From Oliver Burkeman:
In some ways I’m as productivity-obsessed as ever. What’s changed, and it’s a big change, is that I no longer take myself to be en route to some final state in which I’ll have discovered the best system, and can feel good about myself at last.
I’m convinced it’s a balm for much of what stresses us out: “the compulsion to closure,” which is the hope that all of this is leading up to some kind of permanent resolution. It isn’t. It’s better than that: you get to just be here, and do stuff.
The lack of resolution feels like a problem that needs solving. But have you considered the possibility that the only problem is your belief that such tensions might ever get resolved?
Living without hope of resolution is liberating because it removes a terrible weight from your actions and decisions – the weight that arises from the feeling that they must always be moving you toward some settled state. (Which often just leads to procrastination, since you’re unsure which action would be most helpful for getting you there.)
It frees your past actions, too, from being judged a waste of time or a blind alley, simply because they seemed to be headed in a different direction from the one you’re now embarked upon. It’s best to be freed from the notion that you need, in some other basic way, to fix yourself before life can truly begin.
______________________________
Monthly market share for the top LLMs:
_______________________________
__________________________________
Nigeria now has the best performing stock market in the world, taking the lead over South Korea. As of the end of 2025, there were over 5,000 ETFs, mutual funds, and CEFs that focused on U.S. stocks. There used to be one ETF that invested in Nigerian stocks, but it closed back in 2023 because no one owned it.
__________________________________
2025 Returns:
2026 Returns:
As U.S. stock prices continue to rise into the stratosphere, the percentage of U.S. household net work in stocks (equities) is higher than any point over the last 80 years.
The difference between forward earnings earnings (where analysts project S&P 500 stocks’ earnings will be a year from now) and trailing earnings (what S&P 500 stocks’ earnings actually were over the last year), has rocketed up to record bullish extremes.
The defining story of the first half of 2026 was not a macro shock, it was the continued structural transformation of equity markets
Market concentration remains near historic highs. Passive investing continues to absorb capital at unprecedented rates. Retail investors have become a persistent source of demand. Leverage has migrated toward increasingly short-dated and concentrated exposures. Together, these forces are reshaping liquidity, price discovery, and the behavior of volatility.
Retail investors have poured into stock options in 2026:
Unlike previous periods of elevated retail activity, today’s retail investor is increasingly concentrated in the same sectors driving benchmark performance, led by semiconductors and broad-based ETFs.
In June alone, retail traded approximately $1.9 billion of semiconductor options premium per day (6x the historical average) with about 75% of that activity concentrated in call options.
One out of every three listed options traded in the US now expires the same day, roughly doubling zero day options’ market share since daily expirations launched in 2022.
Following the introduction of Monday and Wednesday expirations in single stocks at the beginning of this year, nearly half of all retail options volume executed by Citadel Securities now trades in zero day contracts, up from 30% in 2025 and just 13% in 2021. Average time to expiry on Citade’s platform is less than 3 days.
Investors chase what’s hot (semis and tech) with leveraged ETFs:
In 1949, four of America’s seven richest metro areas were in Ohio. Cleveland, Toledo, Dayton and Akron were out-earning New York, San Francisco and DC.
Tuna Thoughts 