Slice public articles

YWR: Hormuz 2030

noreply@slice-app.io (YWR) — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 07:58:46 GMT

In a land of investors with no view. The one eyed CIO with imagination is king. I say that because I’m kind of amazed. I’ve participated in two PM/HNWI/FO best ideas conferences in the last two weeks and listened to over 40 investment professionals stand up and share their best investment ideas on stocks, FX, commodities, economics, technology and macro trends. Both events were fun, with great people, great dinners, and lots of creative ideas. The ideas were great. But I was also interested in the meta game. What are a wide sampling of investment experts comfortable pitching. And what do they not want to pitch. I imagined each of them at some point prior to the event sitting all alone at home thinking of what idea they would present to their peers. Because I had to do that too. What would sound smart? What would sound stupid? Where did they have conviction? Where would they be able to answer questions intelligently? Will people agree with the idea? Or, will I look stupid? The first conference I attended was quite macro with lots of ideas around being long volatility (interest rates and FX), long gold miners, long UK, long EM, long Brazil, long Venezuela, and shorting the S&P. The second group was more futuristic and hyper focused on AI. Although it was not a tech conference the best ideas were bullish memory, bullish compute, advanced manufacturing and space. Like group 1, group 2 was also bullish on gold. All sensible and smart. Don’t get me wrong. But I couldn’t help noticing the two big things nobody at either conference wanted to pitch. Including me. One of them is the most important variable in the world. An obvious thing with the power to derail all other trades. The elephant in the room. The emerging energy crisis. ‘Too Geopolitical’ I want to share one more anecdote, because I think it explains why investors have such a difficult time taking a view on the Price of Energy. Even if the Price of Energy is the most important input to economic activity. I was at a shipping conference in London listening to a private credit analyst talk about his experiences lending to tanker companies. He said it had been easy back in 2013-2016 to lend to tanker companies when the ships traded at 60% of NAV. But currently, everything was ‘too geopolitical’. He didn’t have a view here and wasn’t playing. He would wait 2-3 years for the cycle to turn down again. Not that shipping companies need his money, but the comment was insightful. The sensible MBA graduate was confident to commit tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to a spreadsheet ‘return to the mean’ type trade, but the analysis and conviction broke down completely when it came to analysing political conflict. What would the IRGC do? What would Trump do? He had no idea. Or, just as importantly, I’d say he had no view he was willing to pitch to an investment committee back in Manhattan. No way. Too difficult. There is no Excel spreadsheet or chart which tells you what happens next. We have left the world of spreadsheets and are in the world of religion, history, egos, human nature and game theory. No way he was going to stand up in a boardroom and explain how they were betting hundreds of millions based on his hunch of how a highly religious military might react to a head strong US president who appears irrational and how long shipping rates might stay high. Instead, he conceded that it was all ‘too geopolitical’. Like that’s something we can just choose to ignore. The Energy Crisis issue is wrapped up in politics so the conversations very quickly get political and uncomfortable. I know because I’ve had them. It’s more pleasant to talk about AI. Except, maybe we need to get uncomfortable. In the future when we look back on this time with 20/20 hindsight, will we say the Middle East Energy Crisis was THE most important event which disrupted every other thing and determined everything about asset class performance through that period? Will we say, yes AI was super important over the long-term, but for several years the energy crisis disrupted everything? Is understanding the unfolding Energy Crisis today the same as realising the significance of the housing bubble back in 2007 and how it would ripple through the financial sector and change the world? The Frog in Boiling Water. Guys. I know the Iran-US conflict seems impossible to know and we would prefer to make calls on Memory and Brazil or whatever… but what is happening in the Gulf is freaking massive. Do you remember back to when we used to fuss about OPEC meetings and whether they would cut 100k or 200k barrels? That is so insignificant compared to what is going on now. Iran is blockaded with 2 mn barrels/day offline. 2 million barrels! That in itself if huge. And it’s not an immediate problem, but day by day there is damage to the fields which will take time and work to repair. Then Qatar; the biggest LNG exporter in the world at 20% of global supply, is blocked in and can’t get its LNG ships out. Then Saudi Arabia, the second largest oil exporter in the world is getting its arms pulled apart on both sides. The East West Pipeline is blown up, their refineries are getting attacked and their tankers can only get out of the SOM intermittently. What if Saudi gets completely disabled? Yes, oil and oil products are getting out through trucks, pipelines, and off again on again through the SOH, but we are probably still losing around 6 million bpd of supply which is 6% of global oil supply and maybe 20% of global LNG. But it’s not just the energy effects. This conflict has killed traffic through 2 of the most important shipping chokepoints. We forget about it but the Suez Canal is one of the great shortcuts of the world, and traffic there is down 50%. Ships from Asia to Europe are diverting thousands of extra miles down the coast of Africa, around the Cape of Good Hope and back up to Africa, adding time and expense to everything. The Energy Crisis is not confined to the Middle East either. Russian oil has been sanctioned on and off again since the Ukraine War in 2022. Then you have Ukrainian drones have been taking apart Russian refining capacity forcing it to import diesel from India and Turkey. And like with Iran, there are the gradual, slow burn effects to future oil production when investment is sanctioned. Also looming over the horizon is the effect this conflict will have on fertiliser and food prices if it continues. Governments have been trying to minimise the shock, but it’s been going on longer than everyone expected and the effects are starting ripple through the economy. Diesel prices are through the roof. And like in 2022 broader inflation measures are rising. Long-term interest rates are also moving higher. The Federal Reserve and ECB, which thought they would be cutting rates, have had to reverse course and start raising the policy rate. US house prices have been stable so far, but there are signs of weakness as mortgage rates keep moving higher. Stresses from the Energy Crisis are building. But like a frog in boiling water nobody wants to panic because who knows, the US-Iran War could be resolved anytime. Nobody wants to be the idiot who panicked and went overweight energy stocks the day before the peace deal. Irreconcilable Differences The Iran War has been off again on again since February. There have been talks and agreements. There have been times of relative calm. These fluctuations give us hope the whole problem could go away quickly. But really this conflict has been decades in the making and there are irreconcilable differences between the parties. The US does not trust with a nuclear bomb a military dictatorship who for decades has been burning American flags, bombing embassies and chanting death to America. Sorry. No way. On the other side the IRGC knows the US and Israel want regime change no matter what, and no matter what agreement is signed. They know their only real defence is a nuclear weapon. They want to be untouchable like North Korea. And it gets worse. If getting the US, Israel and the IRGC to sit down at a table and potentially iron out their differences wasn’t hard enough, now we have a side fight breaking out between the Houthis and the Saudis. A side fight which may, or may not drag in Pakistan and Turkey. Yes, there are attempts at talks between everyone, but the escalating missile strikes on cities, airports, ships and political leaders make it hard to put Humpty Dumpty together again. How could it get resolved? A consistent view I hear is that the IRGC is an immovable object fighting for its life and will never give up. The IRGC will never step down and can’t be overthrown from within. The US doesn’t want to put boots on the ground and the Iranian protestors are unarmed and don’t feel like charging the machine gun nest over and over again. There’s always a chance the IRGC dissolves from within and transitions to a more moderate government which the US and Isreal accept, and we get peace. And maybe this happens. Like the fall of the Berlin Wall. But I also reluctantly accept that the IRGC, like an old African dictator, can be good at ruthlessly hanging on to power. Which leads to the conclusion I usually hear that the only way conflict in the Middle East stops is if the US just goes away, or signs an agreement giving Iran what it wants (control of the SOM and development of nuclear weapons). Because, you know, ‘the US has lost already anyways. One possibility is that Trump loses the midterms and a new Congress enacts the War Powers Act, which forces the US military to disengage. This requires the Republicans to lose both the House and the Senate. The War Powers Act might be easier said than done though. The wording of War Powers Act legislation would be tricky in this situation. What exactly would it say? There isn’t a clear war. Would it say the US Navy can’t enforce sanctions on Iranian oil by blockading Iranian tankers outside the SOH? Would it say the US Navy can’t protect freedom of navigation in the SOH? There would have to be clear language which both the House and Senate could agree upon and they never seem to agree on anything. Historically it has been a tricky piece of legislation. Presidents have notified Congress of US military engagement as stipulated by the War Powers Act, but the act has never forced the removal of the US military from a conflict. Altogether, it might be wishful thinking that Trump loses both the House and Senate and then Congress passes legislation which forces the US military to leave the Persian Gulf. Some would argue Trump might support the process and actually be relieved to capitulate. He could say his hands were tied and get out of this mess. Possibly. Then on the other hand is the theory that to some extent conflict in the Middle East is good for the US and US energy dominance. Maybe Trump likes the status quo. It’s relatively stable. No US ships are getting attacked. No sailors are dying. Meanwhile, he and Bessent quietly choke Iran to death. Inconsistency of Middle East energy also keeps China on the back foot. We can go round and round on what Trump thinks, but it gets more complicated than Trump and the IRGC. We also have the Israelis, Houthis and Saudis. The Israelis will fight the IRGC to the end. They remember everything and will not be done until the IRGC is gone. And I don’t know how you put the Saudi-Houthi fight back in a bottle. The Houthi-Saudi conflict could shake Saudi to its very foundations, which would be a whole new chapter in the future history books. Then one other thing worth mentioning which thankfully hasn’t happened yet. Turkey and Israel are not happy with each other and have come close to blows in Syria. I used to play ice hockey in high school. When it had been a particularly rough game and fights broke out the referees could handle maybe 1-2 fights on the ice at any one time. But if it got to three fights at the same time things would get out of control and sometimes ended in a bench clearing brawl. We are in that 1-2 fight inflection zone now. More than 2 fights and it gets exponentially harder to solve. Messina, Sparta and the Three Hundred Year War. The first conference I told you about was in Greece. It was lots of fun and one of our side excursions, when we weren’t talking about FX vol, was a tour of the local Greek ruins. Our guide, a local Greek school teacher, walked us around the ruins while casually explaining the various wars which had ravaged the temples. She explained how the cities of Messina and Sparta had fought for centuries. As in “They fought between the 5th and 8th century BC”. It hit me how unimaginable it would be to have a ‘hundred year war’ in our day and age. We can’t believe the conflict in the Middle East has gone on for 8 months. Then listening to Greeks casually talk about hundreds of years of war, you wonder if our perspective of what is possible is highly influenced by an 80 year period of relative calm. Are we more intelligent and civilised now, so long wars don’t happen any more? The recent track record is that they don’t, Or can big, nasty multi-year, even multi-decade wars still happen? As they have in the past. Do drones and robots and precision missiles make it more likely that we have lower intensity, but longer lasting wars because fewer human casualties are involved? Maybe the current conflict gets resolved in December after the mid-terms. Or maybe in 2028 when a new president is elected. Or maybe it goes on to 2030. Or 2130. It’s hard to know. But we have to accept the off-ramps are hard to see right now. Which is why I titled this Hormuz 2030. And the risk is the title looks really foolish next week. But the idea is to expand our imagination on where this could be going and how long it could last. $200 Oil There is another reason investors don’t discuss the rise in oil prices, besides that the fact that it’s touchy to talk about the Middle East. It’s because most are structurally bearish. Oil is a dirty boomer fuel. A relic of the past. It will be like whale oil. Autonomous cars and robots don’t run on Brent Crude. The bearish view is oil would be $65 if it weren’t for the conflict with Iran. “You oil bulls got your dream event, a war in the Middle East and oil still can’t stay consistently above $100/barrel. That tells you how broken it is. It’s in a structural bear market” The futures curve confirms this with 2030 oil futures at $65 and 2037 at $55. The futures market says the outlook for oil is slow death. At this point there are two rebuttals I might make to the oil bears You were saying all the same things at $65/barrel and are saying them again at $95…..so…. As for not holding $100 despite all the conflict… let’s give it time. We’ve had an unprecedented draw down of global inventories to keep oil below $100. But that is a short-term solution. And it’s really ironic, or predictable, that Biden reduced the SPR a few years before we got the exact event it was created decades ago to cushion. Either this conflict ends soon or we are going much higher. But I’m not going to say any of that. Because I want to make a different point. This isn’t all about supply. There is a demand side too. We focus on the EV’s and renewables in developed markets, but we never step back and appreciate the hundreds of millions of emerging consumers entering the market place who need a lot of energy and are probably not going to plug an EV into their unreliable electricity grid. I agree EV’s are a headwind to oil price, but possibly we have the relative magnitudes wrong. Do you remember the last commodity boom which started in 2002 and why it happened? It kicked off because 1 billion Chinese started consuming while the mining and energy industry didn’t see it coming and wasn’t ready for it. So prices squeezed higher for years before supply could react. Well guess what? 1.3 billion Indians just did the same thing. GDP per capita in India has been going vertical and has crossed $2,500. In today’s $’s this is that same inflection point China hit in 2002. And like last time nobody is ready for it or talking about it. We are all focused on EV’s and the weak Chinese economy, but nobody is talking about 1.3 billion Indians. Or for that matter 1.4 billion Africans. For years the IEA did an amazing job of brainwashing the world that hydrocarbon demand was going to decline, not grow through 2050. And everyone bought into it. The energy industry, particularly the European oil majors, set modest targets for production growth. They reduced exploration, reduced drilling and reduced growth capex. BP, Shell and Total shifted a portion of their capex budget to renewables and away from hydrocarbons. This bullish EM demand story which the industry doesn’t see coming is why I was pitching $200 oil last year before the Middle East problems even started. Link to: Why $200 Oil Pops the Bubble. Where do we go from here? I’m going to take a stab at how this plays out across asset classes. It’s hard to do, but I think you have to. And maybe it helps. Sometimes it helps to have a guy like me plant a crazy idea out there that we could have a multi-year energy crisis unfolding. Then you can discuss it objectively at your IC’s without the reputational risk of being the one who came up with the idea if everyone thinks it’s ridiculous. Also this is not financial advice and has a high chance of being wrong. Oil Prices I’m sounding the alarm because from here on out if this doesn’t get resolved energy prices are going to start to bite. China and the US have done a lot to alleviate the problem so far by running down inventories. If the problem persists for months (or years) the world will have to adjust to the actual run rate of available oil. Prices will move higher. The next move up will be to $120-130 (in the paper market). I know we are already there in the physical market. While $130 crude oil prices (in the futures market) will be increasingly painful, my unscientific view is this will not crash the global economy, even considering record refining margins on top. Energy as a share of GDP/capita has been declining for the G7. 20% higher energy prices sounds negative, but it’s become a smaller and smaller slice of the consumption basket. Another $50/month at the pump isn’t fun, but things don’t grind to a halt. It also takes time for energy prices to filter into slower moving prices such as rent and mortgage payments. It’s why it’s going to take a substantial move in oil prices, like a move to $200, in order to derail things. Another reassuring sign for global growth is that so far emerging market currencies and inflation have been surprisingly well behaved. The EM’s have been managing the energy crisis well up to this point. Relationship between Demand and Price A word on high prices killing energy demand, because that’s a common view. Oil prices won’t go higher and could actually fall because higher oil prices will kill demand. Oil price may go up, but then they will go down. An economist would say a supply shock, which is what we are experiencing, shifts the supply curve to the left. After the shock there is a lower quantity (Q) of oil available at every price point (P) compared with before. This shift creates a new equilibrium point where the demand (line going top left to bottom right) and supply (lines going bottom left to top right) intersect. This new equilibrium point has both lower quantity and higher prices compared with before the shift. Which fits what we see currently. Yes, there is less oil available for consumption, demand has been ‘killed’, but with higher prices. The real-life picture can get more complicated than this 1 stage Supply-Demand model. Where the bears can be right is if central banks decide they want to fix high oil prices by raising interest rates. Then the Demand Curve shifts left and the new equilibrium point is further to the left. Meaning even less quantity. Depending on the relative slopes of the demand and supply curves prices end up lower than after the shock, but maybe still higher than before the shock. The Energy Crisis is a tricky one for the central banks. It puts them in a difficult position. Same as with Covid. It’s a supply shock, not an overheating economy. And central banks realise they should not be making matters worse trying to fix a supply shock with higher interest rates. But then on the other hand the inflation readings are out of hand and they feel they need to do something. US Equities and S&P $10,000 Like I said above. I don’t see $130 oil crashing the world economy or the US economy. I think US stocks can still go higher, for now.

