|  During July, I spoke with leaders from various industries and across many geographies. The five biggest topics of interest I encountered in July were (1) geopolitics and the Iran War…but with increasing curiosity about the future of Cuba, (2) how the new round of tariffs and energy price volatility will impact the outlook for inflation and the Fed’s response, (3) whether artificial intelligence infrastructure was a bubble about to burst, (4) Chinese economic weakness and whether it was driven by lower energy usage during the second quarter, and (5) how the increasing commercialization of space will impact sectors on earth.
Best wishes for a thought-filled August!
- Vikram
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| JULY 4, 2026
Inspired by my attendance at a naturalization ceremony in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, two years ago, I have been writing about America each year around Independence Day. Spending the day of America’s birth with her newest citizens, it was impossible for me not to think about my own family’s immigrant journey, and each year I pause and reflect with gratitude about our great nation.
Last year, in “Still a Shining City on a Hill,” I wrote about my family’s journey, in particular that of my father, who traveled from India to Africa to a little apartment in Queens to the life he built in New Jersey. This year, as America turns 250, I suspect it will not surprise readers to learn that I am as convinced as ever that the United States is still the greatest nation on Earth. Despite political headlines and polarized dogma, America is still shining. More so than ever, actually…
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| July 12, 2026
I have spent a career arguing that the most important signals rarely announce themselves. The skyscraper that tops out at the market peak. The pizza order that spikes in the Pentagon parking lot the night before a military operation. The private-label, single-serve trade-down in the frozen aisle that telegraphs a stressed consumer months before the macro data confirm it. Connecting seemingly irrelevant dots is not a parlor trick. It is, I’d argue, the only reliable way to see around corners and navigate uncertainty.
And the latest dot that has caught my eye is the size of a poppy seed that no one on Wall Street is watching: a tick that is quietly building a short position in animal protein. At the root of the development is a disease the tick spreads. It’s a condition called alpha-gal syndrome, or AGS, for short. It is an allergy (often severe, sometimes fatal) — to a sugar present in almost every non-primate mammal. AGS essentially makes you allergic to meat… |
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| July 19, 2026
The World Cup final is later today (Argentina and the legendary Messi versus Spain and Lamine Yamal) at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey—and I’ll be watching. My son is an avid soccer fan and watching the games together has been one of those family moments you don’t plan but never forget. Sitting on the couch, cheering for the home team (or the favorite…or the underdog…), groaning at bad calls, high-fiving after goals, with the most important people in my world. And of course, how could we not fall in love with the Norwegian viking row…
As I watched the games this year, I was reminded of Franklin Foer’s book How Soccer Explains the World, which came out in 2004 and used soccer as a lens to explain tribalism, nationalism, corruption, and the enduring power of identity. It was a contrarian book during an era when Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat (2005) was on everyone’s mind, when globalization was supposed to sand down every rough edge and turn the world into one big market. Who could forget his famous thesis that no two countries that had a McDonald’s had ever gone to war with each other?
Foer pushed back. His argument was that the Beautiful Game revealed something uglier underneath. Foer suggested that tribalism doesn’t dissolve with free trade but rather deepens. Familiarity breeds contempt, as the old saying goes… |
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| JULY 26, 2026
As many of you are aware, I run a frozen pizza factory. Pepperoni pizza is one of our best sellers, so it should not be surprising that I spend a lot of time thinking about pork prices. And while the price of your pizza is obviously impacted by the price of pepperoni on top of it, you may find it interesting that the price is increasingly being set in Beijing, not in Iowa or North Carolina.
How’s that? Well, it turns out that the Middle Kingdom is the world’s largest consumer of pork. China consumes 57 million metric tons of pork per year—roughly half of all the pork eaten on Earth. And pork in China isn’t like chicken in America. The Chinese character for “home” (家) is literally a pig under a roof and pork is deeply intertwined with Chinese culture. So when anything disrupts China’s pork supply (such as a disease, tariff, or trade war), shockwaves flow through global markets. Including, eventually, to the pepperoni we put on pizzas in America.… |
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| | | | EXCLUSIVE SUBSCRIBER CONTENT: DISCUSSION WITH MEB FABER |
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| | | Read Vikram’s Prior Predictions! |
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| Since 2015, Dr. Mansharamani has publicly posted a set of global developments to watch over the following five years. Corporate executives, government leaders (including several heads of state!), journalists, academics, and others eagerly read, reread, and look forward to his annual piece. If you reread his prior pieces, you’ll find some developments he noted come to fruition, and others simply did not happen. But as Dr. Mansharamani repeatedly notes, the goal of the predictions is not accuracy, but instead usefulness in provoking thoughts about possible futures. Click on the link below to review his posts from 2015 through 2025. |
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| | As many of you are aware, I’ve returned to writing my weekly newsletter and have been pleased by the rapidly growing interest in my thoughts. As I have in the past, I’m addressing a wide range of topics, ranging from geopolitics and economics to social trends to technology. The overall theme of my work is focused on “navigating uncertainty” and how a generalist approach can help us all make sense of what seems like chaos.
If you have not already done so, please consider subscribing! |
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| | | Want Vikram to speak at your event? |
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| Have an upcoming board meeting, corporate offsite, conference, or other event in which you might want to have Vikram share his views about the global economy, geopolitical dynamics, technological developments, or social pressures? Click below to inquire about his availability! |
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| VIKRAM MANSHARAMANI is an entrepreneur, consultant, scholar, neighbor, husband, father, volunteer, and professional generalist who thinks in multiple-dimensions and looks beyond the short-term. Self-taught to think around corners and connect original dots, he spends his time speaking with global leaders in business, government, academia, and journalism. He’s currently the Chairman and CEO of Goodwell Foods, a manufacturer of private label frozen pizza. LinkedIn has twice listed him as its #1 Top Voice in Money & Finance, and Worth profiled him as one of the 100 Most Powerful People in Global Finance. Vikram earned a PhD From MIT, has taught at Yale and Harvard, and is the author of three books, The Making of a Generalist: An Independent Thinker Finds Unconventional Success in an Uncertain World, Think for Yourself: Restoring Common Sense in an Age of Experts and Artificial Intelligence and Boombustology: Spotting Financial Bubbles Before They Burst. Vikram lives in Lincoln, New Hampshire with his wife and two children, where they can usually be found hiking or skiing. |
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