This is definitely in you really can’t make this up(!) territory… Sen. Lindsey Graham is actually calling for a Congressional vote, but not concerning a War Powers Resolution. 

Instead, he has called for Congress to review and vote on any diplomatic agreement ending the war with what he described as the “Iranian terrorist regime.” That’s right, the NeoCon senator from South Carolina only wants a Congressional vote on whether peace should be approved. He has remained opposed to a War Powers vote.

In a series of posts on X, Graham stated that he supports a diplomatic outcome but insists any deal with Iran must undergo congressional scrutiny to ensure it aligns with his own Israel’s US national security interests.

“Like everyone, I hope we can end the reign of terror of the Iranian regime through diplomacy,” he wrote Tuesday night, and said that any agreement needs Congress “for a vote, like we did with the [former President Barack] Obama JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action].”

The Trump admin and Iran just entered a two-week ceasefire aimed at negotiating a broader settlement following over a month of brutal conflict which has chiefly focused on an air war.

Both sides are readying for direct, face-to-face talks in Islamabad. Trump has previewed that Kushner, Witkoff, and maybe even Vice President J.D. Vance will be there. Trump has said these will happen “very soon”. He told the NY Post on Wednesday:

“We’ll have Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, JD — maybe JD, I don’t know,” Mr. Trump told the New York Post over the phone. “There’s a question of safety, security.”

As for Graham, he has warned against premature conclusions about a deal and called for transparency. “At this early stage, I am extremely cautious regarding what is fact vs. fiction or misrepresentation,” He called for a “a healthy dose of sunlight” to be brought to the deal.

He’s also calling for all of Iran’s enriched uranium to come under American control. 

Again a diplomatic solution to end the reign of terror in Iran is the preferred outcome. The supposed negotiating document, in my view, has some troubling aspects, but time will tell. I look forward to the architects of this proposal, the Vice President and others, coming forward…

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) April 8, 2026

“As President Trump said this morning, all the highly enriched uranium must be removed from Iran and handed over to the United States – the Libyan Model,” Graham wrote, adding that allowing continued enrichment “would be inconsistent with denying Iran a pathway toward a bomb.”

However, there’s an obvious irony to invoking the Libyan Model. After Gaddafi gave up his WMD aspirations during the Bush administration years, he was later by 2011 regime changed by the US and NATO, and bayonetted in the streets by Islamist ‘rebels’.

Authored by Chris Macintosh via InternationalMan.com,

There is a term called “gating” in the fund management world.

It refers to blocking investors from redeeming their funds. Funds do this sometimes as a precaution… and other times when they are in the poo.

Well, governments are the same. When they are in the poo, they also resort to their version of gating. It’s just called taxes.

I’ve always loved the Dutchies. Growing up in South Africa with the Afrikaners — descendants of the Dutch — I can tell you that as a group they are fantastic: hard working, ethical, and very down to earth.

It is with sadness, therefore, that I have to acknowledge that their government is thoroughly cocked-up, and they themselves are already behind a financial iron curtain.

They recently approved a 36% unrealised capital gains tax.

It has since been put back for consideration, but this is not the point. The point is that when governments get into the proverbial isht, this is precisely what happens. You’ll know this because we’ve been talking about it for donkey’s years in these missives.

Along with California and many blue states, the Canadians and Aussies are also toying with the idea. It’s been trial-ballooned (usually how they go about these things) in all of the above-mentioned places, but the Dutchies just approved it.

Some of you may recall how we don’t like ETFs which use futures contracts. The reason is that you are mathematically 100% going to lose money if you hold them over time. Why? Because volatility will erode you. Every time you roll the futures contracts you get shredded if there’s been any volatility. And inevitably there will be volatility.

In any event, what’s going to happen with the Dutchies is kinda similar. Let me explain with some basic maths.

Let’s get on our bicycles for a minute and pretend we’re Dutch, and we invest $1,000 into a stock.