YWR: Why the Pessimism May Be Missing the Bigger Picture

noreply@slice-app.io (YWR) — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 05:02:12 GMT

Another guest post from ‘Tell it like it is’ at Targeted Equity Consulting. Investor sentiment remains remarkably negative. The list of concerns is long: recession fears, higher interest rates, oil prices, a K-shaped economy, dollar strength, the Iran conflict, the Russia-Ukraine war, and persistent warnings that AI and equities are in a bubble. Taken together, there is certainly enough uncertainty to keep investors awake at night. Yet markets and economic fundamentals continue to show considerably more resilience than the prevailing narrative would suggest. Positioning is crowded, not just cautious This is not merely pessimism as an attitude — it is pessimism as a position. CFTC data compiled by Goldman Sachs show leveraged-fund short exposure in Nasdaq-100 futures surging toward roughly $80 billion, while longs have held near $20–25 billion. The resulting net short of about –$60 billion was the most negative reading in several years. That crowding is a contrarian setup: if the tape keeps rising, short covering becomes fuel. One timing caveat belongs in the note. The most extreme net short was concentrated in August; by late September it had moderated — CFTC data show leveraged funds net short roughly 31,000 contracts on September 22 versus about 62,000 on August 18 — even as gross shorts remained elevated. Pessimism is still elevated. The single most stretched reading has already started to unwind. The consumer story is uneven, not broken For years the rule of thumb was that housing drives the cycle. That linkage looks weaker now. There are legitimate reasons to be cautious on the lower-income consumer, where higher rates and affordability constraints bite hardest. But the recession thesis requires the whole consumer to be impaired, and the aggregate balance sheet does not support that. Household deposits and currency stand at about $5.43 trillion — only 0.9% below the recent peak, far above the pre-pandemic level. The cash stock built in 2020–22 has not been drawn down in any meaningful way. Money-market assets have surged from roughly $3 trillion before the pandemic to more than $8.4 trillion. Total household assets are about $206 trillion, up 6.6% and at a record, with household net worth approaching $186 trillion (+7.2%). That changes the transmission mechanism of higher interest rates, which are almost universally discussed as a pure negative. They clearly hurt borrowers. But households holding trillions in cash,money-market funds, and fixed-income assets are earning substantially more interest income — at a 4% yield, $8.4 trillion in money markets alone represents roughly $336 billion of annualized income. The result is the K-shaped economy in action: higher rates squeeze the indebted end while transferring income to savers. Aggregate household balance sheets remain near record strength. Geopolitical narratives have run ahead of outcomes Oil is a useful example of how the narrative can outrun reality. Despite repeated claims that the Iran conflict and the Russia-Ukraine war would leave the world short of supply, oil has not delivered the sustained spike the bears expected. This echoes the earlier claim that the war would destroy the global breadbasket and produce lasting food shortages. In both cases the risks were legitimate, but markets adapted — through substitution, new supply, changing trade routes, and higher production elsewhere. A supply shock does not automatically produce the worst-case outcome, because prices themselves create incentives for the world to adapt. The AI “bubble” deserves the most scrutiny I have worked through the dot-com bubble, the China construction boom, and the U.S. housing bubble. Those episodes shared a defining characteristic: capacity was built dramatically ahead of actual demand. Fiber was laid that went unused. Homes were built for buyers who did not exist. China built enormous property and infrastructure in anticipation of future demand. When demand failed to arrive quickly enough, excess capacity sat idle — in some cases for decades. That is not an accurate description of AI today. The distinction is the relationship between capacity and economically productive demand — not the absolute amount of money being spent. Leading-edge compute capacity is not being constructed to sit idle. Demand is already here: hyperscalers are racing to secure GPUs, networking, memory, power, and data-center capacity, and newly deployed capacity is being absorbed as it is built. The useful life of the infrastructure may be shortening, not lengthening, because each generation of chips, models, and networking materially improves the economics of the last. More importantly, AI investment has evolved beyond a conventional capital-spending cycle into a global strategic arms race. Leadership in AI could confer enormous advantages in productivity, scientific discovery, financial markets, cybersecurity, autonomous systems, and military capability. Nearly every Magnificent 7 CEO has framed falling behind as an existential threat. If management genuinely believes that, slowing spending simply because the numbers look historically large is not rational strategy. The question is the cost of over investing versus the cost of allowing a competitor to achieve a decisive advantage — and for companies with enormous balance sheets and cash flows, the second risk may be considerably larger. Rapid obsolescence, which would normally argue for delaying investment, actually encourages more of it here. If a competitor deploys the next generation of models and infrastructure and achieves dramatically better economics, no one can afford to sit on the previous generation for a decade. And the applications are advancing visibly — from increasingly capable agents and products like Meta’s emerging AI tools and glasses to the longer pipeline of autonomous vehicles, robotics, and humanoid systems. We are still discovering what this infrastructure will support. None of this means every AI company is undervalued, that spending cannot overshoot, or that recession is impossible. There will be failed projects, overbuilt capacity, and valuations that cannot be justified. But there is a difference between identifying individual excesses and declaring the entire cycle a bubble. The bottom line Consider what the bearish case requires: a consumer collapse contradicted by $206 trillion in household assets and $5.4 trillion still sitting in deposits and currency, an oil shock that has repeatedly failed to materialize, a capacity bubble in AI where capacity is being absorbed rather than idled — and investor positioning that was already at historic extremes in August and has since begun to cover. The risks are real, and they are widely discussed. But they are also increasingly reflected in expectations and in portfolios. The market does not need all of today’s concerns to disappear. It only needs growth, earnings, and AI demand to turn out better than what increasingly bearish expectations have already discounted. A guest post by David Quinn 25 years plus of professional financial services experience.

