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Isaac Chan

Isaac Chan

@isaac

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0 followers·0 following·51 papers read

Want to Read(19)

Thread by @S_Stantcheva

Stefanie Stantcheva

threadreaderapp.com·2026

No abstract available

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What I Learned About Asset Pricing

Pedro Santa Clara

X (formerly Twitter)·2026

A history of the field from the inside: its ideas, its people, its machines, and what forty years of studying prices and trading them have taught me

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The Abandoned Order: Learning to Live in a Post-American World

Mark Leonard

Foreign Affairs·2026

Learning to live in a post-American world.

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The Tech High Ground

Jake Sullivan

Foreign Affairs·2026

What it will take to gain the advantage over China.

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Are Bonds Hedges or Risky Opportunities?

John H. Cochrane

Hoover Institution, Stanford University·2024·3 citations

No abstract available

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What Is It Like to Be a Bat?

Thomas Nagel

1974

No abstract available

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Why are you reading fewer books?

Arnold Kling

Substack·2026

Because you should be reading fewer books

★ 1.0 (1)

The Middle Power Delusion | Foreign Affairs

Michael Beckley

Foreign Affairs·2026

Not choosing is not an option.

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The Elephant in the Office: Challenges faced by women of colour in the workforce

Cheah Kah Yann

The essay prompt (Women are advancing in the workforce, yet unique challenges are faced by various communities. What are the challenges faced by women of colour and how can we tackle these?) piqued my interest as the subject of racism and sexual inequalities is something I am quite passionate about. It was refreshing to explore these issues in my essay, 'The Elephant in the Office' about women of colour in medical practice, which paid close attention to microaggressions, racism, and sexism in the workplace. Coming from a traditional "conservative" Asian background myself, I have been unlearning my internalised misogyny and classism, working instead to promote the uplifting of us women as a community. I hope to empower like-minded students to seek out opportunities to advocate for inclusion and diversity.

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Encyclical Letter of His Holiness Leo XIV Magnifica Humanitas (15 May 2026)

Pope Leo XIV

vatican.va·2026

Encyclical letter magnification humanitas of His Holiness pope Leo XIV on safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence

★ 4.0 (1)

Currently Reading(2)

Quantitative Tightening 101

Gianluca Benigno

Substack·2024

Teaching note on Quantitative Tightening

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The Myth of Asia's Miracle

Paul Krugman

Foreign Affairs·1994·1261 citations

No abstract available

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Papers Read(51)

The "Uses" of Literature for Politics

Philip D. Bunn

Substack·2024

How does reading fiction help us think better about politics?

★ 3.0 (1)

Never Reason from an Accounting Identity`

Brian Albrecht

Substack·2023

Economic confusion all around

★ 4.0 (1)

How I Got Hired at SAC Capital Without a College Degree

Byrne Hobart

Medium·2017

No abstract available

★ 4.0 (1)

Banks: The Business of Leverage

Nine One Capital

Substack·2026

Our framework for investing in banks, and J&K Bank as a case study

★ 3.0 (1)

How defence spending will shrink global imbalances and weaken US

Oliver Harvey, Mallika Sachdeva

Deutsche Bank Research Institute·2026

We argue rising defence spending will shrink global imbalances with important implications for interest rates and the dollar.

★ 4.0 (1)

The Master's Trap

Anne Helen Petersen

Substack·2021

What makes a graduate program predatory?

★ 4.0 (1)

Moving toward NGDP targeting

Scott Sumner

Substack·2024

and away from interest rate targeting

★ 4.0 (1)

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Recent Reviews

The "Uses" of Literature for Politics
11/4/2026
OK, literature and politics are joined at the hip. They both study - humans! The key difference: literature deep-dives into individuals like no other medium can, while politics looks at communities as a whole from the top down. Political science's top-down view requires the bottom up analysis of literature ... at least that's what the literature scholars say to justify their discipline! Heh.

Rated Papers

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Netflix is down nearly 50%: Are their glory days behind them?

Brian A., Aaron Pek

Substack·2026

Netflix is now back to where it was trading at during the post Covid peak. Are their glory days behind them?

★ 2.0 (1)

The Death Of Expertise

Tom Nichols

The Federalist·2014

To reject the notion of expertise, and to replace it with a sanctimonious insistence that every person has a right to his or her own opinion, is silly.

★ 3.0 (1)

Exceptional Expectations: US vs Non-US Equities

Antti Ilmanen, Thomas Maloney

AQR Capital Management·2025

In recent years allocators to global equities have faced the conundrum of how to respond to persistent US outperformance. Some serenely maintained market cap weights despite ever more extreme relative valuations, others pursued the contrarian view implied by yield-based expected returns, and yet others gave up entirely on the rest of the world, as the US seemed so strongly placed to foster technological innovation, earnings growth and investor returns. We address this highly topical regional question by analyzing the drivers of relative performance—in particular the different roles of fundamentals and valuations—and assessing the most likely implications for future returns.

★ 4.0 (1)

Never Reason from an Accounting Identity`

11/4/2026

This reinforced what Krugman taught - yes, accounting identities hold. Yes, we must track them. Yes, doing the decomposition is fun. But that's not economic analysis. Economic analysis is asking what changed? What caused things to be different? Accounting identities tell us nothing about causation.

Banks: The Business of Leverage

11/3/2026

Overall an insightful refresher on the business of banking, although I suspect the author confused capital with funding somewhere in the article. The most interesting new perspective I learned here is that a bank with > 1 P/B creates value for shareholders if it issues new equity capital; while a bank with < 1 P/B destroys value if it issues. So there is a compelling distressed bank play for me: if I see a distressed bank with < 1 P/B that's forced by regulators to increase its equity capital, there could be an opportunity for me to scoop the new equity on the cheap. But it's a high-risk trade of course cuz the bank was cheap most likely for a reason, and there's likely NPLs in the waiting. And it's interesting to note that banks are a 'mediocre business' (as described by Derek Pilecki) cuz we have to lever up so much (as noted by Nine One Capital, banks usually carry $100 or more of assets for every $10 of equity capital) just to earn normal corporate returns. The reason why is cuz the product we sell (i.e. money) is completely fungible - a coffee shop for example buys coffee beans, roasts them, and turns them into coffee which can be marked up; a bank cannot mark up money. Furthermore this Indian guy seems like a better equity analyst than Aaron Pek at this point.

How defence spending will shrink global imbalances and weaken US

11/2/2026

Fascinating new perspective on the relationship between defence and global imbalances here - the unwritten pact between Washington and the NATO allies: Washington bankrolls the NATO allies' defence spending; in return, the NATO allies finance America's consumption binge (through their savings from defence)

The Master's Trap

10/30/2026

Aggressively reading posts like these to feel good about how I didn't do a Masters and instead jumpstarted my career (i.e. got rejected from my Masters applications)