🏛️ Harris's federal food price-gouging ban is a discredited price control
On the reported Harris proposal for a first-ever federal ban on corporate price gouging in food and groceries, all three besties who spoke take the same side: there is no gouging in the data (Kraft Heinz revenue $25B to $26B and EBITDA $6.1B to $6.3B across the period, grocer gross margin down two points, CPG three-year TSR falling, strawberries and potatoes back below pre-COVID), so the cause of food inflation is the Fed balance sheet going $4.2T to $7.2T and M2 going $15.2T to $21.2T, not corporate margin. A cap therefore cannot lower prices: producers manage to margin and cut output, supply shrinks and prices rise - the 1970s Nixon/Ford/Carter experiment, and every socialist experiment before it. Chamath expects the campaign to make a few phone calls and drop it; Sacks reads it as her first real policy tell.
⚖ Why this verdict
fully deterministic — evaluate.py replays this from daily closes; nothing below is editable or hand-set
- Window: 2024-08-16 → 2025-08-16 — first mention + 12-month horizon, then the window locks.
- The call: ▼ SHORT KR (primary play). KR rose 33.7% over the window → direction-adjusted R = -33.7% (the call lost money).
- Benchmark: holding SPY over the same window returned +17.5%
→ α = -33.7 − (+17.5) = -51.2%
— what this call made or lost against just owning the index. This is the number the verdict uses.
Stock-selection read: -16.2% — did KR move the predicted way relative to the market. The two only differ on a SHORT: this call was right about direction relative to the index but still cost money versus holding it.
- Rule fired:
· HIT — R ≥ +10% AND α ≥ +5· PARTIAL — R ≥ +5% OR α ≥ 0▶ MISS — everything else
- Credit: supporters of a MISS earn 0 each, opposers the inverse — this feeds the scoreboard weights. supported: Chamath, Friedberg, Sacks | proxy-sensitive: KHC→PARTIAL (+15.8%)
Conviction timeline
bands: green ≥ 65 · watch ≥ 45 · ember ≥ 15
Plays vs SPY · % since first mention (2024-08-16)
Plays
| expression | symbol | kind | relevance | rationale |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ▼ SHORT | KR | stock | PRIMARY | grocer directly in scope of a food price cap - the margin and shortage overhang if enacted |
| ▼ SHORT | KHC | stock | adjacent | Friedberg's named example of a supposed gouger whose numbers show no margin expansion |
| ▼ SHORT | XLP | etf | adjacent | consumer staples complex carries the same policy overhang |
Mention log
Who built this conviction
each voice's total force on the score — supports and opposes from every mention, weighted exactly as the replay applied them · share = % of all mention-driven movement
⏳ decay drained -51.7 over the idea's life — that's time passing, attributed to no one
Score events
| episode | kind | Δ | after | note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| E192 2024-08-16 | init | +35.7 | 35.7 | E192 born by Chamath (explicit_prediction x2) [w=1.02] |
| E192 2024-08-16 | reinforce | +14.5 | 50.3 | E192 Friedberg support x3 (new voice) [w=0.84] |
| E192 2024-08-16 | reinforce | +10.8 | 61.1 | E192 Sacks support x2 (new voice) [w=0.97] |
| E193 2024-08-23 | decay | -2.4 | 58.6 | E193 silent |
| E194 2024-08-30 | decay | -2.3 | 56.3 | E194 silent |
| E195 2024-09-06 | decay | -2.3 | 54.0 | E195 silent |
| E196 2024-09-20 | decay | -2.2 | 51.9 | E196 silent |
| E197 2024-09-27 | decay | -2.1 | 49.8 | E197 silent |
| E198 2024-10-03 | decay | -2.0 | 47.8 | E198 silent |
| E199 2024-10-11 | decay | -1.9 | 45.9 | E199 silent |
| E200 2024-10-18 | decay | -1.8 | 44.1 | E200 silent |
| E201 2024-10-25 | decay | -1.8 | 42.3 | E201 silent |
| E202 2024-11-01 | decay | -1.7 | 40.6 | E202 silent |
| E203 2024-11-08 | decay | -1.6 | 39.0 | E203 silent |
| E204 2024-11-16 | decay | -1.6 | 37.4 | E204 silent |
| E205 2024-11-23 | decay | -1.5 | 35.9 | E205 silent |
| E206 2024-12-07 | decay | -1.4 | 34.5 | E206 silent |
| E207 2024-12-13 | decay | -1.4 | 33.1 | E207 silent |
| E208 2024-12-20 | decay | -1.3 | 31.8 | E208 silent |
| E209 2025-01-04 | decay | -1.3 | 30.5 | E209 silent |
| E210 2025-01-11 | decay | -1.2 | 29.3 | E210 silent |
| E211 2025-01-18 | decay | -1.2 | 28.1 | E211 silent |
| E212 2025-01-25 | decay | -1.1 | 27.0 | E212 silent |
| E213 2025-01-31 | decay | -1.1 | 25.9 | E213 silent |
| E214 2025-02-07 | decay | -1.0 | 24.9 | E214 silent |
| E215 2025-02-15 | decay | -1.0 | 23.9 | E215 silent |
| E216 2025-02-21 | decay | -1.0 | 22.9 | E216 silent |
| E217 2025-03-01 | decay | -0.9 | 22.0 | E217 silent |
| E218 2025-03-08 | decay | -0.9 | 21.1 | E218 silent |
| E219 2025-03-15 | decay | -0.8 | 20.3 | E219 silent |
| E220 2025-03-22 | decay | -0.8 | 19.5 | E220 silent |
| E221 2025-03-29 | decay | -0.8 | 18.7 | E221 silent |
| E222 2025-04-05 | decay | -0.7 | 17.9 | E222 silent |
| E223 2025-04-11 | decay | -0.7 | 17.2 | E223 silent |
| E224 2025-04-19 | decay | -0.7 | 16.5 | E224 silent |
| E225 2025-04-26 | decay | -0.7 | 15.9 | E225 silent |
| E226 2025-05-02 | decay | -0.6 | 15.2 | E226 silent |
| E227 2025-05-09 | decay | -0.6 | 14.6 | E227 silent |
| E228 2025-05-17 | decay | -0.6 | 14.0 | E228 silent |
| E229 2025-05-24 | decay | -0.6 | 13.5 | E229 silent |
| E231 2025-06-13 | decay | -0.5 | 12.9 | E231 silent |
| E232 2025-06-21 | decay | -0.5 | 12.4 | E232 silent |
| E233 2025-06-28 | decay | -0.5 | 11.9 | E233 silent |
| E234 2025-07-04 | decay | -0.5 | 11.5 | E234 silent |
| E235 2025-07-11 | decay | -0.5 | 11.0 | E235 silent |
| E236 2025-07-19 | decay | -0.4 | 10.6 | E236 silent |
| E237 2025-08-01 | decay | -0.4 | 10.1 | E237 silent |
| E238 2025-08-09 | decay | -0.4 | 9.7 | E238 silent |
| E239 2025-08-15 | decay | -0.4 | 9.3 | E239 silent |