Excogitātor

Don’t be the best.Be the only.

A distinct human presence is becoming scarce.

Veni, vidi, cogitavi

Dr. Shayne Heffernan Ph.D.

Shayne Heffernan

Every financial revolution has changed the speed and the surface of finance without changing its substance. Debt cycles still overshoot. Inflation still compounds. Bubbles still form around the new thing while the old rules keep applying. What is different this time is that intelligence itself has become abundant, and everything abundant gets cheap. The scarce thing now is a distinct human presence: judgement shaped by real consequence, taste built over decades, and the willingness to care about a question for longer than is efficient.

I write about that gap most days, and I build in it the rest of the time. Forty years across capital markets, venture capital and emerging technology, and the part that still cannot be automated is the judgement about which question was worth asking. Everything below is published at Live Trading News, wrapped in post-quantum cryptography and anchored on chain at the moment it goes out. The text cannot be altered. Change a word and it is re-signed and re-stamped, and the chain records the new time, so every version and every date stands permanently on the record.

AI

The build-out, the quantum timeline, and what any of it is actually for.

Thinking

Judgement, independence, and staying non-fungible in an AI world.

Markets

Stocks, macro, ramblings and the KXCO build.

Longevity

Healthspan science, and separating the evidence from the sales pitch.

Life

Food, travel, sport, and the unoptimised parts that refill the well.

Latest

6 November 2026

Crony Capitalism: The Force Destroying Western Civilisation

Western civilisation is being dismantled from the top, Shayne Heffernan argues, by a crony capitalism that picks winners through capital, regulation and the Fed. The top 1% of US households hold 32.5% of net worth, up from 22.9% in 1990, while the 50th to 90th percentiles fell from 36.1% to 28.8%. Insured banks fell from 17,901 in 1984 to 4,238 in 2026, listings have halved since 1996, and the median first-time buyer is 40 by the realtors' count. His fix: radical transparency and openness.

6 November 2026

Democrats' AI Spending Curtailment: The Dumbest Idea in Washington

After the midterm sweep, Democrats want to slow America's AI build-out. The Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez bill would freeze building and upgrading of AI data centres nationwide, and a superintelligence ban Rep. Yassamin Ansari wants atop the agenda would pause every model trained with 10^25 operations or more. Governors-elect in Texas and Georgia back pauses, and Goldman Sachs puts 45% of planned capacity in Democrat-run states backing moratoriums. Shayne Heffernan: AI computing follows the power.

3 November 2026

KXCO's FDA Ontology Ranked INO-3107 First. Inovio Hit Over 300% After Hours.

KXCO's FDA ontology ranked INO-3107, from Inovio (INO), first of the FDA decisions due in the next 90 days, from 21 October 2026 to the decision. The FDA granted accelerated approval on 30 October; the news reached the market after the close. From its $0.60 close that day, Inovio traded as high as $2.71 after hours, up 351.7%, and closed 2 November at $1.89, up 215.0%. Both published research books closed ahead of XBI. On our radar: BBP-418 (BBIO), Bezuclastinib (COGT) and Relutrigine (PRAX).

1 November 2026

AI Stocks, Week of 1 November 2026: Seven Buys and the Ontology Behind Them

Shayne Heffernan rates seven AI stocks buys for the week of 1 November 2026: Nvidia, Broadcom, TSMC, Microsoft, Oracle, Palantir and ASML. The latest results put the contracted backlog of the four largest cloud sellers at about $2.48 trillion, and Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft and Meta plan about $720 billion to $740 billion of capital spending in 2026. Every call links to KXCO's AI ontology, updated on 1 November with the quarter's results, power and grid data and new defence contracts.

31 October 2026

AI Is Not Overvalued. It Is Underestimated.

Markets debate whether artificial intelligence (AI) is overvalued. Shayne Heffernan argues the more material risk is underestimation. Alphabet's capital expenditure reached $51.4 billion in the third quarter, Google Cloud revenue rose 103% to $30.7 billion and the Cloud backlog stands at $561 billion, per its 28 October results and earnings call. Jurisdictions that block data centres do not remove the demand: they import the capability later, at a higher price.

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