Itaú is implementing its AI First strategy in customer and employee services through the conversational interface ia.i and the IARA governance platform. This application scenario operates in one of Brazil's most heavily regulated industries.
Read originalBenefit Street Partners speeds up question answering with OpenAI's Codex tool. The firm's Anant Kumar uses Codex to conduct code reviews, improve follow-up efficiency, and build tools to compare loan valuations and analyze credit agreements.
Read originalNew York University Professor Aswath Damodaran reviewed the performance of US stocks in September 2026: the 10-year US Treasury yield rose from 4.75% to 5.29% during the month, an increase of 54 basis points, placing it in the top 10% of 770 monthly changes since 1962. Despite this, the total market capitalization of US stocks still increased by $2.5 trillion during the month, with nearly $1.5 trillion of that increase coming from the technology sector.
Read originalFed Governor Waller delivered a speech at the Central Bank of Türkiye, explaining the rationale behind the September FOMC decision to raise the policy rate by 25 basis points to 3.75%-4%, and elaborating on the signaling role of the Summary of Economic Projections (SEP). He stated that the September rate hike was not based on a single inflation data point, but rather the cumulative result of multiple factors over recent months, including stabilization in the labor market, energy price increases driven by Middle East conflicts, high-tech consumer price increases driven by AI construction, and new tariff risks arising from trade conflicts.
Read originalFederal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook delivered remarks at the first nationwide Investing in Rural America conference hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. She noted that rural labor markets broadly track national trends, but with lower labor force participation and slower employment growth than urban areas in recent years. Rural inflation has largely aligned with national trends, though cost-of-living increases outpaced urban areas during the post-pandemic recovery, with energy and housing costs as the primary sources of divergence.
Read originalIn his latest memo, Howard Marks explores recent attempts to suppress long-term government bond yields. He states clearly that the only sustainable solution is to address the underlying factors driving interest rates higher, even if such measures face political resistance. Any other approach is essentially an attempt to defy the laws of economics, and such attempts have never succeeded.
Read originalNYU Professor Aswath Damodaran reviews the backdrop of rising U.S. Treasury yields in 2026, noting that the 10-year Treasury yield rose from 4.18% at the start of the year to 4.75% by the end of August, while 20-year and 30-year Treasury yields surpassed 5% during the year. He also compares the long-term trend of U.S. Treasury yields since 1962, as well as concurrent changes in government bond yields across multiple currencies, including the euro, Japanese yen, and British pound.
Key Takeaways:One can learn to construct an intrinsic risk-free rate using the inflation rate plus real GDP growth, and combine it with changes in corporate cash flows to break down the differentiated impact of rising interest rates on stock valuations across industries.
AQR co-founder and dean of Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management co-authored an article pointing out that AI can automate most analytical and technical capabilities in quantitative investment, making creativity and emotional intelligence enduring competitive advantages that are difficult to replace. AQR is leveraging the Quanta Academy, launched in 2015, to expand relevant capability development, while Kellogg School of Management also promotes students’ simultaneous development of analytical skills and soft skills through programs such as MBAi. Research shows that the impact of AI on empathy is not fixed, and depends on tool design choices and organizational culture building.
Read originalEpisode 125 of Deribit's Crypto Options Unplugged podcast, hosted by Imran Lakha and David Brickell, explores whether pressure in the global bond market could serve as a catalyst for Bitcoin's next major move.
Read originalAswath Damodaran, a professor at NYU Stern School of Business, writes that the current venture capital industry generally prioritizes corporate expansion over profitability, a tendency that has become more pronounced over the past two decades. He breaks down six core factors influencing a company's expansion potential, including market size, market growth rate, industry structure, capital intensity, customer inertia, and dependence on key individuals. He also identifies the key variables determining a company's profitability feasibility as unit economics, economies of scale, and competitive barriers.
Key Takeaways:You can master an analytical framework that distinguishes between a company's expansion potential and profitability feasibility, using market size, unit economics, economies of scale, and competitive barriers to judge whether a startup's expansion choices are reasonable.
NYU valuation professor Aswath Damodaran published a lengthy article proposing a four-stage framework for revolutionary change, arguing that AI is currently entering its coming-of-age phase, shifting from investment and infrastructure building to commercial implementation. The article notes that since the release of ChatGPT in November 2022, the Mag Seven contributed 45% of the total increase in U.S. stock market capitalization from 2022 to 2025. Six leading AI companies have cumulatively spent $1.7 trillion in capital expenditures, while the current upper bound of total revenue from AI products and services is only about $250 billion.
Read originalAswath Damodaran, a valuation professor at New York University, uses the complete journey of Leopold Aschenbrenner's Situational Awareness hedge fund—from explosive growth to liquidation following a blowup—as a case study to systematically break down the definition, sources, and real-world impact of investment conviction.
Read originalBridgewater has published an AI policy commentary arguing that AI is the most impactful technological change of our time, and that policy must be enacted immediately to balance its productivity benefits against risks of social disruption and safety incidents. Bridgewater proposes that US AI policy must prioritize societal resilience to technological shocks and establish a robust AI safety regulatory framework; otherwise, AI development will be forced to stall due to political unsustainability or major incidents.
Read originalAswath Damodaran, a professor at New York University's Stern School of Business, wrote an article analyzing the SEC's proposal to replace quarterly reports with semi-annual reports alongside new Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh's proposal to reduce forward guidance, arguing that both are essentially reducing the amount of public information that markets have become accustomed to receiving.
Read originalNYU Professor Aswath Damodaran analyzes whether SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic should be included in the S&P 500 after their IPOs. He breaks down index construction, including constituent selection, weighting methods, and index unit conversion mechanisms. He notes that the S&P 500 uses free-float market capitalization weighting, and that the June 15, 2026 closing level of 7554.29 corresponds to an index unit of 0.1190.
Read originalIn his latest memo, Howard Marks outlines the evolution of the sub-investment grade credit market from the 1970s to the present, focusing on analyzing the drivers behind the rapid growth of direct lending after the global financial crisis, as well as the related issues brought by the rapid deployment of large-scale capital. He points out that the development of direct lending is deeply tied to that of private equity, and the performance of private equity portfolio companies is the core determinant of whether direct loans will succeed in the future.
Read originalIn a special episode of The Insight: Conversations, Howard Marks shares his reflections on themes from Oaktree Capital's recent client conference. The discussion covers the evolution of credit markets, the nature of asset mispricing, and the importance of leadership.
Read originalBridgewater Co-Chief Investment Officer Greg Jensen and AIA Labs Chief Scientist Jas Sekhon released a viewpoint arguing that Google Gemini 3 is currently the strongest publicly available general-purpose large AI model, with pre-training compute at least 2–3 times higher than GPT-4o, validating that the path of scaling pre-training remains sustainable. This development will drive the AI industry to continue increasing investment in compute, chips, and power, with significant implications for capital markets and the economy.
Read original
