Hypernormal Investing: Growing Capital & Protecting Wealth Amid Radical Uncertainty

Hosted by Jeremy McKeown

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158

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Aug 2026

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A podcast where we help serious active investors navigate market volatility, protect capital, and uncover new ways to confidently grow wealth in these radically uncertain times.

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August 29, 202610 min

The Lesson Bessent Forgot & The Week Gold, Bitcoin and Bonds Kept the Score

Read the daily notes at the Hypernormal Times on Substack. Subscribe, review, and share. Brought to you by Progressive Equity. Commentary and information only — not investment advice. "Governments defending prices against fundamentals always lose." Stanley Druckenmiller's warning to his old protégé, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, is the thread through a remarkable week. Bessent's "economic D-Day" on Iran and the dollar-as-weapon problem; the Black Wednesday irony of a man who broke the Bank of England now defending the bond price; Warsh's money-supply gauge flashing as M2 runs hot and the Treasury floods liquidity; Nvidia's blowout that answered demand — never the real doubt — while margins compress and a hot PCE print fully prices a December Fed hike; and Warsh's first Jackson Hole , where a frozen market waited on a chairman who refuses to give guidance. Plus the AI -vs-Middle East tug of war, gold and Bitcoin as the debasement scorecard, and a US move to lease Venezuela's oilfields. Essential listening for active investors on markets , capital and the cost of money. investing, markets, macro, capital, stocks, bonds, Treasury yields, fiscal dominance, Scott Bessent, Stanley Druckenmiller, Kevin Warsh, Federal Reserve, Jackson Hole, M2 money supply, PCE inflation, rate hike, Nvidia, AI bubble, gold, Bitcoin, debasement trade, Iran sanctions, Venezuela, OPEC 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 .

August 22, 202610 min

Fiscal Dominance, Treasury Buybacks, Duration, Gold & Bitcoin - Bessent Declares War on the Thermometer

Read the daily market notes at the Hypernormal Times on Substack. Subscribe, review, and share at Hypernormal Times on Substack . The global financial system is running a fever, and this week the authorities declared war on the thermometer. Jeremy McKeown separates the signal from the theatre: why the surge in long-term Treasury, gilt and bund yields is a real-yield repricing of sovereign risk, not an inflation scare. Why Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's surprise bond buyback moved markets for twelve hours and then failed. A put is a bluff with no printing press behind it. Why the AI chip sell-off was a discount-rate shift, not demand cracking. Why Japan and the yen carry trade are where the margin call sits. And why gold, now joined by Bitcoin, is voting no confidence in fiscal sanity. Essential listening for active investors trying to protect capital amid fiscal dominance, rising rates and the AI capex boom. investing, markets, macro, stocks, capital, bonds, bond vigilantes, Treasury yields, fiscal dominance, Scott Bessent, bond buyback, Federal Reserve, Kevin Warsh, inflation, gold, Bitcoin, AI bubble, Nvidia, Anthropic, yen carry trade, Bank of Japan, Jackson Hole 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 .

August 21, 202643 min

Why Oil Isn't $200 - The Blind Squirell on the China Collar, buying Britain on the floor, & what replaces bonds

Why isn't oil at $200 with the Strait of Hormuz restricted? Rupert Mitchell — "The Blind Squirrel" — argues China has become a monopsony: the swing buyer of crude, putting an effective floor and ceiling on oil prices using storage tanks instead of quotas. He calls it the China Collar, and he thinks it will permanently re-rate energy equities. We also cover why he's buying UK domestic mid-caps "on the bond floor", what replaces bonds now the 60/40 portfolio has stopped working, and the Monte Carlo runs where OpenAI and Anthropic are worth nothing. A 25-year capital markets banker turned independent macro writer, Rupert publishes his own portfolio, losses included. The Blind Squirrel Macro: https://www.blindsquirrelmacro.com/ Hypernormal Times: https://jeremymckeown.substack.com/ In this episode: An accidental banker: Barings, 1994 — five months before Leeson Hong Kong ECM, and why the syndicate desk beat the prospectus Inside a Chinese EV startup: "capitalism is a full-body contact sport in China" BYD, Alibaba, Tencent — great company vs. great stock Why a blind squirrel: strong convictions, loosely held Leopold Aschenbrenner: the leverage lesson, not the fraud lesson Is AI inflationary or deflationary? Both — and that's the problem Valuing OpenAI and Anthropic when 20–45% of scenarios are zeros The China Collar: monopsony, storage, and the swing buyer of crude Why energy should be 2.5x its current S&P weight The UK on its bond floor: FTSE 250, 12x earnings, battle-hardened managers Investment trusts: getting paid twice when private equity bids Life after 60/40: CTAs, long-dated crude, gold — and why not Bitcoin EM local currency debt and 40% African exposure The new Fed chair's straitjacket, and moving the 2% goalposts Dollar/yen, the 30-year JGB, and the Forrest Gump of global macro china collar, oil price, monopsony, crude oil, energy equities, opec, strait of hormuz, uk equities, ftse 250, investment trusts, closed-end funds, nav discount, 60/40 portfolio, portfolio diversification, cta, managed futures, trend following, gold, emerging market debt, macro investing, rupert mitchell, blind squirrel macro, openai valuation, anthropic valuation, ai bubble, federal reserve, dollar yen, jgb, byd, tencent, china state capitalism. 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 .

August 14, 202611 min

Securitising Subprime Silicon - Plus the $2 trillion deficit, an indefinite oil siege, and what it means for stocks, markets and capital.

This week's easing was cyclical. The things that hardened were structural. That's the week in a sentence. Subscribe to Hypernormal Times for free on Substack . For your capital markets training needs, visit my friends at Finance Talking . 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 .

August 13, 202653 min

Long-Cycle Investing, Short Selling & the AI Bubble Question - Why duration matters when buying stocks

Subscribe to Hypernormal Times on Substack. 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 .

August 7, 202611 min

Investing in Things You Can't Print: Gold, Oil & Copper & The Week Trust Left Markets

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 . For your capital markets training needs, visit my friends at Finance Talking . 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 .

August 6, 202657 min

Investing in China, Inflation Expectations & Energy - Revisiting Project Zimbabwe & S&P 10,000 with Erik@YWR

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 . For your capital markets training needs, visit my friends at Finance Talking . 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

August 1, 202613 min

Being Situationally Aware - The Hypernormal Investing Week That Was

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. For your capital markets training needs, visit my friends at Finance Talking . 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. In this episode 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 .

July 30, 20264 min

ITCOM Becomes Hypernormal Investing - But nothing really changes

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: jeremymckeown@gmail.com. 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 .

July 25, 202615 min

Mind the Inflation Gap & AI's Second Derivative - Hypernormal Investing

For your capital markets training needs, visit my friends at Finance Talking . 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 .