Record Highs, Negative Gas Prices, and the Discipline Dividend

Host Richard Cunningham sits down with co-host Luke Roush and returning guest Jordan Strebeck of Fortress Energy Partners for a conversation that starts at the S&P 500's all-time high and ends at a Permian Basin wellhead where operators are paying to get rid of their own natural gas.

The numbers alone are worth the listen: four hyperscalers on pace for more than $700 billion in AI infrastructure spending this year, an IPO market that just absorbed the world's largest offering, and a global oil supply chain that's quietly burned through 400 million barrels of inventory since February. Jordan brings the view from the ground in Midland, Texas — where the domestic shale industry is showing more capital discipline than anyone expected, even as Middle East conflict keeps rewriting the energy math in real time.

Key Topics:

• Markets hitting record highs despite tariffs, an unresolved Middle East conflict, and zero rate cuts in 2026
• The AI CapEx arms race: how Wall Street is starting to separate real cash-flow return from spend for spend's sake
• What SpaceX's blockbuster IPO signals for Anthropic and the rest of the 2026 IPO pipeline
• 1,500 unicorns and counting — why so many private companies are stuck waiting to go public
• Inside the Permian Basin: negative natural gas prices, the AI power crunch, and why the U.S. needs more of everything — nuclear, gas, solar, and wind
• What 400 million barrels of drawn-down global oil inventory means for prices over the next five years
• A closing word on presence, parenting, and what it means to steward the time we're given

This episode is a masterclass in reading past the headline number — whether that's an index level, an IPO valuation, or a barrel price — to the stewardship question underneath it. For faith-driven investors trying to separate signal from noise in a genuinely strange market, this is a conversation worth sitting with.

Watch the full episode on YouTube or continue to stream audio on your favorite podcast platform.

Host Richard Cunningham welcomes co-host John Coleman for July's Marks on the Market, joined by two veteran venture investors: Phil Jung, who helps lead the venture investing business at Sovereign's Capital, and Mark Phillips, co-founder and managing partner at Eleven Tribes Ventures. The panel digs into a historic first half of 2026 for venture capital, the "barbell" strategy reshaping early-stage investing, and why faith-driven investors need to understand both the opportunity and the constraints of the AI boom.

Phil and Mark bring an early-stage, seed-focused lens shaped by operator-led, vertically focused founders — from wire harnessing to waste management — while John Coleman zooms out to the macro picture: record public market concentration, a $725 billion capex commitment from the hyperscalers, and the possibility that this technological shift could be ten times bigger and ten times faster than the Industrial Revolution. The conversation closes, as always, with reflections on Scripture and what it means to build — and rest — under God's sovereignty in the middle of historic disruption.

Key Topics:

• A record-breaking first half of 2026: $412 billion invested in venture capital, more than all of 2025 combined
• The "barbell" approach to early-stage investing: mega AI valuations on one end, capital-efficient vertical AI solutions on the other
• Why physical products, deep tech, and hard tech are back in vogue after years out of favor
• Constraints on the AI boom investors should watch: capital expenditure limits, energy demands, and regulatory fragmentation
• Token costs, open-source models, and who ultimately controls the data
• Closing reflections from Psalm 127 and John 4 on surrender, weariness, and calling

Notable Quotes:

"It really is an unprecedented venture market in the moment that we have never seen before." - Phil Jung

"Increasingly your software platform, your product is no longer the moat... it's distribution... and then it's integration." - Mark Phillips

"We serve a God who's in control, who's unchanging, who created a universe far more complex than anything we're talking about here." - John Coleman

What if the most freeing financial decision you could make had nothing to do with your portfolio returns?

In this episode, host Justin Forman sits down with John Cortines, co-author of God and Money and True Riches and a generosity leader at the Maclellan Foundation, for a practical, spiritually grounding conversation about generosity, stewardship, and freedom.

John shares how his journey began at Harvard Business School with a banking password that read "retire@40!" and how God used a men's Bible study, serious biblical research, and interviews with radically generous Harvard MBA alumni to completely reframe his understanding of wealth. What emerged wasn't just a new giving percentage. It was a transformation of the heart.

Key Topics Discussed:

• The wrong question most Christian investors ask about money, and the right one
• Financial finish lines: how pre-defining your lifestyle and net worth guardrails creates freedom instead of limiting it
• The four heart conditions that keep investors from true generosity (pride, coveting, anxiety, and indifference) and the gospel transformation for each
• Why effective altruism produces joyless giving, and what makes Christian generosity categorically different
• The rise of professionally managed giving funds, and why John believes they'll become as normal as index funds
• Practical steps for faith-driven investors to move from obligation-based to joy-driven stewardship

Direct Quotes from John Cortines:

"The right question isn't how much do we need to give? It's how much do I really need to keep." — John Cortines

"Giving is actually a source of joy and freedom and purpose in the Christian walk. And it's God's invitation where I can step into playing on his team to accomplish his purposes in the world." — John Cortines

"What if 10, 20, 30 years from now, it was as normal to think about professionally managed giving funds as it is to think about an index fund for stocks today." — John Cortines

Episode Description

John Cortines started his career in oil and gas with a banking password that literally read "retire@40!", a saver's dream encoded into every login. Then Harvard Business School, a men's Bible study, and a deep dive into Scripture dismantled his framework entirely. What he and co-author Greg Baumer uncovered changed not just how much he gave, but why, and the freedom that came with it.

In this episode, John walks through the framework from his books God and Money and True Riches, including the concept of financial finish lines that set guardrails for lifestyle and net worth, and the four heart transformations every steward must navigate: pride to gratitude, coveting to contentment, anxiety to trust, and indifference to love. These aren't abstract theological ideas. They're the architecture behind how faith-driven investors actually hold and deploy capital with joy.

John also shares his vision for the future of generosity: professionally managed giving funds that work alongside traditional portfolio management, bringing the same rigor, governance, and reporting to Kingdom capital that investors already expect from their financial advisors. Recorded live at Kingdom Advisors, this conversation is a call to bring generosity out of the shadows and into the boardroom, and the family table.