Year 1: Because we’re geniuses, our stock goes to $2,000. Excellent! We made $1,000. Except we now owe $360 in capital gains tax. But we didn’t sell anything. We don’t have the $360. So we’re forced to sell shares to pay tax. But everyone else who has made any gain is also forced to sell too. Mass panic selling. Stock crashes to $800. We have $440 left after paying tax.

Year 2: Stock recovers to $1,200. Government: “You made $400, pay $144.” Forced selling again. Price drops to $900. Now we have $756 left.

Year 3: Stock is back down to $1,000. Government: “You made $100, pay us $36.” Actually, anyone still dumb enough to be hanging around Holland at this point is literally retarded. All the smart money has fled. Anyway, we have $964 in stock.

In total we paid $540 in taxes. Our stock is back where it started (0% gain). We only have $460 left. Congratulations. We just lost 54% on a stock that broke even.

On the other hand, the government made more money off this investment than we did — $540 — and they had a “no money down” deal.

Sticking with the topic of this theft tax, serial entrepreneur Balaji Srinivasan posted the following, which I thought was interesting as I’d not considered it.

“Wealth taxes are even worse than you think. Any asset held by Californian billionaires or Dutch citizens is now at risk of experiencing forced liquidation pressure…

… Because the long run fruits of Western Keynesianism are the same as Soviet Communism, in the sense of wealth seizure and pauperization.

I mean, if you knew the future, you wouldn’t want to co-own a farm with a Russian in 1916. For similar reasons, you might not want to co-own a share of stock with Dutch national in 2026. Or with anyone in a seizure-curious jurisdiction…which unfortunately includes much of Western Europe, Canada, and Blue America.”

I have been warning for years now that the EU would impose capital controls. Please understand: they are already here.

All of the EU is a mess and difficult, but the Dutch and Germans are actually in the worst position.

Now I’m not here to lament and whinge. Complaining is both useless and unproductive. I’m here to explain that we are only just getting started. If you think this stops here — or that more doesn’t come — you are betting against hundreds of years of history.

Capitalist Exploits Insider isn’t particularly meant to be about these issues. After all, we’re fund managers buying listed equities, and I’m not here to tell you how to go about obtaining secondary residencies or anything else. These are simply intelligent steps to take and you need to go educate yourself on those aspects. Now. Because if you don’t, then reading this article after all your wealth has already been stolen is not going to serve you well.

You know what is most frustrating of all? The apathy of the citizenry. The Dutch government just declared open war on them and the response? Nothing. I don’t anticipate anything different in all the other countries mentioned which are preparing for this or something very similar. Very disappointing.

*  *  *

The warning is clear: once governments move in this direction, they rarely stop at one measure. That is why we created a free PDF special report, Clash of the Systems: Thoughts on Investing at a Unique Point in Time. Inside, you’ll see the major economic, political, and cultural trends taking shape right now, what they could mean for your wealth and freedom, and how thoughtful investors can prepare before the next round of controls arrives. Click here to get your free copy now.

The other day Axios ran a piece that cited “findings” that a majority of people trusted their doctors and nurses. Turns out, those “findings” were completely fabricated by a company called Aaru – using AI (causing Axios to issue an editor’s note and ‘clarification’)Aaru uses something they call “silicon sampling,” where large language models (the AI) can emulate humans at a fraction of the cost and time required for traditional polling, the NY Times reports.

Silicon sampling isn’t polling. It is the outright fabrication of public opinion by machines – and major news outlets and research firms are now publishing those fabrications as legitimate findings. 

This is not an isolated slip. The technology is being embraced by some of the biggest names in media, polling, and corporate research. Gallup has partnered with the startup Simile to create thousands of AI-generated “digital twins” that stand in for real people. Ipsos is working with Stanford to pioneer synthetic data for public opinion studies. CVS, whose venture arm invested in Simile, is already using these fabricated insights to shape customer strategy. And outlets like Axios are treating the output as news.

The entire point of polling has always been authenticity – capturing what actual humans actually think (after oversampling your preferred party to make it look like as if people like Hillary Clinton).

