Making Cents Sense

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Billions Burned or Billions Earned? The Brutal Math Behind Return on Compute

I used to think return on investment was the cleanest concept in finance. You put money in. You get more money out. You measure the difference. You pretend it was obvious the whole time. Then I started looking at AI companies—and suddenly ROI felt like trying to measure fog with a ruler. Because in the AI world, the real question isn’t just “what’s the return?” It’s: what’s the return on compute? And that’s where things get messy, expensive, and just a little bit absurd. The New Arms Race Nobody Fully Understands There’s a quiet competition happening right now, and it doesn’t look like anything we’ve seen before. It’s not just about revenue growth. It’s not even about user growth. It’s about compute. Who has it. Who can afford it. Who can turn it into something that actually makes money before the electricity bill shows up like an uninvited guest. Because AI isn’t like traditional software. You don’t just write code and scale it infinitely with minimal cost. Every model, e...

Market Rotation Is Dead—Long Live the AI Gravity Trade

I used to think I understood the market. Not in a “CFA charterholder with twelve monitors and a Bloomberg terminal humming like a nuclear reactor” kind of way. More like the average overconfident adult who has survived a few bull runs, memorized a couple of ratios, and once said the phrase “forward-looking multiples” at a barbecue without being asked to leave. I thought I got it. Leadership rotates. Cycles cycle. Money flows like water—from one hot sector to the next, from growth to value, from “this is the future” to “this is somehow still alive.” It was comforting. Predictable, even. Tech leads. Then it cools. Industrials step in. Energy has its midlife crisis moment. Financials pretend they’re exciting again. Then back to tech, because of course. It was like watching a group of overpaid relay runners pass a baton labeled “market dominance,” each pretending they weren’t completely exhausted when they got it. Then AI showed up. And instead of a relay race, the baton got replaced with ...

Don’t Chase the AI Hype—Own the Infrastructure Powering It

I used to think investing in AI meant picking the smartest company in the room. Find the one with the best model. The flashiest demo. The CEO who talks like they’re one product launch away from rewriting reality. Buy the stock, sit back, and let the future compound. That worked—briefly. Then I realized something uncomfortable. The real money isn’t always in the intelligence. It’s in the infrastructure that makes intelligence possible. And once that clicked, I stopped looking at AI like a software story and started seeing it for what it really is: an industrial revolution disguised as code. The Illusion of the “AI Company” Everyone wants to own the next breakthrough model. It feels intuitive. Intelligence is the product, right? But here’s the problem: intelligence is becoming commoditized faster than people want to admit. Models improve, competitors catch up, open-source alternatives emerge, and suddenly what looked like a moat starts to feel like a temporary lead. Meanwhile...

Durable Growth in Saturated Markets (Or: How I Learned to Stop Chasing “New” and Start Outlasting Everyone Else)

I used to think growth meant expansion. New customers. New markets. New products. New everything. If it wasn’t new, it wasn’t growth—at least that’s what I believed for a long time. And honestly, that belief worked… right up until it didn’t. Because eventually, you run into a wall. Not a dramatic, obvious wall. Not the kind that announces itself with flashing lights and a warning sign. No, this one is quieter. Subtler. It creeps up on you in the form of diminishing returns, rising competition, and that uncomfortable realization that everyone else had the exact same idea you did. Welcome to saturation. And once you’re there, all those strategies built on “just go get more” start to feel a little… naive. The Moment I Realized “More” Wasn’t the Answer I remember the exact phase when things stopped scaling the way I expected. Effort went up. Results… didn’t. I was doing more outreach, producing more content, exploring more channels—basically throwing everything I had at the ide...

Quality at Scale: Why I’m Obsessed With Dominant Platform Businesses (and Why You Probably Should Be Too)

I’ll admit it: I used to chase excitement. Not in relationships—well, maybe there too—but definitely in investing. I wanted the next big thing. The undiscovered gem. The company nobody was talking about yet. The one that would 10x while everyone else was still arguing about valuation models and “fair price.” You know what I got? A portfolio full of “almosts,” “what ifs,” and a few very humbling reminders that just because something is early doesn’t mean it’s good . Eventually, I got tired of being early. So I did something radical. I started paying attention to companies that were already winning. Not kind of winning. Not “on the verge.” I mean dominating . And that’s when I stumbled into what I now think is one of the most misunderstood—and underappreciated—concepts in investing: Quality at scale. More specifically: dominant platform businesses . What I Mean by “Quality at Scale” (Because Everyone Throws Around “Quality” Like It’s Confetti) Let’s get something straigh...