The Noble Update Podcast

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...

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...

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...

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":

<...

Last episode, we left off with Tom Gober about to reveal a secret document he found in a company president’s personal files, and Episode 3 opens with what it said.

A CFO in a criminal case was recorded calling these offshore deals “a little bit like morphine,” and Tom explains why: once you start, the hole gets bigger and you need a bigger dose.

Here’s what we’re going over in Episode 3 “The Secret Side Letter”:

* Tom tells you what was in the side letter hidden behind a reinsurance contract that looked pe...

Our long/short spread widened to 67.4% today, with our longs up 25.9% on average and our shorts down 41.6%.

This post has bonus content for paid subscribers. Upgrade to get full access.

We made money on both sides of the book, which is exactly what a hedge fund is supposed to do.

But the people chasing momentum and narratives are having a very different day.

When the tide of easy liquidity goes out, the momentum...

Today is the last day you can get into the Best Technical Ideas Online Summit for $99, and I couldn’t be MORE EXCITED about this one.

I like to say that putting on these summits is like coaching an All-American team. Most conferences are stuck with whoever’s on their roster, while we get to pick the best players in the country.

On October 27 and 28, that team is John Roque, Rich Ross, David Keller, Brian Shannon and 16 more of the best technicians on Wall Street, and I’m hosting the summit in collaboration with Bill Kelleh...

1. Strategic Actions and Decisions

* Maintain a heavy 50% allocation to energy trades: The risk of escalation remains elevated, physical inventories are depleted, and supply continues to lag behind demand.

* Re-evaluate Petrobras (PBR) as a buy following political re-rating: The stock offers upside toward $30–$35 due to favorable election runoff dynamics, capital rotation, and strong underlying fundamentals despite past governance discounts.

* Capitalize on Methanex (MEOH) undervaluation: Take advantage of severe global supply constraints resulting from blocked Iranian methanol exports and low US feedstock gas costs, which set up a strong upside re-rating.

* Trim gains in...

Grab your seat for The Best Technical Ideas Online Summit at $99 before the early bird doubles to $199 on Friday:

noble-capevents.com

1. Strategic Actions and Decisions

* Re-evaluate long-term bond exposure: Shift positioning away from long Treasury holdings as persistent global capital demands and rising inflation expectations push yields significantly higher.

* Capitalize on French and European fiscal shifts: Monitor European political realignment and fiscal commitments, such as Le Pen’s proposed debt break, for opportunistic bond and currency positioning.

* Assess AI tech ecosystem exposure: Monitor top hyperscaler ca...

20 of the best technicians on Wall Street are bringing you 60 ideas, and the $99 price ends Friday.

On October 27 and 28, John Roque, Rich Ross, David Keller, Brian Shannon and 16 more will each present their best ideas at the Best Technical Ideas Online Summit, which I'm hosting in collaboration with my friend Bill Kelleher. It runs 10 AM to 4 PM ET both days, and the replays are available if you can't watch live.

Thousands have attended these summits, and I think this one is going to be our best yet.

...

Last week we showed you the $2 trillion time bomb sitting inside America's life insurance companies, and in Episode 2 of our series with Tom Gober, we start naming names.

Tom calls it the cash cow: premiums pour into an insurance company 365 days a year, and when a private equity owner sits on both sides of the table, he can steer that money into his own businesses while the policyholders pay him a fee for the privilege.

Here's what we're going over in Episode 2 “Sports Empires & the Liquidity Trap” of The Insu...

1. Strategic Actions and Decisions

* Adopt a defensive investment posture and hold cash: Leaders should consider defensive positioning and holding cash because high inflation, skyrocketing interest rates, and vulnerable market internals create severe risks of post-election market shocks.

* Monitor regional bank earnings closely: Executives must watch upcoming regional bank earnings reports for potential negative surprises, as leveraged asset classes and rising defaults threaten financial stability.

* Evaluate natural gas and uranium for long-term exposure: Investors should look toward natural gas liquids and depressed uranium markets (such as the Sprott Uranium ETF) as asymmetric risk-reward opportunities...

I believe the scandal building inside America's life insurance industry is bigger than Madoff and bigger than Enron, and it might approach the size of the 2008 financial crisis.

I just sat down in New York with the man who's been warning about it for 41 years, and if you want to know what's really going on inside these companies, Tom Gober is THAT guy…

Tom is a certified fraud examiner who started his career as an insurance examiner for the state of Mississippi. In his early 20s, he caught a company hiding a hole in...

