AI and technology
Where I think AI and technology are actually heading, what they change, and what is worth building versus resisting.
Builder · Investor · Writer · Brain Researcher
I think in Principles
From the structure of markets to the structure of the universe, I am interested in how things actually work, and what to do about it.
From the machinery of markets to the workings of the mind, I am drawn to how things truly work. The same search shapes the companies I build, the brain I study, and the words I write.
Big picture
Worldview
Where I stand on the questions that sit underneath everything else. Strong opinions, loosely held, argued in public.
Macroeconomics
How I read debt, currency, inflation, and the long arc of the credit cycle. The model I use to make sense of where money is going.
Law & Politics
A lawyer by training, I passed the New York State Bar in 1999. That grounding still shapes how I read the way societies organise power, markets, and liberty, what gets the incentives right, what reliably fails, and where the rules quietly do the deciding.
Principles
A personal creed, deliberately capped at fifteen. The cap is the discipline, a new principle earns its place only by displacing a weaker one, so adding always means cutting. I would rather these be challenged than admired, so if you think one is wrong, or you have a sharper one, tell me.
The creed
Read all fourteen in full
Practical
Markets & Ideas
The working side of the worldview, where I think capital is going and the trades that follow from it.
Investment Themes
THEMATIC POSITIONING · MID-2026Nine themes with multi-year duration and real capital behind them. The thesis, what has to be true, what breaks it, and how the exposure is expressed.
- IAI Infrastructure, Not AI PlatformsCompute, memory, power and the picks-and-shovels repricing
- IIPhysical AI and RoboticsThe next leg of the AI trade leaves the data centre
- IIIElectrification and Industrial MetalsCopper as the binding constraint
- IVThe Nuclear RenaissanceUranium: structural deficit meets a new class of buyer
- VEuropean Defence RearmamentA generational fiscal commitment, kept Europe-pure
- VIGold and Monetary DebasementAn anti-fiat position in a debt supercycle
- VIICritical Materials and Supply-Chain SovereigntyRare earths: the chokepoint the West cannot route around
- VIIIJapan ReawakeningGovernance reform, reflation and the end of cash-hoarding
- IXHealthcare and DemographicsDefensive growth ballast with a metabolic-medicine kicker
ETFs
RESEARCH UNIVERSE · 60+ FUNDSA working list of every ETF in my research universe, sorted by geography then sector, each with structure, holdings, and the thesis or risk worth knowing.
Open the ETF universe Open the robotics instrument listThese are my personal views, shared for discussion. They are not investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell anything. Markets carry risk, including the loss of capital. Do your own work, or speak to a licensed adviser, before acting.
Neuroscience
The Brain
An MSc in Neuroscience from King's College London, and an ongoing obsession with how the mind actually runs.
How the brain works, and why it matters to me
MSC NEUROSCIENCE · KING'S COLLEGE LONDONI studied neuroscience because the same question sits under markets and behaviour, what makes a person decide, act, and repeat. The brain is the bridge between the big picture and the practical. Incentives, habits, and attention are not abstractions, they are circuits, and understanding the machinery changes how you read everything else.
What pulls me in most is dopamine, and how badly it is misunderstood. It is not the molecule of pleasure but of pursuit. It tracks the gap between what we expected and what we got, and it is the fluctuation, not the level, that makes us chase, repeat, or lose interest. In ADHD that signal runs differently, which is why the struggle is rarely a shortage of attention and more an inability to regulate it, and why a distant reward can feel almost invisible next to one that is right in front of you. The same lens reframes the idea of a brain imbalance as something subtler than a dial set too high or too low. It is a question of timing, circuits, and feedback across networks, most of which we are still only beginning to map.
My Research Papers
PAPERS · OPEN TO READ
Meditation, CBT, and Neural Plasticity: A Comparative Investigation of Non-Pharmacological ADHD Interventions
Attention is Necessary for Conscious Awareness: A Critical Evaluation
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction and Biological Stress Markers
Is There Too Much Medicine in Psychiatry? A Critical Evaluation
All Aggression is Learned: A Critical Evaluation
ADHD
FEATURED ESSAYLess a deficit than a different operating system. One name that fits everyone and describes no one. The presentations, the neuroscience of catecholamine tuning within frontostriatal networks, and how the medications actually work.
Read: ADHD, One Name for Many Different MindsReward, attention, triggers
APPLIEDThe applied side. How modern environments are built to spike and crash the dopamine system, and how you might design your days to work with it rather than against it.
Read: Why Focus Isn’t About Willpower
Writing
Books
Longer arguments that did not fit anywhere else.
Out now · All proceeds to charity
A Letter to My Son
A father's letter to his son, and a journey of wisdom on how to live, what to hold onto, and what matters in the end. Every penny of the proceeds goes to charity.
What I build
Companies
The businesses I am behind, across lending technology, bridging finance, and capital.
Recognition
Talks & Press
Conference stages and coverage across private credit, wealth, and markets. For speaking enquiries: contact@abodenstein.com
Talks & Panels
SELECTED ENGAGEMENTS- Nov 2025DealCatalyst · Specialist Lender Finance, London
- May 2025Preserving Wealth in a World of DilutionSTEP Conference
- Jun 2023Predicting the Unpredictable: Keeping Up with ChangeSTEP Conference
- Jun 2019The Future of Private WealthSTEP Conference
In the Press
SELECTED COVERAGE“Name me one CEO who will wake up at midnight to help get a deal done. It’s unheard of and it made all the difference.”Broker, quoted in Bridging & Commercial, 2025
- 2025Bridging & Commercial
- 2022Private Banker International · Feature
- 2022Cointelegraph, via Investing.com
- 2022Finextra · UK-first Securitize partnership
- 2022Bridging & Commercial
- 2021Bridging & Commercial · Video interview
- 2021Bridging Loan Directory
Reach me
Connect
Find the work, the writing, and the way to get in touch.
Profiles
Agree, disagree, or think I have lost the plot entirely? I would like to hear it. Comments, corrections, and contrarian takes are all welcome.
Companies
Each business, one click away.
Stay updated
New essays across markets, AI, law, and the brain, sent occasionally. No noise, no list sharing.