Sunday, September 20, 2026

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Deep Dive: Brookfield Corporation

Brookfield Corporation, down 20% YTD, manages $1.27 trillion across asset management, insurance and operating businesses as rates, debt and private-credit concerns pressure its valuation.

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Fred Liu on X

AppLovin - Interview with Xiaochuan (architect of $APP's Axon engine). Thought this was the most in-depth public conversation on AppLovin's business to date. (P.S. Youtube has great subtitle translation) Axon & Technical Philosophy - Axon was built by just 5 people in 3 months - AppLovin was the first to implement models with prediction windows exceeding 7 days - Deliberately avoids developing its own LLMs, preferring to use the best available models on the market — building LLMs in-house wouldn't generate the best ROI E-Commerce Expansion - Decision to enter e-commerce made in May 2024, with the product launching later that year; original team was only 10 people - Entering e-commerce was effectively building a new model from scratch - The gaming and e-commerce algorithms share nothing except infrastructure and accumulated organizational experience Core Competency & Culture - AppLovin's edge isn't industry-specific — it's rooted in how the company approaches problems (the culture itself), which he believes positions them to tackle challenges well beyond gaming and e-commerce - His relish for being called an "underdog" comes through clearly throughout the interview Social Media Ambitions - Already working on building a next-generation social media platform - Strategic logic: Meta started with captive organic traffic and built an ad platform on top; AppLovin is doing the reverse - starting with the ad platform and building toward organic traffic - Owning that organic traffic, if achieved, would be a significant advantage Short Seller Response - When the short reports were published, Xiaochuan personally reviewed the systems and code to assess whether the claims had merit Hiring Philosophy - After 2023, overhauled hiring: moved to paying among the highest salaries in Silicon Valley, and shifted focus away from seasoned veterans toward people with fewer than 2 years of experience - Core belief: experience is overrated, the capacity to learn is underrated; breakthroughs come from willingness to abandon convention - "You can't operate like a large company if you don't have a large company's resources" - Most prominent AI researchers are overpriced — high visibility and intense competition drives salaries beyond their marginal value - Targets talent at the "periphery of the spotlight": technically strong but undervalued by the market, and still carrying the underdog mentality that well-known names often lack (i.e. "Moneyball") - Entire engineering org runs on fewer than 100 people https://t.co/vXaWUZGkZt

Brookfield of Dreams

Brookfield is recasting itself from an industrial owner into a $1.3 trillion asset manager and insurer, betting AI infrastructure can…

Groceries, Aggregators, and Agents

DoorDash's grocery push targets a shift from weekly stock-up trips to frequent online fill-in orders, though smaller baskets complicate…

TSOH Weekly Roundup (09/18/2026)

TSOH Weekly Roundup covers organized retail crime, Home Depot’s centralized operating missteps under Bob Nardelli, and research updates on…

Deep Dive: Grab Holdings ($GRAB)

Grab generates 53% of revenue from delivery, 36% from mobility and 10% from financial services, using its Southeast Asian marketplace to…

Power Semiconductors: The Follow-Up

STMicroelectronics, Navitas and Wolfspeed offer contrasting power-semiconductor cases tied to NVIDIA’s 800V AI data-center architecture,…

CPT · long

Camden Property Trust

Camden Property Trust owns multifamily properties across the U.S. Southeast and Southwest.

Copart 4Q26 Business Update

Copart's U.S. insurance volumes fell 7.5% in 4Q26, largely from one customer loss, while international insurance units rose 11.2% and…

Why I Think Uber Is Too Cheap

Uber trades at 14.5 times trailing free cash flow, while robotaxi competition and a Delivery Hero acquisition test its growth and leverage…

A2Gold: Research Note

A2Gold's McIntosh drilling found 0.23 g/t gold over 65.5m, 370m southwest of the existing resource, and extended mineralization 86m…

Research Roundup Vol. LII

Dell’s AI-server demand and Microchip’s data-center components lead updates on Cirrus Logic and STMicroelectronics, alongside a weekly…

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