Recent updates 🗞️
🎓 MBA completed in May! 🎉
🤠 Moved to Texas
🚢 US announced tarrifs on all trade with foreign nations
📈 S&P and NASDAQ at all time highs in June
🎥 Watching “The Studio” on Apple TV
📚 Reading “Empire of AI” by Karen Hao
Back from a hiatus, Rebranding, Global macro, AI Scientist
After a (nearly 8 month!) gap during which I finally completed my MBA, moved to Texas and experiencing a new side to my life, I am now back and the “Techie turns MBA” blog series will now be rebranded as “The Thoughful Investor” series. This is in line with my original idea of the blog series and more accurately captures where I want to spend my efforts in the future. I am sure the “Techie turns MBA” will serve as a thoughtful reminder of the joys and highs of pursuing my masters and hopefully also serve as inspiration and help to anyone else wanting to go down the same path in years to come.
As part of the new “The Thoughtful Investor” series, I plan to include a new section on the Global macro as a piece in all moy posts going forward with my interpretation and journal of the current global macro. I will also be including a new section in the “Recent Updates” to capture my portfolio performance YTD.
Global Macroeconomic Update
Federal Reserve has resumed cutting interest rates in the U.S. amid a slowing labor market, while inflation remains elevated. Global economic activity is showing divergent paths, with concerns about growth in China and Japan, but also selective opportunities in European markets. Fed’s decision to cut its benchmark Federal Funds rate by 25 basis points to a range of 4.00% to 4.25%. This move marks the resumption of an easing cycle after a nine-month pause. This suggests the Fed is prioritizing its employment mandate as the labor market softens. Deloitte Insights notes that indicators from China point to weakness, suggesting that further stimulus may be on the horizon. In Japan, exports have declined for four consecutive months, largely due to U.S. tariffs, while the Bank of Japan is at a crossroads as it navigates weak exports and rising bond yields.
Sources: BlackRock Investment Institute, with data from LSEG Datastream as of September 18, 2025
A BlackRock Investment Institute commentary highlights opportunities for U.S. investors outside of the domestic market, particularly in Europe. They argue that the significant interest rate differential between the U.S. and the Euro area, even after the recent Fed cut, provides a benefit to U.S. investors hedging foreign bonds back into U.S. dollars. They also “still favor financials and industrials stocks” in Europe, seeing selective opportunities in the region.
AI Scientist
There are 20,000 genes in the human genome; no single person could ever hope to read all the research on all of them and hold it all in their head to see the bigger picture. This is where the idea of an “AI scientist” comes in.
Agents will accelerate Scientific discovery
AI Agents today are more than just passive models that spit out answers. They are true “agents” that can interact with the world, take actions, observe the results, and then decide what to do next. You can have one agent that’s an expert in combing through all the scientific literature in the world, another that excels at data analysis, and another that can even help design experiments. The real magic happens when you get these agents to work together, delegating tasks and collaborating in a way that’s much like a human research team, but on a scale and at a speed we can barely comprehend.
This new approach has already shown incredible promise. In one case, these AI agents were able to connect the dots between two different fields of medicine to propose a novel treatment for a major cause of blindness. They found breadcrumbs in the vast sea of scientific literature that human researchers had missed and came up with a hypothesis that, when tested in the lab, actually worked. This is a glimpse into a future where the entire cycle of discovery—from hypothesis to experiment to analysis and back again—is radically accelerated.
Of course, this doesn’t mean humans are out of the picture. Far from it. The best human experts still possess a level of judgment and intuition that AI can’t match. The role of the scientist will evolve. We will become the conductors of these digital orchestras, the ones who ask the big questions and guide these powerful tools toward the most pressing problems. Our intelligence isn’t being replaced; it’s being augmented, giving us a powerful new partner in our quest to understand the universe and our place in it.
Cheers 🥂