Every term Dragonfly uses, explained in plain English by people who remember what it was like to not know what they meant. No jargon left untranslated. No assumed knowledge. Walk through one a week and within a few months you'll read a Bloomberg headline the way a portfolio manager does.
Who we are, what we're trying to do, and the promise we make you: plain-English research you can — and should — check, including a public log of when we're wrong. Built for regular people, not Wall Street.
Read this first → New here · What you getNew here? In two minutes — what we are, what you get, why it exists, and how it helps you understand your money and invest in your future. Calm, honest, plain English.
Start here → Our standardEvery claim sourced, hype flagged as hype, and any trading edge measured against pure luck before we believe it — forward, not just on paper. The honest-by-default method we hold ourselves to, in plain English.
See our standard → Radical honestyWhen we get something wrong, we say so — publicly, time-stamped, and never quietly deleted. Almost no research publication keeps one. That's exactly why you should be able to check ours.
Read the log → InteractiveThe biggest secret in investing isn't a hot stock — it's time. Move the sliders and watch a small monthly habit become a retirement. The one explainer to send anyone who hasn't started yet.
Try the calculator → Income · NewWhat a dividend is, what yield really means (and why a high one is often a warning), the one date that matters, reinvesting, and the tax angle — plain English, with a quiz.
Read + take the quiz → Blockchain · NewMoney was never backed by gold — it's trust. A blockchain is just trust without a middleman. The whole idea in plain English, why most crypto is still junk, and a quiz to test yourself.
Read + take the quiz → Blockchain · 2 of 5Stocks, bonds, gold, real estate — turned into tokens you can own and trade instantly, 24/7, in tiny fractions. What it is, who's already doing it, and the honest risks. + quiz.
Read + quiz → Blockchain · 3 of 5A 5-minute history: barter to gold to paper to fiat (backed by nothing since 1971) to crypto. The throughline that finally makes crypto make sense. + quiz.
Read + quiz → Blockchain · 4 of 5AI agents need to pay instantly, in tiny amounts, 24/7 — which banks can't do. The most credible near-term reason blockchain matters. + quiz.
Read + quiz → Blockchain · 5 of 595% of crypto will be worth nothing — like 1999's dotcoms. The checklist to spot the few real "Amazons" from the hype. + quiz.
Read + quiz → ConceptThe AI race won't be won by the smartest model — it'll be won by whoever delivers intelligence the cheapest, and that comes down to energy. The metric (intelligence per watt) that quietly reorders who profits from the buildout.
Read → Deep dive · NewAI data centers dump gigawatts of heat into the sky while greenhouses next door burn gas. The practical blueprint for pairing them — the loop, the crops, the economics — and why regulators just made it inevitable.
Read → The honest readThe "he's only 42% right" takedown measures the wrong thing. Judge a futurist on direction and sequence, not exact dates — and his record is remarkable. What that means for your money.
Read → The honest readAnthropic and OpenAI filed to IPO. Before the hype: the calm checklist for the real filing — losses, compute liabilities, gross margin, lock-ups — and whether you should buy an IPO at all.
Read → ConceptWhy some news moves stocks and most news doesn't. The difference between a real catalyst and noise — and why convergence is the actual signal.
Read → ConceptTRENDING, CHOPPY, CRISIS — what each one means, how VIX defines them, and why the same strategy can win in one and lose in another. The single most underappreciated lever in investing.
Read → ConceptThe 0-100 conviction score, walked through line by line. Seven components that build the upside, three fragility penalties that cap it, and how to read the hover-breakdown on any real signal card.
Read → ConceptWe backtested every "smart exit" you can imagine — trailing stops, profit targets, time-based exits. The data was unambiguous. Here's what we found, by how much, and why we don't try to time exits anymore.
Read → ConceptWhat CPI actually measures (and what it leaves out), what alternative methodologies (Chapwood, ShadowStats, Truflation, MIT Billion Prices) show, and why a 7% return at official inflation isn't the same as a 7% return at real-life inflation.
Read → ConceptWhat a 60/40 portfolio actually did from 1970–today, decade by decade. Real and nominal returns. The "lost decade" that wasn't really lost. The decade everyone forgets (hint: not the 2000s).
Read →Paychecks in, expenses out, every account (chequing, savings, TFSA, investments, dividends) in one view. See your monthly surplus and exactly where your net worth is headed — nothing saved, all in your browser.
Map your money → Interactive · NewSet a goal like $2,000/month, add weekly or monthly deposits, and watch your real income trajectory — reinvested or not — across steady, balanced, and high-yield styles. See where you're headed.
Plan your income → InteractiveMove the sliders. See what any recurring subscription (Netflix, Spotify, Dragonfly, anything) costs in opportunity-compounded dollars over 10/20/30 years. The math most pricing pages don't show.
Open tool → InteractiveWatch the curve. Notice how the last decade of growth dwarfs the first four. The most important math in personal finance, finally shown instead of just described.
