2026-10-30 21:36:17
To investors,
Binance, one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world, was hacked yesterday for approximately $6 billion. There are three main takeaways that I have from the situation.
First, Bitcoin only sold off about 5% on the news. This is an incredible development because a decade ago the digital currency would have plummeted 20-40% on this type of news. The bitcoin market is very different now though. The institutional participation, combined with crypto investors who have been through many hacks previously, helps to mitigate wild swings in the asset, even on negative news like a multi-billion dollar hack.
We have been here before and people assume these types of hacks will happen again in the future. The corresponding lack of volatility reinforces the idea that bitcoin’s upside volatility will also be dampened in bull markets going forward as well. Gone are the days of the Wild West and investors should expect more steady hands at the wheel over th coming decade.
Second, the concerns around AI and cybersecurity is just starting. We don’t have details yet to understand whether this hack actually used any sort of cutting-edge AI technology, and the rumors are that it has something to do with North Korea, but regardless of the facts, people are still going to assign a high degree of concern to the fast-paced development of AI and what seems to be an increasing number of cybersecurity incidents.
On the positive side, the same AI technology should be able to increase the defense and security of financial assets, but that is not going to be the story that dominates headlines. I anticipate AI will be blamed even if it was not involved whatsoever.
Third, Binance’s leadership team and their shareholders have already said that they will cover any losses for customers. This is not the first time that Binance has done this when there’s been a hack to their platform, but it instills confidence that Binance will always take care of the user. My understanding is that Binance does not have an insurance fund to cover these losses, but instead Binance covers it from their balance sheet (which shows just how incredibly profitable and well-capitalized these large crypto exchanges are).
While the headlines of a hack are never going to be good for Bitcoin or the crypto industry, the fact that users will end up not losing money mitigates the potential negative impact over the long run. When an exchange like Binance eats the loss, it significantly changes how we should perceive these stories and their impact on asset prices moving forward.
Lastly, the timing of this hack is quite interesting because almost exactly four years ago is when FTX imploded and Bitcoin bottomed in the last bear market. At that time, we were sitting right around the midterm elections and max fear had taken over the market. If you had purchased bitcoin at the bottom, you would have seen your ~ $16,000 bitcoin price turn into $125,000 over the next three years.
No one has a crystal ball and knows what will happen this time, but it does feel like we are at or near a Bitcoin bottom in terms of sentiment. The price action on Bitcoin looks quite healthy, so my expectation is that Bitcoin will do well over the next 2 to 3 years.
No one likes to hear about cybersecurity issues when it comes to bitcoin. The facts of this situation, and the muted price drawdown, tell me that investors should be gearing up for higher prices in 2027.
Hope you all have a great end to your week. I will talk to you on Monday.
- Anthony J. Pompliano
Founder & CEO, Silvia, Inc (Nasdaq: SVIA)
I’m hosting the ETF Investor Forum next Tuesday, November 3rd in NYC, bringing together 700+ investors, advisors, and ETF industry leaders to discuss where capital is flowing next.
The lineup includes Dan Ives, Jan van Eck (VanEck), Eric Balchunas (Bloomberg), Robbie Mitchnick (BlackRock), Matt Cole (Strive), Ankur Nagpal (USVC), and many more.
I’m giving away 25 free tickets to Pomp Letter readers. Use code POMPETF26 at checkout. First come, first served. Once they’re gone, you can still get 50% off with code POMPLETTER.
Ryan Detrick is the Chief Market Strategist at Carson Group and co-host of the Facts vs Feelings podcast.
In this conversation, we break down why October weakness is normal, what midterm election history says about stocks, and why the rally is spreading beyond tech. We also discuss AI spending risks, the Fed, record cash on the sidelines, and where bitcoin and gold fit in a portfolio.
