News, insights and thought leadership from the City Different team.
There's a particular thing the mountains teach you if you spend enough time in them: You can't outrun an avalanche from inside one. The work is in not being on the slope when one comes down. After a...
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When someone starts to worry that AI valuations have run too far, the instinct is to ask whether now is the time to get out. I understand that instinct, and it’s not a bad one. The issue we’re...
The financial press has found its story du jour: “The Death of the Safe Haven: How to Fix Your Bond Strategy as Yields Rise.” Nothing sells quite like fear (even though bond yields are indeed scary...
There's a particular thing the mountains teach you if you spend enough time in them: You can't outrun an avalanche from inside one. The work is in not being on the slope when one comes down. After a...
When someone starts to worry that AI valuations have run too far, the instinct is to ask whether now is the time to get out. I understand that instinct, and it’s not a bad one. The issue we’re...
The financial press has found its story du jour: “The Death of the Safe Haven: How to Fix Your Bond Strategy as Yields Rise.” Nothing sells quite like fear (even though bond yields are indeed scary...
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Earlier this quarter Stanford released its 2026 Search Fund Study. It's the closest thing the search fund world has to a census; it covers 862 funds, success rates, and key performance metrics...
The debate about AI has gone tribal, and I don't think that serves anyone who actually manages money. On one side you've got the optimists, convinced AI will remake the economy (and take a lot of...
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An electric economy, a decade early Nobody would call Chengdu a quiet city. When you have twenty-one million people, scooter horns, hotpot exhaust fans, and construction at all hours, you get a...
Remember picking teams in gym class? It was a brutal ritual with a predictable mix of embarrassment and hurt feelings that we rightfully left in the past. We generally try to avoid ranking human...
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Speculation, Leverage, and the AI Build-Out Try this fun experiment. Go to whatever AI tool you use most and ask it a simple question: based on how much I use you, what would you have to charge me to...
Many LPs in private equity right now are sitting on the same frustration: their fund statements still look healthy on paper, their marked IRRs continue to land roughly where the original pitch decks...
Bond investors have grown more sophisticated over the years, and the tools we use to evaluate bonds have evolved alongside us. For decades, yield was the primary measure investors focused on. Yield...
For the better part of fifteen years, investors have read the Fed's intentions through one number: Core PCE. It became the formal benchmark for the 2% inflation target in 2012, and ever since, the...
