Good Job, Will Hunting...

Remember back in 1997 when Will Hunting spectacularly schooled a few obnoxious (typical?) Hahvid grad students? Where is that guy now? Last we saw he was driving to Palo Alto, CA to "go see about a girl."

This clip has resurfaced again recently (originally from 2013), showing an older Will, with his teacher mom, schooling a couple of obnoxious (typical?) reports on the devolution of education policy in the post, post, post-revolutionary period. What Will says seems spot on as a survey by We are Teachers found that in the U.S. a "majority of teachers (75%) entered the profession because they love teaching, and only a quarter of those surveyed say they entered the field because of factors like job stability and benefits." 

Professor Lambeau and the MIT faculty would approve, despite past tensions.   

Tunnel Vision: Steph's 100-Foot Shot (Yes, it was real!)

Stephen Curry returned to the NBA Friday after a 5-game injury. But the biggest action of the night seems to have happened before the game. During the pre-game warm-up Curry sank such an outlandish/ ridiculous/insane long-range trick shot, that it left even Caitlin Clarke wondering if it was AI generated. It wasn't! (Though in the past there have been some confusion). Here's the shot, from different angles:

Oh, in the actual game, Curry went to score an impressive 39-points but it was still not enough to win as the Warriors went down 120-127 to the Timberwolves. But who really cares, right?

After the game reporters inevitably asked Curry about the 100-foot shot. “That’s the second one I made,” he said. “I thought it was going to be a better night.” At least we were entertained.

Did Time Magazine Just Jinx the AI Trade?

Last week (on December 12), Time magazine named the 'Architects of AI' as its Person of the Year ("POY"). It's an annual tradition going back to 1928, when the magazine's editors select the person(s) "who wielded the most influence in the previous 12 months." Of course, Time is not the publication it once was; it currently has a weekly circulation of around 1 million, down from a peak of 4.1 million in 2003. But Time's POY cover still attracts significant attention. This year was no different, with thousands of news outlets covering the announcement (just ask Gemini!).

This year's selection was about the group of people who are responsible for developing and bringing the transformative technology of AI to the world (or so they want you to believe). The cover, shown above, has the CEOs of leading tech companies in the AI landscape sitting on a steal beam high above midtown Manhattan replicating the classic 'Lunch atop a Skyscraper' photograph from the 1930s. Left to right, it features: Mark Zuckerberg (Meta), Lisa Su (AMD), Elon Musk (xAI), Jensen Huang (Nvidia), Sam Altman (OpenAI), Demis Hassabis (DeepMind, owned by Google), Dario Amodei (Anthropic), and Fei-Fei Li (Stanford). The picture has a deeper symbolism that we'll get to later. But one thing is for certain, since OpenAI debuted ChatGPT in November 30, 2022, the stock market has been on a tear. The tech-heavy NASDAQ has rallied 102% over the past three years largely on the promise of AI. So now, investors are fretting Time may have just jinxed this stock market rally with its 2025 pick. Call it the magazine-cover curse, but as Jim Bianco of Bianco Research noted in an X Post: Time's POY choice has a history of being "an excellent contrarian indicator." Yikes!

The premise behind the indicator is that when a magazine finally devotes its cover to a person, company, or theme, said subject or topic is usually past its peak. This idea was invented by Paul Macrae Montgomery and consisted of three primary rules:

1. The magazine must be mainstream--not a business/economics/finance publication that routinely features emerging capital market trends. 

2. The cover subject is a widely talked about or experienced concept/theme.

3. There must have been significant asset-price gains leading up to the cover.

Check, check, and check (Time, AI, and a sustained AI-fueled stock market rally)! So, is it time to sell Big Tech? Maybe, but before we do let's look at how well this indicator actually performs. Brent Donnelly, President of Spectra Markets, a financial media and analytics company, has done empirical work on the magazine cover indicator construct, including that of Time's POY edition. There have been 98 such covers since 1928 and Donnelly identified eight prior occasions when a corporate head, CEO, or industry was honored and where there was identifiable stock performance to track. E.g., in 2010 Mark Zuckerberg was selected Person of the Year, but Facebook (as Meta was then known) was still a private company. Below is Donnelly's list of Time's chosen corporations, CEOs, and specific industries and associated stock performance prior to and after being featured (click to enlarge):

Source: Spectra Markets

What Spectra's analysis shows is that 87% of the time companies lost value in the 12 months after being 'honored' with the POY recognition. And 75% of the time they kept losing value even after 24 months. Andy Grove (and Intel) was the exception back in 1997 (oh but how the company's fortunes have changed today). While the results appear to validate the magazine cover curse, they are based on a very small sample size. Can we say these results are statistically significant?

To find out, we defined our null hypothesis (H0) as: The average return of stocks featured on Time is not statistically different from the average return of the S&P 500 (the market benchmark) and tested it to see if we could reject the H0. The results are detailed in the table below (click to enlarge).

Source: Spectra and Slickcharts.com for stock and S&P 500 returns, respectively; Mantabye for all calculations.

As the calculated t-statistic for the 12-month case is greater than the critical t-value, we can reject the null hypothesis for that period (though that's not the case for the following 24-month case). The result provides statistical evidence that being selected Time's POY has a negative impact on subsequent one-year stock performance. So, we'll try to keep a close eye on the performances of AMD, Alphabet, Meta, Nvidia, Tesla, and Microsoft in 2026! (Yes, MSFT...while Satya Nadella is not in the above picture, Microsoft owns 27% of OpenAI and its stock price has almost doubled in value since ChatGPT was launched.) 