Open tool →In June we published four checkable tests for whether the AI build-out is real demand or malinvestment. Three months on: GPU rental prices rose instead of falling, CoreWeave’s newest debt is rated junk and priced wider, and a $105bn Nvidia guarantee was signed. One test improved, two got worse — and we name two things our June piece missed.
Read the scorecard → Correction · NewOur own track record page overstated two figures, and the way it framed them was worse than the errors. Every position is still open with an average 5.1-year hold, so a cumulative return read as a recent, repeatable result. The corrected numbers, the arithmetic, and the three questions that let you check anybody’s track record in about two minutes. Nobody caught this but us.
Read the correction → Deep dive · NewIn January, roughly $280m of trading repriced Japan's $7.2 trillion government bond market. That is not a solvency story — it is a liquidity one, and the reason is that the buyer left. How banking actually works (banks do not lend out your deposits), why the interest rate matters more than the debt level, and what indebted countries can realistically do. Includes the eight errors we found in our own first draft.
Read the deep dive → Deep dive · NewWashington has reasserted the Monroe Doctrine in writing. Strip out the noise and the strategy is a bet on the hemisphere's resources — oil, copper, lithium, uranium, food, water — and on keeping China out of them. What the Americas actually hold, country by country, both readings steelmanned, and a dated scorecard: what makes sense now, what needs 20 years, what cannot be judged yet.
Read the deep dive → Deep diveEveryone has a number for when robots take the jobs, and most of them are marketing. The sober version: four scenarios for 2040, the rule that predicts which jobs go first, the profession declared dead in 2016 that got a raise instead — and the question that matters more than the timeline: who owns the robots.
Read the deep dive → Deep diveFervo's $2.2B IPO, the May 25 blowout, the 70% drilling-cost collapse — and the heat batteries scaling quietly beside it. The whole field measured against the claims: a 16 GW world fleet, an 800 GW target, and a few tens of megawatts of next-gen power delivered so far. The honest promise-and-setback read.
Read the deep dive → Deep diveCopper can't carry data between AI chips at the speeds now required, so the industry is moving to light — and the lasers need indium phosphide, a crystal made by a handful of firms on tiny wafers. Two supplier CEOs now call it the binding constraint. Who gets paid, and the risks named.
Read the deep dive → Deep diveMicrosoft, Amazon and Google are all buying nuclear power for AI — but the only near-term megawatts come from restarting old reactors. Small reactors and fusion are 2030s-and-later targets, and the fuel they need is enriched by Russia and China. Three clocks, one honest timeline. Every date sourced.
Read the deep dive → Deep diveHow a short squeeze actually works, how to read the same positioning data the big players watch — and the honest part nobody tells you: most people who chased GameStop late got wrecked. We show the data; you decide.
Read the deep dive → Deep diveIgnore the personality and Musk's companies rhyme: Tesla makes the power, xAI the intelligence, the new $16.8B Terafab the chips, SpaceX the launch. One pattern under all of it — build the bottleneck, don't rent it. Not a “buy Tesla” piece; a map of where value pools. Hype flagged, every number sourced.
Read the deep dive → Deep diveIn one week Anthropic started designing its own chips and AMD bought a startup that bakes AI models into silicon. Same story: the bottleneck moved from the processor to the memory feeding it — the “memory wall.” Whoever wins, the memory makers and the one factory underneath get paid. Every number sourced.
Read the deep dive → Deep diveAmazon and Google — two of Nvidia's biggest customers — are now building and selling their own AI chips. But the designer of those custom chips (Broadcom) and the one factory that makes them all (TSMC) get paid no matter who wins. Bet the bottleneck, not the horse — every number sourced.
Read the deep dive → Deep dive · NewThe biggest IPO in history, explained from scratch — Starlink, the Tesla convergence, Terafab, Macrohard, and a full map of who profits and who's at risk. Every term hover-to-define. Built to be a reference.
Read the deep dive → Deep dive · NewAfter the xAI merger, SpaceX is four companies in one: launch + Starlink + defense + AI compute (Anthropic pays $1.25B/mo, Google $920M/mo). Who owns it, every revenue stream, the full variable board, the Elon effect, and the honest risks — sourced.
Read the deep dive → Deep dive · NewSPCX lists June 12 — but the moves that matter come after: forced Nasdaq-100 index buying (~day 15), a tiny float + squeeze, why the S&P 500 sits out, and the lockup flood months later. The supply-and-demand timeline of the biggest IPO ever.
Read the deep dive → Forward look · NewThe IPO is the starting gun, not the finish line. The likely 3-act sequence next + the full private pipeline lining up to follow — Cohere, Figure, Anduril, Shield AI, LeoLabs, fusion. Mapped from our watchlist.
Read the forward look → Frontier · NewCompute, mining, and manufacturing are starting to leave the planet — and they're one connected loop. The convergence, the realistic timeline, and who's building it (Starcloud, AstroForge, Interlune, SpaceX).
Read the thesis → Deep dive · NewA $92B private company built its own blockchain and is letting any business print a dollar — the "AWS for money." What's real, what's viral hype, and who profits (CRCL, COIN, PYPL, V, MA). The facts, separated from the conspiracy.
