Outrageous Predictions
Executive Summary: Outrageous Predictions 2026
Saxo Group
Summary: Today, plenty of headlines from the Middle East and the Strait of Hormuz to keep oil prices boiling, if not yet boiling over, with plenty more to come if the oil doesn't start flowing soon. Are the US and Israel flailing or slowly winning? The opinions are certainly very divided. Elsewhere, Jensen Huang's tries and fails to pump up enthusiasm for sideways trending Nvidia stock, an interesting sign, while high-flying memory maker Micron is set to report tomorrow after the close. Macro and FX also on today's pod, which is hosted by Saxo Global Head of Macro Strategy John J. Hardy.
Links:
On AI systems, here's an X Post from Chris Laub discussing a paper that describes why the current generation of AI hardware is poorly designed for the inference needs that are in highest demand and what the implications are - clearly plenty of urgency to streamline the output per watt with future systems designs, from how tasks are routed to the design of the hardware itself.
On the Iran War, here's one commenter making a reasonable case that the US has gotten itself in a mess with this Iran War, with few good options on what to do next save for just leaving. We are not endorsing this point of view, just pointing to it. And others think that the Israeli-US strategy is working as Iran's decades of preparation are being destroyed in a matter of days and weeks. Interestingly, Ilan (writer of the first post linked to above) specifically tries to dismantle the second link in another post.