Benny & The Squirrel

For Episode 101 of ⁨the show, we were joined by Daniel Peris, head of the Income and Value group at Federated Hermes. Dan explains why cash in hand beats contingent gains, why total return is a broken measurement, how the S&P 500 stopped measuring the market and started driving it, and what a historian and former Sovietologist sees in the long decline of Russia.

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Show Summary

Episode 100! Benny & The Squirrel hit the century mark!! Markets into the midterms, the Anthropic IPO, why Google and Amazon got hammered while Oracle ripped, and the one trade that has held the book together since June.

Benny & The Squirrel is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

The LLM Monitor

Show Summary

Anthropic IPO Note

* The podcast kicked off with a 5-minute run through of the 🐿️’s weekend note on the Ant...

In Episode 99, Benny & The Squirrel are joined by Brandon Carl. Is AI headed for its shale boom moment? Brandon is a rare operator - with a decade on Wall Street in fixed income derivatives followed by a decade building in AI. He is now the founder of Soundcast, and he argues that the loudest voices on BOTH sides of the AI trade are wrong.

We really enjoyed this conversation - it’s a banger!

The Slides

The Finance/AI Divide

* Playing both sides of finance and AI reveals two smart camps th...

Episode 98 and another unmissable Sunday Show! The AI trade is getting flushed. But is this the big one, or just another crowded-position unwind? We unpack the widening cracks in AI financing, why booming compute demand does not automatically mean booming revenue, and whether the S&P equal weight’s comeback signals a genuine market rotation.

LLM Watch

Pod Summary

The AI Unwind in Numbers

* The week’s equity weakness = a sharp reduction in crowded positioning, particularly around AI, rather than clear evidence of a broader market collapse.

* This...

In Episode 97, Benny & The Squirrel are joined by Nick Nemeth, author of Mispriced Assets. Nick has spent fifteen months buried in 10,000 page statutory insurance filings, and what he found should worry anyone with an annuity, a life policy, or exposure to credit markets.

The US life insurance industry runs a balance sheet the size of the entire American banking system, at roughly 16 to 17 times leverage, with capital that Nick describes as “completely fake”.

A mere 5 percent write down on assets would wipe out the margin of error for most of the industry. And there no fede...

For Episode 96 the show brings ‘Black Monday’ (we think not!) chatter, neocloud CDS blow outs, and Brent 2027 going vertical. We break down the first real pain at index level this year, why the AI unwind is a positioning flush and not the big one, the sovereign backstop question hanging over Anthropic / OpenAI and the data center complex, and where the smart money is actually hiding. All that, plus the Squirrel’s latest work on the ‘Twenty for Twenty’ portfolio (Global Industrials) and why BYD might be the world’s most impressive industrial company but a less impressive stock.

Latest LLM...

In Episode 95, our pal Tom Roderick (Trium Capital) is back with us on CPI day as a hotter print cracks a tape that already felt fragile. Recorded at Noon EST on Wednesday 14th October.We get into why the short end rates trade has been a slog, why Tom prefers steepeners to outright receivers, and how France, bank carry pain and hyperscaler supply are all feeding the same problem: a rising cost of capital.From there it is CoreWeave spreads; negative hyperscaler free cash flow; the China AI and oil collar; South African 9.5% bonds; Brazil ahead of the second...

In Episode 94: The free cash flow countdown on AI capex has hit zero, and the bond market is starting to say no. Benny joins from Milwaukee ahead of Brewers vs Dodgers NLCS Game 1, the Squirrel is back in Oxfordshire after a 15-hour drive through France, and the boys go around the houses: the pulled Firmus float on the ASX, hyperscaler CDS at junk levels, why 5% on the long end is anything but “agnostic”, two rate-sensitive stocks worth your attention, Brazil’s pension fund powder keg, and why France is the G7 debt story into April.

Show Notes

A...

In Episode 93 of ⁨the show, our mate Charlie Peabody of Portales Partners returns for our quarterly bank earnings special. Banks peaked in August/September, and Charlie thinks the balance sheet, not the P&L, is about to drive this market lower. We cover credit cards, BNPL, Goldman’s prime broking boom, the Situational Awareness liquidation, the Treasury basis trade, SDR monetization, stablecoins versus deposit franchises, and what Q3 earnings will actually show.

Show Notes

The Bearish Bank Thesis

* Bank stocks peaked between August and September; Charlie still expects roughly another 20% downside in some name...

