Macro Notes
Macro Notes delivers independent research on macro investing, connecting global trends to investment opportunities.
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What they write about
Contrarian macro investment theses, each built around a large addressable market. Recurring subjects include physical applications of artificial intelligence, defence and European rearmament, shipping and tankers, memory and semiconductor supply, sovereign AI programmes, and oncology. Also runs a podcast.
- macro
- thematic investing
- defence
- shipping
- semiconductors
- biotech
Recent examples: Our 7-Step Process for Finding Investment Opportunities · China's AI Infrastructure Paradox
Written from Macro Notes’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)
60K on Sep 10, 2026 → 66K on Oct 21, 2026
Followers (thousands, nightly)
Rank in Substack’s finance leaderboard: #26 today · #28 a week ago · #50 a month ago
Stats worth sharing
Tracked since Sep 10, 2026 — 62 daily snapshots so far. The card below is built from what we track and refreshes nightly.
- Percentile
- Top 5%
- Best rank seen
- #26
- Rank, 7 days
- +2 places
- Rank, 30 days
- +24 places
- Followers added
- +12K
- Posts
- 12
- Reactions per post
- 26
- Reactions tracked
- 906
of 525 ranked finance newsletters
on Nov 10, 2026
since tracking began
last 30 days
average, recent posts
across 35 posts
Most-reacted post we have seen: The $8 Trillion Longevity Economy - Healthcare Before You Get Sick — 60 reactions on Oct 15, 2026.
Recent posts
- Our 7-Step Process for Finding Investment Opportunities
When you’re trying to enter a highly competitive market, where companies are constantly fighting over prices, the first question I like to ask is a very simple one: Where does the cost actually come from? Because if you understand where the cost comes from, you might find a way to compete without having to play the same game as everyone else. And the parcel delivery industry in Poland provides a particularly interesting example. Poland was already an extremely competitive logistics market, dominated by international players such as DHL, UPS, FedEx, and DPD. Prices were low, service quality…
- China's AI Infrastructure Paradox
Right now, I’m taking a closer look at AI infrastructure in China. It’s probably the subject I’ve been asked to cover the most over the past month. So I started researching it using our usual approach at Macro Notes: a global, top-down macro investing approach. And during that research, one company in particular caught my attention: Zhongji Innolight . If you’ve never heard of it, Zhongji Innolight is a Chinese company specializing in optical transceivers, among other products. These components are used to transmit data at extremely high speeds within networks and computing infrastructure…
- Macro Notes Weekly: Where We're Taking Our Research in 2027
By 2027, we plan to expand our research team with three additional analysts. The objective is not simply to publish more editions. We want to improve the quality and depth of our research, follow existing investment theses more closely, and begin covering markets that we have not yet explored in sufficient detail. One of those markets is China’s AI infrastructure industry . AI infrastructure in the United States and Europe has already been extensively documented, both by Macro Notes and by many other independent researchers on Substack. Over the past year, we have covered several parts of…
- The Neurotechnology Economy: Identifying the Next Trillion-Dollar Markets
In June 2025, Neuralink announced a $650 million funding round. In January 2026, Merge Labs, another company working on brain-computer interfaces, announced $252 million in funding. Two months later, Science Corporation raised $230 million. Then, in September, Precision Neuroscience raised another $250 million, bringing its total funding to $430 million. And these are just a few examples. According to Neurofounders, 363 neurotechnology companies tracked in its database recorded approximately $2.64 billion in financing during the first half of 2026 , across 81 transactions. The figures include…
- Introducing Macro Notes Desk + Free Lifetime Public Markets Premium
In this edition of Macro Notes Weekly, we’re sharing several exciting announcements: the launch of Macro Notes Desk , our new Substack community chat; a special offer for newsletter sponsors; and a new benefit for our Premium members, including complimentary access to another Premium newsletter. 70,000 readers - Both Macro Notes and Public Markets are Substack Bestsellers Both of our newsletters, Macro Notes (70,000 subscribers) and Public Markets (18,000 subscribers) , are featured in Substack’s Rising in Finance category and have earned Substack Bestseller status , with over 1,000 Premium…
- Why I'm Betting on Security, Not Infrastructure
Here is my thesis on AI for 2027. I will be investing less and less in AI infrastructure, particularly the components needed to build data centers. Because after every period of accelerating spending in an industry, there can be a period of stagnation, or even deceleration. That doesn’t mean infrastructure spending will stop, or that there aren’t still some very good investment opportunities in specific components. But my main attention will be on something directly connected to artificial intelligence, without being entirely dependent on the infrastructure required to build it. What I will…
- This week in Macro Notes: Defense, the Arctic
Last week, we explored European defense and the Arctic’s growing strategic importance—including how countries are investing to secure their interests in the region. If you missed them, here are this week’s editions to catch up on: Get a full year of Macro Notes Premium for $350 Discover emerging investment theses across AI infrastructure, healthcare, defense, and more—with in-depth research to understand the opportunity, the risks, and the developments that matter. Your Premium membership includes: Every new Premium edition and access to our complete Premium archive. Macro Notes Terminal…
- Who Gets Paid to Fix Europe’s Ammunition Shortage?
For the past six months, I have deliberately held off on publishing a new update to our European defence thesis. I was waiting for a development that justified taking another close look at the investment case. That changed on October 14. European defence has become a major geopolitical and macroeconomic investment theme since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. It is also a long-term theme. We have generally built our defence portfolios around a roughly five-year investment horizon. But that horizon comes with uncertainty. Conflicts are difficult to predict, and their…
- The New $50 Billion Arctic Spending Race
Today on Macro Notes, I want to talk about the Arctic. A piece of news has flown somewhat under the radar, yet it has important geopolitical implications—and could support a new investment cycle, with opportunities for a few companies positioned to benefit. The Arctic has long been strategically important, particularly during the Cold War. Today, that importance is becoming clear again. To put it simply, whenever tensions rise between the West and Russia, the Arctic becomes an even more sensitive region. That was true during the Cold War, and it is true today. When we talk about the Arctic…
- Macro Notes’ Top 5 Best-Performing Portfolios
As you know, we turn the investment theses featured in the newsletter into indexes with defined positions and active management. We take a medium-term approach, typically making just a few trades per year. We regularly publish updates on these indexes to show how the underlying theses are evolving: where the evidence is strengthening, where expectations are being met, and where the original argument is starting to weaken. Today, I’m sharing our five best-performing indexes . Some have benefited from both a strong investment thesis and significant exposure to the AI boom. Others, however…
- The 5 Investment Theses We’re Working On Before Year-End
At Macro Notes, we invest with a global macro approach. That means we start from the macroeconomy to identify interesting market movements, then we build investment theses. Only then do we pick the companies exposed to those theses. It’s a top-down approach to stock picking. We don’t ask “does this company have interesting potential?” We study the economy at the macro level first, and then we ask whether a company exposed to the thesis we’ve built has interesting potential. For example, instead of asking “does GE Vernova have interesting potential?” and analyzing the company, we reason (to…
- The $8 Trillion Longevity Economy - Healthcare Before You Get Sick
There’s a trend you may have noticed recently. Perhaps through Netflix’s documentary about Bryan Johnson. Perhaps through the growing number of people online sharing their blood tests, sleep scores, and elaborate morning routines. Longevity. At one end, picture a billionaire having young plasma infused into his veins, hoping to negotiate a few more years with death. At the other end, someone is trying to stop smoking, sleep properly, and still be able to climb the stairs at eighty. One wants to rewrite the rules of human existence. The other would settle for keeping their knees. Both are…
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