The Noble Update Podcast

More than $10B poured into Nasdaq 100 and semiconductor ETFs in a single week, right into a falling tech market.If you're a bull, that's the LAST thing you want to see.Bottoms form when people finally give up, and this crowd is still buying every dip with both hands. Now add the calendar: it's November, and a fund manager who's behind for the year isn't going to stand up and take more risk, so every leg down invites MORE selling.And for the AI names, it gets worse…Their stock price is their cost of capital, and it's rising at the exact moment they need more money.Tech is in a bear market, and in a bear market you're either short or flat.We positioned for this early, and we're keeping our foot on the gas.We have big news coming about The Noble Update in the next couple of days, so if you've been on the fence, now's the time to subscribe. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit georgenoble.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit georgenoble.substack.comIf you missed last night’s emergency subscriber call, you missed a lot.The room stayed packed to the very end of a 70 minute session with Michael Howell, David Trainer, Frank Longman, Michael Kramer and Nobody Special, and the conversation was on fire from the first minute.We talked about:* Where we are in the liquidity cycle, and what to own while it dra…

Before you watch: We're hosting an EMERGENCY subscriber call tonight at 7:30 PM ET.The AI trade is coming apart in real time, and I'm going live with Noble Update subscribers tonight to walk through exactly where I stand. The Zoom meeting details:AI is a wonderful product and a lousy investment, and I went toe to toe with Gene Munster of Deepwater on exactly that in a debate on ZeroHedge.Gene thinks we're in the third inning and called this a buy opportunity. I think the internet already showed us how this ends. The bulls of 1999 were right about the internet, and anyone who owned Nortel, Lucent or Global Crossing still got wiped out.If the payoff on AI were so obvious, the market would hand these companies the money freely. Instead Nvidia has to play the bank of AI and back its own customers so they can keep buying its chips.It's a commodity, the Chinese are doing it for 95% less, and the bond market is already sending the bill.This was a fun debate, and the bulls have nothing left but copium. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit georgenoble.substack.com/subscribe

Wall Street tried to sell WeWork to the public at $45 billion, and weeks after the IPO fell apart, SoftBank put it on its own books at $4 billion.My friend David Trainer of New Constructs was one of the first to call out WeWork, and he thinks Anthropic is the same movie with a much bigger ending. He calls it the final cash out, and we went through exactly how it works:* How your index fund, pension and 401k end up holding the bag* The $900 billion of purchase commitments, roughly 45 times revenue* The vendor costs Anthropic wants kept out of its earnings* The red flag its own auditors raised on internal controls* The shares insiders can sell within days of the IPOThe crash will be EPIC, and David cuts through the noise in this one.Follow David Trainer on X: x.com/theRealD This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit georgenoble.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit georgenoble.substack.comOur subscriber call last night was TERRIFIC.The election is today, and I told subscribers exactly how I'm positioned for what comes after it. My friend Peter Boockvar joined us too.We talked about:* Why $200 oil is on the table, even if the war ends* What I expect from the market once the election is behind us* The simplest way I know to own uranium* What to ch…

The tech bros are lining YOU up to be their exit liquidity, and the Anthropic IPO is how they plan to do it.Anthropic just disclosed $895B in spending commitments ahead of its IPO, and Robinhood is already fighting for a piece of the shares Anthropic may set aside for retail investors. When the people who got in early want the public holding the bag, you should be angry, very angry.I'll go through all of it tonight on our subscriber call at 7:30 PM EST, along with the process behind our 70% long/short spread.The Zoom details are in the post below: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit georgenoble.substack.com/subscribe

