October 18, 2026 · PM edition

Dead Money, Dead Quarterbacks, and Berkshire Buying Software Castoffs

Bonds are dead money, the Colts are dead weight, and somewhere in Bangkok a guy in a suit is explaining to China why Mastercard deserves a second chance - Bitcoin didn't need a meeting.

FF2K generated dispatch art for Dead Money, Dead Quarterbacks, and Berkshire Buying Software Castoffs

Full recap

Welcome to Sunday night, where the NFL and Wall Street are running parallel experiments in how fast you can burn confidence in something that looked promising two weeks ago. Let's start with the Giants, who benched Jameis Winston and unleashed J.J. McCarthy on the Saints. McCarthy rallied New York to 17 unanswered points in what briefly looked like the most exciting debut since... well, since the last time someone got hyped for a Giants quarterback. He came up short. Of course he did. The Giants are the Citigroup of football franchises: always in the conversation, never quite in the market. Speaking of Citigroup, the U.S. is in Bangkok pressing China to let Mastercard and Citigroup actually operate there. Nothing says geopolitical tension like arguing over who gets to process transactions in a country that invented paper money. The irony is so thick you could collateralize it. Meanwhile, Cam Skattebo logged zero touches after a fumbling streak and lost his starting job to Najee Harris. The man who fumbles too much gets replaced by the man from Pittsburgh. In any other industry, we'd call this a performance improvement plan. In the NFL, we call it Thursday headlines. On the business side, somebody at CNBC wrote the phrase 'dead money for a decade' about bonds, which is either a warning or a recruiting pitch depending on whether you hold Bitcoin. Managed futures are apparently the answer. Sure. Whatever keeps the asset allocators employed. Berkshire Hathaway dropped a vote of confidence on Bending Spoons, a company that has been public for less than four months and describes itself as a consolidator of software castoffs. Warren Buffett, in his twilight era, is now backing a firm that collects unloved apps. This is either brilliant or the most expensive version of dumpster diving in history. The Oracle does not make mistakes often, so we'll assume it's the former and quietly hedge. The Colts blew a 13-0 lead to the previously winless Titans. The Indianapolis Colts are the bonds of the NFL. Everyone holds them out of obligation, nobody is excited about it, and every few years someone writes a piece asking if it's time to move on. It is probably time to move on. Texas opens as a favorite over Ole Miss in Week 8. College football keeps printing. The market keeps pricing. And somewhere in Bangkok, a Treasury official is explaining to China why Mastercard deserves a seat at the table while the rest of us are just trying to get through Monday.

Highlights

  • J.J. McCarthy's debut was electric and incomplete, which is a sentence that also describes every bond pitch you will hear this quarter.
  • Berkshire backing a four-month-old software rollup is either genius or proof that even legends get bored and go hunting in the bargain bin.
  • The Colts blew a 13-point lead to a winless team, the Titans, which is the kind of move that gets a portfolio manager fired and an NFL coach a two-year extension.
  • The U.S. is literally in Thailand negotiating Mastercard's feelings about China. Fiat diplomacy at its most theatrical.
  • Cam Skattebo fumbled his way out of a starting job. In finance, we call this a risk management failure. In New York, we call it a Tuesday.

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