Figure – True DeFi Democratized Prime yielding ~8.5% APY. They also have the lowest industry interest rates at 8.91% with 12 month terms! Take out a Crypto Backed Loan today. Figure Lending LLC dba Figure (NMLS 1717824)
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Fitnexa is an AI-powered wellness technology brand. Its SomniPods 3 combine intelligent sleep technology with all-night comfort to support better rest and recovery. Use code POMP10 for $10 off.
Investor Health — Clinician-prescribed protocols for weight, metabolism, and longevity, shipped to your door in 48–72 hours. No office visits. InvestorHealth.com.1
Simple Mining offers a premium white-glove Bitcoin mining service. Want to grow your Bitcoin stack? Visit https://www.simplemining.io/pomp
GalaxyOne – Earn up to 8.00%2yieldon cash. Auto-Reinvest into stock and crypto.
Abra - Bitcoin, two possibilities: explore BTC-backed borrowing or a BTC yield strategy managed by Abra Capital Management. See terms and risks at abra.com/pomp.
Lava - The Lava Card allows you to earn up to 5% back in bitcoin every time you spend. There are no annual fees, no FX fees, and no gimmicks. You can also use Lava to borrow against your bitcoin at 6.5%, the industry’s lowest interest rate. Get started in just a few minutes at lava.xyz/pomp!
Uphold - Uphold is the all-in-one platform to trade, earn, stake, and swap across 300+ assets with real-time proof-of-reserves and any-to-any conversions. Manage your entire crypto portfolio in one place at www.uphold.com
🚨READER NOTE: If you want to sponsor The Pomp Letter, you can fill out this form and someone from our team will get in touch with you.
You are receiving The Pomp Letter because you either signed up or you attended one of the events that I spoke at. Feel free to unsubscribe if you aren’t finding this valuable. Nothing in this email is intended to serve as financial advice. Do your own research.
2026-10-30 03:09:42
Today’s letter comes from Nick Fouriezos, a former Washington correspondent and tech CMO. As Big Tech earnings reports come in, he looks at who can afford to keep spending, and why waiting may have been the smarter move.
To investors,
Big Tech is betting on AI being a winner-takes-all race.
At the Silvia Investors Summit earlier this month, Pomp described the AI race as hinging on two questions for businesses: how much they spend, and whether they ultimately win.
Sure, everyone wants to be Moneyball. But people forget that while Billy Beane’s low-budget Oakland A’s punched above their weight, they never actually made it to the World Series.
In AI, the stakes are even higher: the winner may lead for two decades, so the worst outcome is losing without really trying.
The result: Everyone gets forced to spend. And that logic has mostly turned the AI race into a borrowing race.
Amazon, Alphabet, Meta and Oracle sold more than $200 billion in bonds through September - a record and more than double what they raised all of last year.
The question now is who still has the cash to keep playing.
Here’s how Big Tech sorts out:
The early debt spenders: Alphabet and Amazon.
The early cash spender: Microsoft.
The fast-following late mover: Meta.
The “dry powder” late mover: Apple.
In July, Alphabet reported its first negative free cash flow since going public in 2004. Yesterday, it reported its second: negative $9.1 billion, on $51.4 billion in capex. It also warned spending will “increase significantly in 2027.”
Today, its stock fell about 13%, on pace for its biggest post-earnings drop ever and wiping out roughly $500 billion in market value.
To keep building, it has raised $85 billion in stock and $25 billion in bonds since June.
Amazon has borrowed $79 billion in bonds this year to fund roughly $200 billion in capex. It reports after the close today.
Microsoft is the exception: It is paying for AI mostly out of its own cash flow, not borrowing.
Yesterday, it reported $45.2 billion in capex and still produced $18.6 billion in free cash flow.
Its stock has barely moved.
Meta chose to buy its way back in. After its Llama models fell behind last year, it invested $14.3 billion in Scale AI, brought in founder Alexandr Wang to run a new superintelligence lab and started over.
Earlier this month, Meta released Muse Wonder, a model that scores roughly even with OpenAI’s and Google’s best models on a widely followed independent benchmark.
