Wednesday, October 14, 2026

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October 2026 Random Ramblings

October 2026 market commentary covers SOLS’s cancelled merger, a hypothetical Starbucks-Chipotle deal, Russell 2000 weakness and AI premiums for Oura and home builders.

From X

@MultiplesCap

Multiples Capital on X

I recently sat down with @StockJabber at @IdeaBrunchEmail to discuss the strategy behind Multiples Capital's outperformance in 2025. The full interview is behind a paywall, but here are 4 core themes we discussed: 1/ The Multi-Asset Edge While many leaned on the "Magnificent 7," we found alpha in global de-dollarization and the massive electricity demands of AI data centers. This approach delivered a 3.15 Sharpe Ratio—with roughly half the turbulence of the S&P 500. 2/ Garrett Motion ($GTX) Update Since my last feature, $GTX has surged ~170%. We discussed the "perfect storm" of index inclusion and aggressive capital allocation that drove this run, and why the "EV-only" fear proved to be premature. 3/ AI Disruption vs. Mispricing The market is correctly identifying "AI Losers" in SaaS, but it’s applying that same anxiety with broad stroke. We broke down why Expedia ($EXPE) is a prime example of this mispricing, trading at a 12%+ FCF yield despite its essential role in the global travel ecosystem and it's growing B2B setment. 4/ My Favorite "Tokenization" Play We closed with a deep dive into the digitalization of finance. I shared my top idea for playing the tokenization trend, a company currently acting as the "digital infrastructure provider" for institutions and growing it's subscription and service revenues. Read the full deep dive here: https://t.co/kuRyJtSPMh Note: As this is premium content, I cannot share the PDF on a open platform. However, if you’d like to join my quarterly investor letter distribution list to see how we are positioning for the "Broadening Trade" in 2026, please send a DM.
@HaydenCapital 2 clicks

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

Lennar, Part One: The Story

Lennar grew from a Miami builder into one of America’s two largest homebuilders, controlling land largely through options and land banks…

Lennar, Part Two: The Deep Dive

Lennar’s second audio program examines the homebuilder’s business for professional investors and housing analysts.

Insider activity September 2026

Asian insider buying rose 19% to US$2.4 billion across 930 September transactions, led by Grab CEO Anthony Tan’s US$30 million purchase…

Vicor Update, Part Two

Vicor uses ITC exclusion-order cases to license power-module patents, with published royalty multipliers rising from 1.0x before filing to…

Expert Call | Nebius

Nebius’s 1 GW annual active-capacity target from 2027 is realistic, according to a former product manager, with greenfield data centers…

AMADF · long

Amadeus It Group SA

Amadeus IT Group turns long after shares fell more than 20% since a November short call.

LQDA: finer powder, higher doses

Liquidia’s Yutrepia sales reached $170.4 million in Q2 2026, while a patent ruling threatens its PH-ILD label but leaves PAH sales and a…

“Is Ralph Lauren Still Relevant?”

Ralph Lauren’s 2017 CEO change put Patrice Louvet in charge of reversing nine quarters of same-store sales declines and restoring the…

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