Read the deep dive → Contrarian · NewEveryone's crowded into AI power generation. The actual chokepoint is delivery — transformers with 4-year waits, grid interconnect, the gear inside the data center. The contrarian map of who profits (ETN, PWR, GEV, VRT, MU).
Read the deep dive → Framework · NewA “10 GW campus” isn’t compute — it’s intent. GPUs ship in weeks; the grid connection takes 5–7 years, and the slowest input sets the date. The critical path, the synchronization tax, and a scorecard for reading any data-center headline.
Read the deep dive → Framework · NewFour companies will spend $725B on AI infrastructure this year. A 100-year-old framework — the one that called railway mania and the fiber bust — asks the only question that matters, and names the signals that will answer it.
Read the deep dive → Resource · NewMcDermitt Caldera may hold the largest lithium deposit on Earth — and the US government literally owns a piece of the first mine. The full honest map: Thacker Pass, the unproven chemistry, and the upside ladder (LAC, JNDAF, ALB).
Read the deep dive → Frontier · NewMachines are growing muscles (1,000 fluid-filled fibers) and brains are getting ports (12+ implant patients, first FDA approval racing for 2027). Your phone was the prosthetic all along — here's the honest map of the attachment: four timelines, the bandwidth problem, and who profits.
Read the deep dive → Deep dive · NewEveryone owns the obvious shovels. We went one layer deeper: who the shovel-makers themselves depend on — the single-point-of-failure suppliers under chips, robots, magnets and satellites, and the cap-table signal that spots them early. A research map, every name flagged.
Read the deep dive → Myth vs reality · NewHalf true, half myth — it depends entirely on the cooling method and the watershed. The best operators now use almost none (Amazon 0.12 L/kWh), and the heat they reject is becoming a product. The honest map, every number sourced.
Read the deep dive → The skill · NewA 12% yield looks like free money — it's usually a warning. The four checks that separate a dividend you can trust from a trap (and the one filter that does the most work), the framework behind our Income watchlist. Plain English.
Read the framework → The restart wave · NewA reactor that shut in 2019 is restarting — to power Microsoft's AI. Canada refurbished one seven months early and under budget. AI's bottomless demand for clean, 24/7 power is reviving nuclear in real time — who profits (uranium, enrichment, the utilities), and the honest multi-year timelines.
Read the deep dive → Myth vs reality · NewSodium is 300x cheaper than lithium and CATL says its batteries are "mainstream-ready." The "lithium is doomed" takes wrote themselves — but the honest answer is a segmentation story: sodium wins cheap grid storage, lithium keeps premium EVs. Which exposure actually loses, and the second-order winner.
Read the deep dive → The pivot being mispriced · NewA bitcoin miner just signed a $220M deal to run AI for Bell Canada and Cohere. The quiet rotation — crypto miners with cheap power and ready data centers turning into AI compute landlords — who's really pivoting, who's just pumping, and the honest risks.
Read the deep dive → The next bottleneck · NewFor 50 years the limit was "more transistors." That era is ending — the wall moved to moving data between chips, and the energy it burns. Why co-packaged optics is the most important hardware shift of the decade, who profits, and an honest moonshot ladder (optical computing, superconductors, quantum).
Read the deep dive → Myth vs reality · NewEveryone wrote off the CPU when GPUs won training. Then AI became agents — and a huge share of the work turned out to be logic, not math. Why the "boring" chip is the surprise winner of the agent era, what "CPU comeback" really means (ARM, not x86), and who profits.
Read the deep dive → Framework · NewCompanies seem to "come from nowhere" — they don't. The x-ray framework for a private or emerging company's real backers, integrity and likely trajectory, plus the honest method we use to decide what's actually true. The companion to our supply-chain maps.
Read the framework → Contrarian · NewThe AI brain gets the headlines, but Morgan Stanley pegs 56% of a humanoid robot's cost in the actuators — the gearbox, the roller screw, the magnet. The real pick isn't the robot, it's the part inside the joint. Who profits, who's exposed, every number sourced.
Read the deep dive → Myth vs reality · NewA mini PC ran a 235B model with no cloud, and the internet declared subscriptions dead. The chip is real, the demo is real — but here's what "killed subscriptions" leaves out (mixture-of-experts, quantization, ~11 tokens/sec), and who actually profits from AI moving to the edge.
Read the deep dive → Framework · NewA trillion-dollar IPO spawns a wave of confident takes — a viral valuation, a seductive analogy, a can't-miss playbook. Most are engineered to move you. The honest checklist for telling signal from bait, built from this week's real SpaceX examples.
Read the framework →SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic, Cerebras, Quantinuum — the whole wave. Live candlesticks, lockup countdowns, the cycle overlay, share-structure comparison, and our scenario read on where each could land.
Open tracker → ArchiveEvery newsletter we publish, kept on the record and scored against what actually happened — including where we were wrong. The verifiable track record, not a highlight reel.
Open archive →This section will grow. Every concept Dragonfly references on a signal card, in an email, or on the dashboard gets its own plain-English article here. If you read something on the platform and don't know what it means, that's a bug — tell us. We'll write the explainer.