. Together, they dig into a few everyday dilemmas of the DIY investor.

Drawing on the latest chapter of Rob's book, the conversation covers when to run winners and when to cut losers; why stop-losses belong to momentum traders rather than fundamentals-driven investors; and how to think about position sizing, sector and geographic diversification, and which parts of the market to simply leave alone. Rob explains his ranking system for weighting holdings by future potential, why he keeps a trading log to separate skill from luck, and the edge private investors hold over the professionals — permanent capital, patience, and the freedom to buy the crashes.

Along the way: the case for Diageo as an out-of-favour quality compounder, Terry Smith and the perils of a forced churner, and a detour into Argentina under Milei and what its decades-long decline might tell us about the UK's own trajectory.

And we nearly managed not to talk about the football.