Hidden Forces

• How to Navigate the New Investment Paradigm | Lawrence McDonald

  In Episode 450 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Lawrence McDonald, the founder of The Bear Traps Report and the author of a recently published book about the risks and investment opportunities present in today's radically reshaped economy titled "How to Listen When Markets Speak." In today's conversation, Demetri and Lawrence discuss how social media and the gamification of investing have amplified behavioral biases and fueled the AI boom, as well as the growth of crypto and other "tertiary" assets. They then zoom out to examine how the macro environment has changed since the Covid 19 pandemic, and how the government's response to both the GFC and covid crisis have sent investors scrambling for new frameworks to help them understand government's role in the economy and how to position themselves and their client's portfolios for a radically new world—one that you will not learn about in financial text books or most macroeconomics courses. Kofinas and McDonald also explore the "dark side of passive investing," the extreme concentration risk present in a handful of AI-linked mega-caps, the risk to markets of more capricious government trade policies, and why Lawrence McDonald believes that one of the most underappreciated opportunity sets in AI lies not at the intersection of semiconductors and AI companies, but in the physical energy and delivery infrastructure needed to power them. Subscribe to our premium content—including our premium feed, episode transcripts, and Intelligence Reports—by visiting HiddenForces.io/subscribe. If you'd like to join the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius community—with benefits like Q&A calls with guests, exclusive research and analysis, in-person events, and dinners—you can also sign up on our subscriber page at HiddenForces.io/subscribe. If you enjoyed today's episode of Hidden Forces, please support the show by: Subscribing on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, Stitcher, SoundCloud, CastBox, or via our RSS Feed Writing us a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify Joining our mailing list at https://hiddenforces.io/newsletter/ Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe and support the podcast at https://hiddenforces.io. Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas Episode Recorded on 11/17/2025

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• Investment Implications of the AI CapEx Boom | Chase Taylor

  In Episode 449 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Chase Taylor, head of research at Bulwark Capital Management and founder of Pinecone Macro Research about investment opportunities around the buildout of the new "electric stack" and the AI CapEx Boom that relies on them. Chase and Demetri spend the first hour of this episode exploring his methodology, how he extracts signals from noise, and why a multidisciplinary approach to investing is especially important during periods of disruptive sociopolitical and technological change like the kind we are experiencing today. They then apply these ideas to two important technological trends underway in the global economy: (1) the transformation of the so-called "electric stack" or electro-industrial stack and (2) the AI CapEx Boom that relies on it. They begin with a deep-dive exploration of the dramatic cost declines happening across the entire electric stack, beginning with the addition of new sources of energy, advancements in battery technology for storage, the use of magnets and motors that turn electricity into mechanical motion, power electronics that shape it into the precise force needed by today's technologies, and the embedded compute that orchestrates and decides how and when to put that force into action. They discuss the sources of China's dominance in this industry, the horizontal complementarities in its manufacturing ecosystems, the advantages of vertical integration, and what America and Europe need to do in order to remain competitive in this new industrial ecosystem. The second hour is devoted to exploring the implications for investors of the current AI CapEx boom, how the USD might behave in a growth slowdown scenario post-Liberation Day, and what the Trump administration's military and covert action threats against Maduro's regime in Venezuela can tell us about his foreign policy and whether we are returning to a more colonial phase of domination by the American empire over the Western hemisphere. Subscribe to our premium content—including our premium feed, episode transcripts, and Intelligence Reports—by visiting HiddenForces.io/subscribe. If you'd like to join the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius community—with benefits like Q&A calls with guests, exclusive research and analysis, in-person events, and dinners—you can also sign up on our subscriber page at HiddenForces.io/subscribe. If you enjoyed today's episode of Hidden Forces, please support the show by: Subscribing on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, Stitcher, SoundCloud, CastBox, or via our RSS Feed Writing us a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify Joining our mailing list at https://hiddenforces.io/newsletter/ Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe and support the podcast at https://hiddenforces.io. Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas Episode Recorded on 11/10/2025

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• Investing on the Front Lines of the AI Arms Race | Nathan Benaich

  In Episode 448 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Nathan Benaich, founder and general partner of Air Street Capital and the creator of the annual State of AI Report, an open-access compendium that tracks advances across AI research, industry, policy, and geopolitics. Nathan Benaich and Demetri spend the first hour of their conversation exploring some of the most important AI breakthroughs of the year. They unpack the DeepSeek moment, dig into some of the advancements made by the latest reasoning models, and discuss why there appears to be a regression in capabilities across certain domains in artificial intelligence at the same time as we are seeing marked improvements in reasoning-heavy use cases like coding and scientific research. The second hour turns to a conversation about the commercial implications and geopolitical dynamics of the AI arms race, including China's strategy to become the leader in open-weight models and tooling. They look at what industries, sectors, and professions may be most ripe for disruption, where the investment opportunities are, whether we're in a bubble comparable to the 1990s Internet boom, and how export controls, energy constraints, and regulatory red-tape could play an outsized role in shaping the trajectory of the current arms race. Lastly, Kofinas and Benaich examine where along the AI stack most of the value is likely to accrue—from the underlying picks and shovels, through the foundation models, to the apps that ride on top of them—and what all this means for labor markets, education, and the cadence of scientific discovery. Subscribe to our premium content—including our premium feed, episode transcripts, and Intelligence Reports—by visiting HiddenForces.io/subscribe. If you'd like to join the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius community—with benefits like Q&A calls with guests, exclusive research and analysis, in-person events, and dinners—you can also sign up on our subscriber page at HiddenForces.io/subscribe. If you enjoyed today's episode of Hidden Forces, please support the show by: Subscribing on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, Stitcher, SoundCloud, CastBox, or via our RSS Feed Writing us a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify Joining our mailing list at https://hiddenforces.io/newsletter/ Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe and support the podcast at https://hiddenforces.io. Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas Episode Recorded on 10/29/2025