That process is imperfect and messy. Let’s say a pollster wants to learn how many people in the United States are in favor of a certain policy measure, but the pollster ends up with a survey that includes 80 percent Republicans and only 20 percent Democrats. The pollster may think that in reality the country is closer to a 50-50 split, so the results are rebalanced to reflect that perceived reality. This means that the percentages you read as the results of polling are the output of the model, not numbers from the actual survey data.

The problem is that every model is designed with its own biases, because pollsters disagree about which variables deserve more weight. In 2016, The New York Times’s chief political analyst, Nate Cohn, ran an experiment in which he gave five pollsters the same election poll data. (That included Siena College, which conducts opinion polls for The Times and first acquired the data.)

Mr. Cohn found a 5 percent range of difference among what the five pollsters’ models returned. That range was larger than the margin of error typically associated with random sampling, meaning that the modeling assumptions were meaningfully skewing the results. This is alarming, because it suggests that pollsters can use modeling to nudge polls in a certain direction and influence public opinion itself, rather than merely to report what the public thinks.

Walter Lippmann warned a century ago that democracy depends on an accurate picture of the public will. Traditional polling, however imperfect, at least began with real responses from real citizens. It was expensive, slow, and messy precisely because humans are expensive, slow, and messy. Silicon sampling removes every trace of that mess – and with it, every trace of reality. The models are trained on past data, tuned by the biases of their creators, and prompted to spit out whatever “representative” opinions the client wants to see. The result is not public opinion. It is a mirror of the assumptions fed into the machine.

Fake Polling Also Picked Kamala Harris… 

On the eve of the 2024 election, Aaru ran a full-scale simulation that confidently projected a narrow victory for Kamala Harris. Market researchers now use these synthetic polls to decide product launches and ad campaigns. Policy shops quietly substitute AI-generated “constituent sentiment” for actual feedback. Each time a respected outlet or pollster presents these inventions as fact, they normalize the idea that fabricated data is good enough.

The consequences are already here. When headlines say “a new poll shows,” readers have no way of knowing whether real people were ever asked. Trust in institutions is eroding fast enough without handing decision-makers and journalists an unlimited supply of plausible-sounding fake data. Social science, political strategy, and market research risk becoming elaborate games of digital pretend.

So there’s that…

Authored by Andrew Korybko,

The sequence that Trump threatened if no deal was reached before the expiry of his deadline would have cut China off from half of the oil that it imported by sea last year and likely set Afro-Eurasia aflame in resource wars for the indefinite future that would have derailed China’s superpower rise.

Three unnamed Iranian officials reportedly told the New York Times (NYT) that China pressed their country to compromise with the US by agreeing to a two-week ceasefire and resuming talks.

When asked about whether China played such a role, Trump responded that, “I hear yes. Yes they were.”

This was followed by Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning revealing that “China made its own efforts in this regard.”

Although she didn’t directly confirm the report, she didn’t outright deny it either.

Interestingly, Drop Site founder Ryan Grim noticed that the edit history of Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s tweet imploring Trump to extend his deadline for destroying Iran’s civilization if a deal isn’t reached saw him originally post “*Draft – Pakistan’s PM Message on X*”. Grim wrote that “Sharif’s own staff don’t call him ‘Pakistan’s PM,’ they would just call him prime minister. The U.S. and Israel, of course, would call him ‘Pakistan’s PM.’” Trump cited his talks with Sharif when extending his deadline.

In light of the NYT’s report, Trump’s positive affirmation thereof, and Mao’s related innuendo, an alternative hypothesis is that it wasn’t the US or Israel that drafted Sharif’s tweet, but China. Regardless of whoever did, it’s reasonable that China might have indeed pressed Iran to compromise with the US, not least because it would have tremendously suffered had Trump carried through on his threat. As a reminder, he threatened to destroy Iran’s power plants, bridges, and possibly even oil infrastructure too.

In response, Iran threatened to destroy the Gulf’s, and the sequence that Trump could have catalyzed would have resulted in the region’s energy exports going offline indefinitely. China would have then suddenly lost the 48.4% of oil that it imported by sea last year, 13.4% of which came from Iran and 35% from the Gulf Kingdoms (excluding Oman whose exports are from the Arabian Sea). Although it has strategic reserves and is producing more alternative energy, that would still its economy very, very hard.

