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What they write about
Satirical market commentary presented as a running live book, heavy on memes and recurring jokes. Subjects include Treasury and Federal Reserve policy, artificial-intelligence enthusiasm and valuations, hedge funds and market plumbing, and election cycles, alongside a regular conversational feature.
- market commentary
- satire
- macro
- artificial intelligence
- hedge funds
- politics
Recent examples: Midterms - The Aftermath · Midterms & The Midas Touch
Written from Reminiscences of a Shrub Operator’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)
34K on Sep 10, 2026 → 34K on Oct 21, 2026
Followers (thousands, nightly)
Rank in Substack’s finance leaderboard: #80 today · #81 a week ago · #85 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 16%
- Best rank seen
- #76
- Rank, 7 days
- +1 place
- Rank, 30 days
- +5 places
- Followers added
- +1.7K
- Posts
- 7
- Reactions per post
- 126
- Reactions tracked
- 3.1K
- Tickers covered
- 1
of 525 ranked finance newsletters
on Oct 20, 2026
since tracking began
last 30 days
average, recent posts
across 25 posts
in tracked posts
Most-reacted post we have seen: The Greatest Regime Shift of our Generation* — 364 reactions on Aug 8, 2026.
Recent posts
- Midterms - The Aftermath
GM Shrubstack! As we wrote yesterday, “my guess is that the Midterms getting out of the way will excite the monkeys that it’s a “Clearing Event”, which creates a Market bounce that may last a few days…” … et voila, the S&P is up +1% on the worst possible outcome: Meanwhile, we can officially call an end to the “Golden Age of Grift” ™️aka GAG ™️ as we move to the “Golden Age of Rift” ™️ aka GAF ™️ . (For those who bought the “Golden Age of Grift” mugs, there is no need to throw them away, just scratch out the “G”, et voila, you got yourself a “Golden Age of Rift” mug. Besides, it’s for…
- Midterms & The Midas Touch
The “AI Slop of Hope” is slowly and surely destroying investors’ Capital and Patience. Since October 13th when we published the Meme , the Nasdaq see-sawed -5%, +2%, -3%, +3%, -5% … which in a bizarre coincidence nearly matches the “ AI Slop of Hope” Meme of -5%, +3%, -5%, +3%, 5-% ! Parody for the Win again! NASDAQ SINCE OCTOBER 13TH … BECAME THE MEME! The latest blow came from INTEL, which lost >50% of its value in a month … which matches the >50% decline that INTEL experienced in 2000. Nothing to see here! INTEL Yet, just as the Monkeys have nearly lost all hope, the Nasdaq is now sitting…
- It’s a Marathon and a Sprint
“It’s a Marathon, not a Sprint” is an overused expression in Trading. In fact, Trading consists of both “Marathons” and “Sprints”. Some of our most successful trades were long-term “Marathons”, some were short-term “Sprints”, some were a bit of both. Equally, some of our worst trades were ones where we didn’t sprint as far away from them as possible once they turned sour. In any case, here are some “Marathons” and “Sprints” we are currently involved in:
- Don’t Miss the Forest from the Trees
While every monkey will be busy trying to call the bottom in the AI Trade, we try not to miss the forest from the trees… ..so we continue with our quest for trades that work with just a pen and paper…
- The AI Slop of Hope II - Trades
With our mental framework in place, we were ready to go and execute quite a few trades today. Here’s what I did:
- The AI Slop of Hope - Part II
We raised the alarm on the AI Trade on the premise that the monkeys who trade it have no clue what they own and they are also terrible in Mafs . The funniest part is that the things that the Monkeys are worried about shouldn’t really be a concern if they thought them through for a second … or even asked Claude. For example, is the US 10 Year crossing >5% really a concern? Well, not for someone who buys the bond today to lock in a pretty safe NOMINAL 5% yield … but it should be a concern for someone who owns cash-burning ponzis whose survival depends on unlimited financing from the same Bond…
- The AI Slop of Hope™️
Last week, the Nasdaq sold off nearly 2% on FT headlines that OpenAI’s annualized revenues were $20bn less than expected. As it turned out, this was just investors getting confused on the difference between “net” vs “gross” revenues… …which got us concerned that if the investors who “underwrite” the AI Trade (which is now half the Market!), don’t understand what they own and can’t do basic mafs that my 9-year old can do, then it’s a pretty dangerous setup. Echoing our concern, Broadcom’s CEO Hock Tua Tan warned that “a lot of investors have no clue what they are investing in ... almost like…
- Shrubtivism*
Some companies would truly benefit from Activism , where a shareholder proposes steps to improve the finances, operations or governance of the target company. But can a company benefit from … Parody ? And what should that be called? “ Shrubtivism” seems appropriate! Anyway. There’s only one way to find out. So here’s it goes, our inaugural Shrubtivism piece, so we had to choose a good one … and one where we piggy-back on the work of real Activists …
- The Hunchback of Notre Shrub
This week, French 10-Year Bond yields surged to 4.9%, the highest since 2002, with the spread over Bunds hitting 150bps, the highest since 2011… …as Investors worried about France’s growing debt pile of 120% Debt / GDP (twice that of Germany’s) and fiscal deficit of 5% (the second worst among major “developed” countries after the US)… …though the real Catalyst was fear around the upcoming Presidential Elections of April 2027 , where Le Pen and her National Rally party are gaining ground… …which has caused a spike in yields, that could soon become so unsustainable that the “Hunchback of Notre…
- Election Special - Brazil Edition
We are getting close to the elections in Brazil . Round 1 will take place on October 4th . Round 2 will take place on October 25th . We have been investing / trading the Brazil ETF (ticker: EWZ ) pretty well since 2024 and enjoyed the “real” rally <pun> when the ETF had a +50% run from its 2024 lows into its 2026 highs , while punting in Calls and giving “obrigado” along the way… EWZ But, now with the Elections round the corner, is there a trade?
- Uncomfortable Truths
GM Shrubstack! Yesterday, AI stonks were on fire thanks to META’s latest AI Agent, Muse , which got everyone super-excited and eager to sacrifice their remaining privacy and share their credit card details with Mark Zuckerberg … …which proves that the AI Ecosystem is in shambles when Zuck appears more trustworthy than Scam Altman and Dario “Am-not-Opus-Dei” … …where even Jensen is calling out Scam and Dario for spreading fear for their own self-interest: “Don't let this doomsday narrative cause somebody to relieve them of the laws that currently exist…Go and read between the lines. They're…
- Claudification Overdrive™️ - Part II
Claudification ™️: “The Outsourcing of Investment Research and Decision-Making to AI” (source: Shrubstack) I’ve had enough. I’m a patient shrub, but I’ve had enough. One day it’s “WE’VE REACHED AGI!” … …the other day it’s “WE NEED TO SLOW DOWN OTHERWISE THE DIGITAL GOD WILL KILL US ALL”… h/t @contextconor …while the “AI Slowdown Committee”, featuring prominent figures like “Scam” Altman and Dario “Am-not-Opus-Dei” (best I could do), has embarked on a mission to spread the message (h/t @Escapation): In any case, I’m getting triggered again by the similarities between AI and Shale. Lets take a…
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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: Reminiscences of a Shrub Operator. 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: Nov 10, 2026.