The Wall Street Journal on Leopold Aschenbrenner’s meteoric rise

Leopold Aschenbrenner’s forecasts about the future of artificial intelligence earned him a cult following on the internet, where his investment firm’s routine regulatory filings are studied like scripture. 

The parabolic performance of his hedge fund has given the 24-year-old Aschenbrenner a fan club on Wall Street, too. 

Aschenbrenner had no professional investing experience when he launched his AI-focused firm, Situational Awareness, less than two years ago, with a few hundred million dollars. 

Prescient stock picks and whooshes of inflows have vaulted its assets under management to more than $20 billion, according to people familiar with the matter, approaching the size of Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square and Dan Loeb’s Third Point.

~ "The 24-Year-Old AI Wiz Who Counts Jane Street as an Investor," The Wall Street Journal, June 8, 2026

 

 

MIchael Rectenwald reflects on youth vs. experience and his life's mission

Seeing photos of myself -- on the one hand, I wish that I was younger.  I don't see myself as the camera sees me.  In my mind's eye, I'm still a young man -- forever young and never aged.  I see a young man in my mirror, not a 60-something year-old.  It's why, for example, I expect to beat my very talented thirty-year-old son in tennis, why I overextend myself, why I never expect to be tired.  It's why I catch sly, half glimpses of myself that never betray me or my age, why I think I am still as attractive as I ever was. 

On the other, I am grateful that I am no longer young.  With age comes a seasoning that makes one more or less inured to life's difficulties and inoculated to its many lies.  There is a resting knowledge that cannot be replicated in youth, youth that pines for a future that never comes as expected.  If I were to offer any advice to the young, it would be to seize the day and enjoy the process of making a way for tomorrow, with faith, hope, and charity. 

And then there is the historical reality that I would not want to be young in a world such as ours, when the world is more insane than ever, and bound to get worse.  This is why I pray for my children and my grandson, and why I keep trying, in spite of seemingly insurmountable odds, to make the world more habitable for them, to endow them with liberty and hope, and to enshrine the present by leaving a legacy to them that may be meaningful and serve as a guide for them.  I hope one day that they will read my works and realize that was part of my life's mission.

~ Michael Rectenwald

(This quote was provided by Tom Woods.  Tom writes: "It's very rare to find someone late in his career, and in his 50s, who has a complete philosophical transformation.  But that's what happened with the great Michael Rectenwald, an ex-Marxist formerly of New York University...  Well, the other day he wrote something rather melancholy and introspective -- yet determined and fearless, too, that I thought you might want to see.")

Jim Rogers on youth, experience and bubbles

… that is what happens in bubbles.  The price goes up because the price is going up. In one sense, what you want in a bull market is a kid who is too young to know that what he is doing is foolish.  You want a kid who will race into a bubble and leverage it higher and higher.  Guys like me will not make nearly so much money because we see what is going on.  The kid does not know why he is making money, which is why he is making so much money.  The rest of us are experienced enough or smart enough to know that this is going to end badly.  What you want is a kid with very little experience and just enough brains to be very dangerous.  But you need to be smart enough to know when to pull out, to save yourself from his lack of knowledge and experience, and that, of course, can be hard to do.  When things go bad, you certainly do not want that kid around— and the kid is probably not going to be around by then anyway.

~ Jim Rogers, Street Smarts: Adventures on the Road and in the Markets

Bill Maher on how Gen Z sees socialism

When I hear people nowadays, fact-free, if you look at Gen Z, a lot of them think "maybe communism, be good to give that another try."  They just don't understand, because they have this idea in their head that if something happened before they were alive, what does it matter?  It didn't really happen.  But stuff did happen.  Stuff did happen.  I know you weren't around for it, but it really did and other people noticed it and we learned that lesson.  Communism doesn't work and it makes people very cynical.

~ Bill Maher, "Here's Why Russia Invaded Ukraine, w/ Bill Maher and Ben Shapiro," The Ben Shapiro Show, 9:50 mark, March 14, 2022

Ilana Mercer on smashing traditions: Mao's China vs. Biden's America

Core curriculum and Western classical texts have been all but purged from American schools.  In China, the number of “classical texts to be taught in schools has increased from 14 to 72.”

[...]

In 1949, during “the Cultural Revolution, Mao exhorted the Chinese to smash anything old.”  À la Antifa, “Gangs of Red Guards swarmed Qufu, Confucius’s hometown, and blew up his tomb.”  Americans have arrived at that point.  They are purging their foundational teachings and obliterating memorials and mementos to their spiritual fathers.  Been there; done that, say the Chinese.

~ Ilana Mercer, "CNN’s Sinophobic Expert Is Clueless: China Is Reactionary, Returning to Confucianism; Not Communism," The Unz Review, December 16, 2021

Martin Lau on learning from young people

First of all, the challenge rather for myself being not a young fund manager is that there are so many new things.  So, I just talked about video streaming and I needed to go to my colleague, and I deliberately put two youngest colleagues within our team sitting next to me, so that I can look at how they do video streaming.  Actually, one of them set up a shop and painted and sells stationery--but not from the company, from her own pocket, just for fun.  And by doing so you actually learn about how young people behave.  And I think it's fair to say the best business opportunities come from the younger people.  So, I think that's how I try to learn.

~ Martin Lau, FSSA Investment Managers, "Martin Lau: Now is a Better Time to Buy China," Morningstar's The Long View, August 3, 2021

Thomas Sowell on traditions

For the anointed, traditions are likely to be seen as the dead hand of the past, relics of a less enlightened age, and not as the distilled experience of millions who faced similar human vicissitudes before.

~ Thomas Sowell

Kevin Duffy on the willingness of the young to abandon time-tested institutions

Capitalism lifted man out of the Malthusian trap circa 1800 and created the hockey stick of human prosperity, yet many – especially the young – are ready to risk it all for a new form of economic organization based upon fuzzy concepts like “fairness” and “equality.”  (This is technically an old idea which has failed countless times, but we should never allow details to get in the way of progress!) 

While we’re at it, the family originated between 100,000 and two million years ago.  Time for a replacement, say the cultural Marxists.

~ Kevin Duffy, "Neomania Revisited," The Coffee Can Portfolio, April 26, 2021