This week broke most correlations in the book!

Show Notes

French politics and OAT

* French OATs now trade wider than Italian BTPs

* Framed as an old-fashioned political crisis: markets waking up to the risk of a Le Pen vs Mélenchon second round in next year’s presidential election, with no centrist to rally around

* Exacerbated by Japanese sovereign selling…

,,, and the global diesel crisis

Carry trade unwind and rates deleveraging (Minute 3)

* Second major carry unwind this year; in deleveraging, price is irrelevant and p...

Episode 91 was recorded at 5.30 EST on Wednesday 30th September, 2026. We were joined by Izabella Kaminska. Izzy is the founder of the Blind Spot, a finance and ideas publication. Best known as the former editor of FT Alphaville at the Financial Times, she is now a contributor to the business pages of The Daily Telegraph and a widely read commentator on markets, monetary policy and the economics of AI.

Show Notes

The Leaked Anthropic S-1

* The twin questions:

* how to value the foundation-model companies

* what the public-market displacement effects will...

This week broke most correlations in the book!

Show Notes

Correlation chaos

* The theme of the week is market divergences and breaking correlations

* Correlation breakdowns are hurting levered macro and pod shops; unlevered beta investors unaffected; machine models handle slow correlation shifts but not fast ones. Heavy “taps on the shoulder” in fixed income relative value pod shop world

* Benny reiterates his bond bull call from prior weeks despite rates rising since; long end blew through 5 percent and payer swaptions are expensive with few willing sellers

* Treasury mark...

Episode 87 was recorded at 4.30 EST on Thursday 17th September, 2026. Rob Connors of The Crude Chronicles joins Benny and the Squirrel to explain why he doesn’t count barrels, why the marginal cost of production is the only number that matters in oil, and why he thinks crude is heading to $240 before this cycle is done!

We get into the well productivity slowdown that signals rising development costs, the “China collar” and the renminbi signal, why big tech’s trillion-dollar capex binge is a replay of big oil in 2013, the refining secondary-unit squeeze, and where we are in the ener...

Episode 86 was recorded at 6.30 EST on Thursday 10th September, 2026.

Show Notes

Quite a weekend in ‘AI La-La-Land’!

* Recap of a wild weekend in “AI La La Land”, triggered by another AI “safety / off ramp” announcement.

* Surely we are in a world of diminishing returns from these ‘Axios-style’ safety / ‘FUD’ headlines. Can the off ramp play out elegantly from here?

* Sunday night futures open with Nasdaq offered and bonds bid - kinda makes sense!

* Grown-up corporates do not want to hand data to model companies; the move is toward private, self...

Episode 85 was recorded at 6.30 EST on Thursday 10th September, 2026. We were joined by Herve van Caloen, Founder and CIO of Mercator Investment Management. Starting his career as an analyst at Scudder, Stevens and Clark in 1985, when global investing was still in its infancy.

He later launched The PaineWebber Europe Growth Fund, the first mutual fund specializing in both Western Europe and in the former communist countries of central Europe. In the mid 1990s, Mr. van Caloen led the international investment effort at Provident Capital Management and later served as First Vice President of Schroders in New York.<...

Recorded at 7pm EST on Sunday of the Labor Day Weekend.

On this “Unmissable Sunday Show”, the 🐿️ drops the latest “20-for-20” installment - this week it’s resources (energy and materials) and explains why today’s pitch is scarcity, capital discipline, debasement and sovereign resilience rather than a China demand shock. Plus why the $DJP commodity ETN took nearly two decades just to break even after the 2008 sell-off.

The Show Notes (plus bonus extras at the end)

🐿️’s “20-for-20” and Resources

* The latest Twenty for Twenty sector installment on resources (energy plus mater...

Episode 83 was recorded at 8am Tokyo Time on Friday 4th September, 2026. We were joined by Jesper Koll - the Japan Optimist. Jesper is an economist, investor and an unashamed Japan bull! --- ex JPMorgan & Merrill Lynch Chief Economist/Strategist & Head of Research ; Board Director at OIST, the Asia Society and three Japanese start-ups; Global Ambassador at Monex Group and for the Tokyo Financial Center.

Show Notes

Yen intervention and “Oriental Maggie”

* Is there real coordination between the MOF, US Treasury and others behind the yen moves of recent weeks?- “the last 3 to 4 weeks...

The show has expanded on the socials! Follow us on Instagram and / or TikTok (if you do that kind of thing!)