Back to Spectra Market's table and the Time magazine cover. Brent Donnelly provides important context to Chrysler and RCA's POY selections in 1928 and 1929, respectively. In the late 1920s automobiles were a transformative technology that helped propelled markets higher (sound familiar?) and RCA was "at the center of that tech bubble that led to the Crash of 1929." (During the 1920s, RCA stock rose in price 200-fold, one of the largest increases in the history of the stock market--it would go onto lose 98% of its market value by 1932.) 

Oh, and that famous Lunch atop a Skyscraper photo that the Time POY cover recreates...it was taken on September 20, 1932, on a steel beam of...the RCA Building!

NBA: Who Is the All-Time Best Scorer?

The question of who's the GOAT in any sport is always controversial and almost certainly impossible to settle---there are just too many variables (length of career, titles, personal stats, etc.) and intangibles (impact of leadership, clutch plays, teammates, evolution of the game, etc.) that need to be taken together. It is a little easier to compare these different dimensions in isolation, particularly something like scoring. 

Lebron James is the highest scorer in NBA history. As of Nov 18 2025, he's made 42,915 points. The next highest scorer is Kareem Abdul Jabbar with 38,387 points, followed by Kobe Bryant with 33,643 points. 

Click to enlarge. Source: StatMuse and Mantabye. 

Michael Jordan, who in many people's eyes is the most dominant scorer in NBA history, scored 32,292 points in his career; but he only played 15 seasons in the NBA compared to 22+ for James (as shown above). Jordan's 30.1 average points per game (“PPG”) is substantially better than James' 27.0. Does that mean Jordan is the better offensive player? Not necessarily! Perhaps if Jordan continued to play, rather than retire, effectively, at 36 years of age, his PPG would have come down with age. Who knows? 

Last year we looked at Lebron James' remarkably consistent scoring record over 20+ seasons in the NBA. He has maintained his output at almost the same level throughout his career! He has scored at the same rate in his first five years in the league, as he has in his middle 10 years, and as he has in his last five years. Simply INCREDIBLE! He has successfully adjusted his game in response to age, team, competition, tactics, etc.

In fact, we can only really appreciate James' uniqueness by comparing his career scoring rate to that of the other NBA greats. As shown below, Jordan's average PPG rate peaked early in his career and gradually trended down (albeit from a very high level), similar to the way Kareem's PPG rate moved over time (but Kareem's average PPG rate fell more steeply than Jordan's). If we quantify the trend, Jordan's chart has a slope of -0.49, i.e., on average, for every two years he played he scored 1 point less per game. Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty good! By comparison James’ chart has a slope of 0.04, i.e., almost no change in production as his career progressed. Better! The difference with the other great scorers is most stark when you compare average PPG in seasons 16-20. There is a huge drop-off for Bryant and Jabbar, but not for James. Or more aptly, King James? 

Click to enlarge. Source: StatMuse and Mantabye.

(Note, this is an admittedly simplified analysis...that assumes the only variable is age...for example, perhaps Jordan's PPG came down, in part, because he was comfortable sharing more of the scoring responsibilities with his teammates in later years.)       

When Donald Met Zohran...

Yes, that happened! Yesterday, NYC Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani met President Trump at the White House in a highly anticipated face-to-face that was covered extensively by the press, something the media-savvy President noted (see clip below). The two men, seemingly polar opposites, both ideologically and temperamentally, got along well shockingly well, despite the WH press pool's best efforts to stoke drama. Trump was genuinely warm and cordial, lavishing Mamdani with praise and even defending him against questions clearly designed to bait Mamdani. Moreover, he swatted down some of the racists attacks Republicans like Elise Stefanik were making against Mamdani, declaring "I want him to do a great job." Here's the Q&A session with reporters.

While the media was feverishly awaiting/hoping for a "slugfest" (ala the infamous Trump-Zelensky meeting), what they got was a remarkably affable meeting that left both rightwing and liberal media outlets shellshocked. Reporters were incredulously using words like "bizarrely chummy," "lovefest", and "bromance," to describe what they witnessed between a rising political superstar and a famously adversarial President. Here's a summary of the headlines spanning the political spectrum from the liberal Huffpost to the Mamdani-phobic NY Post:

(Click to enlarge)

It was all fascinating to watch and the President affectionately posted selfies on his social media account (even including a picture of Mamdani by himself!). Outlets like AP, CNN, and the Hill provided helpful key takeaways. 

Basically, the winners were:

1. Mamdani, who cemented his status as an important new political figure 

2. Trump, who found common ground with Mamdani on affordability which had contributed to his falling approval ratings

3. New York City, their shared love

The losers, for the time being, were:

1. The GOP overall, whose "hopes of running an anti-Mamdani scare campaign next year just took a big hit, straight from the president."

2. Elisa Stefanik, specifically, who is aiming to take Kathy Hochul's job as NY Governor. She meekly "agreed to disagree" with the President.     

History: NYC Elects Zohran Mamdani!

A historic night: Mamdani to become the first Muslim mayor of NYC, the youngest mayor in over 100 years (at 34 years old), in election with the biggest voter turnout (2+ million) since 1969!!! A Democratic Socialist in the financial capital of the world to boot! And it looks like, despite the tens of millions spent against him by the billionaire class, he will have an outright 50%+ majority win. Mabrouk beta!

MLB: Mr. Shoctober

Last year Shohei Ohtani had one of the greatest offensive games in baseball history. He went 6-for-6 with 3 home runs against the Miami Marlins. Yesterday, in the NCLS Game 4, he had arguably the best game ever. Full stop. He was dominant not only with the bat--hitting 3 home runs---but also with the ball, shutting out the Milwaukee Brewers for six innings with 10(!) strike outs. The epic performance propelled the Dodgers to the World Series to boot!

Here's a highlight of the highlights: