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- Subscribers
- 34K
- Paid subscribers
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- Bestseller 1k
- Followers
- 67K
- Paid plan
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- Recommends
- 44
- Podcast
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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: Uncomfortable Truths · Claudification Overdrive™️ - Part II
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 Sep 30, 2026
Followers (thousands, nightly)
Rank in Substack’s finance leaderboard: #87 today · #87 a week ago
Stats worth sharing
Tracked since Sep 10, 2026 — 21 daily snapshots so far. The card below is built from what we track and refreshes nightly.
- Percentile
- Top 17%
- Best rank seen
- #81
- Followers added
- +557
- Posts
- 5
- Reactions per post
- 136
- Reactions tracked
- 2.0K
- Tickers covered
- 1
of 525 ranked finance newsletters
on Sep 25, 2026
since tracking began
last 30 days
average, recent posts
across 15 posts
in tracked posts
Most-reacted post we have seen: The Greatest Regime Shift of our Generation* — 363 reactions on Aug 8, 2026.
Recent posts
- 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…
- The 60/40 Portfolio Re-Invented
I hate Bonds. I mean I really really hate Bonds! To start with, Bonds offer the exact opposite return profile of what we seek here at Shrubstack: Limited Upside, with Significant Downside! Secondly, thanks to the reckless fiscal and monetary policies of our governments, Sovereign Bonds have mostly offered returns below inflation, and rightly became known as “Certificates of Confiscation”. We have been warning about the risk in Bonds for a long time now, likening the sellers of sovereign bonds as “Penny Bond Promoters” , since their pitch comes out as sleazy as that of penny stock promoters we…
- Fly on the Wall with Shrub & Cloudbear
Between Bessent being the House, and Trump showering voters with $5,000 cheques, one thing is for sure: This is a Bull Market in Memes … and we are here for it!
- Claudification™️ Overdrive
“WE HAVE ACHIEVED AGI! CONGRATULATIONS TO THOSE INVOLVED!” <SHAME ABOUT THE REST OF YOU!> …. Well, at least that’s what Nvidia’s Jensen proclaimed over the weekend, after Scam Altman’s OpenAI released its latest model, Astra… ….so you’d be forgiven that this spectacular statement was met with less excitement than Hunter Biden releasing a crypto token (I kid you not, he just did )… This brings back to mind our seminal piece, “The Greatest Regime Shift of Our Generation” … …where we introduced the concept of Claudification™️…. which is “ the Outsourcing of Investment Research and…
- Fly on the Wall with Shrub & Cloudbear
I can’t believe we are doing this, but both Paulo and I are punting in Bonds, at least through an interesting asymmetric structure (the one we discussed here ). We also give Bessent the benefit of the doubt, just when everyone has lost faith in him. Why? Because of this meme, that’s why 👇 Good luck out there! 🌳🙏 Disclaimer: This isn’t financial advice. Th…
- “Druck in the WSJ” vs “Shrub in the SSJ”
Druckenmiller just “penned” an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal titled “Let the Bond Market Speak” , critisizing Bessent’s latest Bond Market “operation”. On one hand, I’m glad that Stan, a personal hero, called out the nonsense that we refer to as “ MUM ™️ = Markets-Under-Manipulation ”. On the other hand … I’m disappointed. To start with, it seems the text was “100% AI-generated” (per Pangram , however accurate this is)… …but more importantly, WHERE WERE THE MEMES?!!! SUCH NONSENSE CAN ONLY BE EFFECTIVELY COUNTERED WITH MEMES! Luckily, we can compliment the “Druck op-ed in the WSJ” with the…
- Midterms
I’ve been reminiscing on trading past Midterm elections. There’s an obvious pattern. But is it really that simple?!!!
- Fly on the Wall with Shrub & Cloudbear
I’ve been itching to discuss “ The Greatest Regime Shift of our Generation ” piece with my bruv . I’m glad we managed it before he heads off on holiday. I think it’s very timely so do give it a listen! Good luck out there! 🤭🌳🙏 Disclaimer: This isn’t financial advice. This is Parody. This is the equivalent of Monty Python and Spaceballs for finance, but w…
- The Greatest Regime Shift of our Generation*
“A Meme is worth a Thousand Tweets” - Le Shrub 🌳 Back in December 2024 , we proclaimed the beginning of the Golden Age of Grift ™️aka GAG ™️: At the time, people thought we were exaggerating. Today, people are telling us we were too “conservative” in our expectations… …while the Media finally woke up to it (though Bloomberg forgot to give us thanks!). However, “Grift” was always part of the Markets, as was “Stupidity”. Today, while people are losing their mind about the grift and irrationality prevalent in the Markets, in reality history is just repeating itself with nothing new under the…
- Someone Forgot to Give Thanks... - Part II
Boy, did things escalate quickly. In one of the biggest plot twists of recent memory, Kenny G’s Citadel emerged as the “buyer” of whatever was left from Lee Pol ’ s Situational Awareness … …yep, that’s the same Citadel that caused panic a week ago that the Fed might raise rates in July. Legendary! In a relief bounce, Lee Pol’s major holdings ( Bloom Energy / Sandisk / Coreweave / Iren), jumped nearly +30% in a single day . We can safely assume that Kenny G would’ve commanded a discount from the closing price so, just on the listed portfolio Kenny G must have made a profit of $1 billion in a…
- Someone Forgot to Give Thanks...
After 4% of South Korean adults were margin-called (!), the crash in the AI Trade has claimed another high-profile victim: Leopold Schnitzelburger (or something like that) was widely celebrated as the Rock Star of the AI Trade. Unfortunately, his fund Situational Awareness suffered heavy losses in the latest rout and is now looking to raise fresh capital. The fund was using leverage to amplify returns (source: FT ). It baffles me why someone would use leverage after such a massive run. One possible explanation is that Leopold has Korean DNA , in which case he should change his name to Lee Pol…
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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: Sep 30, 2026.