Conspectus @conspectusintel

Was at Manifest this weekend, a prediction market/AI/rationalist "conference" with lots of weird goings-on. I have a lot of thoughts on that experience that I might post lol. But one of the topics I had fun discussing was the combination of the big two topics -- whether AI was going to improve forecasting. Complex topic obv, and my basic thought is...yes, at least incrementally (more than "incrementally" is an interesting debate). The reason that I'm confident in yes is that humans are TERRIBLE at forecasting. It won't take much to improve upon it. My whole career is proof of inefficiencies in forecasts. I'm not some genius. I recoil at the term "superforecaster" and would disown that label with a quickness. I'm a normal person. Maybe higher curiosity levels. Maybe a tad smarter than normal. But the big point is this: if I can crush markets, then markets are stupidly inefficient. Humans are legitimately not good at predicting, compared to all of the things we are extremely good at. AI is one way that forecasting will improve. Another of the ways, and one of my edges, is thinking about the future through incentive structures -- whether it is a nominee picking a VP or the next Fed Chair or peace deals or whatever. So many decisions revolve around people making hard & important & thoughtful choices, under pressure, based on incentives. I invested in Conspectus a few months back with the hope that the company could help improve those types of forecasts. Jennifer, the founder, had the idea to focus on in-depth analysis of important people. This immediately clicked with me. There's quantative analysis as far as the eye can see, but how much in-depth qualitative analysis is there? There's not much! And to the extent that this exists, many of the global consulting firms that do it are so embarrassing that they'd go out of business if forced to bet on their predictions. Conspectus just launched their beta today, and I did an AMA earlier in their discord. Got asked some really good questions if you want to check either that out or the company out!

Conspectus @conspectusintel

2 weeks ago

Today Conspectus launched our first Situation Room: the Iran War Room. We model the people who move markets and geopolitical events, digging below signal to determine their incentives, constraints, networks, behavioral patterns, and decision-making logic. Outcomes are

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The Great Man Theory is in the news cycle...again. "Regime Change," a book by NYT reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, says Trump considers himself more powerful than figures such as Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Stalin, Mao, Hitler. His comfort publicly measuring himself against history's most powerful/feared figures underscores where we are at: an era of systemic weakness and uncertainty, met with immense individual power across geopolitics, business and beyond. That's why we have Conspectus. truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTru… edition.cnn.com/2026/06/18/pol… axios.com/2026/06/19/tru…

@NikitaNear Fixed - dms now open

Today Conspectus launched our first Situation Room: the Iran War Room. We model the people who move markets and geopolitical events, digging below signal to determine their incentives, constraints, networks, behavioral patterns, and decision-making logic. Outcomes are downstream of individuals. We built the infrastructure to see those individuals clearly. After an AMA on our Discord with @Domahhhh, our beta launched to a curated group of prediction market traders. If you're making decisions that depend on what happens next in Iran, this was built for you. Join the waitlist at theconspectus.com or DM us to cut the line.

@akola77 DMs now open, message us

@deejayrips Fixed, DMs now open

@liquidatedxxx DMs open now, come through

Maduro is sitting in a New York jail, and Delcy Rodríguez is heading to The Hague. Four months since Maduro's capture, and Rodríguez is running Venezuela on a tightrope: complying with Trump, managing the military, releasing prisoners, rebuilding global ties. What does the next year look like? Why does it matter? Everyone covered the raid - we are modeling the people shaping what comes next. conspectusintel.com/situations/ven…

The AI race - a human battle? A coalition contest gated by one bottleneck holder (Jensen Huang and NVIDIA) Contested by tempo-setters, depth-builders, hedgers and operators And this network of partnerships, power struggles, rivalries, funding constraints? We mapped it: 8 operators. 14 power dimensions. 5 scenarios. Decision windows. Behavioral patterns under pressure. Known unknowns. → conspectusintel.com/situations/ai-… Sign-ups open, more situation rooms on the way.

If you followed the battle in the #hungaryelection between Péter Magyar and Viktor Orbán, these are some dates on the calendar you should know: May 9 - Magyar sworn in as PM, formally ending Orbán's 16-year-rule. Mid‑August – “Use it or lose it” deadline: around €11 billion from the EU’s post‑pandemic Recovery Fund must be committed by then or is permanently forfeited under EU rules. August 31 – Hard stop to meet the EU’s “super‑milestones” on judicial and anti‑corruption reforms to unlock the rest of Hungary’s recovery money. These are the dates that will show how much power Magyar really has and how much change EU lawyers will actually let him deliver. visit conspectusintel.com for the breakdown on Magyar, Orbán, the upcoming calendar events you need to know and everything in between.

