Buy-Side Insights — November 7, 2025

Here’s what’s been on my radar this week:

What’s new on Pitch The PM:

🎧 New on the pod: RMCF and NBIS deep dives — two stock debates you don’t want to miss.
💡 Coming up: Join our AlphaSense webcast with Arjun Murti on energy, AI, and the next supercycle. Thursday, Nov. 13 at 12pm ET. Register here

What’s on tap today:

Market insights

• Leverage at the limits: Margin debt and household equity exposure are both near record highs — a setup that’s historically preceded 20–50% drawdowns.

• Markets as policy tools: Beijing increasingly sees U.S. equities as America’s soft underbelly.

Process & edge

• Flat, fast, and accountable: Why the best teams push decision-making down — and how AI is flattening the org chart.

• Pod shop fees and alignment: They aren’t done innovating.

Talent & culture

• The evolving comp curve: PM payouts are pushing 30%, sub-PMs 10%+, and management fees are back. The economics of multi-manager land are shifting again.

• The Scalabrine principle: Even the “worst” pro plays at an elite level. What that says about skill dispersion among PMs and analysts.

Tools & tech

• Excel 2.0 might be here: YC-backed Crunched is embedding AI directly into Excel — potentially the biggest modeling leap since the Bloomberg API.