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• A Practical History of Financial Markets | Russell Napier

  Demetri Kofinas speaks with financial historian and investor Russell Napier about his "Practical History of Financial Markets" online course, which is provided in conjunction with Edinburgh Business School. Hidden Forces premium subscribers can sign up using their subscriber email + code "HF50" for a generous 50% DISCOUNT. Genius members can access the course for an even more generous discount of 75%. Sign up today at libraryofmistakes.com/course. The course runs in three formats: a ~14-hour online version; a two-and-a-half-day in-person version in London (capped at about 30 people); and a university version for mostly post-grad students. This is not just for professionals—many attendees are principals or retail savers who feel responsible for managing their and their families' wealth. The course is "radically different" from standard finance classes. Instead of starting from pricing theory or discounted cash flow, it takes a historical approach to asset valuation across equities, bonds, cash, commodities, and property, asking the question: "what repeatable conditions caused valuations to change?" The course leans heavily on long-run U.S. and international data, examines market behavior in different monetary and inflation regimes, and includes a module on investing in periods of inflation, disinflation, and deflation. After completing this course, you should be able to: ✔️ Critically evaluate different methods of valuing stock markets and identify faults in the valuation methods. ✔️ Explain the idea of mean reversion in financial markets and identify valuation techniques that follow mean reversion using data from the last 100 years to demonstrate this. ✔️ Understand the impact inflationary or deflationary forces have on the returns to different classes of financial assets. ✔️ Understand the impact liquidity and the supply of money has on stock market returns over time. ✔️ Understand the impact of psychological biases on returns in the stock market and the role that they can play in major stock market events. ✔️ Critically evaluate the lessons from the history of the financial markets over the past 200 years or more. As Russell has often said, "when regime change occurs, the greatest risk for any investor is to get all the right answers to all the wrong questions." The ultimate goal of this course is to teach people how to find and ask the RIGHT questions. Subscribe to our premium content—including our premium feed, episode transcripts, and Intelligence Reports—by visiting HiddenForces.io/subscribe. If you'd like to join the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius community—with benefits like Q&A calls with guests, exclusive research and analysis, in-person events, and dinners—you can also sign up on our subscriber page at HiddenForces.io/subscribe. If you enjoyed today's episode of Hidden Forces, please support the show by: Subscribing on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, Stitcher, SoundCloud, CastBox, or via our RSS Feed Writing us a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify Joining our mailing list at https://hiddenforces.io/newsletter/ Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe and support the podcast at https://hiddenforces.io. Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas Episode Recorded on 10/31/2025

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• What Happens When Social Trust Collapses? | Peter Atwater

  Episode 447 is the tenth installment in the Hundred Year Pivot podcast series. In it, Demetri Kofinas and Grant Williams speak with Peter Atwater, a recognized expert on the impact of confidence and mood on individual and group decision-making. Peter's work has been instrumental not only in helping his clients, students, and readers understand how people make decisions under conditions of chaos and uncertainty, but also in showing how to use those insights to gain a competitive advantage. The three begin their conversation by mapping out Peter's Confidence Quadrant and using it to explain how individuals and crowds move between feelings of high and low certainty and control. They explore the immense contemporary pressure people feel to conform—particularly on social media and in an educational system that rewards conformity. They discuss financial nihilism, the search for community in unusual places, and why real, in-person networks, relationships, and conversations matter now more than ever. The second half of the episode turns to the political economy of confidence: the rise of leader-centric movements, the fragility of "passenger-seat" societies, the lasting impact of COVID, and the "velvet-rope" economy that has transformed everything from airline cabins to financing. They discuss wealth stratification, powerlessness, the risks of a genuine socialist revolution, the search for leadership, and practical ways individuals can regain agency—through epistemic hygiene, disciplined storytelling, and service to others. Subscribe to our premium content—including our premium feed, episode transcripts, and Intelligence Reports—by visiting HiddenForces.io/subscribe. If you'd like to join the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius community—with benefits like Q&A calls with guests, exclusive research and analysis, in-person events, and dinners—you can also sign up on our subscriber page at HiddenForces.io/subscribe. If you enjoyed today's episode of Hidden Forces, please support the show by: Subscribing on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, Stitcher, SoundCloud, CastBox, or via our RSS Feed Writing us a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify Joining our mailing list at https://hiddenforces.io/newsletter/ Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe and support the podcast at https://hiddenforces.io. Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas Episode Recorded on 10/23/2025

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