China’s superpower rise would end, while resources wars would break out all across Afro-Eurasia except in resource-rich Russia, thus destabilizing the Eastern Hemisphere for years to come as the US relatively insulates itself in “Fortress America” and divides-and-rules the other side of the world. Naturally, China would prefer to avert that dark scenario even if the lesser evil results in the end of Iran’s petroyuan experiment and perhaps also its oil exports to China. Continued Gulf exports are much more important.

It’s unrealistic to imagine that China promised to intervene in Iran’s support if the US dupes it with talks for a third time in less than a year when it won’t risk World War III over Taiwan nor in furtherance of its “no-limits” Russian strategic partner’s goals in Ukraine.

Observers can therefore only speculate what China credibly offered Iran in exchange for compromising with the US by agreeing to a two-week ceasefire and resuming talks, but at the least, generous reconstruction support was probably included.

To recap, China’s interest in pressing Iran to cut a deal with the US would have stemmed from fears of the sequence that Trump threatened setting Afro-Eurasia aflame for the indefinite future, though there has yet to be any unambiguous confirmation from its side that it played such role and might never be.

Nevertheless, it’s clear that something happened close to the expiry of Trump’s deadline for the IRGC to agree to a ceasefire with the US instead of embrace martyrdom, and it’s likely connected to China.

Authored by Amin Haqshanas via CoinTelegraph.com,

A White House report found that banning yield on stablecoins would have a marginal impact on bank lending while creating clear economic downsides.

According to the Council of Economic Advisers, a three-member agency within the Executive Office of the President tasked to offer the president economic advice, moving funds from stablecoins back into bank deposits would not translate into significant new lending. Under its baseline scenario, total bank lending would increase by about $2.1 billion, roughly 0.02% of the $12 trillion loan market.

The report, published Wednesday, says that community banks would see even smaller gains. Lending at these institutions would increase by roughly $500 million, or about 0.026%.

The findings come amid an ongoing clash between banks and the crypto industry over stablecoin yields. Banking organizations, including the Independent Community Bankers of America, have warned that stablecoin yields could significantly reduce bank lending, while crypto groups have rejected the claim.

Stablecoin lending ban could cost $800 million per year

However, banning stablecoin rewards could carry a greater cost. The report estimates a net welfare loss of around $800 million per year, mainly because users would lose access to yield on stablecoins. The cost-benefit ratio is about 6.6, meaning the economic costs would far exceed any gains in lending.

“Producing lending effects in the hundreds of billions requires simultaneously assuming the stablecoin share sextuples, all reserves shift into segregated deposits, and the Federal Reserve abandons its ample-reserves framework,” the report concludes.

Portfolio effects of the yield ban. Source: White House

In July 2025, President Donald Trump signed the GENIUS Act into law. The law prohibits stablecoin issuers from paying interest or yield to holders, but third-party platforms (like exchanges) can still offer yield on stablecoins. The proposed Digital Asset Market Clarity Act could close that gap by clarifying whether yield should be restricted across the board or allowed under certain conditions.

CLARITY Act nearing Senate markup hearing

The US House of Representatives passed the CLARITY Act on July 17, 2025. In January, Senate Banking Committee Chair Tim Scott delayed a planned markup, which has yet to be rescheduled.

Last week, Coinbase chief legal officer Paul Grewal said the CLARITY Act could be nearing a markup hearing in the US Senate Banking Committee, with lawmakers close to agreement on key provisions. He noted that progress hinges on resolving disagreements over stablecoin yield.

By Noi Mahoney of FreightWaves,

A nationwide strike by Mexican truckers and farmers blocked major highways and freight corridors across Mexico on Monday, disrupting access to Mexico City, industrial zones and several U.S.-Mexico border crossings.

The protest, organized by the National Association of Transporters (ANTAC) and the National Front for the Rescue of the Mexican Countryside (FNRCM), included road blockades in at least 20 states and began around 7 a.m. CST, with disruptions expected to last several hours or longer in some areas.