The U.S.–Iran ceasefire is a story of minds. Tehran’s leaders publicly denied direct talks and rejected ceasefire proposals even as they worked through mediators. Why? Because their psychology is shaped by fear of humiliation, a crisis of legitimacy at home, a shifting power axis around the IRGC, and a domestic media system they personally control. Leadership needed to say “no” on TV to feel even slightly safe saying “maybe” in the backchannel. Some interesting reads if you want to peer inside the mind of Mojtaba Khamenei: theatlantic.com/international/… engelsbergideas.com/notebook/the-h… lansinginstitute.org/2026/03/09/ira… ****visit conspectusintel.com to better understand how individual are shaping the world****

Everyone analyzes the decision, but nobody models the decision makers. The world they grew up in, the coalition they need to survive, the failure they're running from - their incentives, constraints, relationships, behaviors. Those are the actual signals driving world events.

In 2026, entire markets move based on the decisions of a single person. Yet that variable, the decision-maker, remains largely unmodeled and hard to track. At Conspectus, we are building a system for modeling how and why market movers make decisions and the geopolitical impact.

Slight deep dive on Fed Chair. Second biggest win of my career. Over the course of the past ~5 months, I've been trying to predict Trump's Fed chair nomination, as well as the timing of the announcement. Rewind to late November/early December, Kevin Hassett stood at 60% (eventually hitting 85%) AND the pick seemed potentially imminent. I had large paper losses and was in the red for about $200k. Was on track to be my second biggest loss. I had a huge negative position, because my two largest bets were the opposite of what seemed like the current reality: (1) I was betting heavily against Hassett and (2) I was betting the pick wouldn't happen until at least January. I was annoyed, and second guessing my research and thought process on Hassett, but after like a day of thought, I decided, screw it, I'm right -- he was a political hack, and didn't belong anywhere near the Fed -- and I'm not leaving. Why should I leave? I'm not leaving!!!! In fact, I kept betting even more against Hassett. The market, which had already displaced the first betting frontrunner (Chris Waller, a current Fed governor who was appointed by Trump) with Hassett, kept Hassett very high for weeks as Trump continued to fawn over him and make eyes with him. A few weeks later, when Trump implied he may want to keep Hassett's goofy countenance closer to home, Warsh shot up to 60% immediately. Warsh was then somewhat randomly displaced as frontrunner in favor of Rick Rieder, after favorable coverage of his interview pushed him to the 55% favorite. Four different frontrunners in four months. That's my kind of market. My thesis stayed fairly constant the whole time, in roughly four parts: 1. Kevin Warsh is the weak frontrunner. Maybe ~40%-50% odds. He checked off Trump's loyalty card, and is at least respected enough and distanced enough from Trump to have a bit of credibility. He certainly moves well in Wall Street circles, and was previously a Fed governor. Trump also has a very personal connection to him: Warsh's father-in-law gave $5m to MAGA Inc. a few months ago. The issue with Warsh is that, as far as monetary policy, he is at least a bit of a moron. He flunked his Fed governor test in 2008-2009 when he infamously identified inflation (which was below 1%) as his biggest concern, much to the dismay of Bernanke. Someone who wants higher rates to combat inflation is called a hawk. This is literally the opposite of what Trump says he wants (a dove, who is not as concerned with inflation). 2. If Trump actually wants lower rates and a credible, dovish person to achieve that, his best pick was the Governor he already picked in his first term: Christopher Waller. I had him as worth ~25%-30%. Trump is FAR more into loyalty than effectiveness, which helps to explain quite a lot of his bad picks for various positions (think of it like the polar opposite of Lincoln's "Team of Rivals"). With Bessent shepherding this, though, I felt like he could guide Trump tp pick the person likeliest to be able to lead a Fed boardroom down the path of lower interest rates. Waller has a very credible (and perhaps correct!) thesis that rates are too high. 3. Trump's best pick for matching loyalty and credibility is Bessent himself, who was leading the search and has roughly equal views to Warsh. I rated that at around a 5-10% chance. Bessent seemed very disinterested in this (unclear why -- I landed on him liking politics for whatever godforsaken reason and wanting to stay in that lane). But I thought Bessent may change his mind if Trump was deadset on Hassett, who was easily the worst pick (I rated Hassett a 5-10% chance). I thought in the scenario where Trump wants to pick Hassett, Bessent may be like "damn it, man, alright fine whatever, I'll be Fed Chair." Lol. But for real! 4. Other -- As with any pick, Other is probably worth a decent amount, and one of the "Others" ended up in the final 4 and indeed became the frontrunner eventually (Rick Rieder). Zooming out over the course of 5 months, I would've put Other at around 15%. (Side note -- I get pitched on hundreds of prediction market-adjacent products and projects. Vast, vast majority go nowhere. One that has actually gone somewhere is research platform Conspectus Intel from @jennkornn, which was very effective at synthesizing Trump's decision matrix as it relates to these candidates) This morning, Trump announced my weak frontrunner was the pick: Kevin Warsh. In the end, after all the drama and swinginess of the markets, the pick was neither that surprising nor that interesting. But I did wind up making $425,000 on this bet across various markets and sites, a couple of which I've pasted below. Second largest win of my life! Which is a great ending for me (not sure about the country). But it's also not the storybook ending: I would've made nearly $1m if Trump had made the smart pick, Chris Waller. C'est la vie.

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