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Why Oil Didn't Go to $300, plus Chinese gold bugs, Copper Squeezes & Uranium Alpha with Josh Blanchfield (Avos Capital)
Description
Jeff Malec sits down with Josh Blanchfield of Avos to trace his path from physics at Harvard, poker pro, and 11 years at Bridgewater (including co-heading the trading desk during Lehman) to running a concentrated, risk-aware commodities and macro shop. Josh explains why China is “ground zero” for global commodities, detailing how its import cuts, stockpiling, and scrap policies have shaped oil, copper, gold, and uranium, and why understanding flows and participant behavior matters more than neat top-down supply-demand models. He breaks down how Avos blends macro with very granular micro, like Chinese spec flows around Lunar New Year, refinery outages, crack spreads, and uranium’s inelastic buyers, to build convex, options-heavy trades that aim to capture upside tails while avoiding the classic commodity-fund blowup.
Along the way, they dig into the realities of radical transparency at Bridgewater, the limits and promise of AI as a “research team we never hired,” the risks of an AI-driven labor shock, the true drivers of the dollar’s dominance and petrodollar fears, why he’s skeptical on small modular reactors but bullish nuclear, and how his Substack and broader investment philosophy challenge received wisdom on everything from munis to equity valuations. - SEND IT!
Chapters:00:00-01:19= Intro01:20-09:01= From Boulder Trails to China’s Oil Trap: Josh’s Origin Story and DB Cooper Commodities
09:02-19:27=China’s Dollar Dilemma, Gold Grab, and the Real Story Behind Commodity Power
19:28–30:36 = From Poker Tables to Lehman’s Collapse: Josh’s Bridgewater Baptism by Fire
30:37–37:57 = AI, Jobs, and Impossible Growth: Rethinking the Macro Behind the Magnificent Seven
38:38–49:04 = Gold Flows, Burning Refineries, and the Uranium Edge
49:05–56:26 = Capacity, Convexity, and Why Small Nuclear Isn’t So Small
56:27–01:09:15 = Munis, Myths, and Moneyball: Josh’s Skeptical Playbook and Pop-Culture Lens
From the Episode:
Follow along with Josh and Avos on LinkedIn and Substack, and be sure to check out<