It went from a stumble to the frontier in about 16 months, learning from the labs that went first.
But catching up wasn’t cheap: Meta expects to spend up to $145 billion on capex this year, and its free cash flow turned negative last quarter. In short: Meta proved you can catch up late, but it landed firmly in the “Pay to Play” box.
Apple is taking the opposite approach.
It plans to spend roughly $13 billion to $14 billion on capex this year, a rounding error next to its rivals, while sitting on more than $130 billion in cash. Instead of building frontier models, it reportedly pays Google about $1 billion a year to power the new Siri with Gemini.
The market has rewarded that approach: Last Friday, Apple became the most valuable company in the world. When, or if, it decides to pour on the gas, it can do so without borrowing a dollar.
Cheaper open-source models now handle 78% of the tokens on at least one major AI gateway, as we showed in our Friday charts.
Pomp sees it too, describing Elon Musk’s plan to route Grok questions to whichever model answers best: “the models are going to get commodified.”
If the models become interchangeable, the hundreds of billions that Anthropic, OpenAI, or other frontier labs spent building them stop being a moat. A company that waited can plug in the best model for a fraction of the price.
To be clear, waiting only saves money on models.
The memory used in data centers costs more than five times what it did a year ago, and power equipment makers are booked past 2030. The late movers will pay today’s inflated prices for chips and power, while the early movers already own much of the capacity.
Still, Apple’s bet could work if it eventually steps on the gas, and if there’s enough compute still available for it to properly enter the race.
Remember, Moneyball never won the World Series ... for the A’s.
But two years after Billy Beane made sabermetrics famous, the Boston Red Sox paired his philosophy with a big budget and won it all. That may be the real lesson for AI: cheap models won’t win the race on their own, but cheap models plus deep pockets might.
Right now, only one company fits that description.
-Nick Fouriezos (@nick4iezos on X)
I’m hosting the ETF Investor Forum next Tuesday, November 3rd in NYC, bringing together 700+ investors, advisors, and ETF industry leaders to discuss where capital is flowing next.
The lineup includes Dan Ives, Jan van Eck (VanEck), Eric Balchunas (Bloomberg), Robbie Mitchnick (BlackRock), Matt Cole (Strive), Ankur Nagpal (USVC), and many more.
I’m giving away 25 free tickets to Pomp Letter readers. Use code POMPETF26 at checkout. First come, first served. Once they’re gone, you can still get 50% off with code POMPLETTER.
Ryan Detrick is the Chief Market Strategist at Carson Group and co-host of the Facts vs Feelings podcast.
In this conversation, we break down why October weakness is normal, what midterm election history says about stocks, and why the rally is spreading beyond tech. We also discuss AI spending risks, the Fed, record cash on the sidelines, and where bitcoin and gold fit in a portfolio.
Figure – True DeFi Democratized Prime yielding ~8.5% APY. They also have the lowest industry interest rates at 8.91% with 12 month terms! Take out a Crypto Backed Loan today. Figure Lending LLC dba Figure (NMLS 1717824)
Arch Public’s platform automates your trading strategy beyond DCA for equities, commodities, ETFs, and crypto. With advanced inputs that reflect your own intentions, Arch Public supports smarter entries, exits, and opportunities in volatile markets. Connect with their team, try the product for free, and see how agentic trading can work for you, with Arch Public!
Fitnexa is an AI-powered wellness technology brand. Its SomniPods 3 combine intelligent sleep technology with all-night comfort to support better rest and recovery. Use code POMP10 for $10 off.
Investor Health — Clinician-prescribed protocols for weight, metabolism, and longevity, shipped to your door in 48–72 hours. No office visits. InvestorHealth.com.1
Simple Mining offers a premium white-glove Bitcoin mining service. Want to grow your Bitcoin stack? Visit https://www.simplemining.io/pomp
GalaxyOne – Earn up to 8.00%2yieldon cash. Auto-Reinvest into stock and crypto.