The groups say the strike is in response to rising cargo crime, high diesel and operating costs, deteriorating road infrastructure and a lack of progress on agreements with the federal government related to highway security and extortion.

Major freight corridors affected

According to Mexican media reports, blockades were reported on several of Mexico’s most important freight routes, including:

Mexico–Querétaro
Mexico–Puebla
Mexico–Pachuca
Mexico–Cuernavaca
Federal Highway 45 in the Bajío region
Culiacán–Mazatlán corridor
Guadalajara–Colima and Mexico–Guadalajara routes
Access roads to Mexico City
Border crossings in Ciudad Juárez, Tijuana and Mexicali

These corridors connect Mexico’s manufacturing hubs, ports and border crossings, making them critical for domestic distribution and cross-border trade.

The strike is affecting access to industrial corridors, customs facilities and toll roads, similar to protests in November 2025 that disrupted more than 40 highways and access to industrial zones and customs facilities.

Security and costs drive protests

Transport and agricultural groups say insecurity remains one of the biggest issues facing freight operators in Mexico.

Official government data shows 6,263 investigations into cargo truck robberies were opened in 2025, but industry groups estimate the true number of cargo theft incidents — including unreported cases — exceeded 16,000, with losses topping 7 billion pesos annually.

Protesters are demanding:

Increased National Guard presence on highways
Action against extortion and corruption at checkpoints
Lower operating costs, including diesel
Support programs and policy changes for agricultural producers

Farmers joining the strike say insecurity, high fuel costs and agricultural pricing pressures are hurting rural producers and transport operators alike.

Government pushes back

Mexico’s Interior Ministry said the government has held multiple meetings with transport and agricultural groups and has provided billions of pesos in support to farmers, arguing there is “no reason” for the protests and warning that blockades affect third parties and the broader economy, according to Omnia.

Still, organizers say the strike could continue if no agreements are reached, raising the risk of ongoing disruptions to supply chains and freight movement across Mexico.

Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank has once again cut the asking price on his massive thoroughbred racing farm in northern Baltimore County, Maryland, as the historic farm – once owned by the Vanderbilt family – continues to sit on the market amid a series of deep price cuts.

Plank has been winding down his sprawling real estate portfolio, offloading everything from multiple residential properties to a luxury hotel in Baltimore City in recent years. Among his crown jewels – alongside the Baltimore Peninsula – is Sagamore Farm, a 404-acre thoroughbred racing operation he has been trying to sell for years.

The latest data from multiple listing service provider MLS Bright shows that Plank likely instructed his listing agent, Christina Giffin of Monument Sotheby’s International Realty, to pursue another price cut.

MLS Bright data shows Sagamore’s current listing price is around $16.5 million. This represents a 15% cut from the late-2025 listing of $18.5 million and an overall decline of about 25% from the original $22 million listing in March 2025. The farm appears to have been on and off the market.

We’ve outlined the mounting challenges for Plank as UA’s brand momentum trended downward for years, but only in recent quarters have we begun focusing on UBS analyst Jay Sole, who is attempting to call a bottom in the stock. Also, the “Warren Buffett of Canada” piled into the stock earlier this year as management raised its outlook.

Plank is still dealing with the “ghost town” of Baltimore Peninsula amid the city’s declining population, which has fallen to a 100-year low under the far-left leadership of Mayor Brandon Scott. Statewide, Maryland’s financial profile is deteriorating under left-wing Governor Wes Moore, with high taxes, crime, a growing fiscal deficit, rising power bills, prioritizing all things woke, significant outbound migration, and other mounting challenges. This is what you get under one-party Democratic rule of kings and queens that have ignited a fire in the state and city under backfiring DEI policies.

Plank should focus on advocating for political change in Baltimore City. At least one other billionaire is already involved in such efforts. If Plank wants his “city within a city” to thrive, negative net migration trends must reverse, and both the city and the state will need to improve their overall financial profiles. Certaintly Democrats show zero interest in fostering a thriving state. 