20 of the BEST market technicians on Wall Street are bringing 60 ideas to the summit I’m hosting together with Bill Kelleher on October 27 and 28, and the timing couldn’t be better:

This market runs on narrative dominance, where the fanciest story on TV gets the money until the CHART says otherwise.

Mr. Market hands out a scorecard every single day, and these 20 experts read it for a living.

The lineup is a murderers’ row: John Roque, Rich Ross, David Keller, Brian Shannon are just the start. You get all of them with their 60 ideas...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit georgenoble.substack.com

Our subscriber call today was TERRIFIC.

We talked about:

* Why rates still have room to run

* Where the real bubble in this market is hiding

* What I expect once the election is behind us

* Which scoreboard names I'd still buy today, and where I'm taking profits.

* My best advice for anyone coming off a bad year

I highly recommend you watch the full...

The Noble Update has doubled in the last 60 days, and that's because of YOU. Thank you for the extraordinary support.

Our longs are up 24.4% on average and our shorts are down 36.5%, which puts a 60.9% spread between the 2 books.

The results matter, and the process behind them matters even more. That's what today's subscriber call at 12 PM Eastern is about. I'll walk you through our picks and our process, and I'll explain how to read the scoreboard (since there was some confusion).

Know what...

This panel is the AI skeptics' version of the '92 Dream Team: Ed Zitron, Gary Marcus, Julien Garran and Nobody Special, all on one stage. This is what you'll hear:

* We run the math on how much of Big Tech’s profits this buildout could wipe out, and the number is staggering.

* We go through the leaked Anthropic filing and the numbers that never made the headlines.

* We expose the balance sheet games the biggest names in tech are now playing to keep the money flowing.

* We follow the ri...

1. Strategic Actions and Decisions

* Assess the $15 billion physical uranium market structure: The underlying commodity market is exceptionally thin, cash-only, and lacks liquid derivatives or futures, creating structural supply vulnerabilities despite steady global reactor growth.

* Capitalize on pricing disconnects in physical contracts: Utilities are entering long-term contracts with price floors near $105/lb and caps at $130/lb, while spot prices linger around $89/lb—below greenfield mine incentive costs of $120–$130/lb.

* Prepare for supply squeezes driven by policy mandates: US legislation mandating domestic uranium purchases and banning Russian enriched imports faces physical impossibilities, as current US prod...

Anthropic's own IPO filing tells you why:

The prospectus warns that its AI models could resist being shut down and could hide or manipulate information. If you run security at a big bank, that's the last thing you're letting anywhere near your customers' money.

The surveys back that up too: 69% of IT and security leaders say security worries are slowing down their AI agent rollouts, and only 1 in 5 American businesses use AI in any part of their work.

And the revenue Anthropic does have leans...

1. Strategic Actions and Decisions

* Divest from fixed income assets and prepare for elevated yields: Reallocate capital out of bonds as structural factors—such as heavy government issuance and persistent inflation—drive 10-year Treasury yields toward 10% by 2032.

* Monitor critical Treasury yield thresholds for potential equity market stress: Track the 2-year Treasury yield, as a monthly close above 5.30% signals a rapid move toward 6%–7%, which equity markets cannot absorb.

* Capitalize on capital flows into non-U.S. treasury assets: Adjust institutional allocation strategies to account for foreign marginal buyers preferring U.S. megacap tech equities over U.S. Tre...

In June 1990 I told Louis Rukeyser on Wall Street Week that the Japanese bull market was over, and the Nikkei didn’t see its 1989 high again until 2024.

The reason was simple:

Japanese stocks were still trading at 50 times earnings while their long bonds paid around 7%. A stock at 50 times earnings gives you a 2% earnings yield, and 2% can’t compete with a 7% government bond.

In the same interview I warned that any company with a leveraged balance sheet in a cyclical industry could get into trouble, and I singled out the airlines. The recession star...

Many subscribers asked for a single place to track all of our stock picks, so we built it:

A live scoreboard with the entry and current price on every position.

21 of our 24 scored calls are winners, and the 3 that aren’t are on there in red, because I’m not in the business of hiding losers.

Ask whoever you’re paying for stock picks to publish the same thing.

Most won’t, because a sheet like this shows you very quickly who does real fundamental work and who’s been riding a rising m...

Macro Musings by Danny D joined me for a Substack live, and these are the 5 biggest takeaways from our conversation:

1. The low rate world was the anomaly, and it isn't coming back.

Danny explained why rates stayed so low for so long, and why those forces have flipped:

* Last cycle had baby boomers in their peak saving years and households repairing their balance sheets after 2008, and both pushed rates down.