Abra - Bitcoin, two possibilities: explore BTC-backed borrowing or a BTC yield strategy managed by Abra Capital Management. See terms and risks at abra.com/pomp.
Lava - The Lava Card allows you to earn up to 5% back in bitcoin every time you spend. There are no annual fees, no FX fees, and no gimmicks. You can also use Lava to borrow against your bitcoin at 6.5%, the industry’s lowest interest rate. Get started in just a few minutes at lava.xyz/pomp!
Uphold - Uphold is the all-in-one platform to trade, earn, stake, and swap across 300+ assets with real-time proof-of-reserves and any-to-any conversions. Manage your entire crypto portfolio in one place at www.uphold.com
🚨READER NOTE: If you want to sponsor The Pomp Letter, you can fill out this form and someone from our team will get in touch with you.
You are receiving The Pomp Letter because you either signed up or you attended one of the events that I spoke at. Feel free to unsubscribe if you aren’t finding this valuable. Nothing in this email is intended to serve as financial advice. Do your own research.
2026-10-28 03:01:29
Today’s letter comes from Nick Fouriezos, a former Washington correspondent and tech CMO, who broke down what investors should watch with Big Tech reporting earnings this week.
To investors,
On Friday, Apple became the most valuable company in the world (passing Nvidia at about $5.1 trillion.). Its stock is up 28% this year, the best of the Magnificent Seven.
It is also the one spending the least to build AI. Why?
The answer may lie in the collapse of the software premium.
Writing a program was expensive. Selling one more copy costs almost nothing.
That is why investors paid a premium for tech stocks for two decades. Every new customer was nearly pure profit. But AI breaks that model. Every answer a chatbot gives runs on chips, power and data centers that someone has to build.
So Big Tech, which used to be traded on a software premium, is now spending like a utility. For example, Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta plan to spend more than $700 billion on capital expenditures this year.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella explained the shift on the podcast “Confession with Ali Partovi.”
“We are going to be a more capital intensive business in a world where marginal cost of software is approaching zero,” he said. And many investors increasingly see that as a trap. The software they sell is getting cheaper to copy.
At the same time, the infrastructure they need to run it is getting more expensive to build. The market is repricing as a result. Investors don’t pay software multiples for utility businesses.
In July, the Magnificent Seven’s valuation premium over the S&P 500 fell to about 10%, its lowest in more than a decade. Look at who the market is rewarding this year. Apple, the lightest spender, leads the group.
Meta, one of the heaviest, is down for the year (and when Meta reported last week and declined to give a 2027 spending outlook, its stock fell about 7%).
OpenAI is reportedly raising money at a $1.4 trillion valuation, about 28 times its roughly $50 billion in annualized revenue. Anthropic, the maker of Claude, could go public as soon as next month, with prospective investors floating $1.8 trillion to $2 trillion, roughly 30 times its revenue.
Most of Big Tech trades at a fraction of that. Still, sentiment appears to be turning downward. OpenAI’s annualized revenue is roughly $50 billion, about $20 billion below one widely reported estimate, and its IPO has slipped to 2027.
Anthropic’s quarterly growth slowed to 45%, down from roughly 147% the quarter before, as rivals cut prices. And as we’ve previously reported, cheaper open-source models now handle most of the tokens on at least one major AI gateway.
Most of this year’s IPOs are underwater, and SpaceX fell below its offering price within a month of listing. Anthropic’s IPO will be the biggest test yet of whether public investors will still pay a software premium for an AI company.
Now the suppliers are getting hit too. Big Tech’s spending is someone else’s revenue, and chipmakers were the year’s big winners.
However, that is starting to change. Earlier this month, chip stocks fell for more than a week straight, nearly matching their worst streak since 2008 and erasing about $2 trillion in value.
South Korea’s stock market, home to memory giants Samsung and SK Hynix, is about 40% below its June peak.
