[Spectra | GBP]•[Nvidia | {China, USA}] ⊂ Preeminence

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves—NextFedChair.com isn’t live just yet. We’ll catch up with John Thomas once he’s back from his travels next week to hear the latest inside scoop from Trump and the MAGA world. Everyone loves JT—even the Democrats who disagree.

Short GBP

Brent Donnelly at Spectra Markets recently published a short UK Sterling (GBP) trade idea—available to members. He also shared his year-to-date trade blotter, including P&Ls, but excluding Polymarket punts and research revenues. It's the pinnacle of trading transparency.

You can subscribe to Spectra Markets’ am/FX here. If asked nicely, we can likely arrange a small discount on the first year of an annual subscription. No kickback to us.

U.S. Lifts Nvidia H20 Export Restriction To China

The Wall Street Journal reports that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang made a persuasive case to President Trump for the U.S. to grant licenses for the H20 chip to China.

If we miss a news stories, we can usually rely on our regular readers to steer us in the right direction. The recent uptick in interest around our coverage of third-generation GLP-1s in clinical trials suggests there must have been related news hitting the wires.

In our update on June 6, 2025, we wrote:

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang remains one of the last major tech leaders who can travel the globe in stealth mode, leaving minimal digital footprints. On Monday, he opened London Tech Week with a keynote. Today, he’s expected in Paris for a similar event. Who knows—maybe he squeezed in a visit to Lancaster House, where U.S. and Chinese delegates met for trade negotiations. Wasn’t the core of the discussion a quid pro quo: critical minerals in exchange for high-end chips?

Did We Called It?

Even if non-committal and somewhat speculative—in line with present-day standards, where direct causal links are drawn between predictions and outcomes—we’re still taking a victory lap. But no… not really. No new information or intelligence has emerged regarding Mr. Huang’s whereabouts between his public appearance on the Monday morning in London and, two days later, Wednesday morning in Paris. Nada.

Globetrotting Ghost

Like we said: Huang globetrots like a ghost—a feat for someone in his position, especially in an age of abundant open-source intelligence.

Let’s assume we were right about Huang playing a quiet but active role in the last round of U.S.–China trade negotiations at Lancaster House, London, in June. Would it then be unreasonable to suggest that the U.S. Treasury and Commerce Secretaries—and their Chinese counterparts—quietly accommodated the Nvidia CEO’s travel itinerary when scheduling those talks? And would that really be so bad—if that’s where real power resides in American politics these days?

We can think of worse possibilities.

The lesson for corporate America’s C-suite: stay quiet, stay out of politics, and air legitimate concerns—discreetly and with purpose—behind closed doors. Just like the old playbook taught: It’s wise to cooperate with the government of the day, but wiser still to keep enough distance to avoid becoming a conspirator.

Huang or Musk?

Like Elon Musk, Huang is a first-generation immigrant to Silicon Valley, building cutting-edge hardware. Both are exceptionally smart and driven, but the similarities end there. Unlike his Tesla counterpart, Huang belongs to a vanishing class of tech CEOs who prefer staying off-stage rather than center-stage.

Hareware vs. Software Engineers

Hardware engineers have long been the poorer, humbler, and—some might argue—sharper geeks, living in the shadow of their better-paid software peers. The reemergence of Apple in neighboring Cupertino, along with in-house chip and cloud infrastructure efforts at Amazon, Meta, and Google, led to Nvidia losing many of its best engineers to faster-growing rivals offering compensation packages too rich to refuse. A problem all too common among Bay Area founders.

The Nvidia Miracle

If the microprocessor was a “miracle,” as Bill Gates once said, then Nvidia is the second coming.

It’s a sore subject for someone who once left Nvidia as a senior engineer to jumpstart Google’s Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) program. We only bring it up when he’s on a hot poker streak. If that doesn’t break the momentum, a casual comparison between Alphabet’s stock performance and that of his silicon venture fund over the past few years usually does. Failing that, a question about career satisfaction versus compensation sacrifice tends to do the trick.

Wall Street vs. Tech Brain

Whereas the typical Wall Street brain excels at multitasking and parallel-processing shallow bits of information—like a GPU—the engineer is more adept at sequential deep thinking. More CPU than GPU. The classic Wall Street degenerate is, of course, second to none—if they even still exist.

A Warm Welcome To All Summer Interns

And as we—and many others—welcome this summer’s interns, the message for those just starting out is simple: choose role models closer to Jensen Huang than Elon Musk.

Either way, seize the internship as an opportunity to learn and help out as much as possible. And if you find the that industry isn't for you, still work hard to give it your best shot so as to leave no doubts or regrets later on. A job offer you can turn down is still better than none at all. It’s a milestone in itself—something to take pride in, and a foundation to build from.

There is success not only in what we choose, but in what we choose to walk away from—especially when it no longer speaks to who we are.

Grown Ups Version

Before we add this year’s young and eager interns to the mailing list, it’s worth asking: what kind of signals should we be sending out to them?

Option 1

Is it the usual: follow your passions and dreams (plural), because you are our future, our hope, and the very center of it all this summer? That we are here—at your disposal—as your unwavering mentors, therapists, latte sponsors, hand-holders, and, if absolutely necessary, rear-wipers?

With that said: on paper, the quality gap among entry-level candidates appears narrower than ever. In practice, it’s arguably never been wider. For those willing to invest the time and effort into recruiting talent, excellence is found in abundance.

The previous generation often doubts they’d land the job if they applied today. It’s their work ethic that keeps them in the seat—so long as they don’t run afoul of modern norms or rules, like getting gaslit for mixing up a colleague’s preferred gender pronouns.

Option 2

Or should it be something closer to the truth: that a job—especially this one—is not a paid extension of higher education. That your sign-on bonus is equivalent to a civil servant’s annual salary, and your base pay matches that of a junior or mid-level university professor. That mentorship comes in dribs and drabs, in various shapes and forms, from whoever, whenever, and wherever you manage to find it—by way of barter, beg, or borrow.

In high-pressure environments, don’t mistake human error for ill intent. Most people aren’t evil—just imperfect.

It may be better to think of yourselves, metaphorically of course, as prostitutes in search of a home—if only to manage expectations. That way, the experience is more likely to end in pleasant surprise rather than disillusionment.

Occasionally, if there’s a bit of time left, you may even be lucky enough to enjoy interesting pillow conversations. But perhaps that’s too much, too soon, for them.

Craig, by the way, has the funniest story about a pre-IPO sales partner at the U.S. investment bank where he got his start. It was right after the partner wrapped up a brutal, soul-destroying call with an impossibly difficult client. What he turned and said to the freshly minted MBA associate on rotation beside him may have shattered the poor guy’s entire sense of professional reality—though it drew huge laughter from the more seasoned hands nearby. Something explicit about considering a career move into prostitution to reclaim his dignity.

Anyway, must jump now—my first punter of the day just showed up! A free annual membership goes to the first business leader who dares to run with option 2.