Les 📈🚀 retweeted
1/ Everyone take a deep breath. Texas data centers aren't going anywhere. The Texas governor has very limited authority to stop them. Calls for a pause or moratorium must be approved by TCEQ—the permitting authority of Abbott appointees. Here's how Texas permitting really works👇
Les 📈🚀 retweeted
In 1913, Congress sold you the income tax as a tiny levy on the rich. The top rate was 7 percent, and it only kicked in on income above $500,000 (roughly $15 million today). The bottom rate? One percent. They promised it would stay that way. They lied, of course, but the lie was elegant: target the millionaires, calm the working man, then expand the definition of "millionaire" until it includes a plumber in Ohio.
By 1918, five years later, the top rate hit 77 percent. Five years. The "temporary" emergency of the First World War gave the state its excuse, and the state never gives an excuse back. Once you accept that Washington owns a percentage of your labor, the only question left is which percentage, and that question gets answered every April by people who have never met you and never will.
Income tax is a claim on your time. When the government takes 24 percent of what you earn, it takes roughly three months of your working year and assigns that labor to itself. You work January through March for the Treasury. Call that what it is. A man forced to work for another man without pay has a word in the dictionary, and it is not "citizen."
Free market thinkers spotted the trick a century ago. Frank Chodorov wrote a whole book on it, "The Income Tax: Root of All Evil," published in 1954, and his argument has aged better than the dollar has. The tax requires you to confess your entire financial life to the state and prove your innocence on demand. No warrant. No suspicion. Just compliance, backed by liens, wage garnishment, and the polite threat of armed men. The IRS now employs more people than the FBI, ATF, and DEA combined.
You were told 1913 was the beginning of a fairer system. It was the beginning of a permanent one. Nothing the government touches stays small, and nothing it calls temporary ever ends.
Les 📈🚀 retweeted
We're in a new era of communication, and only one side seems to be living in it. The old guard consultant class is about to be relegated to the dustbin of history.
If you think that high prices lost the election for the right, you don't understand marketing. Humans have no problem paying a premium for a good quality brand. Notice the word "brand", not "product". Are Nikes better than New Balance? Nope. But the brand is better. And notice what happened when they tinkered with the brand and screwed their core narrative? Nike stock fell through the basement. Did the product change? Nope. The brand did.
It's not the product, it's the brand. Results don't sell the product, the storytelling does. Will these newly-elected commies lower prices? Of course not. Are they gonna get you free healthcare? No, your insurance is gonna get even worse, just like it did the last time they tried socialized medicine. They're not going to do anything they've sold you, but...like Saul Goodman said: if you're committed enough, you can make any story work.
The committed storytelling of a couple insane podcasters was enough to fracture an entire political coalition from their own side in less than 2 years...they have zero power, zero credibility, they've never actually governed anything nor produced any results, but...they're good storytellers, and that's all that matters. Are they telling a good story? No, it's atrocious, but they're telling their atrocious story effectively and compellingly.
It is 100% true that everything's too damn expensive, and we all know that inflated prices are always sticky. Does anyone know that it's entirely the result of shutting down the global economy over the flu and (both naive republicans and democrats) printing infinity dollars for several years? Nope...because nobody has effectively told that story, and it's an unsexy story to tell. "Free stuff!" is a VERY easy story to tell, and when everyone's gotta take out a second mortgage just to pay their insurance premiums, "free healthcare" is an unbeatable story. It doesn't matter that "free healthcare" doesn't exist and socialized medicine is a terrible product...it's not the product, it's the brand. And "FREE!" is a great brand.
You can't get mad at people for having the financial literacy of a 9 year old. I mean, you can, but they outnumber you a million to one, so it's not going to be productive. You need to figure out how to make an unsexy story sexy, or else the "free stuff!" crowd is going to eat your lunch every time. If you give people a choice between earning a six pack on a treadmill or taking Ozempic, they're gonna choose Ozempic...they don't care about the side effects. If you give people a choice between fiscal discipline or free stuff...guess what they'll pick? They don't care about the side effects.
With projected growth of 5%, the economy right now is stronger than it's been in generations. Is that the story you hear? Nope. Is that the vibe you feel? Absolutely not, especially when every time you fill up your gas tank, it feels like a diesel enema.
