The Four Horsemen of the Technocalypse
And The Mimetic Kill-Shot To Accelerate the Future
In the first half of 2024, about 60% of the gain in the S&P 500 was in just 7 stocks. We can see that effect by comparing the performance of QQQ (market-cap weighted) to QQEW (equal weight).
These are known as the “Magnificent Seven,” or Mag7 for short.
Before Mag7, it was MAGA stocks.
Before that, it was FANG which expanded into “FANGMAN” as MSFT, AMZN, and NFLX started their runs.
When commodities are running, we hear about the BRICS countries.
When Europe is about to default on their debt, we place all the bad countries into PIIGS.
Financial market participants love acronyms. They help create a heuristic, a narrative, that is used as a shortcut when explaining market movements.
These naming conventions can end up developing their own power.
Financial media will repeat the acronyms to death. Financial planners will use them in their letters to clients.
Once a group of assets are given a clever name, they will start to trade differently, almost as if they were lashed together using a magical spell.
In reality it’s that liquidity tends to cluster around narratives, and using “MAGA” as a shortcut puts all these names at the top of watchlists.
It’s memetic reflexivity. Incredibly powerful technology to harness if you do it right.
Time to Be An Evangelist
The second half of the decade is going to be a convergence of four technologies that compound on one another to the point that markets and society are going to be drastically changed.
I’ve been ranting about this to people in real life, but it just doesn’t seem to stick. These technologies are either a neat toy, a scam, or an existential risk.
Everyone who is terminally online is acting as though the world is about to go limit up, but when you talk to folks who have a statistically normal lifestyle, they don’t get it.
Who cares, right?
If they miss the boat that’s on them, and all of us who were early can just get on the first flight to Mars, financed by all the crypto bags we’re still holding.
But they have to figure this out. These people vote. They hold leadership positions and direct capital in the economy. They run the most powerful and lethal military in the history of the world.
It’s not that they don’t get it, it’s that there is a need for a simple, sticky heuristic that can reduce complex narratives into something that can be understood.
The Memetic Killshot
The second half of the decade will be driven by the BRAIN movement.
Blockchain - the technology that will change how we manage data and contracts
Robotics - the technology that will change how we manipulate the physical world
AI - the technology that will change how we think
Nuclear - the technology that will finance the movement
These are the Four Horseman of the Technocalypse.
They Need Each Other
This grouping is exceptionally effective because they all accelerate at the same time, or none of them will.
A major roadblock coming for both AI and blockchain is power. We simply don’t have the electrons to build the AI models of the future.
Current projections are suggesting that AI alone could account for 15-20% of power demand in the U.S. by 2030.
It could be higher. Much higher, if we scale up power capacity across the globe.
It won’t just be Nuclear. Natural Gas could be a bridge solution inside the U.S. (which helps preserve our newborn acronym), but in terms of energy density Nuclear is the only play that can get this going.
The same holds true for Robotics— the manufacturing onshoring into the U.S. will require AI to interface into robots for fast learning, and you’ll need nukes to power it.
Blockchain could easily drive growth in Robotics, as funding constraints are rapidly removed using smart contracts and tokenomics.
Does Nuclear need robotics? Sure, if you want to quickly buildout small modular reactors.
Does Nuclear need blockchain? A reductionist view of BTC is the conversion of energy into a digital asset, which could help “grease the skids” with economics of scale in the crypto markets.
These technologies need to grow in lockstep with one another. What were once constraints are now accelerants.
Do You Want a Big BRAIN Or Not?
Current policy in the West is against all of these movements.
Blockchain is kneecapped by the SEC and an unfriendly Executive.
Robotics is tied to manufacturing onshoring, of which there are many people in power who are incentivized for its failure.
AI keeps being regulated by the Feds, where they are trying to “classify” math.
Nuclear is a solved technology but has been a boondoggle for decades.
Policy has to change. Fast.
The Technocalypse Is A Good Thing
In the financial markets, the bearish narrative will, without fail, be a more fascinating and “sticky” narrative than expecting stocks to go up.
The narrative can change every quarter, but you will always sound like the smartest person in the room even though you have been chronically underinvested for the past decade.
Narratives around technology follow the same structure. It’s straightforward to push fear when it comes to any of these technologies.
Killer AI drones. Nuclear meltdowns. Crypto scams.
This is why heuristics matter. It’s hard to care about the economy when you bought a basket of Mag7 stocks and they’re all up 30%.
The same holds true here. You can be bullish on the BRAIN theme, or you can end up BRAIN-dead.
The word “apocalypse” has a bad rap in our society. Current consensus is that if the apocalypse is happening, it means it’s the end of the world.
That’s not the original meaning. Taken literally, you have apo-kalypto, which means “reveal” or “disclosure.”
It’s why the Apocalypse of John is called “Revelations” in the Bible. It’s the Revelation of John, or the Apocalypse of John.
When you have an apocalypse, the future is being unveiled.
When you have a technocalypse, the unveiling is being driven by new developments in our understanding of our world and how to manipulate it.
Right now, the existential risk is at a nation-state level. I’d rather not live in a world where an oppressive communist regime makes it to superintelligence first.
This is going to require coordination by a lot of parties who do not think it’s in their interest to allow growth in these fields.
They have small brains. It’s time for a big BRAIN move.
How to Profit From the BRAIN Trade
If you’re aware of an emergent heuristic like Mag7 or FANG, you can jump in early to these trends. It has nothing to do with the businesses, but liquidity.
The BRAIN trade is still very early, but there’s some investing themes to consider:
Blockchain - exchanges like Coinbase (COIN) should continue to do well. And BTC/ETH will be good high vol trading instruments. I’ve got other setups orthogonal to this idea that need a separate writeup
Robotics - aside from TSLA, the best setups may not be in public markets right now. There’s Rockwell (ROK) that is trying to introduce automation in industry. But watch for equity financing rounds from small hardtech firms next year.
AI - not many pure AI plays available on the open market, but I would look for crypto tokens that share cloud services. RNDRUSDT is a token that allows for distributed access to GPUs. Any token that introduces economics around sharing AI hardware is one to watch.
Nuclear - you can get direct access to nuclear by SRUUF, a fund that physically owns Uranium. It’s also available on the TSX with ticker symbol U.U.