The secret to Y'all St. (and Europe's fade)

The special ingredients behind enduring success (and slow, crippling failure)

• Y’all St. rising

• What’s the real secret behind Texas’ success?

• Data centers . . . if you build them, they will come

• Twilight of an empire. Draghi opines on the Big Sleep of Europe

---

👉👉👉Reminder to sign up for the Weekly Recap only, if daily emails is too much. Find me on twitter, for more fun. 

The secret to Y’all Street (and Europe’s fade)

Sometimes I see a chart and my reaction is, “wait, what?”

Y’all St. rising

This is one of those charts:

Daily Upside/BLS

Texas has overtaken New York as the state with the most finance jobs.

That’s a pretty surprising fact.

I mean, sure, Texas has been rising as a regional economic power for a while now. A huge influx of people and businesses accelerated during the pandemic, and Texas’s already bright prospects got even brighter.

Texas isn’t just a one-trick oil pony either—major tech companies (and minor ones), hedge funds, and other big cos have migrated to Texas, as they flee the increasingly backwards and uncivilized incumbents. Plus, talent and commerce tend to be mutually reinforcing—the more you have, the more get.

That all being said, flows are very different from stocks.

Texas might be up-and-coming—it’s even got a new moniker, “Y’all Street” and an exchange on the way—but when it comes to finance, New York is still the world leader by far. So, it was pretty surprising to see that Texas not only has the most impressive flows, but its stock of finance jobs was the biggest too.

“Oh come on Random Walk, it’s just back office.”¹

Well, no, it’s not just back office, but surely that’s at least part of the story. But really the rest of story is much more interesting.

This for example, is not a back office kind of arrival:

The Real Deal

This is the virtuous cycle of talent and commerce begetting talent and commerce:

Nvidia is looking to expand its presence in the Austin metro area with a 300,000-square-foot office lease, a move that would fivefold the company’s footprint of 57,000 square feet . . .

Nvidia’s search for a larger space in Austin aligns with a broader trend of tech companies expanding in the region, a positive signal for the city’s office market, which has faced record vacancies this year. 

IBM, led by CEO Arvind Krishna, is set to take over a 320,000-square-foot building in the Domain that was previously leased to Meta Platforms. Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s X is also looking for office space in the area. 

Nvidia’s move could further solidify Austin’s status as a growing hub for AI innovation and tech expansion.

If Nvidia secures this new office space, it would also strengthen its presence near Round Rock-based Dell Technologies, a key strategic partner. The companies have built a close alliance, with Dell leveraging Nvidia’s AI-optimized servers for its infrastructure solutions. The partnership also includes plans for constructing an AI factory.

Nvidia begets Dell, which begets AI factories, which . . . you get the idea.

So it’s not just back office.

If you build data centers, they will come

I mean, while Texas is busily recruiting Nvidia, Elon, and IBM, look at what Northern California is doing.

Tech needs data centers. Northern California is the center of tech. So how many data centers did Northern California add last year?