Investing

On Thursday, October 22, Nvidia fell 4.4 percent. By Friday’s close of $210.96 the stock had posted its third consecutive losing week, sat 12 percent below the high it set on October 6, and was down 7.6 percent for the month, its worst month since last November (CNBC, October 24, 2026). Nothing in that week’s news explained the selling. At GTC Berlin the company announced a shipping container holding seven Vera Rubin racks, which cuts the time to bring a data center online from six months to fourteen days, and a supply-chain expansion that includes a $1.1 billion capacity advance to a Taiwanese testing house (CNBC, October 21, 2026; NVIDIA, October 21, 2026). Those are the announcements of a company that expects to sell an enormous amount of hardware. ...

On July 31 I argued that the danger in the artificial intelligence buildout lay less in whether the technology works than in how the capital behind it is arranged: hardware that depreciates faster than the debt secured against it, revenue that arrives slower than the projections promise, and a downside diffused onto private-credit funds, pension holders, and index investors who never chose the bet. On October 14, that argument acquired a price. ...

“There is no occasion to give this notice. It will soon show itself by acts.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 11.15 (trans. George Long, 1862) The answer, and the shells. On Saturday the president rejected Iran’s seven-day plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. “I’m rejecting their deal,” he said, and called it unacceptable (BBC News, 2026). That looked like an ending. It was not one. Within days Qatar had carried an official American response to Tehran, and the foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, brought it into a cabinet meeting and laid it before the president of Iran (ABC News, 2026). Officials briefed on the exchange describe the two sides as agreeing on the components and differing only on their order (CGTN, 2026). All of that was diplomacy. In the same waterway, the Revolutionary Guard confirmed for the first time that it strikes shipping in the strait every twenty-four hours, and a Kuwait-flagged tanker was set alight on Thursday (The New York Times, 2026; Seatrade Maritime, 2026). Washington answered the proposal and sent a third carrier group, with roughly nine thousand sailors and Marines (Fortune, 2026). ...

Ninety Days From Today Count it out on a calendar. Ninety days from this morning is December 30, a Wednesday, which means this window closes two days before the year does. Between here and there sit two Federal Reserve meetings, on October 27 and 28 and again on December 8 and 9; a midterm election on November 3; a Treasury quarterly refunding on November 4; a government funding deadline on December 11; a Thanksgiving on November 26; and a Christmas on December 25. That is the window this article is about: one quarter of a year in which the world’s largest bond market has to price a war in its eighth month and a central bank that has told it, in plain language, to expect more. ...

Ninety Days From Today This is the third installment of a series I started on September 3. Same calendar discipline, same premise, new window. Ninety days from this morning is December 30, a Wednesday. The furniture in the room first. The Federal Reserve meets twice between here and there, on October 27 and 28, which the market now expects it to skip, and on December 8 and 9, which comes with a fresh Summary of Economic Projections and is the meeting that decides what the year looked like. In between sit a midterm election on November 3; the Treasury’s quarterly refunding on November 4; third-quarter earnings, which open on October 13 with JPMorgan and peak in the last week of October; three inflation reports, on October 14, November 10, and December 10; three employment reports, on October 2, November 6, and December 4; the minutes of this week’s Fed meeting on October 7; Nvidia’s quarter, which the company has dated November 17; a Thanksgiving on November 26; and a government funding deadline on December 11. Read the last three dates of the year in sequence: the Fed decides on December 9, inflation prints on December 10, and the continuing resolution expires on December 11. ...

“No longer talk at all about the kind of man that a good man ought to be, but be such.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 10.16 (trans. George Long, 1862) The plan is not the strait. Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, told reporters at the United Nations that Tehran has handed Washington a proposal with a timetable: over the first four or five days, lift the naval blockade on Iran’s oil ports, restore the waiver that lifted sanctions on Iranian oil exports, end the war on all fronts including Lebanon, and permit the release of some frozen assets. On the sixth day the Strait of Hormuz would reopen to shipping through a route designated by Oman and Iran. On the seventh day, nuclear talks would begin, accelerating what the June memorandum had scheduled for sixty days. He called the preconditions nothing new, contained in the Islamabad memorandum the president himself signed, and said he was not in a hurry. Traffic through the strait had fallen to nine vessel transits. The advantage of the offer is speed. Its defect is that the water is still closed (The Guardian, 2026; CNBC, 2026). ...

“If any one can convince or shew me that I am wrong in thought or deed, I will gladly change. It is truth that I seek; and truth never yet hurt any man. What does hurt is persistence in error or in ignorance.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.21, a modern paraphrase. The sourced Long rendering reads: “If any man is able to convince me and show me that I do not think or act right, I will gladly change; for I seek the truth, by which no man was ever injured.” (trans. George Long, 1862) ...

Ninety Days From Today Count it out on a calendar. Ninety days from this morning is December 17, a Thursday. Between here and there sit two Federal Reserve meetings, on October 27 and 28 and again on December 8 and 9, a midterm election on November 3, a quarterly refunding on November 4, and a Thanksgiving on November 26. That is the window this article is about: one quarter of a year in which the world’s largest bond market has to price a war that shows no sign of ending and a Federal Reserve that just proved it will act anyway. ...

Ninety Days From Today This is the second installment of a series I started on September 3. Same calendar discipline, same premise, new window. Ninety days from this morning is December 17. The window is unusually well furnished, so let me put the furniture in the room before I say anything else. The Federal Reserve meets twice between here and there: October 27-28, which the market expects it to skip, and December 8-9, which comes with a fresh Summary of Economic Projections and is the meeting that will decide what the year looked like. In between sit a midterm election on November 3, three inflation reports (October 14, November 10, December 10), three employment reports (October 2, November 6, December 4), the minutes of this week’s Fed meeting on October 7, the Treasury’s quarterly refunding on November 4 (Treasury tentative auction schedule), third-quarter earnings season opening on October 13 with JPMorgan and peaking in the last week of October, and a government funding deadline on December 11. Read those last three dates in sequence: the Fed decides on December 9, inflation prints on December 10, and the continuing resolution expires on December 11. That is the whole year’s argument compressed into seventy-two hours, and it lands six days before this window closes. ...

“When you are going to take in hand any act remind yourself what kind of an act it is. If you are going to bathe, place before yourself what happens in the bath; some splashing the water, others pushing against one another, others abusing one another, and some stealing; and thus with more safety you will undertake the matter, if you say to yourself, I now intend to bathe, and to maintain my will in a manner conformable to nature.” — Epictetus, Enchiridion 4 (trans. George Long, 1862) ...