Energy was up 11.8% and tech was down 2.7% through Thursday, and we were long energy and short tech the whole time.Our long/short spread is now 70.1% (119% annualized), and all 12 of our scored shorts are winners.If all you owned was the index, you got a flat month and MISSED every bit of it.The tide is going out. Money isn’t cheap anymore, so valuation and fundamentals matter again, and the stocks priced on stories are the first to go. I think the tech rout is just getting started.On Sunday at 10 AM ET I’m going live with Noble Update subscribers to go through the portfolio and our process, and to explain why I think SpaceX is about to crash - instructions to join are below and replays will be available:If you missed this week’s Best Technical Ideas Summit, the replay with all 60 ideas is up here: noble-capevents.com/btios-watch-the-replaysThe Noble Update is the #1 place for alpha.I want you to MAKE MONEY. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit georgenoble.substack.com/subscribe

All it takes to break the AI picks and shovels trade is order growth slowing from 30% to 15%. That's STILL double-digit growth, but the stocks can get crushed anyway.My friend Peter Boockvar joined me, and he thinks this is gut check time for the whole trade:* The warning lights already flashing on the AI dashboard, from Chinese chipmakers to scrapped data center IPOs* Why the memory chip boom peaked within weeks of a Chinese rival going public* The credit market pricing a 55% chance that one AI darling defaults within 5 years* The cyclical chip stock that just became the top holding in a major value ETF, and why that should worry you* The most hated sector in the market that Peter loves right nowYou can also watch the full conversation on Youtube: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit georgenoble.substack.com/subscribe

Last week CoreWeave's bonds traded at yields around 15%, and the cost of insuring its debt implied roughly a 60% chance of default within 5 years. Oracle's default insurance hit a record high at the same time. That's what it looks like when narratives and dreams run into a lack of cash flow and a mountain of debt.When easy money dries up, the most indebted company with the weakest fundamentals gets shot first, which is why CoreWeave is at the front of the line. It's our biggest short, we added to it 2 weeks ago, and I think it's a better short at around $60 than it was at $107.As Hemingway put it, you go bankrupt gradually, then suddenly.Check out the full conversation.Sign up for The Best Technical Ideas Online Summit here:noble-capevents.comP.S. Every position we hold is on our public scoreboard with the date and price we called it, including the ones that aren't working: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit georgenoble.substack.com/subscribe

This is the final episode of our series with Tom Gober. Last episode ended with Tom challenging the offshore reinsurers to show us the $1.5 trillion, and in Episode 4, he shows you which companies are behind it.Just 40 companies account for 85% of it, and the biggest sends $235.7 billion to a single offshore affiliate while holding only $4 billion of surplus, which Tom describes as moving money from one pocket to another, like "trust me, bro, I got this."Here's what we're going over in Episode 4 "The Offshore Black Box":* Tom maps every internal reinsurance deal at a household name in American insurance, with billions swirling between its own companies and all of it tapping into 7 captives in Arizona where you can't get any information.* Tom shows how a company you'd recognize asked Texas to approve a reinsurance deal worth more than $20 billion with its own affiliate, and when it never heard back, it disclosed the deal as "non-disallowed."* Tom ranks the 25 carriers he worries about most, and at the top of the list, just over 1% of the higher-risk assets going bad would wipe out the entire surplus.* Tom shows that over the last 9 years, the industry's surplus grew by about 50% while the affiliated reinsurance he's worried about doubled.We also call out 9 state insurance commissioners by name, so stay for that.I'm very bearish on private equity and private credit, and this episode made me even more so. Insurance companies have been a huge source of money for those firms, and a lot of that paper ended up in 401(k)s and pension plans, so a firefighter in Peoria who's never thought about private credit may already own it.Over 4 episodes, Tom has taken us from a recorder hidden in a briefcase to a $1.5 trillion question the regulators still haven't answered, and neither of us got paid a cent to do it. We did it because the people who've paid their premiums on time for years deserve to know where their money went.I'm asking every American who watches this to speak up, and the easiest place to start is sending this series to anyone you know with a life insurance policy or an annuity.Tom's closing words say it all: The more people who hear the truth, the better off the policyholders will be. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit georgenoble.substack.com/subscribe