Sailing into a gathering storm

noreply@slice-app.io (Alex Krainer) — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 15:56:50 GMT

The world is in a once-in-a-lifetime transition that could toss investors across rough seas into uncharted territories - environments for which we have no precedent within the lifetimes of most investors. Through 2020, our "normal" was defined by a 30-year trend of falling interest rates and rising bond prices, low commodity prices (including silver and gold) and relative stability in the geopolitical environment. All this started to disintegrate over the last five years or so, starting with the Covid 19 pandemic, and continuing with US withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 and the onset of Russia-Ukraine war in February 2022. Then we hit another inflection point this year when the United States and Israel launched the war against Iran. The chart below shows clearly the way geopolitical events influenced global capital markets. It strongly suggests that we'll experience much more turbulence is up ahead. Trend following to the rescue So, how should investors navigate the coming changes and the volatility of conditions we have never experienced before? My strong recommendation is that investors should adopt trend following to guide their forward-looking investment decisions. The particular approach I have developed during my nearly 30-year career as an active participant in financial and commodity markets is called, I-System Trend Following. Our objective is the strategic, disciplined management of investment portfolios. It is based on the following twin hypotheses (with links to articles where each is hypothesis elaborated in more detail): Large-scale price events (LSPEs) are far and away the most powerful drivers of investment performance , Systematic trend following is the most reliable way to capture value from trends . LSPEs invariably unfold as trends that can span weeks, months, or even years, but their onset, duration and magnitude is never predictable. Trends are seldom so obvious that we can take a position in some asset and have confidence that our trade will be profitable. Most investors attempt to catch such profits by analyzing market supply and demand fundamentals. But most investors also lose money in this way. LSPE's, by definition, are unpredictable and market fundamentals can't help us formulate reliable predictions. Taking different, exciting approach on Slice! I've written about trading, portfolio management and trend following on my blog, TrendCompass newsletters and on Substack, but here on Slice we'll take another, more direct approach. We'll balance an overview of the investment universe - the external reality - with concrete tactical trades and investments that appear to make sense at the moment. We'll anayze individual markets like gold, copper, crude oil, natural gas, coffee, cocoa, soybeans, wheat, or FX pairs and explore potential trades with the benefit of my 30-year experience in these markets, and in a way I haven't yet shared on any other platform. We'll look at trading opportunities as they emerge, discuss them directly and occasionally put on directional trades and track their performance. We'll also cover what you need to learn in order to trade in many diverse markets even if you've no experience with them so far. Believe me, it's no rocket science - though it does require learning how to manage risk, and how to exercise discipline and patience. Join me and consider subscribing for this exciting learning adventure. It could also turn out to be profitable for the long haul. If you do, welcome aboard. The adventure begins on Wednesday, 7 October 2026.

Monday Open - Weekly Market Update - October 5

noreply@slice-app.io (CryptoJelleNL) — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 10:18:35 GMT

Good morning & happy new week! Bitcoin added further confidence to the 'new bull market' thesis, locking in a monthly breakout at the turn of the month. This means Bitcoin rolls into Q4 with a weekly break in market structure, a confirmed weekly breakout, and a monthly breakout too. A lot of good signs, but at the same time, still very early stages - which means its the season to prepare ourselves for whats to come. And that's exactly what we've been doing. I've spent the past months detailing my entry strategy, which reached a climax last week - where I deployed a larger chunk of capital in one go after Bitcoin's confirmed weekly market structure break/breakout. From there, my plan is simple; wait for the next higher low to form. I have no idea when and/or where it happens, but I'll be ready. I've also discussed the accumulation of various altcoin positions, which primarily serve the purpose of eventually ending up with even more precious Bitcoin. In essence, I've finished up most of my preparatory work for the cycle ahead, which means I'm shifting back to a more passive approach to the market: sitting on my hands. As you can tell by now, that 'doing nothing' part of my strategy is the part that I spend the absolute majority of my time doing. There are windows of opportunity where I'm either getting in and out of the market, and in between those times, I make as little moves as possible, while slowly designing the plans for the years ahead. The primary task that is still at hand is in the land of Altcoins. Many of these coins are likely never making new all-time highs again, but there are charts showing great promise. You know my bags already, but this week two of those bags have interesting events on the agenda. Both HYPE & ENA have major unlocks coming as early as today (ENA) and tomorrow (HYPE). Usually unlocks make for a good dip (to buy) - so that's what I'm watching for this week as well - primarily on ENA. HYPE is a position I'm already in thick profit on, so just letting it ride - but if I get another opportunity to scoop more ENA on the cheap, I'll take it. The team teased a major announcement yesterday on Twitter (posting the cryptographic hash) as well, so whichever way this goes, I'm expecting volatility. As said, if that means opportunity on ENA, bring it on. All in all, I'm still looking for some more opportunities to allocate capital to. Keeping a close eye on AR (Arweave) to see if it can't reclaim the white box to form a similar setup to ENA. No position yet - just keeping a close eye on it. If it gives a good setup, I'll take on a position; and if not, I'm happy with my current exposure, ready to get this cycle on the road. Time for my favourite part of the crypto bull market: doing nothing, watching my net worth climb higher. Hope you guys are feeling just as ready for it as I do. Will keep you in the loop on any moves I make as always. Eyes on HYPE, ENA & AR primarily - letting the rest do its thing in the background. See you around!

$AVGO - THE LONG HOLD Why Broadcom Is the Next Core Position

noreply@slice-app.io (InvestmentGuru) — Sat, 26 Sep 2026 13:48:57 GMT

Broadcom is no longer a diversified chip company with an AI kicker — it is the toll booth on custom Al silicon and Al networking, with a software annuity attached. AI semiconductor revenue is tripling, the order book...

YWR: An Elysium Trade on Sale

noreply@slice-app.io (YWR) — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 20:50:46 GMT

