Capital Mischief
Capital Mischief: what I learned briefing six presidents, applied to your portfolio. The market-moving events. Before the smart money sees them.
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What they write about
Long-form essays connecting geopolitics and commodity prices to everyday costs, written by a former presidential briefer. Recurring subjects include diesel and oil markets, inflation as households experience it, energy infrastructure and conflict, and a reader advice column. Also covers the author's fiction writing.
- geopolitics
- oil
- diesel
- inflation
- essays
- advice column
Recent examples: Trump Has 15 Days and Iran Has Five Years. That Is the Whole Election. · Dear Charlie #52: The Scammers Wanted Her Money. They Settled for Her Silence.
Written from Capital Mischief’s own published post titles and openings in Sep 11, 2026. It describes the subjects the newsletter covers, not its views, and is not investment advice.
Growth history
Subscribers (thousands, nightly)
22K on Sep 10, 2026 → 22K on Oct 20, 2026
Followers (thousands, nightly)
Rank in Substack’s finance leaderboard: #100 today · #101 a week ago · #103 a month ago
Stats worth sharing
Tracked since Sep 10, 2026 — 41 daily snapshots so far. The card below is built from what we track and refreshes nightly.
- Percentile
- Top 20%
- Best rank seen
- #97
- Rank, 7 days
- +1 place
- Rank, 30 days
- +3 places
- Followers added
- +680
- Posts
- 23
- Reactions per post
- 162
- Reactions tracked
- 7.0K
- Tickers covered
- 1
of 525 ranked finance newsletters
on Sep 28, 2026
since tracking began
last 30 days
average, recent posts
across 43 posts
in tracked posts
Most-reacted post we have seen: Trump's Greenland "Infinite Life Agreement" Arrived Six Days Before Xi. That's the Point. — 300 reactions on Sep 19, 2026.
Recent posts
- Trump Has 15 Days and Iran Has Five Years. That Is the Whole Election.
Mar-a-Lago, February 28, the night the war began. From left: CIA Director John Ratcliffe with his back to the camera, President Trump in the USA cap, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and, behind her, deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino. The easel map reads OPERATION EPIC FURY, red diamonds on the targets inside Iran, American warships in the water off the Gulf states Iran would spend the next seven months hitting 135 times. INTELLIGENCE ASSESSMENT: 19 OCT 2026 07:30 EDT // DAY 234 OF THE WAR // MISCHIEF CLEARANCE REQUIRED // ⬛⬛⬛ EYES ONLY. TOP SECRET. ⬛⬛⬛ PREPARED BY…
- Dear Charlie #52: The Scammers Wanted Her Money. They Settled for Her Silence.
- AI Will Make Somebody Rich. History Says It Won't Be the People Who Paid for It.
- Will Ade - How a Farm Boy Who Found a Billion Barrels of Oil Is Passing Real Wealth to His Nine Grandchildren
A Five-Year-Old, a Metal Pail and a Rooster Walk Into a Barnyard Before kindergarten, Will Ade put a metal pail over his head and walked straight at a rooster. The rooster was about as tall as he was. They saw eye to eye, and neither one liked what he saw. Every morning little Will ran from the gate to the chicken house, and every morning the rooster chased him, because roosters, dogs, coyotes and tigers will chase anything that runs. The rooster knew which of the two of them was the chicken. His father told him to hold his arms up high so he would look big to the bird. So he did. Bucket on…
- A MOLECULE COSTS $3 IN LOUISIANA AND $25 IN TOKYO. GUESS WHO KEEPS THE $22.
The Most Expensive Thing in the World This Fall Is Distance On October 6, natural gas cost $3.03 at Henry Hub , the Louisiana pipeline junction where America prices the stuff. In September the same gas averaged $25.39 in Japan and Korea and $25.42 in Europe . Same molecule. Same methane. Nobody improved it on the boat. You have paid this premium yourself. A bottle of water costs a dollar at the grocery and six past airport security. The water did not change. The difference is that you cannot leave. The $22 between Louisiana and Tokyo is the airport markup, charged on a planet that has just…
- SUBSTACK ADMITS NO PUBLICATION ON ITS PLATFORM HAS BEEN TARGETED LIKE MINE. HERE IS ITS PLAN, GRADED ASK BY ASK.
