Some things and ideas: February 2026
My monthly overview (Monthly recurring piece)
I consider YAVB my “empire” with four core pieces: this blog / substack (the free side), the premium side of this blog, my podcast (also on Spotify, iTunes, or YouTube), and my twitter account. You can see my 2025 vision and goals for the empire here. If you like the blog / free site, I’d encourage you to check out the pod, follow me on twitter, and maybe even subscribe to the premium site!
A bonus note: I get asked from lots of people about how to break into the finance industry. I’ve done an entire podcast on how to get a job in investing I’d encourage you to listen to…. but my top advice would be to go out and start a substack yourself! If you do launch a substack, please let me know so I can try to be helpful.
It’s good to be back
I try to publish these “monthly things” posts every month (thus the name!)…. but we just had our second kid, and between taking care of baby, no day care for winter break at the end of December, a little bout of sickness at the end of January, etc. I ended up skipping these posts December and January. I have missed writing these; it’s good to be back!
A webinar! A live one!
I’m doing a live webinar with AlphaSense’s director of TMT research on March 10th at 1 PM ET. We’ll be talking all thing media: Netflix / PSKY / WBD1 will probably be the headliner, but I plan on asking about all sorts of things: Disney’s new CEO, sports rights, the future of video games, etc. It’ll be a live webinar, so we will be taking questions from listeners in real time (a replay will be available if you can’t make it live!). If you’re interested, you can sign up here
State of markets (Monthly recurring piece)
It’s not a perfect indicator, but I like to use the CNN “Fear & Greed” Index just to quickly quantify where the markets are.
My last monthly links was in November; the index said we were in “extreme fear” territory (to which I said “get the fudge out of here; we’re near all time highs”). Today, we’re at the high end of “fear” / just below neutral:
It remains a very strange market. Basically every index is hovering near all time highs….
But the turmoil inside the index is pretty wild. SaaS and payments companies continue to implode; as I finish writing this post, DUOL reported earnings that saw their stock drop ~25%, and GDDY’s stock dropped ~20% on their earnings Weds only to rebound ~10% on Thursday. Just wild moves across the board.
I don’t think I have much to say on the markets that’s particularly new / insightful….. but I will continue to beat the drum that I’ve been pounding for a while now: stocks are at all time highs, and I see a world just overflowing with volatility and downside risks. I’m not saying to go 100% cash and buy 10 years worth of canned goods, but I do think being a little cautious now when markets overall feel ebullient makes sense…. but I think that’s part of what makes these markets so strange. Markets overall are still at highs, but you can pretty easily find areas of fear / dislocation like SaaS.
One article that caught my eye (New monthly recurring piece)
What keeps Max Greyserman in Golf Obscrutiy? Less than One Stroke Per Round
There’s a somewhat legendary story in basketball circles where Brian Scalabrine (a beloved bench guy for the Celtics) played a bunch of very good local players and just slaughtered them. At one point, he yells to one “I’m closer to Lebron than you are to me.”
There are around 400 players in the NBA. Let’s assume Scal was the worst player in the NBA; that still made him the 400th best person in the entire world at a sport that tens of millions of people play. He’s literally on the far, far edge of whatever skill measure you want to look at.
That Scal story is always floating around my head somewhere. Investing is a competitive, performance game. You don’t need to be a butthole to everyone, but you do need to be competitive and always improving. So I like to read any article about an athlete who is (quite literally) in the 99.99% of skill at a sport as they try to close the gap between being in the 99.99% and the 99.999% (as Scal would do if he caught LeBron, or as Max is trying to do in this article with golf).
Outside of the interest in the performance, the other thing I think is interesting is the analytics. Analytics are taking over every sport, but I honestly wouldn’t have imagined it was so important in golf. Boy does this article prove me wrong!
Nerd Corner (Monthly recurring piece)
There’s no hiding it; I’m a massive nerd. I read 3-4 fantasy books a month, my favorite pastime is playing board games with my wife and friends, and I was an eager supporter of the Brandon Sanderson (original) Kickstarter (yes, I splurged and went for the hardcover books).
I didn’t support Sanderson’s DND-style board game…. but only because my wife would murder me if I bought another board game when I have a whole Dungeon Master kit collecting dust. Still, I wanted to highlight it because between the two Kickstarters Sanderson will have raised >$50m for new projects; if you’re a fan of fantasy and that type of fan enthusiasm doesn’t encourage you to give him a try, I don’t know what will! As I mention below, if you’re trying him out, I’d probably start with Mistborn, though Tess and the Emerald Sea is basically a standalone book and might be my favorite book he’s written
Honestly, outside of book 17 of the Wandering Inn, I haven’t been doing much reading the past few months. I tend to read for ~an hour every night before bed, but with the newborn I start reading and my eyes are closing before I get to the second page. As the baby’s sleep schedule gets more regular, hopefully I’ll have more to report here because I have a long, long list of books I want to get to!
PS- outside of my monthly recs, I constantly get asked what my favorite fantasy books are. So I’m just going to throw this list out monthly:
Anything Brandon Sanderson writes; he’s by far the best fantasy author out there. I’d probably start with Mistborn, though Tess and the Emerald Sea is basically a standalone book and might be my favorite book he’s written. The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England is also a standalone book and a very fun and fast read. Most of his works are interconnected through something called “the cosmere;” if you’re feeling crazy, here’s how to read the cosmere in order.
Kingkiller is probably the best series I’ve ever read; waiting for the third is agony.
Gentleman Bastards is right up there with Kingkiller; the mix of fun and world building is outstanding.
Red Rising series is more sci-fi, but my god is it good. I would literally stay up all night to read every book the day they came out (note: I’ve only read the first trilogy; I’m going to read the second when the last book comes out later this year).
If you’re looking for something a little more under the radar (most of the books above are widely regarded as some of the best fantasy books / series ever), the Licanius Trilogy was fantastic.
First Law trilogy is excellent. It can get a little brutal / graphic though; there are a bunch of sequels and spins, but I’ve never been able to finish them because one of them got so brutal I just put the book down and never picked it up again. But the first trilogy is really, really great.
The Cradle series probably isn’t as “good” as the books above, but I binged them and every fantasy fan I’ve recommended them to has said something along the line of “I read all ten books in two months after I opened the first one.”
I’ve also really enjoyed that author’s newest series, Last Horizon!
The Wandering Inn series isn’t for everyone, and the first ~150 pages of the first book need to get powered through…. but, if you can power through them, the world building here is incredible, and I’ve had so many friends get hooked by this series. If you like hard fantasy, I can near guarantee you’ll like it.
Similarly, Dungeon Crawler Carl won’t be for everyone, but it’s probably the most fun series of books I’ve ever read, and some of the scenes in the later books carry a surprising amount of emotional weight.
I’ve been pitching it for months (hate to say I was early, but….), but it’s not just me! It’s so popular it got an NYT piece describing it as a “global blockbuster” in 2025.
The Silvers Epic (Flight of the Silvers, Song of the Orphans, War of the Givens) is more sci-fi than fantasy, but it’s one of my favorite series I’ve ever read and I think is wildly creative in how they use time travel / multiverse as a plot point (the last book was a little slow, but the ending wrapped everything up beautifully / it got a little dusty in the room I was reading).