Wednesday Night Links

• The world has been noisy recently. Geopolitical conflict, shipping disruptions, tariff fights. I don't know how those will resolve. What I do know is that we paid off our bank revolver last month and have only $14 million of debt outstanding. Barring something unforeseen, we intend to raise distribution significantly in November. Coal, both metallurgical and thermal, has settled down and shown modest improvement off the lows, although I can't point to any single event that's likely to push prices sharply higher from here. We're not in the business of predicting commodity prices anyway. What matters more is that our mineral rights segment just keeps doing what it's done for years, producing cash, rain or shine. Through every major coal cycle, it has been the most dependable cash generator we've ever owned. [Craig Nunez]
• "NRP generated $42 million of free cash flow in the second quarter of 2026 and $163 million of free cash flow over the last twelve months before accounting for the $39 million investment we made in our soda ash business in the first quarter of 2026," said Craig Nunez, NRP's president and chief operating officer. "We are on track to pay off all debt and significantly raise distributions before year-end.” [Natural Resource Partners L.P.] 
• The bottom line is that Washington, fearing the consequences for US financial markets, is reluctant to see foreign central banks use their dollar reserves. This is telling us that the dollar is not the attractive reserve currency it once was. When this message sinks in, other countries will redouble their search for more attractive, readily usable alternatives. Reserve diversification is apt to gather steam. [FT] 
• Before 2021, TPL was structured as a trust — that was, until activist shareholders Eric Oliver (SoftVest L.P.) and Horizon Kinetics got involved in modernizing TPL. While Texas Pacific’s unique trust structure granted it more flexibility than the three names listed above, it still had significant drawbacks that were ultimately remedied when it converted to a C corp. In May 2026, Oliver took action again, this time seeking to amend the structure of Permian Basin Royalty Trust through a merger with Blackbeard Holding’s US Land Guild. This transaction, if approved, creates an entity similar to TPL and would crucially restructure the Trust’s net profit royalties into 15% revenue royalties and also allow the new C corp to repurchase units and acquire new properties. [Athelas Research]
• When a workman is unceasingly and exclusively engaged in the fabrication of one thing, he ultimately does his work with singular dexterity; but at the same time he loses the general faculty of applying his mind to the direction of the work. He every day becomes more adroit and less industrious; so that it may be said of him, that in proportion as the workman improves the man is degraded. What can be expected of a man who has spent twenty years of his life in making heads for pins? [Alexis de Tocqueville]
• At lunch as in business, Nelson Peltz makes his preferences known. Sweeping past the row of pink bougainvillea into Trevini in Palm Beach, the octogenarian activist investor and father-in-law of Brooklyn Beckham greets me, then turns to the waiter: “Can you turn the music down? We have important stuff to talk about.” It’s the proprietor’s prerogative — Peltz’s 19-year-old investment firm, Trian Partners, owns the building and the Italian restaurant is their de facto canteen. Soon the elevator-style music quietens down and we settle at our table on the outdoor terrace. [FT]
• When the week began, Leopold Aschenbrenner was preparing for his wedding. The plan was for a multiday celebration in Carmel, a seaside town in Northern California, with the ceremony at a Tuscan-style villa and the send-off at a spa in the forest. There would also be a pre-wedding colloquium to discuss ideas in panels and breakout sessions. [WSJ]
• “The first half of 2026 was the strongest in CME Group's history,” said CME Group Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Terry Duffy. "We delivered record H1 performance across revenue, adjusted operating income, adjusted net income and adjusted earnings per share, all of which were powered by record trading in Q1 and our second-highest Q2 volumes ever. [CME Group Inc.] 
• PrairieSky, the subject of one of the roundtable topic questions, is a land and royalty company that has done just that. In the 12 years since its IPO, even while more than tripling its acreage from 5 million to 18 million acres, it managed to double its acres per share. That’s about 6% annually, in addition to whatever revenue and earnings growth it managed to achieve. That astoundingly large and largely unexploited land portfolio, which sprawls along a roughly 750-mile axis across three Canadian provinces, gives PrairieSky the advantage of not having to reinvest profits in additional royalty contracts. Its large cash flow budget is fully available to pay dividends, repurchase shares, and make expansion-type land acquisitions. That consistently applied capital allocation plan by an executive team that requires of itself to, within three years of appointment, make cash purchases of enough PrairieSky stock to be worth 2x to 5x their salary. This is separate from their direct stock-based compensation. It is a strategy toward ensuring itself of a very long stretch of financial compounding possibilities. Those of us gathered here happen to know that it’s possible to own land in the public sphere, even though this largest of all physical resources is not even listed as a sector in the equity indexes. That was the idea—land, not oil—in the original buy recommendation for Texas Pacific Land Trust over 30 years ago: to own the internal, frictionless compounding benefits of share repurchases to increase the per-share acres held. [Horizon Kinetics]
• Many of us will remember when we first read Syme’s Roman Revolution. In my case it was largely in a Cardiff suburban back-garden during the summer of 1969: I still have that battered copy, together with my intrigued and not very insightful student comments in the margin. I have often re-read it since, but nothing compares with the initial impact made by that first reading. I had never read any prose quite like it before. [Chris Pelling]