It's not the product, it's the brand. A great product can fall into oblivion with bad messaging...a single bad review from one effective storyteller can tank a restaurant. The "influencer economy" is lucrative for a reason; everybody inherently understands the importance of effective storytelling...except the right. Zohran Mamdani gets it...he has an army of influencers on staff. In a perfect metaphor of this transitional phase of old guard vs new wave political messaging, Zohran nuked the Vice President into oblivion with maybe the biggest ratio in the history of the internet. By simply posting the subway assistant meme, Mamdani got 2 MILLION likes, quoting a post from the VP that had only 10K likes. If you're reading that sentence thinking "this is fucking ridiculous, you're talking about social media likes as political analysis now?"...you are the problem.
Yes, this stuff matters. Rizz matters. The President did a masterful job of this kind of retail politics in his historic 2024 campaign...you can be angry that this is what politics has been reduced to, but you can either adapt or die.
"No the problem is, you didn't deliver enough for the American people!" Are you a moron? Since when does anybody care about that? What have democrats delivered for Californians in the last 20 years? Unmitigated wildfires, homeless drug zombies everywhere, roads that look like Fallujah in 2004...people don't care about results. They think they care about results. That want you to believe they care about results, just as Nike wants you to believe their shoes are better than New Balance...but at the end of the day, all people really care about is the swoosh.
Adapt or die.
Guys, I hate to break it to you, but most political advisors are so bafflingly incompetent, it would make your head spin. All the talented communicators go work in Hollywood or at Saatchi and Saatchi, and these political bros never tap these agencies for help...I've connected several campaigns with literally the best marketing geniuses in the game, got them discounted rates, even...and they just never even bothered calling. It truly feels like a lot of consultants and candidates just want to lose.
You ever wonder how my ads went so massively viral, but there's not been a single candidate who's come close to it? It's their dumbass advisors. I didn't go with any political advisors, and they were SO mad about it. I partnered with a filmmaker and marketing wizard, instead of political grifters. Why? Because I wanted our messaging to be effective. Political ads suck. Nobody watches them. I wanted people to want to watch my ads. The fact that nobody else understands this is...I honestly don't know how to explain it, other than they want to lose.
There are a bunch of candidates who love it when their party loses power. It takes all the heat off them, because then they can't be expected to pass legislation when they're in the minority, plus they can fundraise way better off of the rage when the opposition is running roughshod over the country. Baffling to watch.
Les 📈🚀 retweeted
$IREN is going to get rinsed tomorrow, but this guppy has something the trillionaire running unpermitted gas turbines doesn’t have—2.75GW of interconnected grid power in Texas and 750MW of *permitted* capacity available/online right now. All of which runs on excess renewable energy.
Price of 2027 compute just went up massively. Good luck running your BTM turbines in Corpus Christi and installing 10GW of Vera Rubins. I’m sure the new governor is also going to be super cool with you launching starship every day to put your compute in space…
IR—please open your mouths tomorrow and point out all the ways you’re already compliant with the new governor’s stance towards data centers
There is no compute glut coming.
$IREN earnings expectations—it’s simple:
-Hit the consensus expectations on the top and bottom lines for a change. Based on the last call you exited FYQ4 “around” a $.5B run rate. Prince George should contribute ~$125M alone. Plus Horizon 1 (pro-rated). Plus Mirantis (pro-rated). Plus residual mining revenue puts you above consensus expectations of ~$230M. Re-affirming H2-4 delivery in Q4 should be a given considering recent messaging. Investors give zero fucks if you have to run 1-2 of them temporarily using chiller trucks. Elon certainly doesn’t care and neither do his customers. Get your compute online and start hitting the mark.
-You need to start monetizing 2027 builds. Longing the price of compute in 2026 was the right call, but you have almost a gigawatt of builds (gross) for next year and the project level economics need to be locked in with credit-worthy customers (or a mix of IG and non-IG). Trying to squeeze out a few more mil/MW is not the right call. Sign *some* deals. Get the financing. Get any remaining equipment on order. If we get more “advanced discussions” or “soon” the market will continue to assume you can’t close deals and validate every sell side model which values uncontracted compute at $0. Start with the uncontracted B300’s at Childress.
Les 📈🚀 retweeted
I've put them all together here: datacentersontheballot.com/
Les 📈🚀 retweeted
Great thread on actual datacenter bans on the ballot tonight. Many Ohio datacenter projects in planning phase got stopped tonight.
Les 📈🚀 retweeted
🚨 AI INFRASTRUCTURE BOOM JUST GOT BIGGER.