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If you act on anything provided in this newsletter, you agree to the terms in this disclaimer. Everything in this newsletter is for educational and entertainment purposes only and NOT investment advice. Nothing in this newsletter is an offer to sell or to buy any security. The author is not responsible for any financial...

Episode 81 was recorded at 6pm EST on Thursday 27th August, 2026. We were delighted to be joined by my pal Chase Taylor. Chase is is a busy guy. He is Founder and ‘Chief Cone’ at Pinecone Macro as well as Head of Research at Bulwark Capital Management.

The show has expanded on the socials! Follow us on Instagram and / or TikTok (if you do that kind of thing!)

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https://www.instagram.com/benny_and_the_squirrel/

If you act on anything provided in this news...

The show has expanded on the socials! Follow us on Instagram and / or TikTok (if you do that kind of thing!)

Benny & The Squirrel (@bennyandthesquirrel) | TikTok

https://www.instagram.com/benny_and_the_squirrel/

If you act on anything provided in this newsletter, you agree to the terms in this disclaimer. Everything in this newsletter is for educational and entertainment purposes only and NOT investment advice. Nothing in this newsletter is an offer to sell or to buy any security. The author is not responsible for any financial...

The show was recorded at 6.30pm EST on Sunday 16th August.

The show has expanded on the socials! Follow us on Instagram and / or TikTok (if you do that kind of thing!)

Benny & The Squirrel (@bennyandthesquirrel) | TikTok

https://www.instagram.com/benny_and_the_squirrel/

If you act on anything provided in this newsletter, you agree to the terms in this disclaimer. Everything in this newsletter is for educational and entertainment purposes only and NOT investment advice. Nothing in this newsletter is an offer to sell or to buy any...

Benny (Capital Misallocation) & The Squirrel were joined once again by Jeff. Jeff founded Macke Asset Management after getting his MBA from Stanford in the 1990s. He wrote for TheStreet.com, Minyanville and Yahoo Finance. He was also a founding cast member of CNBC’s Fast Money and an anchor on Yahoo Finance.

Jeff learned his trade on the knee of his dad who was the CEO of Target for over a decade. You could say US retail runs through Jeff’s blood. You can find his subscriber content over at StockMarket TV as well as at Wall Stre...

Benny (Capital Misallocation) & The Squirrel were joined once again by Mike.

The show was recorded at 6pm EST on Thursday 6th August.

The show has expanded on the socials! Follow us on Instagram and / or TikTok (if you do that kind of thing!)

Benny & The Squirrel (@bennyandthesquirrel) | TikTok

https://www.instagram.com/benny_and_the_squirrel/

Full show notes available for The Blind Squirrel and Capital Misallocation paid subscribers.

Benny (Capital Misallocation) & The Squirrel were joined once again by Mike.

The show was recorded at 6pm EST on Thursday 6th August.

⚠️ Audio Quality Warning & Apology ⚠️We want to sincerely apologize for the audio issues on our end during this episode. Blame Caribbean Telecoms! However, we decided to publish this because Mike Green’s audio is perfectly clear, and since he is delivering the vast majority of the insights and doing most of the talking, we didn’t want you to miss out on this incredible conversation.

Benny & The Squirrel will be back on S...

Episode 74 was recorded at 5.00pm EST on Sunday 2nd August, 2026. Don’t miss this week’s guest show on Thursday evening (6.30pm EST). Michael W. Green is back on with us!

The show has expanded on the socials! Follow us on Instagram and / or TikTok (if you do that kind of thing!)

Benny & The Squirrel (@bennyandthesquirrel) | TikTok

https://www.instagram.com/benny_and_the_squirrel/

Full show notes available for The Blind Squirrel and Capital Misallocation paid subscribers.

Thanks to everyone that joined us live on the various platforms - and for all the questions. Watch via the panel above or link to the YouTube recording below.

Blind Squirrel Macro is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

If you act on anything provided in this newsletter, you agree to the terms in this disclaimer. Everything in this newsletter is for educational and entertainment purposes only and NOT investment advice. Nothing in this newsletter is an offer to sell or to...

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If you act on anything provided in this newsletter, you agree to the terms in this disclaimer. Everything in this newsletter is for educational and entertainment purposes only and NOT investment advice. Nothing in this newsletter is an offer to sell or to buy any security. The author is not responsible for any financial loss you may incur by acting on any information provided in this newsletter. Before making any investment decisions, talk to a financial advisor.