belikewater

Libya

A couple interesting things:

1. A survey of a statistically representative sample of almost 16k people in Iran over age 51 finds that, "61.6% of respondents believed reforms could improve the situation, 30.2% thought the country was beyond repair, and 8.2% felt the current state was good and defensible."
https://x.com/SinaToossi/status/1833173832875573295

2. Apparently, knocking off the turbans of clerics is a bit of a sport now in Iran.
https://x.com/realMaalouf/status/1830344950237864022

I would love to see a comparable survey for the country as a whole. I suspect that a larger portion of the population under age 51 would think that the country is beyond repair.

I see these two findings as signs of discontent but not imminent upheaval. Still, together with so many other facts, including that the population is decreasingly attending mosques, the number of mosques has declined dramatically over the years, and a variety of economic concerns, these findings point towards the eventual demise of the regime.

Gonzalez, Venezuela's opposition leader, has landed in Spain, seeking asylum after an arrest warrant was issued in his name. That's it. I think there's <0.5% chance that Maduro won't be president 4 months from now.
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/venezuela-opposition-leader-gonzalez-flies-spain-after-arrest-warrant-2024-09-08/

Adjusting my forecast.

The crowd's recent switch to predicting >28% seems to be based largely on an extrapolation of the Q1 + Q2 data, which came in at over 28.0%. However, as @JonathanMann notes, historically, "the average change from the mid-year to the end of the year is a relative reduction of about 1.3%," and it is important not to ignore seasonality. Nonetheless, @Jim points out that there hasn't been much in the way of such seasonal drops since 2022, so it's possible that this historical trend no longer applies in the CHIPS Act era. So I will increase my forecast for the higher bin for now.

Following @JonathanMann's analysis, including his point that the percentage has historically tended to dip in the second half of the year. @404_NOT_FOUND notes that the Americas accounted for 27.5% of the revenue in the past year (Q3 '23 to Q2 '24), consistent with @JonathanMann's analysis. I also think there is more volatility in these numbers than the crowd forecast is allowing for. This volatility can be seen clearly in this plot of annual revenues by region: https://www.statista.com/statistics/249509/forecast-of-semiconductor-revenue-in-the-americas-since-2006/ (I attached the plot below because I somehow miraculously got it to load once but you might not be able to.) However, with results in through Q2, it's hard to see how the total could come in under 26% for the year at this point in the absence of some catastrophic event.

But I will tilt my forecast slightly upwards because of both the US CHIPS and Science Act and the US ban on sales of certain chips to China. See also https://x.com/AgatheDemarais/status/1823298456321949935, which is a prediction that because of the CHIPS Act, the US will likely "produce around one-third of global supply for leading-edge chips by 2032" and that the "US rise will come at expense of South Korea, which could become minor player for top-notch chips." I think that as a whole, US chip production is likely to rise faster than it has historically and that the Americas' share of revenue is likely to end up between 27.5% and 28.0% for 2024. If I had to pick one number, I'd say 27.7%. But again, we have to remember the volatility.

I think the crowd is about right on this. So much could change in the forecast period; it depends on who is elected US president, how the war in Ukraine goes, whether Putin stays in power, and how secure his power is. I think that if Trump becomes president, he's more likely to invade the Baltic states, though, to try to call NATO's bluff and thereby destroy it. I think that would be a much bigger "accomplishment" in his eyes. If he could take Ukraine or some large chunk of it and de-fang NATO, he would see himself as having partially restored the Russian Empire. After that, I think Moldova would be next, or Georgia.

It'll probably be Apple, but there's so much volatility, it could well be Nvidia. And fundamentally, AI technologies are ascendant. It was clear years ago that their stock was going to go to #1.