We are all worried about Dubai crashing right now. But it might be the opposite. Demand for Dubai real estate might be infinite. Why do I say that in the midst of war in the Middle East? Two reasons. #1 People are losing patience with taxation in the West. When you think about all the ways you get taxed from birth to death, you almost wonder what’s the point. It seems it’s designed to allow you to make a little bit of income, but not get rich. Let’s say you are working a job in the UK. Any income over £50,000 is taxed at 40%. Then around £100,000 there is a weird transition point above which the earlier £12,500 tax free income gets reversed and you are paying 60% tax on incremental income. After you’ve paid 45% to the government on your income let’s assume you invest it in some stocks. Let’s say these shares which you invested in (with post-tax money) pay you a dividend. Now that dividend gets taxed at 35%. Then you sell those shares and pay a 24% tax on the gain. Why does the government get a double dip on your investment income? They already hit it the first time when you earned it, so why are they hitting it again after you invested it? Let’s also not forget the sales taxes and VAT’s all day long. Or the ‘congestion charge’ or the ‘ultra low emission zone charge’ or the growing 20 mph speed limit zones with speed cameras. Do you know how hard it is to drive under 20 mph? It’s constant annoying harassment to not have a car for the sake of the environment. Now say you go one like this all your life, a tax donkey, and manage to save over £325,000, but then you die. After the funeral service is over the UK government will take 40% of everything over £325,000. Yes, another 40% swipe after you die. ‘Thank you for your energy and hard work. You will be missed.’ 60% of everything you ever made your entire life went to a mindless entity which doesn’t care about you or listen to you. As long as you are happy to earn less than £50,000/year and don’t try to accumulate more than £325,000 over your entire life you are fine. Try to accumulate wealth and you instantly run into in quick sand. It’s what Michael Green calls the Valley of Death . But that’s not enough. It never is. The new Labor government wants to lower the starting valuation point for the ‘mansion tax’ from £2mn to £1.5mn. In London there are a lot of houses you would not consider ‘mansions’ which cost £1.5 million. That really starts to cut into upper middle class. This is on top of an earlier decision that parents should pay 20% VAT (sales tax) on private school fees. Ouch. You can try to be clever and set up a company, own shares in it and pay yourself a dividend, but it all works out the same. Roughly 50% of what you make, no matter which way, goes to the government in round one. With repeated 30% slices thereafter for the rest of your life until you die. That’s the one end of the burning candle. Then the other of the candle is what you get for your 50% pound of flesh. There are some really good public schools in the UK, but it’s getting harder and harder to get into them. There is a large allocation to international students and disproportionate admissions for low income students. If you are middle of the road income and not ‘diverse’ your odds are poor. ‘I’ve heard Durham is a good school’… I’d say the healthcare system is pretty good, but I have to caveat that I’ve never had an emergency and I’m not old. So it’s been easy clinic type stuff. There also isn’t really any new infrastructure to point to. Maybe a new tube line every 20 years. Basically, it’s all old and quaint. Maybe there are new roads somewhere, but you get taxed every time you move your car so what’s the point? So you put your head down and push on because others before you have made it. Surely, there will be light on the other side of the Valley of Death. Bothering you though is this increasing discussion of wealth taxes. Taxes on the value of assets as well as income. Across Europe, the UK and the US it’s a trend. The Netherlands already went ahead with it. You think you have it figured, out how to accumulate some wealth by owning stocks and not selling them, but then they come and tax that too. It’s bothersome because it signals you may never come out the other side. You are tax slave. You are a slave who is supposed to be grateful for what you have and not complain about how much you are getting squeezed because of ‘those less fortunate than you’. Except, every now and then you get a glimpse of how the guilt trip around ‘those less fortunate than you’ is full of fraud and scams. You are supposed to not mind the wealth taxes because politicians promise it will only be the 0.1%, and that it’s not you they are targeting (yet). But it’s always the ‘thin end of the wedge’ as they say. Because wealth tax enforcement starts with reporting. Everyone needs to report their entire net worth; all assets, not just income. Fill out the form. How much is your house worth. How much is your stock portfolio worth? Do you own any art? List all your properties. Then when the tax authorities have the full picture they can review the data and decide the exact amount you owe. Today it’s the 0.1%. Tomorrow it’s the top 10%. Or, tomorrow it’s high rate for the top 10% and a ‘reasonable’ rate for you. It never stops. Thank you tax donkey. I’m sorry for complaining. I’m trying to communicate a theme. A frustration which is building. Across the world, one by one; in the US, the UK, and Europe the middle, upper class and wealthy realise the system is not fair. There is no appreciation for the disproportionate contribution they are making to the tax bill. Instead it is non-stop attack and criticism that it isn’t enough. And things are likely to get worse. A growing concern for the upper middle class that the door might be closing on them. And after the door closes they slowly get ground to dust. Like Boxer the horse. They realise they need to make a plan and get going now. Any goal to accumulate substantial wealth is going to have to involve a low tax jurisdiction strategy. Low-tax jurisdictions are not just for the super rich anymore. It’s an upper middle class need as well. And you need to start now. Dr Ben Tippet’s UK wealth tax proposal (above) will be enforced 10 years after you leave the UK. This problem of too much debt, a narrow tax base which gets squeezed, is a global trend. There are millions of wealthy people across the Europe, the UK and the US who will realise they need to start the process of building up activity and residence in a low tax jurisdiction. Hong Kong, Singapore, Monaco, Puerto Rico, Cayman Islands, and Dubai are all going to benefit. But, in my view, only Dubai can handle the volume which will be involved. Dubai is a 5 million person city which could be going to 10 million. A new London. This is reason #1 Dubai is going to go supersonic. Reason #2: Dubai is becoming cool. I’ve been going to Dubai for 20 years. My first visit was in 2007 right before the huge property crash. They were still building the Burj Khalifa (Dubai). We were investing in a new Dubai futures exchange (DGCX). I remember visiting Jumeriah Lake Towers when 84 towers were under construction at the same time. To my Western mind it was unimaginable to construct 84 office towers at once. Between the towers were large open spaces with tarps laid out over the sand which were going to be lakes. I was blown away. So was John Burbank. Within 10 min of landing he texted that we needed to have an office in Dubai. The city made an impression on us that quickly. Later in 2010 after the crash I was in Dubai working on a project. For 2 months I used to walk around the empty construction sites. On Saturdays I would walk to Ibn Battuta Mall and watch movies. It was a real low point for the city. Then over the next decade I would visit for short layovers on the way to Africa. I would notice the big billboards of new projects under development and how previous projects I remembered as concrete shells (Dubai Mall and Dubai Marina) were now alive and bustling with activity. The city was growing. Then recently I visited Dubai again. The first time since 2019 and was truly surprised at how much it had changed. Yes, there were a few more buildings, and Business Bay has really filled in, but more it was that for the first time there was a hustle, bustle feeling when you landed and took a taxi from the airport. It was a bit like JFK. There was a feeling that you were in a real city with real people. A city with a pulse. Not a fake picture on a billboard. For fun I stayed at the Five Palm Jumeriah. You can stay anywhere you want right now for $150/night. The Five Palm Jumeirah had a cool vibe and reminded me of The Standard in LA. One of my favourite hotels. Yes, everyone was ridiculous and trying too hard to be cool, but it was fine. The DJ’s were good, the food was great, and the night time skyline was filled with the blinking lights of cranes building something new for the future. As if to say ‘Come back soon and check out the new things we have built!’ It kind of makes sense to compare Dubai with LA. If you look at a map of Dubai you see it is surrounded by billions of people in Africa and South Asia. These billions of Global South youth want to move up in the world and enjoy the good life. Like Americans who would Head West to California in search of their dreams,these youth come to Dubai. They want to be the first person in their family to have a fancy car, wear a fancy watch, stay at nice hotels and drink expensive cocktails. They are hungry for it. And that’s good. How we make money. We have these two forces. Millions of wealthy Americans, European and Brits searching for a place where they can retain more of that they create. Although fair to say it will probably be mostly Europeans and Brits who gravitate to Dubai. Then billions of emerging market consumers looking for a taste of the good life and willing to work like crazy to get it. And these two forces slam together in Dubai. Opportunity and money. Opportunity, money and property. That is the trade. Emaar Properties. A global Elysium Trade. I could tell you what a ‘good’ company Emaar Properties. How it is the premier property developer in Dubai with the best reputation. I could tell you how it is trading at a 61% discount to appraisal value, a 9% dividend yield and 7x earnings with no debt. It is all those things. I could explain how the ‘Emaar’ brand on top of the most beautiful towers across Dubai is day by day burning itself into the minds of billions of Global South consumers who dream of one day owning an ‘Emaar’ property. It is a new luxury brand. But really the trade is to appreciate the size of the wave of hungry workers and entrepreneurs across the West looking to escape tax tyranny and to realise the very few doors for them to go through. Dubai is the most obvious door and the most open. It’s English speaking, and has an economy which is growing. There are things to do from tech to finance. You can build a business. It’s not a bunch of retired hedge fund guys on an island in the Caribbean. With Dubai’s growth has also come an acceptance that it is a real city with a real economy and not just a tax dodge. Dubai will check the boxes for many people. It will be the start of a new future for them. They will come to Dubai and will want a nice house. They will want to shop in air conditioned malls on the weekends. Emaar is a good way to monetise all of this. Property development, malls, hotels, entertainment and services. Plus, enough undeveloped land for the next 12 years. And it’s currently on sale. Nobody knows the future of the Iran War. It could end quickly, it could go on for years. But Dubai is on a growth trend which is hard to dislodge. If we are willing to be patient and sit through the volatility, it’s probably a good trade to take advantage of the weakness and buy into the city of the future.

MARKETS & TRADE IDEAS UPDATE - 22nd September

noreply@slice-app.io (JustDario) — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 22:14:48 GMT

In case you had any doubts about whether or not something very wrong was going on in the energy markets today (Monday), just take a look at the TTF Natural Gas benchmark for Europe, down ~7% in a day, while Cheniere Energy (LNG), whose revenues are highly correlated to TTF, closed the day ~2.5% higher in the last session. We know Europe is entering the winter season with dangerously low stockpiles of Natural Gas, and we know that supply from Russia or Qatar is going to be close to zero, which is why TTF has been steadily rising since August. However, in the past 7 days, the TTF benchmark is down ~13%. Strangely, the WTI price (including the reference contract roll from October to November) is down ~13% as well over the past 7 days. Another very odd thing that happened on Monday: despite the sharp drop in crude oil and natural gas, gold and silver not only haven’t experienced much volatility, but even closed slightly red. What was surely very bullish was the price action of “RISK ON” assets like stocks and crypto. What triggered that? Trump's latest TACO, definitely. Is there a silver lining connecting all of these? Trump calling off the strikes on the Houthis? Reuters claiming, based on Kepler data on “non-observable ship traffic”, that Saudi ARAMCO is exporting, so far in September, 4 times the amount of crude oil per day it exported on average in August, while Kepler itself stated SOH transits dropped from 35 to 13 a day (118 the pre-war level FYI)? According to Kepler, again, STS oil exports in Hormuz are ~2.5mb/day currently, HIGHER than the crude oil amount they claimed ARAMCO ALONE has been exporting through Hormuz. Objectively speaking, there are quite a few inconsistencies in the last Kepler report that allegedly triggered Monday's sharp correction in energy prices, which followed a correction that started exactly a week prior. Some people argue the market is already pricing a new SPR release from G7, forgetting that in the ongoing IAE plan agreed in March, there are still ~100mb of crude oil left to be dumped in the market. But that argument still would not explain the move in the Natural gas market. Sorry to make you feel dizzy, but I have one last thing to share. While Energy futures have been crashing in the past 7 days, Diesel and gasoline prices at the pump across the globe have been going UP. Diesel in the US is up ~5% in the past 7 days in particular. While the market was making many heads twist today, I shared already in the general chat my findings about the options activity on CL that, combined with the futures tape, strongly suggest an effort to trigger a reverse gamma squeeze in the market. I suspect something very similar has been happening across other major energy benchmarks. During my flight to Europe, I had a lot of time to think and could not get my head away from going back to 2020 when the whole market was heavily long oil, assuming the COVID crisis would have been temporary and not shut the whole global economy for months, as in reality occurred. Because of that particular setup, on the 20th of April those who were long futures received so many requests to deliver, rather than cash settle the contracts, that the market quickly realized there was not enough storage available, and longs started panic selling, ultimately driving crude oil prices all the way to minus 30$ that day. Can the exact opposite occur? The exact opposite can occur, in theory, and the market has already shown smaller versions of it whenever Cushing inventories approached the operational floor in 2000, 2008, and 2023. The only missing ingredients for a mirror-image “plus $30 or $40 in a single session” event would be an unusually large remaining short open interest into expiry coinciding with a genuine inability to source barrels at the hub. In practice, those who are short have the option to decide whether to cash settle or deliver. Is the reason why the crude oil price has been slammed so hard into tomorrow's WTI Oct contract last day of trading to reduce as much as possible the cash bleeding of short positions as much as possible? That’s my strong suspicion. Hilariously, so to speak, last week in the Markets chat I flagged that the options positioning suggested an extreme scenario where CL could be pushed all the way down to 90$. Those options expired on Thursday, but nevertheless, the crude oil price is still being pushed all the way down to 90$. Shall we prepare for another big crude oil slam tomorrow, then? I am afraid that is a strong possibility. But at the same time, the US just announced that on Wednesday it will sanction all Iranian airlines, aiming to restrict them from flying across the globe. Iraq already said it will comply and close its airspace to Iranian planes starting on Wednesday. So far, Iran has not said anything on the matter, but I doubt they won’t retaliate from their side. How? I cannot think about much else than going after the STS oil transfer system in the SOH. Because of the UN General Assembly starting in NYC and Chairman Xi's visit to DC starting right after, another reason why Trump decided not to order an attack against the Houthis was also not to spoil the diplomatic agenda. But I still believe there are the perfect conditions for this week's actions in the market to be very messed up, and the Monday session somewhat reinforced my belief. Now you understand why I am sitting tight on my PR trade expiring in less than 4 weeks. Especially when crude oil inventories across the globe are not only making new multi-year record lows, but at this time of the year they are supposed to be rising, not still trending lower. On the contrary, after mulling quite a lot over it, I decided to exit the CRAK trade because I think that even if refineries still have potential to go higher, the large part of their move because of the oil crisis has occurred, and their margins are now heavily squeezed by skyrocketing shipping costs and soon potentially by crude oil repricing higher. It was hard not to notice the strength in Sugar today; that should have gone lower big following crude oil, but it did not. Why? Because, as I said earlier, the prices of gasoline and diesel in the real world are going higher, with France being the first G7 country already reporting widespread shortages of fuel. This is pushing the price of ethanol higher, and the costs of shipping Ethanol are also a fraction of crude. The combination makes it very attractive for sugarcane refineries in Brazil to shift a significant amount of refining of sugarcane to Ethanol versus sugar and potentially suddenly impact the price of sugar in the market in the near future. I am still monitoring the LNG trade, especially when TTF is being pushed down so much at the moment, but I believe we are not the only ones who are increasingly aware of this opportunity, considering the strong bid for Cheniere on such a bloody day for the energy space.

