One River Peters wknd notes

OR Peters - wknd notes 13 Sep 2026 Eric Peters · One River Asset Management · Chief Investment Officer Sun 13 Sep 2026, 6:17pm ET

Hope all goes well… “My wife talks to this goddamn thing all day long, it’s like her best friend,” grunted Bulldog. “So now it’s the two of them teaming up against me in every conversation, I’m playing man down defense at all times,” he growled. “She even named the thing. Clara. Says it’s short for Clarity. So now I gotta argue with my wife and a computer; definition of hell.” I didn’t interrupt; Dawg was on a roll. “But every so often I catch a mistake. So, I tell my wife, ‘Hey, hold on, you two got that wrong, you need to go do a deep dive,’ and usually, by the time Clara figures it out, my wife gets distracted by something else. That’s my only winning strategy left.”

*Overall:* “The measures I propose to advance the frontier at a safe pace will not be easy. But I believe we owe it to humanity to try,” wrote Dario Amodei today, Saturday, and it made me laugh out loud. His open letter here proposed a more cautious path to continue the most expensive infrastructure buildout in human history, while minimizing the probability that his artificially intelligent creation murders us all. He really does owe it to humanity to at least try. I made the most of my August in Wyoming, and that was before Dario lifted the odds that it might be my last. Got some altitude on me, family time, some solitude, and did plenty of fishing, shooting, handguns, shotguns, rifles. Real tail hedges. Before Dario dropped his bomb, I’d planned to return to my writing with an overall section covering a lighter topic: financial repression. President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, announced that the 10 trillion euros of savings parked in the EU’s banking system is lazy. Having never held a private sector job in her 67 years, she has nevertheless devised a plan to push her peasants out of their bank deposits into riskier assets at the 100th percentile in trailing equity returns in over a century. Her speech seemed to attribute Europe’s chronic lethargy to a lack of funding for entrepreneurs. No in Europe one even listened, it was summer. Bessent went berserk. Fun to watch. He bought cheap Japanese yen and US long bonds. This is the beginning of US financial repression. But if Dario fails to save humanity from the creature of his own creation, nothing matters. And if we somehow kick the catastrophe can down the road, productivity will rise, lifting prosperity and with it our ability to service the extraordinary debts that neither party is willing to pare. The real risk is that something goes wrong with AI, the economy tanks, deficits blow out, and financial repression kicks into high gear globally.

*Dawg:* “Usually, bonds are right and stocks are wrong. This time they’re both wrong,” barked Bulldog. “The economy is slowing. Gas, diesel and high mortgage rates are to blame,” he grunted. “We always say don’t fight the Fed. Now everyone’s fighting both the Fed and Treasury. And Bessent’s a baller.” I smiled. “You know, Senator Tillis asked Bessent on TV if he threatened to punch Bill Pulte. And he said, ‘No, I said I was going to kick his ass.’ And now everyone is max short bonds. When this market turns, yields are going to absolutely tank.”

*Dawg II:* “There’s so much bad news that should’ve pushed stocks down,” grunted Dawg, one of the great trading talents. “The fact they’re still here tells you they still have plenty of Baby Boomers to suck

in.” I nodded. “So, I’m staying nosebleed long until I see some sign. Still thinking we get something that looks like the 1989 blow-off top in Japan. Then it’s good night. We won’t see those highs again for a generation or two.” Japan’s stock market fell 82% and it took the Nikkei 34 years to reclaim the 1989 highs. “I’m going to have fun smashing the bid.”

*Lone Star:* “It’s starting to feel like we have maybe 12 months left on the chip front,” said Lone Star, one of our nation’s top performing endowment CIOs. “But after that, growth slows, and the market is not remotely prepared for what comes next.” A moderate recession would likely lift the budget deficit to 9- 10% of GDP…