So why does this matter? And where does growth go next?
The 10 largest companies make up about 39% of the S&P 500. Nvidia, Apple and Microsoft alone are about 20%. And for years, the index’s returns have been powered by software-style profits. If those companies start trading like utilities, rather than receiving software multiples, the whole market’s growth engine slows down.
The next rotation could be into the sectors the AI trade left behind.
Healthcare is up about 25% over the past year, compared with about 15% for the S&P 500. Freight shipments have grown for two straight months after 42 months of declines. That recovery comes with a catch: diesel prices are up 68% from a year ago. Still, the physical world economy is starting to move while AI cools off.
Microsoft and Alphabet report Wednesday, and Amazon reports Thursday. Watch three things:
Next year’s CAPEX. Meta wouldn’t give a number and its stock fell sharply. If others stay quiet too, investors will assume the worst.
Cloud growth. If cloud revenue grows faster than spending, the software premium could come back.
Where stocks move. Beats on revenue haven’t been enough. Investors want some proof (or at least reassurance) that all this spending will pay off.
Where do you think growth goes next, if AI labs don’t get the software premium going forward?
We may spotlight your most interesting takes on X and in future editions of the Pomp Letter.
-Nick Fouriezos (@nick4iezos on X)
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In this conversation, we break down Chamath’s claim that bitcoin is going to zero, the real quantum computing risk, the historic hedge fund unwind, and why AI is now smarter than all of us. We also discuss using AI as a life coach, genetically modified war dogs, and why Eli Lilly could become the biggest company in America.
Figure – True DeFi Democratized Prime yielding ~8.5% APY. They also have the lowest industry interest rates at 8.91% with 12 month terms! Take out a Crypto Backed Loan today. Figure Lending LLC dba Figure (NMLS 1717824)
Arch Public’s platform automates your trading strategy beyond DCA for equities, commodities, ETFs, and crypto. With advanced inputs that reflect your own intentions, Arch Public supports smarter entries, exits, and opportunities in volatile markets. Connect with their team, try the product for free, and see how agentic trading can work for you, with Arch Public!
Fitnexa is an AI-powered wellness technology brand. Its SomniPods 3 combine intelligent sleep technology with all-night comfort to support better rest and recovery. Use code POMP10 for $10 off.
Investor Health — Clinician-prescribed protocols for weight, metabolism, and longevity, shipped to your door in 48–72 hours. No office visits. InvestorHealth.com.1
Simple Mining offers a premium white-glove Bitcoin mining service. Want to grow your Bitcoin stack? Visit https://www.simplemining.io/pomp
GalaxyOne – Earn up to 8.00%2yieldon cash. Auto-Reinvest into stock and crypto.
Abra - Bitcoin, two possibilities: explore BTC-backed borrowing or a BTC yield strategy managed by Abra Capital Management. See terms and risks at abra.com/pomp.
Lava - The Lava Card allows you to earn up to 5% back in bitcoin every time you spend. There are no annual fees, no FX fees, and no gimmicks. You can also use Lava to borrow against your bitcoin at 6.5%, the industry’s lowest interest rate. Get started in just a few minutes at lava.xyz/pomp!
Uphold - Uphold is the all-in-one platform to trade, earn, stake, and swap across 300+ assets with real-time proof-of-reserves and any-to-any conversions. Manage your entire crypto portfolio in one place at www.uphold.com
🚨READER NOTE: If you want to sponsor The Pomp Letter, you can fill out this form and someone from our team will get in touch with you.
You are receiving The Pomp Letter because you either signed up or you attended one of the events that I spoke at. Feel free to unsubscribe if you aren’t finding this valuable. Nothing in this email is intended to serve as financial advice. Do your own research.
2026-10-26 21:29:28
To investors,
Bitcoin was a contrarian trade a decade ago. If you believed, and had the courage to allocate your dollars, then you were handsomely rewarded by one of the most asymmetric assets of our lifetime.
The digital asset is less contrarian today.
Instead, the largest financial institutions in the world are spending time and resources to figure out how to put bitcoin into as many traditional wrappers as possible. Blackrock’s success with the bitcoin ETF caught everyone’s attention, so now there is a race underway to financialize the asset.
Most of these attempts are uninteresting and appear to be the equivalent of this famous meme:
But Franklin Templeton recently filed for a new fund strategy that caught my attention. It is called DRIP, which is short for “Dividend Reinvestment Plan,” and the idea is to give investors 95% exposure to the S&P 500 or Nasdaq 100, while putting 5% exposure of bitcoin into the fund.
That is not necessarily innovative, but then the fund will convert all dividends from equity exposure into more bitcoin over time. So rather than reinvest the dividends into the equity index or pay out the dividends in cash, the fund will buy more bitcoin from the dividend payments.
I find this interesting because this is what Eric Balchunas has previously called “boomer candy.” It is fairly traditional exposure to the US equity market, but there is enough of a sexy twist that you could see the fund pulling in AUM. Traditional investors want the perception of taking risk, yet they want to feel like they are not abandoning their core investment philosophy.
This fund strategy does both. It allows for ~ 95% of the investment to hold pure equity exposure via an accepted index, but the dividend reinvestment into bitcoin is “cool” and feels “risky.” Notice that I didn’t say anything about the fact that the fund’s bitcoin exposure will lead this S&P or Nasdaq exposure to outperform the underlying indexes.
In my opinion, narratives are more important than returns with a fund like this. And there may be no greater narrative than “you can be a bad boy, but it is okay because you will still be safe.”
I expect to see many more variations of these “boomer candy” funds that incorporate bitcoin. As I have said before, bitcoin is the riskiest asset held by the most conservative investors, and the safest asset held by the highest risk investors. That intersection makes it the perfect asset to leverage for new inflows.
Bitcoin has struggled in the last year. The AI trade sucked air out of the room. But it will be glorious when the AI gains rotate back into bitcoin. Investors will need a “safe” place to put their gains, especially against the backdrop of rapid disruption in equities and insanely undisciplined monetary policy, so that is when bitcoin will become the belle of the ball once again.
Hope you all have a great start to your week. I will talk to you tomorrow.
- Anthony J. Pompliano
Founder & CEO, Silvia, Inc (Nasdaq: SVIA)
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Jordi Visser is a veteran macro investor with 30+ years of experience and the author of the VisserLabs Substack.
In this conversation, we break down Chamath’s claim that bitcoin is going to zero, the real quantum computing risk, the historic hedge fund unwind, and why AI is now smarter than all of us. We also discuss using AI as a life coach, genetically modified war dogs, and why Eli Lilly could become the biggest company in America.
Figure – True DeFi Democratized Prime yielding ~8.5% APY. They also have the lowest industry interest rates at 8.91% with 12 month terms! Take out a Crypto Backed Loan today. Figure Lending LLC dba Figure (NMLS 1717824)
Arch Public’s platform automates your trading strategy beyond DCA for equities, commodities, ETFs, and crypto. With advanced inputs that reflect your own intentions, Arch Public supports smarter entries, exits, and opportunities in volatile markets. Connect with their team, try the product for free, and see how agentic trading can work for you, with Arch Public!
Fitnexa is an AI-powered wellness technology brand. Its SomniPods 3 combine intelligent sleep technology with all-night comfort to support better rest and recovery. Use code POMP10 for $10 off.
Investor Health — Clinician-prescribed protocols for weight, metabolism, and longevity, shipped to your door in 48–72 hours. No office visits. InvestorHealth.com.2
Simple Mining offers a premium white-glove Bitcoin mining service. Want to grow your Bitcoin stack? Visit https://www.simplemining.io/pomp
GalaxyOne – Earn up to 8.00%3yieldon cash. Auto-Reinvest into stock and crypto.