YWR: Asset Management as a Service (the YWR MCP)

noreply@slice-app.io (YWR) — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 13:46:13 GMT

Things are moving so quickly with AI. When I ponder the ramifications of agentic trading.. my mind splatters. It makes me think a new business model may be emerging for asset management. Asset management as a subscription service. And it makes me think we need a YWR MCP. Which we built. More below. Agentic Trading MCP What is an MCP (Model Context Protocol)? An MCP is a tool connector for Claude or ChatGPT. An MCP connects your LLM with software. It enables an LLM to operate software directly (as you). Tools (connected through MCP) are what turn your chatbot (LLM) into an agent. Common MCP tools are Gmail, Google Drive, Notion and Slack. But there is a new tool available to connect to your LLM. And it might change everything. Your brokerage account. Now you can trade your brokerage account directly through Claude or ChatGPT. Robinhood launched it. And IBKR did too. Yes, it means what you think it means. “Hey Claude.. review the top movers in my portfolio and look up any news.” “Hey Claude please build an automated trading script to rebalance my portfolio every month and add to anything which is -20% over the last 60 days.” “Hey Claude can you make sure I know if YWR talks about any of my stocks? If Erik likes something please buy a 1% starter position.” It seems so cool. But as you can see it starts to change everything. And to see where this could be going we need to go back. We need to go back to a conversation I had with our friend Jason @ back in 2021 during COVID. The Future of Asset Management. As you know Jason is younger, South African, and crypto native. He also has bold views. Which he loves to share. Back in 2021 Jason was struggling with a problem. He wanted to launch a crypto asset management business, but was torn between launching a traditional Cayman fund, or a new crypto native asset management product using Blockchains. In his view blockchain technology made much of the current asset management structure irrelevant (funds, administrators, custody), but he was worried he was too far ahead of the market. Boomer allocators. He predicted (correctly) for the next 10 years that the fuddy, duddy allocators would want to invest in crypto, but would want to do it the old fashioned way, even though if they truly understood the technology they were investing in they would see owning a Cayman fund no longer made any sense. But they would be stuck in their old structures. So why fight it? Right? So Jason went with the tradfi Cayman fund even though in his mind it was against the very technology he was investing in. It bothered him though because in his mind he saw where asset management was going. “Erik. In the future nobody is going to need your ‘funds’. If you are a financial advisor I will fund a digital wallet with stable coins for you to manage and allow you to connect to my wallet. I will also set up smart contracts to guardrail what you can do. I won’t need a custodian or administrator. It will all be transparent and on the blockchain. And the assets are in my wallet. I have custody. I don’t write you a letter asking for them back. Oh, and I will pay for it like a Netflix subscription. Same as everything else. That is the future.” That was an interesting, but of a painful view of our industry. Especially, the last part. It equires a lot to change structurally (full tokenisation of assets), but I increasingly worry Jason will be right. Eventually. Jason’s view was back in 2021. Pre-AI. Now we have these agentic trading MCP’s. And it makes me think Jason’s view is happening, but in a slightly different way. Maybe we don’t need the digital wallet on a blockchain. Your IBKR or Robinhood brokerage account is the digital wallet. And the financial advisor being connected to your account is Claude. Claude is the gatekeeper. You naturally run everything through him first. Claude subtly runs your account. And Claude is AI. With the right data and programmatic access to your brokerage account he can do amazing things. For example, maybe you don’t need a S&P 500 ETF. Claude can build you a customised version of the S&P 500 and rebalance it monthly. Claude can also read every Substack in the world and execute the best ideas automatically. You don’t have to read anything. And it goes back to Jason’s view of the future. Doesn’t it change what the asset management industry is selling? We used to be selling funds, but maybe now we are selling content. Or, we are selling ‘judgement’. Claude doesn’t need your fund. But it does want your creative ideas. Claude will take in your investment ideas and decide how to best implement them in the context of the individual’s overall account, risk tolerance and tax situation. You see where this is going. To Claude a model portfolio in a newsletter is more useful than a fund. Alpha Capture as pre-MCP asset management At the hedge fund level a version of this has been happening for years. It’s called alpha capture systems. Marshall Wace’s TIPS system is the most famous and long-running alpha capture system, but there are many others. Hedge funds remunerate independent analysts and writers to run paper portfolios on their systems. The analyst submits their trading ideas, and gets paid on performance, but without ever knowing what the hedge fund is actually doing with the trade ideas. The hedge fund has hundreds of analysts submitting ideas. Behind the scenes the hedge fund is analysing questions like ‘What is everyone’s favourite ideas? What is the prevalent sentiment or allocation. Who has the best hit rate? Over what interval? Which sector will nobody recommend?’ This universe of ideas and content is a gold mine for the hedge fund. They run all this data through their sophisticated analytics to find alpha. For example, the hedge fund might have discovered that trading against you in size is worth billions of dollars in performance fees, without you ever knowing why they value your input so much. “It’s weird. My performance is terrible, but they never kick me off the system.” For the independent analyst or writer it’s as if you are running capital without having to set up a fund. In a sense with MCP’s and LLM’s a retail trader can set up their own alpha capture system. For the Substack writer it means you have a new customer. Claude. Claude, meet the YWR MCP I know you like YWR. But we want Claude to like it too. We can do all of this with Stevie , but we also want Claude to be able to access YWR Factor Scores and QARV Scores in its chats. Plus, we decided to give Claude (and Stevie) something totally cool. We gave Claude access to YWR Portfolios (Dirty Dividends and New Era Finance). As in “Claude please show me the “YWR Dirty Dividends Portfolio”. Or, “Claude can you create a portfolio for me based on the YWR New Era Finance portfolio, but take out Jackson Financial and add more crypto?” Or,“Claude which US refining stocks have the best YWR Value score?” Cool right? To connect Claude to YWR go to Settings then Connectors, then add a new connector. Name it YWR. Paste in this URL:https://api.ywr-intelligence.world/mcp When it connects it will take you to login page to check your email address with your YWR subscription. Same as with Stevie. Have a good rest of the weekend. Erik

MARKETS COMMENT - 17th September 2026

noreply@slice-app.io (JustDario) — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 03:11:29 GMT

I just watched Kevin Warsh video a second time, just in case at 3am in the morning my brain was tired and I missed something. But no, I have not, because, as a matter of fact, he didn’t really say anything relevant, but one thing: “a fed hike won’t directly impact [crude oil prices], but aims at containing that inflation from spreading into other sectors”. When I heard that a few hours ago, I immediately took a look at oil futures and, to my surprise, saw no reaction. Question in my brain right away: “Why?”. I did not take long to find the answer: WTI futures options OPEX 1 trading session away. After that, I started to look at options market positioning across the board, and all the pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place. Forget about the fake narratives and headlines; we can tell they aren’t working. When the headline of a “peace deal” between the Houthis and the US dropped - so fake that not even Trump dared to say a word about it when he usually loves to flex his “winnings” - oil futures did not move. Once the whole barrage of fake news and narratives across socials and MSM stopped, oil futures started to trend higher quickly, and 30 minutes later those busy manipulating the tape heavily left a huge fingerprint all over it, as you can see in the chart. The headline used as a cover-up? ARAMCO will be able to resume limited E-W pipeline operations in a few days and restore full operations in 6 weeks, “bypassing” the damaged sections. EXACTLY THE SAME SCRIPT US SECRETARY HASSET RECITED A FEW HOURS EARLIER, while he was also claiming 18mb of crude left Hormuz on Tuesday (that FYI is pre-war levels). Fun Fact: he claimed that AT THE SAME TIME Fox News reported Iran fired upon a vessel trying to transit Hormuz, also injuring US Military personnel ONBOARD the vessel. I don’t want to spend more words commenting on this whole garbage; all of you here are smart people who can complete the whole picture unless you already did so. Anyhow, back to the options market because the key to deciphering what moves the markets in the short term lies there more often than not nowadays. What was remarkably odd was Energy stocks opening, all deeply in the red. Why odd? Because it was disconnected from oil futures too much. An open slightly in the red would have been fair, but not deeply. Strong market shenanigans aren’t unusual around large OPEX, especially around quadruple witching, and it did not take long to complete the puzzle. Thanks to that timely dump at open, market makers GEX on Energy stocks and ETFs options expiring THIS FRIDAY across the board (See Chart2) flipped from positive to negative gamma. As I explained in the 3rd episode of “Options By Dario,” when GEX is negative, market makers have to “chase” the market to delta hedge, amplifying moves in the underlying asset. BINGO. I can list many firms I suspect could be behind that, either alone or coordinating, but I will keep it to myself since it adds no value to this commentary. Likely the same firms that have been supporting the government's efforts to suppress crude oil futures prices; this is my gut feeling. At this point, I believe it is clear how, when you are in a trade, it’s critical to always have in mind the fundamental, technical, and structural market picture to be able to manage your positions or catch an opportunity. The exact reason why, in the last minutes of trading, I decided to sell 50% of my deeply ITM CRAK calls and buy more PR 23$ Oct options. Not because I believe less in my Diesel analysis; as a matter of fact, a few hours later, pictures of US gas stations out of Diesel started even surfacing on social media, while ALL oil upstream companies were dumping on Wednesday, bids for refiners remained strong (VLO even closed green), and despite the heavy hand trying to crush futures, Diesel remained flat. But risk management discipline is key, and my STRICT rule is to never go beyond 2% high-risk options exposure in my investment portfolio. Since I saw in the chats that people shared interpretations about gold, silver, and stock moves on Wednesday that I agree with, I would not spend more words on that either. There is only one thing I already shared in the chat I would like to highlight here again: those very odd large SPY and QQQ puts, and VIX OTM calls trades right before the FED were incredibly timely and are now all in profit already. However, with the benefit of hindsight, considering that Warsh did a good job of delivering the most neutral possible message not to trigger a volatility event in markets, I believe those weren’t bets on the FED but on something whoever is behind it believes might occur in the near future; otherwise, they would have cashed out all those profits already rather than keeping those positions open at the close.

