Soft & Gentle
w.293 | AI, UK Investors, PE Firms Raising Debt, Pension Growth, BTC & De-Mortgaging
Dear Friends,
Happy Thanksgiving this upcoming week! It’s my favorite holiday and distinctly American; Canada celebrates it too, so inclusive of North America minus Mexico.
All the best from me to you, your friends, and your family and all that we have to be thankful for. One of my mom’s traditions is for each of us to share our ‘thankfuls’ prior to our Thursday feast. My list is long, but my relationships with many of the readers of this newsletter is near the top.
Today's Contents:
Sensible Investing: Trends
Weeklies: Selfie & Song
Sensible Investing
AI Eats the World, a Nov 2025 Presentation from Ben Evans (former a16z research partner). We’ve covered most of this in previous newsletters, but it's always nice to flip through the narrative laid out cleanly in one place.
UK Investors Pull Out of the London Stock Market at Record Pace. Outflows come as inflows from foreign investors help propel the FTSE 100 to a record high.
Important reminder from the article: The FTSE 100, which derives more than three-quarters of its revenue from overseas, is generally not considered by investors to be a barometer of the UK economy's health.
PE Firms Flood Junk Debt Market to Pay Themselves. Grim.
Another driver is collateralized loan obligations, structured credit vehicles that are the largest buyers of leveraged loans. CLOs are financed by issuing bonds. There have been more than $151 billion of the debt backed by syndicated loans sold in 2025, up about 4.7% from the same time last year, according to the Bloomberg data.
“The problem is the deals aren’t performing. And so when they don’t perform, even if I want to sell mine, I’m not going to sell it to the other PE guy that knows that he has his own deals that aren’t performing and he doesn’t want mine,” Mish said. “The easiest thing to do is to do a recapitalization and sell it to a less credit discriminate investor, which is a CLO.”
Bitcoin Heading for Worst Month Since Crypto Collapse of 2022
Just a note on Bitcoin and Crypto. Yes, it’s all down ~20% this month, and BTC is now down 10% for the year. It’s a volatile asset class prone to drawdowns. It trades like speculative tech, not like a risk-off hedge. Long-term buy-and-hold investors know this dynamic. I don’t think it’s dead, but it’s obviously not ‘digital gold’ either.
Pension Growth Has Outstripped Wage Growth in Europe Since 2008
Among other charts, this single image speaks to the generational divide that continues to extend across Western economies.
Interesting Chart on the ‘De-Mortgaging’ of America.
Weeklies: Selfie & Song
Selfie: Eli, Deep Tech, Israel, Global Dialogue
In London, I got to hang out with my dear KaufmannFellows and global explorer friend Eli Novershtern. Eli is an independent investor and investment advisor with his own firm called Morrag Ventures. One of his specialities is matching family office and institutional investor capital with later-stage deep tech direct investment opportunities in Israel.
We always have great conversations about a wide variety of topics and how, in general, people need to ‘wake up and smell the hummus,’ in his words. Sounds downright pleasant to me.
He’s also a long-time leader at the World Jewish Congress. He cares deeply about Israel-Diaspora relations, Israel advocacy, and strengthening the pluralistic and tolerant aspects of Judaism, both internally and externally through outreach and interfaith dialogue.
Eli serves as the President of the WJC Jewish Diplomatic Corps, a program of the World Jewish Congress, where he is also an Executive Committee member and a member of the Investment Committee. He also serves as an active board member of the Reut Institute, Israel’s leading think tank, and was one of the founders of the Jewish Peoplehood Coalition, which aims to strengthen connections between Israelis and Jewish communities abroad. Eli is also the Chairman of Innovation: Africa - Israel, using Israeli technologies to provide access to energy and water to some of Africa’s neediest villages, already affecting over 4 million lives.
In times of global strife and confusion, it’s nice to have friends doing the work to bring people together and find ways forward for humanity.
Song: Soft & Gentle
Here on YouTube.
The Polish Ambassador (TPA) was an experiment, David Sugalski’s sound-art passion project that came to life. An inventive, imaginary character born of humble, humorous beginnings, he found his first audiences through the support of primitive digital radio stations. Today, TPA is among the premier EDM/live-crossover artists in the country, with millions of listeners worldwide.
This is a fun, mostly instrumental song.
“Soft & Gentle” by The Polish Ambassador
Soft & Gentle
Instrumental Thanks for reading, friends. Please always be in touch.
As always,
Katelyn