Abra - Bitcoin, two possibilities: explore BTC-backed borrowing or a BTC yield strategy managed by Abra Capital Management. See terms and risks at abra.com/pomp.
Lava - The Lava Card allows you to earn up to 5% back in bitcoin every time you spend. There are no annual fees, no FX fees, and no gimmicks. You can also use Lava to borrow against your bitcoin at 6.5%, the industry’s lowest interest rate. Get started in just a few minutes at lava.xyz/pomp!
Uphold - Uphold is the all-in-one platform to trade, earn, stake, and swap across 300+ assets with real-time proof-of-reserves and any-to-any conversions. Manage your entire crypto portfolio in one place at www.uphold.com
🚨READER NOTE: If you want to sponsor The Pomp Letter, you can fill out this form and someone from our team will get in touch with you.
You are receiving The Pomp Letter because you either signed up or you attended one of the events that I spoke at. Feel free to unsubscribe if you aren’t finding this valuable. Nothing in this email is intended to serve as financial advice. Do your own research.
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2026-10-25 23:16:43
To investors,
My goal is to help readers of this letter make money by more effectively managing their portfolios. In my pursuit of this goal, I spend an enormous amount of time meeting smart people, interviewing founders and investors, analyzing companies, and critically thinking about the future.
One area that I have not spent a lot of time on in the past was ETFs. But capital flows have led me to realize that I will have to add ETFs to my coverage area because ETFs have gone from a niche product to one of the dominant vehicles in global investing over the last 15 years.
Here are some stats to put this in perspective:
US ETF assets rose from roughly $1–2 trillion around 2010–2015 to $13.4 trillion at year-end 2025.
Global ETF assets climbed from under $2 trillion in the early 2010s to over $20 trillion earlier this year, including more than doubling in just from years from 2019 to 2024.
US ETFs account for about 70% of global ETF assets now.
ETFs now represent ~30% of U.S. investment company assets.
Global ETFs recorded 87 consecutive months of positive net inflows through mis-2026.
US household ownership of ETFs surged from ~1 million households in 2005 to nearly 20 million last year. This is about 15% of all US households.
The reason for this growth can be attributed to low costs, liquidity, transparency, tax advantages, and regulatory changes, which has led to a compounding effect. Over the last 15 years, ETFs delivered multi-fold asset growth, took substantial share from mutual funds, attracted record and highly consistent inflows, and reached tens of millions of households. Pretty incredible.
To kick off this expansion into ETFs as another asset class or industry that we will cover in these letters, I am hosting a massive one-day event in NYC on November 3rd with many of the top entrepreneurs and investors from the ETF industry.
Speakers include:
Dan Ives (Partner, Yorkville Ives & Co)
Jan van Eck (President & CEO, VanEck)
Robert Mitchnick (Global Head of Digital Assets, BlackRock)
Eric Balchunas (Senior ETF Analyst, Bloomberg)
Matt Cole (Chairman & CEO, Strive)
Gavin Filmore (CEO, Tidal Financial Group)
Bilal Little (Global ETF Strategist, Direxion)
Ryan O’Connor (CEO, Global X)
and many more incredible leaders
In an effort to bring you as much value as possible, I have reserved 100 tickets at the event for readers of The Pomp Letter. These tickets are 100% free and being personally subsidized by me.
It is first come, first served for the tickets. Not only will you learn a lot about various investment opportunities, but the room will be full of big time investors and capital allocators.
🚨 You can claim your free ticket by using code POMPETF26 when you check out on the event website here.
I look forward to seeing some of you at the event on November 3rd. Talk to you tomorrow.
- Anthony J. Pompliano
Founder & CEO, Silvia, Inc (Nasdaq: SVIA)
2026-10-24 00:44:24
To investors,
Asia’s AI trade is unwinding. South Korea’s KOSPI is more than 40% below its June peak after last week’s “Black Thursday,” and China’s stock market just posted 11 straight red weeks despite 4.5% GDP growth. The short answer for investors: this is fear about AI spending and higher Treasury yields, and governments are already stepping in. Here are five charts that explain it.
