Lab · Our first AI video

The market has been quiet lately, and let's be honest — quiet markets aren't much fun. But they do give us one nice thing: time. Time to read more, dig a little deeper, and play with the new AI tools everyone keeps talking about.

That's what we've been doing here this year. And this week, the first thing we built together with those tools is ready — a video, made almost entirely with AI. It's at the top of this page, and on our YouTube channel.

It's a true story. Ronald Read pumped gas and swept floors in a small Vermont town. He wore an old coat held together with a safety pin. When he died in 2014, he left behind about $8 million — and almost nobody who knew him had any idea.

We picked it because it's the kind of story that stays with you. No secret, no drama, no lucky trade — he just quietly bought good things and held them for fifty years, while nobody was watching.

Behind the scenes, it was a fun experiment too. The script came first, then AI drew every picture and read every line. A video like this used to need a whole studio — now it takes one person and a week.

Everything on this site is written, and writing is great for details. But a good story is easier to remember than a good chart — we watch it once and it stays with us for years.

So this is what we want to try next: taking the ideas we talk about here — supply, cycles, why we all chase the top — and telling them as stories.This video is test number one. It's not perfect, and that's fine — the next one will be better.

If you watch it, we'd love to hear from you. Did you watch to the end? Was any part boring? And what story should we tell next?

Just reply to the weekly email — every reply gets read, and it really does shape the next video.