Since the last FOMC meeting (March 18th), a lot has happened (war, more war, and now less war), and rate-change expectations hawkishly surged, then dovishly normalized today…

And given the last 24 hours, perhaps this information is more useful now, as we return to macro-fundamentals from geopolitical chaos running markets.

The minutes, released three weeks after the meeting, underscore the Fed’s dilemma as it seeks to fill its congressional mandates of low inflation and maximum employment.

Fed officials wrestled with starkly differing scenarios for the US economy following the outbreak of the Iran war, including one that called for interest-rate cuts and another that would require raising rates.

Key Highlights (via Bloomberg):

*FED: MOST SAID PROTRACTED WAR COULD HIT JOBS, WARRANT CUTS

*FED: SOME SAW `STRONG CASE’ FOR TWO-SIDED LANGUAGE ON RATE PATH

*FED: TARIFF EFFECTS ON GOODS PRICES HAD BECOME MORE UNCERTAIN

*FED: MANY SAID INFLATION HIGHER FOR LONGER COULD CALL FOR HIKES

*FED: VAST MAJORITY SAID INFLATION PROGRESS COULD BE SLOWER

*FED: VAST MAJORITY SAW EMPLOYMENT RISKS AS SKEWED TO DOWNSIDE

*MOST JUDGED RECENT DATA SHOWED LABOR `BROADLY IN BALANCE’

Minutes of the meeting showed most officials worried the war could hurt the labor market and warrant lower interest rates.

Fed officials acknowledged that the Iran conflict could also force households to cut back spending to offset higher gas prices, which would slow growth and raise unemployment.

At the same time, many policymakers highlighted the risk to inflation that might ultimately warrant rate increases.

“Partly as a result of these factors, the vast majority of participants noted that progress toward the Committee’s 2 percent objective could be slower than previously expected,” according to the minutes.

The record of the meeting also showed that a growing number of officials urged their colleagues to consider language in the committee’s statement raising the scenario of hiking interest rates under certain conditions.

“Some participants judged that there was a strong case for a two-sided description of the committee’s future interest-rate decisions in the post-meeting statement, reflecting the possibility that upward adjustments to the target range for the federal funds rate could be appropriate if inflation were to remain at above-target levels,” the minutes said.

As a reminder, The Fed kept its key rate unchanged at about 3.6% with Powell saying that another reduction depended on underlying inflation cooling steadily this year:

“If we don’t see that progress then you won’t see the rate cut,” he said then.

Will the ceasefire slow inflation or is the damage already done and yet to flow through global supply chains?

Read the full Minutes below:

A trader who made a large bet on a stocks rocketing in the coming weeks is up about $23 million in paper profit today, according to Bloomberg.

The unknown trader spent $12 million premium on 6800 lots of 6950 S&P 500 Index Options (SPX) calls for May 8 expiry, when the index was at 6556.21; the trade was executed around 10:20 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday, just hours before Trump’s announcement of a 2-week ceasefire which sent stocks soaring. 

The trade was an “example of upside chasing on hopes of an imminent peace deal”, said Chris Murphy, co-head of derivatives intelligence, in an email Tuesday. 

Following the ceasefire deal last night, stocks surged, with the long SPX 6950 position now trading at $50, Bloomberg pricing data indicates.

That makes the position worth $35 million as of noon on April 8, with the S&P 500 at 6773, or a $23 million profit net of the premium paid. 

Authored by Michael Lebowtiz via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

While tech giants invest billions in AI, Apple executives are quietly sitting on their hands and a mountain of cash. Given the massive growth in AI investments, as shown in the graphs below, executives of leading companies at the forefront of AI development must be ecstatic about the prospect of AI significantly boosting their bottom lines.

The puzzling question, however, is why Apple isn’t following suit. Or could they be taking a different approach to winning the AI arms race?

Apple Avoids The AI Spending Boom

Apple is one of the world’s most profitable companies. Over the last four quarters, they reported over $400 billion in annual revenue and nearly $100 billion of free cash flow. Furthermore, the company holds $65 billion in cash and cash equivalents and $77 billion in marketable securities.  The bottom line is that Apple can easily self-fund AI innovation on a massive scale, as its competitors are doing. Yet it hasn’t.