* This cycle, household wealth is up nearly $70 trillion and the boomers are spending their retirement savings instead of adding to them.<...

1. Strategic Actions and Decisions

* Assess Central Bank Disconnect: Re-evaluate fixed-income and equities positions: Monetary policy tightening amidst a energy-driven inflation spike creates heightened downside risk for broader economic growth. [01:39]

* Capital Allocation in Energy: Maintain high exposure to energy and supply chains: Structural supply deficits, ongoing geopolitical tensions, and physical market tightness continue to support energy sector outperformance. [17:05]

* Mitigate Consumer-Exposed Risks: Divest from consumer discretionary assets: Squeezed real incomes and rising interest rates are severely impacting consumer spending power and earnings. [28:05]

* Sovereign Debt Realignment: Reduce long-duration Treasury holdings: Structural fiscal deficits and...

Dispersion is increasing and the corrections are starting to arrive, and after 3 years where owning the index was enough, this market has started paying the people who actually know what they own.

I've been through enough cycles to know this is where stock picking starts to matter again:

Our longs are up 28% this year and our shorts are down 40%, which puts 68 points of spread between the 2 books. It's all documented and time stamped on my feed, so go check the work yourself.

We were early on gold...

34 years ago today, the market broke the Bank of England for holding the pound at a price that wasn't real.

Scott Bessent is now trying to manipulate the price of the US 10-year the exact same way.

HISTORY WILL NOT BE KIND

Take the dot com bubble, merge it with the 2008 housing crisis, and that is roughly what we are looking at.

You have a commodity deflating at record speed while the debt built up to produce it explodes at record speed.

What could possibly go wrong?

Normally the market fixes this by itself. Prices fall, management gets nervous, budgets get cut. But that wiring is CUT right now.

Prices never fell far enough to scare anybody, and Washington is running a deficit near 7% of GDP that papers over the damage.<...

1. Strategic Actions and Decisions

* Transition portfolio allocations toward scarce, capital-light real assets: Shift away from long-duration growth assets toward tangible asset oligopolies to protect capital against sticky inflation and rising baseline capital costs.

* Avoid over-allocating capital to hyper-cyclical semiconductor producers: Recognize the structural risks of chasing record margins in tech hardware as major tech firms build proprietary chips and capacity expansions mean-revert.

* Rebalance natural gas holdings toward royalty trusts and infrastructure: Target pure-play royalty vehicles (e.g., White Hawk) that capture nominal price increases without incurring direct operating expenses or heavy capital expenditure...

1. Strategic Actions and Decisions

* Pivot capital allocation to short-term trading: Shift strategy away from duration risk and medium-to-long-term investing toward short-term algorithmic trading to navigate high macroeconomic uncertainty.

* Maintain neutral positioning on peak-cycle tanker equities: Avoid taking long-term short positions against strong cash flows while managing volatility via short-term equities and derivatives.

* Capitalize on shipyard capacity constraints and order backlogs: Monitor expanding newbuilding order books—particularly for 2027–2028 deliveries—to prepare for eventual cyclical rate collapses.

* Position for upcoming weather-driven market disruptions: Prepare for El Niño-driven trade disruptions over the next 3–6 months th...

Scott Bessent is either incompetent or a liar.

Short bonds.

THIS IS INSANITY!

Check out our most recent Pod Street Week edition - diving deeper into what's going on right now and how you should be positioned, by distilling the highest-value finance conversations into one investment-focused summary:

1. Strategic Actions and Decisions

* Transition away from momentum-driven asset strategies: Reallocate capital toward strict, fundamental free cash flow analysis to insulate portfolios from severe day-to-day market volatility.

* Capitalize on global fiscal debt realignments: Rebalance fixed income and equity portfolios to account for high long-term interest rates and expanding US fiscal deficits.

* Target mispriced, cash-generating healthcare assets: Invest selectively in targeted pharmaceutical equity baskets that possess robust drug pipelines and at least five years of patent protection.

* Exploit semiconductor supply oligopolies: Acquire deeply discounted memory chip suppliers that hold pricing power over...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit georgenoble.substack.com

Yesterday's subscriber call was one of the BEST we've done.

There are decades when nothing happens, and there are weeks when decades happen. Right now, decades are happening. The market is sitting near all-time highs and blissfully ignoring all of it.

Here's what we covered:

* Bonds: The real story isn't Hormuz or the CPI decimal. It's a global capex boom co…

1. Strategic Actions and Decisions

* Mitigate Interest Rate Volatility: Position portfolios to be short the long end of the yield curve to hedge against rising long-term yields driven by massive deficit spending and capital competition.