GS has raised its 2030 global data center capacity forecast from 217 GW to 273 GW a massive 26% upgrade.
That's an estimated $8.5 TRILLION in infrastructure spending over five years.
And here's the real story: AI demand isn't slowing down. The race for power, GPUs, and data center capacity is accelerating.
The biggest AI investment cycle may still be ahead of us. 🧵👇
Les 📈🚀 retweeted
🚨 NOMURA: THE MARKET MAY BE MISREADING THE ENTIRE AI DATA CENTER BOOM.
Big Tech is spending hundreds of billions on AI infrastructure. Free cash flow is under pressure. Investors are worried the AI boom isn't profitable.
But Nomura argues something very different:
AI infrastructure is already highly profitable. The cash flows simply haven't caught up with the investment cycle.
Here's the breakdown 🧵👇
1/ The profitability numbers tell a different story.
According to Nomura's November 2 report:
• AWS revenue: $46B, +39% YoY
• AWS operating margin: 38.7%
• Google Cloud revenue: $30.7B, +103% YoY
• Google Cloud operating margin: 36.2%
• Azure growth: +48%
These are not the numbers of an industry struggling to generate operating profits.
2/ The real issue is timing, not necessarily profitability.
Big Tech pays for data centers, GPUs, networking and memory upfront.
Revenue and cash generation arrive over subsequent years.
That creates a classic free-cash-flow J-curve:
CAPEX accelerates → FCF deteriorates → Infrastructure generates revenue → Investment growth moderates → FCF recovers.
3/ Nomura expects operating income to surge before free cash flow.
Its illustrative forecasts suggest operating-income growth could peak around 2029, while FCF growth accelerates later.
That distinction matters enormously for investors valuing AI infrastructure businesses.
4/ Why can't hyperscalers simply stop spending?
Because AI increasingly threatens their existing businesses.
Search, advertising, shopping, software and cloud services are being reshaped by AI agents.
Companies that underinvest today risk surrendering customers, data and market share tomorrow.
5/ Demand may not be the primary constraint. Capacity is.
Nomura cites enormous contracted cloud backlogs:
• Google Cloud: $560.8B
• AWS: ~$496B
• Microsoft commercial RPO: $677B
These figures have different reporting definitions, but collectively illustrate substantial contracted demand.
6/ Big Tech has financing alternatives to cutting CAPEX.
Nomura identifies four paths:
① Accelerate investment
② Freeze CAPEX
③ Use joint ventures and operating leases
④ Monetize contracted future cash flows
Its preferred expectation is continued investment supported by increasingly sophisticated financing structures.
7/ Oracle offers a real-world example.
Nomura highlights Oracle's combination of long-term leases, project financing, customer prepayments and customer-provided hardware.
The broader message: hyperscalers can restructure who finances infrastructure without necessarily reducing how much infrastructure gets built.
8/ This distinction is critical for semiconductors and memory.
Negative hyperscaler FCF does not automatically imply collapsing demand for GPUs, DRAM, HBM or other data-center components.
If spending continues through financing structures, semiconductor demand can remain resilient even while hyperscalers optimize their balance sheets.
9/ What could invalidate the thesis?
A genuine compute oversupply.
Watch:
• Cloud revenue growth
• GPU rental pricing
• Contracted backlog growth
• Data-center utilization
• Memory supply commitments
• Hyperscaler investment guidance
These are more useful indicators than negative FCF alone.
10/ The investment takeaway:
The key question is not simply:
"Why is Big Tech burning so much cash?"
It is:
"Will the infrastructure being built today generate enough durable cash flow to justify its cost of capital?"
Nomura is optimistic.
But the answer ultimately depends on pricing, utilization, investment discipline and the durability of AI demand.
The AI infrastructure cycle may be a cash-flow timing problem rather than a profitability crisis.
$NVDA $MU $GOOGL $MSFT $AMZN $META $ORCL
Les 📈🚀 retweeted
COT Report data show something intriguing for crude oil futures. Prices are still high, but the big money "commercial" traders are paring their shorts. These traders have been continuously net short to varying degrees since 2009. Many of them are producers, using futures markets to lock in pricing on their future production.
When prices go up they short more. When prices go down, they short less, figuring they can get a better price for their production by waiting. It is quite irregular to see prices moving up and their net short position going down.
The implication is that oil prices are headed a lot higher.
