Transcript
Introduction
Patrick
My guest today is Modest Proposal, joining me for our third conversation and the first in a few years. Modest is anonymous online, but one of the most thoughtful investors that I know overseeing a large pool of capital in public and private markets. He offers insight into many different corners of today's landscape, covering AI's frontier models versus open source models, overcapacity issues in transportation in our post-COVID world and the potential economic impact of GLP-1 drugs and more. I always love hearing what Modest thinks about markets. Please enjoy our latest conversation.
Lessons From Past Commodity Cycles
Patrick
Maybe a fun place to start would be to teach us about what mid-2000s commodity markets can teach us about today's market.
Modest
Yes. So something that's been on my mind throughout COVID and really accentuated by what's transpiring today with AI is this idea of what happens when surging demand meets inelastic supply? And the mid-2000s commodities just did a wonderful example of that, which is China had historically been out of the global economy for a long time, joined WTO, joined the global trading environment.