Peter Atwater
@peteratwater.bsky.social
President of Financial Insyghts. Adjunct Professor William &Mary. Author of "The Confidence Map." Lover of bad puns.
FWIW - I was sick and tired of talking about the K-Shaped Economy years ago. Unfortunately, not only have policymakers done nothing to help close the divide, they made it worse and expanded it to more than the economy.
FWIW - I'm not sure I've ever seen a moment when policymakers jawboned so many markets at once.
"We are leaning on resilience because we live in disquieting times. More than that, though, it’s an inherently pessimistic ideal: an admission that the best we can hope for is to muddle through." Required reading from Shawn Donovan. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
We Are Living in an Era of Resilience. That’s Not Good.
From the economy to climate change, our growing celebration of resilience says less about our strength than about a world we increasingly expect to be unstable.
bloomberg.com
A Sunday morning thought: Moving from the Passenger Seat to the Launch Pad is the hardest move on the Confidence Quadrant. Why? Because it is our choice and, if we fail, it's on us. What we forget is the same is true when we choose to remain in the PS. That's our choice too.
FWIW - Hugging Face is to AI as Tom Hanks was to COVID. Tipping points don't have to be big. They just have to confirm our worst fears.
"When we’re captured by the death spiral of scarcity and dominance, we’re signing up for a journey that’s all about the destination, a destination we’re quite unlikely to reach." seths.blog/2026/07/stat...
State champs
Compared to what? 98% of the time, the state champ loses at nationals. Every billionaire but one isn’t the richest person in the world. Only one of the 300 people who direct a feature film ea…
seths.blog
The arm of the K has become a slippery slope...
Carl Quintanilla@carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 2w ago“.. There’s this whole tranche of people who’ve been quite used to being among the most upwardly mobile in society who are all of a sudden saying, ‘Now I’m the guy on the street.’” @washingtonpost.com www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...
A Sunday Morning Thought: It is said that you need confidence to succeed. That is not true. Confidence comes from being successful. With that being the case, it is important to remember that success comes not from having confidence but by what we do when we are without it.
ICYMI - With the passage of time, our always on, 24/7 social media cycle creates a virtual carnival midway, where the only way to be heard is to become a circus barker touting a sixteen-headed lady. www.panoptica.com/peter-atwater/
Peter Atwater
panoptica.com
The challenge with an "Attention Economy" is that, over time, what draws a crowd must become more and more absurd and be delivered with greater and greater stridence. Welcome to the Circus Barker Economy. My latest thoughts: panoptica.com/the-circus-b...
Inside companies, AI is creating two groups: Beneficiaries and Victims. As if we needed even more K's in our already K-Shaped Economy...
Paul J Davies@pauljdavies.bsky.social · 4w agoWelcome to the K-Shaped company! AI was supposed to flatten organizations. Instead, it's starting to create lordly aristos and underclasses at work - just look at Meta! via @bethkowitt.bsky.social for @opinion.bloomberg.com www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...
Welcome to the K-Shaped company! AI was supposed to flatten organizations. Instead, it's starting to create lordly aristos and underclasses at work - just look at Meta! via @bethkowitt.bsky.social for @opinion.bloomberg.com www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...
Meta Is Ushering In the Era of the K-Shaped Company
Silicon Valley has long considered itself an egalitarian utopia — a place where rebelling against hierarchy is encouraged and good ideas are supposed to bubble to the top, regardless of who has them. ...
bloomberg.com
The challenge with an "Attention Economy" is that, over time, what draws a crowd must become more and more absurd and be delivered with greater and greater stridence. Welcome to the Circus Barker Economy. My latest thoughts: panoptica.com/the-circus-b...
'Saylor feel likes the Bear Stearns of this cycle. Moreover, like the collapse of Bear Stearns, Michael Saylor’s demise has the potential to be both the result of falling confidence and a contributor to a further decline.' www.panoptica.com/the-circus-b... by @peteratwater.bsky.social
The Circus Barker Economy
Peter Atwater's latest note connects three things most people are watching separately: the collapse of attention-economy figureheads, the escalating absurdity of our information environment, and what ...
panoptica.com
“Everyone thinks of pawn as the lowest end of the credit spectrum, but I think they are sort of capitalizing on the K-shaped economy.” www.wsj.com/cfo-journal/...
From $200 Loans to $30,000 Birkins, a Pawnshop Chain Serves the K-Shaped Economy
Higher household costs are driving demand for quick cash at Ezcorp’s stores, which also are seeing affluent customers on the hunt for secondhand luxury goods.
wsj.com
As with all media, the challenge for The Economist is that to remain relevant and resonant its predictions must mirror the trend extrapolation of the crowd.
The Economist@economist.com · 4w agoPredictive perfection is not our goal and we aim mainly to inform and stretch minds. But ideally we would be right more often than wrong. Can we lay claim to a creditable forecasting record?
As we celebrate America's 250th anniversary, just a reminder that with widely shared feelings of extreme powerless and uncertainty comes revolutionary change. Declarations of independence are the resulting inevitable combination of the first and last of the 5Fs.
Be especially careful with forecasts. It is all but impossible, even for experts, to forecast what we don't expect. And there it is important to remember that expectations are a far better predictor of the confidence of the provider than the future ahead of us.
FWIW - Coming out of this cycle, I expect we will see term limits not just for elected officials but for CEOs too.
A Sunday morning thought. Be careful with your imagination of the future. The future is always unknown. When we are certain about what is coming - both good and bad - we unknowingly reveal far more about own level of confidence far more than anything else. We see as we feel.
“It is heartbreaking and enraging that Elon Musk can use the system to enrich himself while most people are not being paid fairly and so can’t afford food and healthcare... I do think this brings us closer to profound social upheaval.” www.theguardian.com/science/2026...
‘It’s a scam’: Americans express unease over SpaceX’s influence on retirement savings
Guardian readers in the US share concerns about how the SpaceX IPO and AI boom affect their retirement accounts
theguardian.com
A Sunday morning thought; What others see as uncertainty, the entrepreneur sees as opportunity. Purpose changes our stories. With that our feelings and actions then follow.
A Sunday morning thought. Few things move us to the Launch Pad like purpose. Whether we're in the Stress Center or the Passenger Seat, purpose pushes us to take control. Moreover, it reframes uncertainty as an opportunity worth striving for.
english.elpais.com/economy-and-...
The popularizer of the K-shaped economy: ‘The rich are living a golden age under Trump’
Professor Peter Atwater believes economic inequality has mutated into something more dangerous for social cohesion. ‘Such an unequal economy is fragile, like a Jenga tower,’ he warns
english.elpais.com
Please appreciate that at this point oil prices are a real-time measure not only of tensions in the Middle East but stress on Main Street, too.
Thank you to the new readers of "The Confidence Map." It's very cool to see my book suddenly climbing toward the top in "Decision-Making" books!
“Everybody and their mother wants in on it right now,” said Ryan Scarborough, a 44-year-old mortgage broker currently in graduate school in Philadelphia, who plowed about $30,000—around half of his individual retirement account funds—into VCX. www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...
“I’m, Like, Rich:” Retail Investors Are Chasing IPO Fortunes in Private Markets
Funds with exposure to SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic are luring traders chasing riches in private markets.
bloomberg.com