* Reallocate to Tangible Real Assets: Increase structural exposure to physical commodities and gold miners with verified volume growth to counter systemic fiat currency debasement.

* De-Risk High-Debt and Discretionary Holdings: Divest from debt-laden companies and vulnerable consumer sectors facing margin compression from sticky food and input inflation.

* Target Strategic European Growth Drivers: Capitalize on European market shifts by...

1. Strategic Actions and Decisions

* Capitalize on Sector Rotation Out of Tech: Shift allocation away from the broad tech indices into outperforming market sectors such as biotechs and healthcare. ****

* Execute Long Positions in Gold and Energy Assets: Accumulate gold, gold equities, and energy stocks during pullbacks as long-term base structures signal extended bull trends.

* Monitor Critical Technical Levels Across Key Indices: Track the S&P 500 support around the 7600 level while leveraging the 200-day moving average for downside protection on tech futures.

* Target Value Discrepancies in Mispriced Equities: Identify fundamentally mispriced individual stocks...

1. Strategic Actions and Decisions

* Monitor macro capital competition: Track U.S. Treasury liquidity against heavy private AI debt issuance crowding out yields.

* Prepare for commercial real estate exposure: Anticipate Q3/Q4 hard debt maturity walls in the $2.3T multifamily sector.

* Evaluate regulatory and political shifts: Factor in growing state-level moratoriums and bipartisan pushback against data centers ahead of elections.

* Hedge against hardware centralization: Capitalize on the transition from centralized data centers to localized edge computing models like Mac Minis.

* Position portfolios in real assets: Allocate defensively into precious metals...

The government couldn't find enough buyers for its own long bonds, so the government became the buyer.

Argentina does this and Turkey does this.

We now do it 3 months before an election, and the financial press is calling it “decisive leadership.”

These are emerging market tactics, and the effect will be temporary at best.

Bessent will go down as one of the most cons...

1. Strategic Actions and Decisions

* Capitalize on the “debasement trade” re-acceleration: Pivot investments into precious metals like gold and silver as markets walk back rate-hike expectations and yield curves steepen.

* Mitigate bond market exposure to high debt-to-GDP sovereigns: Reduce holdings in countries with unmoored fiscal policies (such as the US at 7% deficit-to-GDP and Japan at over 200%) to safeguard capital against potential yield blowups.

* Construct a resilient safe-haven basket: Diversify out of devaluing fiat currencies by allocating into a multi-asset basket featuring precious metals and sovereign assets from low-debt nations like Switzerland, Sweden, and Germany.

1. Strategic Actions and Decisions

* Maintain Structural Bullish Equity Stance: Continue holding macro equity index exposure driven by overall trend-following signals while managing risk dynamically [01:40].

* Capitalize on Insider Buying Sectors: Prioritize allocation to healthcare [04:03] and technology [05:08] sectors due to significant insider accumulation signals over recent months [04:48, 05:40].

* Execute Mean-Reversion Metal Trades: Maintain long positions in gold based on recent sentiment buy signals, and prepare to overweight gold mining equities for multi-year mean reversion [09:41, 11:13].

* Divest Long-Term Treasuries: Maintain zero long-term Treasury bond allocation for structural investment accounts due to a multi-decade rising interest rate...

1. Strategic Actions and Decisions

* Capitalize on oil supply constraints: Leverage the extended geopolitical conflict restricting Middle East supply by holding assets insulated from regional disruption, such as Petrobras.

* Deploy capital into super-spec offshore drilling: Invest in providers like Aquestive/NorAm Drilling that control high-specification rigs in the Permian Basin to capture rising day rates and 12–14% dividend yields.

* Exploit regulatory mispricings in biopharma: Acquire shares of Aquestive Therapeutics following its sell-off over minor FDA packaging rejections, anticipating an 80% probability of rerating toward $6.50–$10.00.

* Implement active portfolio risk management: Cut underperforming positions rapidly and scal...

1. Strategic Actions and Decisions

* Capitalize on Oil Services and Drilling Platforms: Position investments into leveraged offshore oil service companies like Transocean to take advantage of rising daily rig rates and expanding free cash flows.

* Reallocate to High-Quality Energy Engineering Giants: Invest in dominant engineering and service firms such as Schlumberger and Baker Hughes as they transition into critical infrastructure players for data centers.

* Execute Short Positions on Overvalued SMR Companies: Target small modular reactor (SMR) startups lacking products or revenue—such as Oklo and NuScale—ahead of Westinghouse’s upcoming IPO.

* Gain E...