The Institutional Risk Analyst

Michael brings a ground level view of the brave world of new media and narrates the slow-motion consolidation of streaming as a business model for large public media companies. Our readers will recall that Michael predicted this very outcome eight years ago -- before COVID in 2017 (“The Economics of Content: Michael Whalen”).

Researchers at Apple just released a paper that throws cold water on the "reasoning" capabilities of the latest, most powerful large language AI models. In the paper, a team of machine learning experts makes the case that the AI industry is grossly overstating the ability of its top AI models, including OpenAI's o3, Anthropic's Claude 3.7, and Google's Gemini.

Private equity portfolio companies are about 10 times as likely to go bankrupt as non-PE-owned companies.

Yes, net loss rates in percentage terms post default are back up to 2010 levels, but the dollar volume of net charge-offs remains very low.

As and when GS can exit the loss leading credit card relationship with AAPL, the performance of the business should improve significantly.

How is Goldman going to extricate itself from this profoundly unattractive business with AAPL without destroying Apple Card?

COIN has been helped by a groundswell of positive comment about crypto in 2023...

When you are in a big crowd, nothing else matters.

If it’s artificial, then it’s not intelligent.

SI’s management team is taking advantage of the narrative in Washington, which is that stable coins will be a bank only product

A nation of 1.5 billion souls is being held hostage by a criminal gang called the Chinese Communist Party.

The evolution of fintech companies into regulated banks has implications for public market valuations...