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Introducing the 2025 AI advent calendar

It’s been two years since I last created an AI advent calendar, a stretch of time that feels like a lifetime given the pace of progress in large language models and AI more broadly. Back then, I used the then-current version of ChatGPT and the first iteration of DALL·E—the image generation tool where you had to purchase tokens on the go.

This time, I’m using GPT-5.0. Rather than producing short stories based on images, I’ve asked the AI to generate 24 short essays on economic theories and concepts, each roughly 600 words. A typical prompt might be something like: “Write an essay about [topic] in 600 words.”

I quickly discovered the need to be specific. GPT loves bullet points and excessive bolding, so I had to explicitly instruct it to avoid both. I also standardized a referencing format to ensure consistency across essays. In some prompts, I provided detailed context to steer the AI in a particular direction; in others, I left it more open-ended.

Advent Calendarclaus vistesenNovember 28, 2025economics, AI

Global Leading Indicators, October 2025 - In the Pipe, Five by Five

Equities have wobbled a bit recently, without any obvious catalyst, aside from the most apparent one: they’re expensive by nearly all historical valuation measures. Many investors now appear concerned that the end of the U.S. government shutdown will trigger a deluge of data, potentially revealing that the economy is weaker than expected. That fear, however, doesn’t quite align with the sell-off in the December 2025 SOFR contract, which is casting doubt on what had once seemed a near-certain Fed rate cut in December.

Equity Sector Rotation Chartbook, October 2025 - Nirvana

Equity investors are currently in the enviable position of having their cake and eating it too. What if I told you that you could outperform the S&P 500 by investing in market-leading U.S. technology firms—and enhance that outperformance further by adding non-U.S. equities? Sounds too good to be true? Well, yes and no.

Markets and Tradingclaus vistesenNovember 2, 2025equities, equity sectors

Reflections on Albion

The high point of Daniel Craig’s portrait of James Bond over five movies is undoubtedly the moment in Skyfall where Bond runs through London to rescue M, portrayed by Judi Dench, as she finishes her testimony in front of a select committee—assembled to put her and her agency out to pasture—with the closing passage of Tennyson’s Ulysses. The duality of meaning embedded in this sequence is profound. In the movie itself, the depiction of the ageing and wounded, but still capable, hero encapsulates the narrative arc of James Bond, who in Skyfall has almost literally come back from the dead to save his country. In a wider context, Tennyson’s closing lines can be seen as the saplings of a post-empire English identity, in which erstwhile grandeur and power have been replaced with grit, determination, and pride—and more distantly, with common sense, decency, and respect.

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