Compute : The next $5 trillion AI infrastructure Supercycle

noreply@slice-app.io (InvestmentGuru) — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 02:34:35 GMT

The AI Trade Is Getting Bigger For the past several years, the AI investment story has been dominated by one question: Who makes the chips? That question created one of the greatest semiconductor rallies in history and turned Nvidia into the clearest symbol of the AI revolution. But the next phase may be much bigger than GPUs. The real opportunity is compute . AI models are becoming more capable, inference workloads are exploding, enterprises are deploying AI agents, and frontier labs are racing to build increasingly powerful models. Every one of those developments requires one thing: More compute. And compute requires far more than a GPU. It requires: Silicon → Memory → Networking → Data Centers → Cooling → Electricity → Grid Infrastructure This is why I believe the next phase of the AI cycle could create opportunities far beyond traditional semiconductor companies. The AI infrastructure buildout is becoming an economy-wide capital cycle. 1. The Numbers Are Becoming Almost Difficult to Comprehend The scale of spending is the first thing investors need to understand. The four largest U.S. hyperscalers — Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet and Meta — could collectively spend roughly $725 billion or more on capital expenditures in 2026 , with estimates moving toward roughly $1 trillion in 2027 . That is extraordinary. And perhaps even more important: Wall Street has repeatedly underestimated the spending cycle. AI capex expectations have been revised higher again and again. That tells us something important. The market may still be thinking about AI infrastructure using yesterday’s assumptions. The question isn’t simply: “Will hyperscalers continue spending?” The better question is: “How much compute can the global economy absorb before physical infrastructure becomes the limiting factor?” That is a very different investment question. 2. Nvidia Can Win Even If Nvidia’s Market Share Falls This is one of the most important concepts for investors to understand. A common mistake is assuming: Lower Nvidia market share = bearish for Nvidia. Not necessarily. Imagine Nvidia controls 90% of a $100 billion market. That’s $90 billion. Now imagine its share falls to 60%, but the market grows to $500 billion. Nvidia’s revenue becomes $300 billion. Its market share fell dramatically. Its revenue still more than tripled. That’s the dynamic I believe investors need to watch. Custom ASICs from Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta are becoming increasingly important, particularly for predictable, high-volume inference workloads. That doesn’t necessarily mean GPUs lose. It means: The total compute market gets bigger. And that creates multiple winners. 3. The ASIC Revolution Is Real Google’s TPUs, Amazon’s Trainium, Microsoft’s Maia and Meta’s MTIA are evidence that hyperscalers don’t want to rely entirely on external GPUs forever. Why? Three reasons: Cost. Efficiency. Control. When a company runs AI workloads at enormous scale, even small improvements in performance per dollar can translate into billions of dollars. That’s why custom silicon matters. The likely future isn’t: GPU OR ASIC. It is: GPU + ASIC. Training complex models and handling constantly changing workloads still favors flexible accelerators. But high-volume inference can increasingly favor purpose-built silicon. And that creates another major investment opportunity. 4. Broadcom May Be One of the Biggest “Picks and Shovels” of the ASIC Era If Nvidia is the dominant GPU infrastructure company, Broadcom is emerging as one of the most important beneficiaries of the custom-silicon revolution. Google. Meta. Microsoft. OpenAI and other AI developers. Multiple major technology companies are pursuing customized accelerators. And Broadcom sits directly in the middle of much of this ecosystem. That makes $AVGO particularly interesting because its AI opportunity isn’t dependent on winning the GPU market. It can benefit from the proliferation of AI accelerators themselves. Marvell is another company worth watching as custom silicon expands. The larger thesis: The AI semiconductor market is becoming more diversified, not smaller. 5. Memory Could Become the Next Major Bottleneck This is one area I believe investors still don’t pay enough attention to. AI doesn’t just need compute. It needs enormous amounts of high-bandwidth memory. Modern AI accelerators increasingly depend on HBM to feed processors with data fast enough to keep them working efficiently. And the supply chain is concentrated. That creates an interesting dynamic. You can have: GPUs available Data centers under construction Customers ready to deploy …but still have constraints because you don’t have enough HBM. That puts companies such as: $MU — Micron SK Hynix Samsung at an increasingly strategic position within the AI supply chain. The market has spent years talking about GPU shortages. The next bottleneck may increasingly be: Memory. And eventually: Power. 6. The Real AI Bottleneck May Be Electricity This is where the AI investment thesis gets much bigger. You can manufacture more GPUs. You can manufacture more servers. You can build more data centers. But you can’t simply manufacture electricity overnight. That’s the problem. The IEA expects data-center electricity demand to rise dramatically through 2030. AI is turning data centers into some of the largest new electricity consumers being added to the grid. And AI workloads can be extremely power intensive. That creates a massive second-order investment opportunity. The AI trade is moving from: Silicon → Electricity. 7. Welcome to the “Silicon-to-Substation” Trade This is the framework I would use to understand the next stage of AI infrastructure. Layer 1 — Compute $NVDA $AMD The accelerators. Layer 2 — Memory $MU $SNDK SK Hynix Samsung The high-bandwidth memory required to feed the accelerators. Layer 3 — Networking $AVGO $ANET $CRDO $MRVL Moving enormous quantities of data between GPUs, servers and data centers. Layer 4 — Data Centers $NBIS $CRWV $IREN $CIFR $APLD The physical locations where compute actually lives. Layer 5 — Power $VST $CEG $GEV Generating and supplying the electricity. Layer 6 — Grid Infrastructure $ETN $PWR Transformers, switchgear, transmission and electrical infrastructure. This is the part of the AI trade that I believe could surprise investors. The further you move down the stack, the less crowded the narrative becomes. 8. The Energization Gap Here’s a concept I would watch extremely closely through 2027–2030. Announced capacity is not the same as operational capacity. A company can announce: “We are building a 1 GW AI data center.” That doesn’t mean 1 GW of AI compute is operating. You need: Land Permits Construction Servers GPUs/ASICs HBM Networking Cooling Transformers Grid connection Generation capacity And increasingly: Power availability. This creates what I call the Energization Gap . There could be a significant amount of AI compute that is physically built but cannot immediately operate at full capacity because the electricity infrastructure isn’t ready. That distinction could become extremely important for investors. 9. Nuclear and Natural Gas Become AI Infrastructure This is where the AI story intersects with traditional energy. If electricity demand accelerates faster than renewable generation and transmission can be built, the industry will need reliable baseload and dispatchable power. That puts nuclear and natural gas directly into the AI conversation. Companies such as: $CEG $VST $GEV are therefore not simply traditional energy or industrial businesses. They can increasingly be viewed as AI infrastructure companies. That doesn’t mean every utility automatically becomes an AI winner. Valuation still matters. Execution still matters. Regulation matters. But the structural connection is becoming impossible to ignore. 10. Data Centers Become the New “Factories” There is another way to think about this. The industrial revolution built factories. The internet built data centers. The AI revolution is building AI factories . But these factories consume enormous amounts of electricity and require specialized infrastructure. That makes companies involved in data-center development potentially very valuable. The NeoCloud ecosystem is particularly interesting because these companies can provide GPU infrastructure to customers that don’t want to build everything themselves. That is why names such as: $NBIS $CRWV $IREN $CIFR $APLD have become part of the broader compute conversation. But this is also where investors need to be careful. These companies can have enormous growth potential. They can also have enormous capital requirements. Growth without financing discipline can destroy shareholder value. 11. The Biggest Risk: AI’s Circular Financing This is the part of the thesis that should not be ignored. Nvidia invests in AI companies. AI companies purchase compute. Cloud companies build data centers. Data-center companies buy Nvidia hardware. Cloud providers finance infrastructure. And some of those same companies become customers, investors or suppliers of each other. This creates a fascinating feedback loop. When demand keeps accelerating: The loop becomes a growth engine. But if AI demand slows dramatically: The same loop can amplify the downside. That is why I don’t think the correct question is: “Is AI a bubble?” The better question is: “Which companies have real cash-flow-producing demand, and which companies depend primarily on the next round of financing?” That distinction could become critical during the next bear market. 12. China Creates Another Long-Term Variable The AI compute race isn’t happening only in the United States. China is aggressively developing domestic alternatives across: AI accelerators HBM semiconductor manufacturing data centers AI models Huawei has become increasingly important in China’s AI-chip ecosystem, while CXMT is working to improve domestic HBM capabilities. The U.S. still maintains significant advantages in advanced AI compute and semiconductor technology. But the direction is important. China is moving toward: Compute self-sufficiency. That means export controls may remain a structural factor in the semiconductor industry for years. For investors, China exposure may increasingly deserve a permanent geopolitical discount rather than simply a temporary regulatory discount. 13. The Most Important Variable: Inference Here’s the part of the AI story that could change the economics of the entire industry. Training gets the headlines. Inference could become the enormous recurring workload. Once an AI model is trained, every time someone asks it a question, generates an image, writes code, uses an AI agent or interacts with an autonomous system, compute is consumed. And unlike training, inference happens continuously. Think about the difference between: Building the factory and Running the factory every day. As AI becomes embedded into: Search Software Robotics Autonomous vehicles Healthcare Finance Customer service Enterprise applications Personal assistants the amount of inference could explode. That could fundamentally change which hardware wins. 14. The Next AI Winners May Not Be the Companies Everyone Is Watching Today This is my biggest takeaway. The first phase of AI created obvious winners: $NVDA $AMD $AVGO $MU The next phase could create winners in less obvious areas: Power Grid infrastructure Transformers Cooling Optical networking Nuclear Natural gas Data centers Memory Custom silicon AI inference This is why I don’t view AI as a single-sector trade. I view it as a multi-year capital-expenditure cycle. 15. My AI Compute Watchlist If I were building a long-term AI infrastructure watchlist, I’d organize it by layer rather than simply picking the “best AI stocks.” COMPUTE $NVDA $AMD CUSTOM SILICON $AVGO $MRVL MEMORY $MU $SNDK NETWORKING / OPTICAL $ANET $CRDO $MRVL DATA CENTERS / NEOCLOUD $NBIS $CRWV $IREN $CIFR $APLD POWER $VST $CEG $GEV GRID $ETN $PWR The important thing isn’t owning every name. It’s understanding where the bottleneck is moving. 16. What Could Break the Thesis? No investment thesis is complete without the bear case. There are several. 1. AI capex slowdown If hyperscalers suddenly reduce spending, the entire ecosystem could re-rate. 2. Model efficiency If models become dramatically more efficient, required compute per task could fall. 3. Custom silicon ASICs could reduce demand for expensive general-purpose GPUs. 4. Power constraints Ironically, the biggest constraint on AI growth could also limit the revenue opportunity. 5. Financing stress Highly leveraged NeoCloud and infrastructure companies could struggle if capital markets tighten. 6. Valuation Even an excellent company can be a bad investment at an excessive valuation. 7. Geopolitics China/U.S. semiconductor restrictions could disrupt supply chains and markets. 17. What I’m Watching Over the next several years, I would focus less on headlines and more on leading indicators . Watch #1 — Hyperscaler Capex Are $AMZN, $MSFT, $GOOG and $META increasing or decreasing spending guidance? Watch #2 — HBM Pricing Memory shortages can tell us how intense AI infrastructure demand really is. Watch #3 — Power Interconnections How quickly can new AI data centers actually receive electricity? Watch #4 — ASIC Adoption How quickly are Google, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft replacing external GPUs with internal accelerators? Watch #5 — Inference Growth How rapidly is AI usage translating into recurring compute demand? Watch #6 — Financing Are NeoCloud companies generating enough cash flow to fund expansion? Watch #7 — China How quickly are Huawei and domestic semiconductor companies closing the technology gap? The Bottom Line The AI revolution isn’t ending with GPUs. It is expanding beyond them. The next stage of this cycle is about building the physical infrastructure required to turn artificial intelligence into an always-on global utility. That means trillions of dollars potentially flowing through an ecosystem that stretches from: GPU → HBM → Networking → Data Center → Cooling → Electricity → Grid And that is why I believe investors should stop thinking about AI as simply a technology sector . AI is becoming an infrastructure cycle. The biggest question for the next decade may not be: “Who has the smartest AI?” It may be: “Who has enough compute to run it?” And behind that question sits an even bigger one: “Who has enough power to run the compute?” That’s the investment chain I will be watching: Silicon → Memory → Network → Compute → Data Center → Power → Grid. The AI race is becoming a race for compute capacity . And we may still be very early in the infrastructure buildout.