SUBSTACK ANSWERED BY TUESDAY. NOW IT GOES ON PROBATION. This goes to every subscriber again, because the thieves do not check your tier before they write. The rule first, in case you read nothing else. I will never contact you on WhatsApp or Telegram. I will never ask you for money. I will never invite you to a "smaller group," a private club, an investment or a trading signal. If "Charlie" does any of those things, he is a criminal. Report him, then block him, and do not reply. On Sunday I told you Substack let a thief wear my face for seven months , and that I had asked for five things by…
- WAS COLUMBUS SECRETLY A JEW? THREE PEOPLE OFFERED TO KILL ME FOR ASKING.
HAPPY COLUMBUS DAY: Born in His District, Raised in His Province, and Not Amused by the Baltimore Harbor I was born in Washington, in the District of Columbia. The District is named for George Washington and Christopher Columbus. In September 1791 the three commissioners George Washington appointed named the city for Washington and the district around it the Territory of Columbia , because in those days Columbia was what patriots called the country when they wanted to sound like a poem. Andrew Ellicott's 1792 plan of the City of Washington, and there in the title sits the Territory of…
- Dear Charlie #51: He Bought His First Third on Monday. Tuesday Handed Him 12% He Did Not Earn, and He Nearly Kept the Credit.
- SUBSTACK LET A THIEF WEAR MY FACE FOR SEVEN MONTHS. HERE IS WHAT HE TOOK.
A lie used to need a head start. On Substack it gets an account in seven minutes! Seven minutes is how long it took. At 8:10 last night, someone created a Substack account. By 8:17, it had my name, my face, my sign-off and a door leading to WhatsApp. The criminal was open for business before most websites finish sending the verification email. This one goes to every subscriber because the people who most need to read it are the ones who never pay for anything, including the man pretending to be me. Here is the warning first, in case you read nothing else. I will never contact you on WhatsApp…
- The Four Food Groups of the AI Economy: Promises, Pledges, Letters of Intent, and Other People’s Money
The Mischief Library: Giving Out Science Medals at the Institute of Peace Is Like Holding the Policemen’s Ball at a Chop Shop Thursday afternoon the United States Institute of Peace , down Constitution Avenue from the White House, the President of the United States hung a medal around the neck of the man who sells the shovels. Jensen Huang of Nvidia got the National Medal of Science. So did Sergey Brin of Google, Elon Musk, and Lisa Su of AMD. Satya Nadella of Microsoft and Michael Dell got the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. One ceremony, six medals, and the first time in either…
- A CHICKEN JUST TOLD ME WHAT YOUR GROCERIES WILL COST THIS WINTER. THE FED HAS NO IDEA.
Two Substack Writers and a Texan Walk Into a Zoom. One of Them Is a Poultry. At ten o'clock Thursday morning a cartoon chicken explained the price of my groceries to me, and it was the most useful hour of economics I have had since the Situation Room. Three boxes on a screen. On the left, Stu Turley of Energy News Beat , a Texan with a microphone the size of a fire hydrant. In the middle, me. On the right, a green bird with a red comb and the number three finance publication on all of Substack, which makes it the only top-three financial publication that could be served at Thanksgiving. I…
- ONE BUILDING. 81,000 HOMES' WORTH OF POWER. GUESS WHOSE BILL.
THE POWER GOT A CONTRACT. THE WIRES GOT A BALLOT MEASURE. Last Wednesday the United States Senate took up a question your grandmother could have settled between the soup and the pot roast. A data center moves into your county, the power company strings new wire to feed it, and somebody pays for the wire. Who? Fifty-seven senators voted to take up a bill that leaned toward making the data center pay. Forty-three voted no. The rules required sixty. So the answer stays what it has always been. You do. It was the second time the Senate killed this thing. The first time was a rehearsal. The House…
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Data: Substack public leaderboards and publication archives, refreshed nightly, plus public beehiiv sitemaps and recommendation pages, refreshed weekly. Source for this page: Capital Mischief. Subscriber counts are Substack’s own rounded public figures, so week-on-week changes move in steps. beehiiv audience sizes are self-reported by the publisher and are not verified. Last snapshot: Oct 20, 2026.