Each Friday, the Pomp Letter publishes five charts that helped us make sense of the world this week. We hope these will bring you clarity.
(Phil Rosen, Opening Bell Daily)
SpaceX’s AI and X revenue grew more than ninefold in a year, from $810 million to $7.56 billion. Over the same stretch, the rocket business grew 6%.
Most of that AI money isn’t coming from chatbots. It’s coming from renting out computing power to other companies.
Our friend and colleague Phil Rosen said it best: “Investors who bought SpaceX for rockets and Starlink now own a stock that gets more than half its quarterly sales from AI and X. Unreal.”
(Dario Catodici, JustDario.com)
Last week, South Korea’s KOSPI plunged nearly 8%, a session local press called “Black Thursday.”
The biggest winners of the AI boom fell hardest. Samsung sank 9.5%, and SK Hynix fell more than 11%. The KOSPI is now more than 40% below its June peak.
That’s close to the average drop in Korea’s seven previous market crises, including the 1997 Asian financial crisis and 2008, according to Daishin Securities.
The trigger was fresh doubt about AI spending, along with rising Treasury yields that make safer bonds look more attractive.
“Ultimately, the AI revolution will be judged not just by how much computing power we build, but by how profitably we use it,” Manish Singh of Crossbridge Capital told Bloomberg.
AI’s future is one of nearly unlimited productivity potential. Its present though is one of high debt-servicing costs.
On Thursday, Hong Kong-based analyst Dario Catodici warned the KOSPI was “on the verge of crashing hard again, 3rd time this week,” with “a high chance that tomorrow will be Black Friday in Korea if a miracle does not strike.”
He was close. On Friday, the KOSPI fell as much as 4.1%, then reversed to close up 0.3%. SK Hynix, one of the hardest-hit names, finished up nearly 5%.
No miracle needed, at least not this week.
It’s not just Korea. China’s economy just beat expectations, growing 4.5% last quarter.
Yet its stock market is having its worst run on record, with 11 straight red weeks.
Another sign that traditional economic indicators say little about how markets will perform.
The chip and AI stocks that powered China’s spring rally are now leading the drop.
China’s tech-heavy STAR 50 is down about 40% since June 30, and chip stocks are down 45% this year.
This is what an AI trade unwinding looks like.
(Phil Rosen, Opening Bell Daily)
Beijing isn’t waiting to find out how bad it gets. State-backed funds are buying stock ETFs at the fastest pace since July.
It’s the same government playbook that Pomp highlighted at the Silvia Investor Summit two weeks ago, where he said he doesn’t expect another 18-month recession in his lifetime.
At the first warning sign, governments step in. History shows why. Black Monday turned 39 this week. On Oct. 19, 1987, the S&P 500 fell 20.5% in a single day.
The Fed promised to flood the system with cash, and a year later the index was up 23%.
After the October 2008 crash, Washington stepped in again. Stocks were up 21% a year later.
With the help of AI, hackers are having their best year ever, at least by volume.
Crypto hacks in 2026 are running at more than double their usual pace … serving as a glimpse for what the general web can soon expect.
“Onchain hacks are a canary for what will happen in the rest of web security, because onchain is the first and easiest place to monetize cyberattacks,” says Haseeb Qureshi, managing partner at Dragonfly.
The big protocols have hardened their defenses, many with AI tools of their own, leading hackers to find more vulnerable targets
“The dollar value of hacks has gone down, while the number has gone up—a mass looting of small, poorly maintained protocols,” Quereshi adds.
— Nick Fouriezos is a former Washington correspondent and the founder of Scalable Storytelling, a narrative firm leading tech content and launches. Follow him on X at @nick4iezos.
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