YWR: Shipping Conference Notes

noreply@slice-app.io (YWR) — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 21:30:03 GMT

There’s always something to do in London. Like go to the Capital Link shipping conference. Because shipping is a top ranked YWR sector and everyone wants to know whether to take profits, stick with it or buy more. Here are my notes and observations. The Energy Security Panel: 96% of the world population relies of imported energy. Geopolitics is pushing this energy farther away. 70% of global trade goes through maritime chokepoints. The world has huge exposure to maritime security. Current situation started in 2022. The Russia-Ukraine War and sanctions on Russia increased energy ton-miles by 7%. Russian energy had to go to India and Europe had to import gas from US. The whole shipping picture keeps evolving and creating large arbitrage opportunities which means traders will pay a lot for ships. At the beginning of the Iran War there was a huge trade to sell naphtha in the Gulf of America to Asia so ships realigned for this trade. Then there was a big trade to bring diesel to Australia. Everytime, ships need to reposition. Now you have Asian markets trying to diversify away from the Gulf. All of this locks up ships on long-term routes. Governments may need to get into shipping, the same way they have been getting into critical metals and supply chains. ADNOC purchased older tankers and is crewing them with military personnel in order to get their energy products out of the Persian Gulf using the US Navy shuttle service. The world has done a good job of managing through the situation so far. We came into the crisis with elevated oil stocks, but these have been worked down. Where there are still elevated inventories of crude and refined products is within the Persian Gulf which are trapped. From here the oil price is likely to react a lot more. The tanker market could stay expensive for the medium term. The Iran conflict could go on for years. There is no making peace between Iran and Israel. Even if the war is resolved peacefully in the near-term there will be a restocking trade. Inventories will need to be rebuilt and countries will structurally want to carry more inventory. All this will require tankers. Customers want to secure long-term contracts, but it’s really hard to know the right price. The fleet is aging quickly and not many ships are available. Oil companies want to make sure they have shipping companies to move their product. Some customers are willing to lock in 7 year tenders for ships being delivered in 2030. ‘World is chaotic but shipping is booming. Everyone is enjoying it.’ Huge lead times on new supply. No new shipyard capacity. Orders now will be delivered in 2030. Longer-term the current disruption will accelerate investment into small modular nuclear reactors and electrification of the grid. Global Trade in a Fractured World Panel: Panama Canal has drought problems. Ships are laid up in Istanbul and don’t want to go into the Black Sea. Ships don’t want to go into the Persian Gulf. Now they don’t want to go into the Red Sea. Somalia is still a problem but not talked about as much. Security is a non-stop problem. Blocking maritime chokepoints and attacking commercial ships is the new normal. Sanctions + terrorism + ship attacks are here to stay. It’s a new age of Piracy. Complying with all the sanctions and compliance is also challenging. Making lots of money, but hard to enjoy it. Globalisation is over. New trend is near-shoring and friend-shoring. China is building factories in Egypt to get goods closer to the European market. Saudi Arabia is buying solar panels from India instead of China. The post WW2 Era is over. We are in an era of strong men (Trump, Putin, Modi). The global south is full of strong men. It makes everything more volatile for the shipping industry. ‘We are like a ping pong ball bouncing between everyone.’ For Russia and the Middle East being able to deliver energy and service their customers is an existential problem. Customers have to have confidence Russia and Saudi can deliver the energy and right now that is in doubt. It used to be a 6,000km route to send oil to to Asia, now using the Egypt Sidi Kerir route around Africa it is a 12,000 km route. Japan imported 90% of its crude from Middle East, but is trying to diversify this exposure. It will mean sourcing crude from farther away (like Brazil) even if it is more expensive. 4th generation Turkish shipowner is diversifying her business into ship building for the Turkish Navy. Tanker order books are 30% of the fleet. But offsetting this there has been no scrapping of tankers. The Shadow Fleet will also have to be scrapped. So tanker bull market might last longer than people expect. Seafarers are under stress, but actually recruitment interest at academies in Philippines and India is high. Pay for top officers has tripled. Many are making so much money they will be able to retire early. The Black Swan event from here is if problems kick off between Taiwan and China. 78% of the ship order book is in China. If those ships can’t be delivered it will be another shock for the industry. YWR Observation: No one had a strong view on how long the bull market would last. The word ‘uncertainty’ reiterated over and over again. Also, lots of discussion about things politicians and the world ‘should do’ to restore freedom of navigation. General mood is that the good times may last a bit longer than expected, but will eventually normalise. Either peace will come to Middle East, or new ship deliveries would lower rates. MEPC Reality Check (Net Zero Panel): IMO is trying to create rules to force shipowners to reduce emissions but there has been a lot of pushback. Sounds like IMO is pausing without saying that they are pausing. “Assuring shipping industry that everything is still under discussion.” “IMO needs to acknowledge that the alternative fuels just aren’t there yet.” Maersk was an early mover and bought some methanol ships in 2022, but sounds like they are not totally sold on methanol and still considering other fuels like ammonia, even nuclear. Really hard for ship owners to order ships with 20 year lives when there is uncertainty around fuel regulations. Alternative fuels cost 2-3x conventional fuels. Dual fuel ships are another solution. “What are we regulating? Can buy a low emission engine, but then burn just as much carbon if you drive the ship faster (15 knots instead of 11).” “Emissions can be reduced in other ways besides the engine fuel. Better maintenance, propellers, carbon capture.” “Need to make sure there is fuel availability in all the ports not just ‘some ports’ or in ‘green corridors’.” YWR Observation: This uncertainty about IMO engine regulations is another positive. It dials down new ship ordering. Financing Shipping Panel: Currently not much demand from banks for ship financing. Ship owners aren’t really doing anything. They are watching the money flow in. There are ship owners with 20 ships fully paid off and $500mn in the bank. A lot of 2nd hand tonnage is delevered. There aren’t really any new banks in the ship financing industry. It’s the Greek banks and the German banks. The new player is the alternative funds. The Greek banks have been very active. Container rates have been surprisingly resilient. The consolidation in container shipping appears to be working. One banker thinks the top 5 container lines are colluding to keep rates high. Same banker thinks this might also be happening in tanker market. There aren’t really that many ships on spot. He figures if you and a few friends can control 200 tankers you can control the spot market. Where will the money flow next panel: Private credit fund that was very active in shipping around 2016 is struggling to find opportunities now. Back then you were financing ships at 60% of replacement value, now you are financing ships at 95% of replacement value. The outlook is highly dependent on continued geopolitical risk. Equity part of capital structure is the most sensitive to geopolitical risk. Debt is less so. The order books are picking up. In 2-3 years we could be having a very different discussion. From JPM Asset Management: If you are a Greek shipping family watching the cash come in, and have always been in shipping, then you make sure all your ships have been paid off and then maybe reinvest some of the cash in new ships. Greek family offices are also taking the opportunity of the cash bonanza to diversify out of shipping. But if you are an institutional investor trying to underwrite new deals today on a deal by deal basis it is difficult. Owners of ships have a gusher of cash coming at them and if you want to take that gusher of cash away from them you really have to pay up. Moving a VLCC from ME to Asia used to be $2mn but is now $70mn. Do it twice and you have paid for the ship. Western ship owners are hamstrung by compliance concerns. It is a disadvantage to being compliant. You can make a lot of money right now on certain non-compliant routes, but there can be some challenges when selling a ship depending on what is has done during this period. ADNOC trying to keep their business balanced and reinvesting tanker profits into terminals, and specialist segments. Can buy ships with ‘28-29 delivery and 5 year charters to guarantee ‘some’ return. A Bulk Ship owner regrets he didn’t get more into containers and tankers. Liner business is highly monopolised. Top 10 went from 30% market share to 85% share. Top 1 controls 25% share. Other markets (bulk) are not consolidated.“Container market prices are managed. VLCC’s will be the same way.” Infrastructure funds are coming into lots of previously specialised areas like LNG. Question going forward will governments be more involved in shipping? Energy has become like this and the US wants to have a container line. Those are my notes. But what is the conclusion? How do we make money? Here’s my conclusion and also the global factor model rankings for the shipping stocks. I came away from the conference bullish. I think the sector goes higher. Especially tankers and containers. The only new information I hadn’t appreciated was the uncertainty around ship engine emissions and how that could be hindering enthusiasm to buy new ships. But mostly it was listening to everyone talk and try to rationalise everything. #1 Nobody could articulate the bull case. Nobody had a multi-year bullish view. Or, maybe they did but were keeping it to themselves. I heard all the usual concerns about the order book and cyclicality of shipping. Shipping rates should come down (eventually). Reversion to the mean type stuff. But I didn’t hear any conviction around where the world was going. Ship owners could see routes were fractured and longer. Owners can see geopolitical problems are popping up with increasing regularity. But there was no strong view on why this is happening or whether it would continue. They can see attacking shipping is a new form a terrorism. They also had no view on whether the Iran War would end next month, next year or next decade. No one stood up and said ‘You have no idea how much higher this is going. This is going to last 10 years and get worse. You should take every $ you are earning and buy as many ships as you can, as fast as you can and keep them all on spot.” OK, maybe that’s an exaggeration and only a crazy person like me would say that, but you know what I mean. That lack of conviction was bullish. #2 Finance Bro’s struggling with geopolitics. I liked listening to the private credit guy. He was massive in shipping post-GFC when he could show on his spreadsheet he was lending against depressed ship values. A mean-reversion trade. But now that the bull case had become ‘geopolitical’ and required imagination he had no conviction and was looking elsewhere for opportunities. That’s good. I like that the Wharton MBA’s throw up their hands whenever something gets geopolitical. It means they won’t come and ruin the party with billions in excess capital. It also means public shipping companies run by unimaginative boards of directors will also unlikely to authorise a huge ship ordering programs. There is no ‘logical’ reason to justify paying the highest price ever to buy a new ship, other than if you are replacing an old one. The opposite of ‘geopolitical uncertainty’ is a neatly presented McKinsey ‘Long term theme’ where all the dots make sense. That’s when it sounds great, but is actually terrible because the supply response is assured. So finance bros not bullish was also positive. #3 Investors and operators missing the magnitude of the trend. People are worried ‘the order books are full’. But what if order books need to be 50% bigger? Tariffs, near shoring, diversifying suppliers, the growth of India as a trading partner, congestion in the Panama Canal, rerouting around the Suez Canal. It all increases trade route complexity. More nodes in the network. I have a friend who imports wood flooring from China to Canada. To get around the tariffs his Chinese suppliers relocated as a group to Mexico. Now think about that from a shipping perspective. Previously, a container ship with flooring went from China to Vancouver then back again. 2 nodes. Now a ship has to go from China to Mexico; then later a ship from Mexico to Vancouver. 3 nodes. Plus, imagine that supplier in China also started shipping some flooring to India 1/month because there is a new customer there. 4 nodes. You can connect every point in a 3 sided triangle to another with 3 shipping routes. If the number of vertices increases by one (a square) it requires 6 shipping routes to connect every point. If the vertices increase to 6 (a hexagon) the number of routes needdd to connect every point is 15. It’s a non-linear increase in shipping routes. Say there are 30 shipping nodes in the world (just as an example) but with changing trade patterns because of tariffs, the growth of the Global South, and maritime disruptions there are now 40 nodes; a 30% increase. The number of connecting routes between the nodes goes from 435 to 780. + 79%!! Growth in new shipping routes is non-linear as the nodes increase. And that is what everyone is missing. They see the trend, they see the growth in dots, but they miss the magnitude. They can’t imagine that demand is going to overwhelm the order book and shipping rates will be higher for longer. Years later, when it is clear, and stock prices are much higher, investors will think in terms of nodes and explain to each other why shipping rates never went down. Market manipulation is underestimated. Another thing which stuck out. The repeated mentions that container shipping is highly consolidated and rates are managed by the big players. Because that is not what is priced into container shipping stocks. The assumption is that container shipping is one of the worst segments of the market. Container shipping is a feast or famine commodity with too much capacity. The common sense wisdom from the shipping experts is you want to be in specialised segments instead. Also the comment that it wouldn’t be hard to manage spot tanker rates, and it might already be happening, also stuck out. What I’m doing. I own Frontline. I think I’ll keep reinvesting the dividends back into more Frontline. COSCO Holdings also looks good. The conference also increased my bullishness on owning a shipyard; Kawasaki Heavy ( 5 Silicon Valley Start-Ups for the Price of 1 ). Shipping Global Factor Model Rankings Below are the latest shipping global factor scores. Have a good rest of the week. Erik