Rather than mimicking its peers, Apple appears content to let the AI landscape mature before committing significant capital. Restraint may seem like complacency or even negligence. However, Apple has a long and extremely successful history of deploying capital at the right time; when the profit outlook is clear, the technology is established, and the customer value proposition is well-defined.

This approach may be frustrating for Apple shareholders in the short term, but history and the chart below, comparing Apple to the S&P 500, suggest it has served them extremely well.

Apple’s Historical Playbook

Apple has rarely been first to introduce a new product. It was not the first personal computer company, the first smartphone maker, or the first to launch wireless earbuds, smartwatches, or VR headsets. In nearly every case, Apple waited while other companies experimented and helped define the product and the market.

Apple waited to understand what consumers wanted in a product.  Only after the uses of a new product became obvious and consumer demand was proven did Apple step in with well-designed products that emphasized reliability, usability, and profitability. Their goal has always been not to be the biggest producer of a product but to be the best. In most cases, they have lived up to that lofty goal.

The timeline below shows the various smartphones that preceded Apple’s iPhone. Given the smartphone landscape today and the fate of the products that preceded the iPhone, it’s fair to say that Apple’s patience was well rewarded.

Discipline May Win The AI Game

Today’s generative AI ecosystem is still in its experimental phase. Training costs are enormous, inference costs remain high, and business models are largely unproven. Many AI products may be impressive, but have produced limited revenue.

Instead of competing with the likes of Microsoft, Meta, and Google, Apple appears to be integrating AI incrementally. They are embedding AI into existing hardware, operating systems, and services rather than creating standalone, capital-intensive platforms. This allows its products to stay competitive without fundamentally altering its cost structure.

This approach takes Apple out of the AI limelight, which has at times weighed on the stock price.

Waiting For Clarity

There are good reasons to wait for AI to better define itself before Apple spends hundreds of billions on strategies that may not prove profitable. For example:

Monetization: While AI can clearly improve productivity and user engagement, it remains unclear how much consumers are willing to pay for it directly.

Legal/regulatory: Data privacy, intellectual property disputes, model accountability, and regulatory limitations are evolving areas of law and public policy. Apple, whose brand is closely tied to trust and privacy, could lose more than most companies from missteps in these areas.

Capital flexibility: By not locking itself into massive investments today, Apple retains the capital flexibility to invest rapidly once AI technology better defines itself and the economics become more apparent.

The Long View

For the impatient investor or trader, Apple’s approach probably feels underwhelming, especially amongst the daily headlines proclaiming AI innovation and trillion-dollar opportunities. But, for investors with patience, history suggests that Apple’s greatest successes have come not from being first, but from entering markets when technology, consumer readiness, and profitability align.

In our article, AI Bubble: History Says Caution Is Warranted, we discussed how many game-changing innovations, such as AI, are often accompanied by a financial bubble. Furthermore, for understanding Apple’s AI strategy, it has historically been far from certain that the front-runners, initially touted as the biggest beneficiaries of the innovation, will be the long-term winners.  To wit:

In 1999, few, if any, investors had ever heard of Google. The term for an internet search, “Googling,” was not yet a thing. Today, Google has a 90+% share of the search engine volume, and many of its early competitors no longer exist. 

Might Apple be taking a page out of Google’s playbook and waiting in the weeds for the AI industry to mature?

Might Apple be the next Google?

Summary

In the early stages of a technology buildout, infrastructure tends to capture the most value. This time appears similar, with the chipmaker Nvidia posting extraordinary returns and investors fawning over the big data center players like Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and Google. However, over time, value typically migrates toward the technology’s application. Understanding where we are in that migration from infrastructure to application is important.

In our opening section, we asked if Apple executives share the same enthusiasm for AI as their chief competitors. The answer may be that Apple executives understand something their peers do not; the race rarely goes to whoever is first out of the gate.