Key Takeaways
- Infisical raised a $40M Series B at a $600M valuation, led by Elad Gil, with more than 1,300 organizations using its infrastructure security products.
- US money supply grew 5.7% year over year, the fastest pace since May 2022, while the Bank of Canada raised rates 25 bps to 2.50%, its first hike since 2023.
- Richmond Fed's October manufacturing index rose to 51.7 on an ISM-adjusted basis, ending two months of declines, while consumer inflation expectations eased but stayed elevated.
- Meb Faber flagged small-cap seasonality — 19 straight positive November-to-April periods — and noted all five shareholder-yield regions are up more than 20% year to date.
- Ben Carlson contrasted the S&P 500's 1960 composition with today's and called the current decade the worst for bond returns, while saying he is buying.
1. AI Security and Industrial Autonomy Funding
- Elad Gil led Infisical's $40M Series B at a $600M valuation, after also leading its Series A and preempting the B round. Infisical says more than 1,300 organizations use its infrastructure security products, including Airbus, First American Financial, Hugging Face, OpenRouter and Wise. The company will use the funds to strengthen secrets, certificate and access management and to expand Agent Vault, which lets engineers grant AI agents access without handing over underlying credentials. A cited post argued that AI makes both writing code and finding vulnerabilities roughly 10x easier while autonomous agents reach sensitive systems that existing security infrastructure was not designed for — via 1 2 3
- Gil also led the Series A of Lumaril, an industrial autonomy company whose team comes largely from Palantir. Lumaril aims to help existing US factories run at real capacity, raise output and cut waste; it argues that hundreds of thousands of US factories depend on veteran operators' decades of tacit knowledge, retirement is draining that knowledge, and helping existing plants expand is the fastest path to restoring industrial capacity rather than relying only on new construction — via 1
2. Macro Data and Market Signals
- US money supply rose 5.7% over the past year, the largest year-over-year increase since May 2022, which Charlie Bilello framed as "money printing" returning after a pause. The Bank of Canada raised its rate 25 bps to 2.50%, its first increase since 2023 — via 1 2
- On the data side, the Richmond Fed's October manufacturing index rose to 51.7 on an ISM-adjusted basis, ending two consecutive declines and returning to expansion. September new-home supply fell to 8.4 months from 8.5, still above pre-pandemic levels. October consumer confidence improved in both expectations and current conditions, but the gap between them remains deeply negative; one-year inflation expectations fell to 5.8% (mean) and 4.7% (median) while staying high, and the share expecting better business conditions in six months rose to 17.7% from a prior 25.2% expecting worsening, now 20.7%. The Conference Board index fell to a five-month low while the University of Michigan index rose for the first time in four months — via 1 2 3 4 5 6
- MBA mortgage applications rose 3.4% week over week after a 5.3% drop, the first gain in two months, with the 30-year fixed rate at a four-week low of 7.37%. The September goods trade deficit widened to $134.9B, above the $130.2B expected and $132.1B prior, as imports rose 2.4% and exports 2.6%. The 10-year Treasury yield's rolling correlation with the S&P 500 kept climbing, and profitability was the top factor over the past month — via 1 2 3 4
3. Portfolio Views and Market History
- Meb Faber cited data showing small caps have posted positive returns in the November-to-April window 19 consecutive times, averaging about 20% over six months, with the last negative period in 1946. Across five shareholder-yield areas — US all-market, large cap, small cap, developed ex-US and emerging markets — dispersion was wide last year at roughly 4% to 34%, but all are up more than 20% year to date, which he said he cannot explain given that most years are mixed — via 1 2
- Ben Carlson compared the S&P 500's 1960 composition (425 industrial, 25 railroad, 50 utility names) with today's (83 industrial, 76 financial, 75 tech, 60 health care, 47 consumer discretionary, 34 consumer staples, 31 utilities, 30 real estate, 24 materials, 21 energy, 22 communication services), concluding the market differs each time but human nature does not. He called the current stretch the worst decade for bond returns, with yields at 20-year highs, and said he is buying — via 1 2
- A reposted view argued that among the Mag 7 only Apple and Nvidia have beaten the market this year, ranking first and second in free cash flow, and that investors are rewarding cash generation while growing skeptical of large AI spending with uncertain returns. Separately, Jason questioned the revenue base behind Instinct's roughly $30B valuation, citing a reported climb from $100M to $500M to $2.5B to $10B to about $30B in under a year — via 1 2
4. Books, Media and Personal Finance Commentary
- Raoul Pal announced his new book 《The Everything Code》, out in a week, which he says gathers two decades of his writing themes: demographics, debt and currency debasement, the refinancing cycle driving liquidity and liquidity's dominance over everything else, plus the way out — the exponential era and how to position for it. He asked readers to preorder now because preorders determine initial ranking, which determines whether the book reaches readers who have never heard of him. He said he spent most of this year writing about AI's effect on the economy and this time is writing about AI's effect on ourselves, and previewed that it is not the "AI takes jobs, humanity ends" doomsday version — via 1 2
- Morgan Housel was told about a girl who asked at what age she would become a millionaire and about a deal she turned down; the reposted account gave no further details. Lyn Alden used a clip from Avatar in which children easily defeat elite Earth Kingdom guards to argue war scenes often pretend large battles can happen without casualties, and said her work Stolguard Incident explores the ethics of a protagonist killing to win in a lethal situation — via 1 2
- Clifford Asness promoted the second Return Stacking symposium, with 150 advisors, CIOs and allocators gathering in Chicago for a day on building more diversified portfolios without sacrificing core exposures, alongside Return Stacked, AQR Capital, JPMorgan AM, Mather Group, Sonoma Wealth and Man Group. He also compared the fall of the Roman Republic — Caesar marching on Rome fearing prosecution after leaving office — to concerns that the US is on the same path, arguing each norm trampled gives the other side license to go further — via 1 2 3