Monday Open - Weekly Market Update - September 14

noreply@slice-app.io (CryptoJelleNL) — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 13:41:07 GMT

Hello and good afternoon, happy new week! Another week with Bitcoin chopping just below resistance, similarly to where we were last week. The market has dropped a bit over the past week, especially noticably so in Altcoins. That being said, not much has changed - we're still very much in the same position that we were in last week: right below the crucial resistance, and depending on how BTC reacts to it, we'll know how to react. The below chart demonstrates this well. We currently face a bearish market structure, with lower highs and lower lows - but at the same time, Bitcoin has clearly shown that the seller momentum is running out. Each consecutive sell-off was shallower than the one before it, and price is now very close to making a higher high. If we don't break this area now, we likely will on the next attempt. I've been noticing this for a while, which is why I've been accumulating coins over the past months. Slowly getting into the market; while the market built its strength. The next few weeks will be telling though, and this coming week could be the one to start the next phase in the market. There are a couple of big moments on this weeks calendar, most notably the procedural vote for the Clarity Act, and the Federal Reserve's interest rate decision, taking place on Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively. Neither of these events necessarily have to spark a major move, but they certainly have the potential to do so. The Clarity Act has dominated headlines for months, with the market eagerly awaiting news as to what exactly is coming. Depending on the outcome of the vote tomorrow, we may get a sell the news event, or a strongly bullish reaction. In similar fashion, the Interest Rate decision itself is not that important. The market has priced in a rate hike, which is projected to happen with about 90% certainty (According to CME's FedWatch tool). The real uncertainty is in what happens after that. When Warsh takes the stage, he'll talk about monetary policy (boring, I know) and his view of the future. Algorithms and traders alike will be reading that speech to figure out if there are more rate hikes to come, or if this was a one off event. That information is currently not priced in, and depending on how big the surprise is - the market could move violently. It should come to no surprise to you that I don't really care about either of these events, but since they both carry the weight to potentially decide how Bitcoin reacts to the current resistance, I thought I'd put them on your agendas too. Worth keeping an eye on, but don't overconsume content around these events- as they can also quickly suck you into overtrading, fomo or fear. You know the drill by now. So - this week might be the one where we learn where the next few months lead us. Either we have another higher low to form, or we're getting an early start to the bull market. My plan in light of this remains simple: I will continue DCA-ing, and will add more aggressively on a higher low. Doesn't really matter if it forms after or before a break of the current resistance area - the bull market is coming either way. The black & white lines are just two examples of what could happen from here. It's impossible to know - I'll just stick to my plan regardless of what the market gives. In terms of Altcoins, I have not been doing too well recently. I chased a few coins, had a few suboptimal entries - and overall just haven't been on the top of my game. I closed PENGU this week as discussed, and will leave the other bags untouched. It's important to recognize when this 'bad streak' happens, as being aware of it will help prevent you from making any further mistakes. I'm taking a step back from the Alts, letting the positions do their thing, and not paying too close attention to them for a while. The positions I have open at the moment are long-term positions, so there is no need to micromanage them. HYPE looks good. ONDO looks good. JTO is holding where it needs to be holding, and so is PUMP. Until that changes, we simply ride 'em higher. Short Conclusion This article conveys the same message as the one I originally wrote, but I don't think it does it as well as the one that got lost. It is what it is. Will keep you posted as usual if I make any changes. Sticking to the plan, as always. Cheers, J

The Autonomous Vehicle Stack: Where I’d Buy the Dip in 2026

noreply@slice-app.io (InvestmentGuru) — Sun, 13 Sep 2026 18:16:12 GMT

The autonomous-driving story is finally moving from “future technology” to “commercialization.” But that doesn’t mean every AV stock deserves to be bought on a red day. The opportunity is in understanding which layer of the stack is actually monetizing today — and which companies are still selling the dream. My AV watchlist breaks into four layers: Compute → Integrators → Perception → OEMs And the risk/reward is very different across each. 1. The Brain — Compute & Silicon $NVDA — My highest-quality AV infrastructure play NVIDIA remains one of the strongest ways to own the broader autonomous-driving compute cycle. The advantage isn’t simply GPUs. It’s the combination of: CUDA AI training infrastructure inference DRIVE platform software ecosystem enormous developer base The beauty of NVDA is that you don’t need autonomous vehicles to become a massive standalone business for the stock to work. AV is additional optionality on top of an already enormous AI infrastructure business. $MBLY — One of the cleanest AV pure plays Mobileye is much more directly tied to the autonomous-driving thesis. It has exposure to: ADAS → SuperVision → Chauffeur → autonomous driving The risk is execution, competition and the amount of capital required to move from advanced driver assistance toward true autonomy. But unlike many speculative AV names, Mobileye already has meaningful OEM relationships and an installed technology base. For investors wanting pure AV exposure without betting on a tiny lidar company , MBLY remains one of my favorites. $QCOM / $AMBA These are more specialized plays. QCOM: Snapdragon Ride gives Qualcomm exposure to automotive compute and ADAS. AMBA: much higher beta, but interesting because of its edge-AI and computer-vision exposure. AMBA is the type of name I would rather trade around support than make a huge core position. 2. Integrators — Where I See the Biggest 2026 Inflection This is the layer I find most interesting. Why? Because we’re finally getting something investors can measure: Miles. Vehicles. Customers. Revenue. That’s much more valuable than another autonomous-driving demonstration. $AUR — One of my favorite AV risk/reward setups Aurora is probably the most interesting commercialization story in autonomous trucking. The company had nearly 440,000 driverless miles by the end of June 2026 and has launched its second-generation driverless truck platform. More importantly, Aurora says it is fully allocated to exit 2026 with approximately 200 driverless trucks operating commercially . That’s the key transition: Pilot → commercial network → scale Aurora is also targeting a major reduction in hardware costs with its second-generation system. And that’s where the economics get interesting. A driverless Class 8 truck doesn’t need to sleep. It doesn’t take weekends off. It doesn’t have hours-of-service limitations. The potential utilization improvement is enormous. I’d rather own AUR after fear than after euphoria. $PONY — One of the most interesting robotaxi growth names Pony is showing something I want to see from an AV company: revenue growth + fleet growth + commercial deployment. Q2 2026 revenue increased 68.8% YoY to $36.2M , while robotaxi revenue jumped 691.2% YoY to $12.1M . Its robotaxi fleet reached 1,975 vehicles by June 30. Even more interesting: Pony is targeting more than 3,500 robotaxis by year-end . That’s a huge jump from simply proving the technology works. It’s attempting to build an actual business around it. The risk? China. Regulation. Cash burn. Competition. And valuation. So I wouldn’t treat PONY like NVDA. I’d treat it as a high-beta growth position. $GOOG — The Quiet AV Giant This is one of the most interesting setups in the entire sector. Waymo isn’t a PowerPoint presentation anymore. It’s operating a commercial driverless service. In September, Waymo expanded public rides into Denver, San Diego and Tampa , bringing the number of cities where it provides fully autonomous trips to 14. And that’s buried inside Alphabet. That’s the part investors sometimes overlook. You’re not buying a company that depends entirely on robotaxis succeeding. You’re buying: Google Search + YouTube + Cloud + AI + Gemini + Waymo Waymo is essentially a massive embedded option. GOOG is one of my favorite lower-risk ways to own AV If Waymo eventually becomes a massive transportation platform, the upside is meaningful. If it takes longer than expected, Alphabet still has its core businesses. $TSLA — Highest upside, highest debate Tesla is completely different. It’s trying to own multiple layers: AI compute → software → vehicle → fleet → robotaxi network Tesla currently lists autonomous Robotaxi service in Austin, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Orlando and Tampa, while Cybercab rides are available in limited areas of Austin. That’s real progress. But Tesla also carries enormous expectations. The bull case: Millions of vehicles → autonomous software → robotaxi network → enormous operating leverage The bear case: Regulatory limitations, safety questions, slower deployment and valuation. So TSLA isn’t a simple AV trade. It’s an entire ecosystem bet. 3. Perception — The Most Dangerous Layer This is where I become much more selective. Lidar has produced incredible technology. It has also produced an incredible graveyard of stocks. Names like: $HSAI $AEVA $ARBE $OUST $MVIS $INVZ can produce huge moves. But that’s exactly the problem. Technology leadership does not automatically equal shareholder returns. You can have: Great technology Major OEM interest Increasing deployments …and still have: Dilution Cash burn Margin pressure Pricing wars $HSAI One of the more interesting lidar names because of scale and Chinese automotive exposure. But China + lidar + valuation makes this a higher-risk combination. $AEVA The FMCW lidar story remains technically interesting. If Aeva converts technology into large-scale production and OEM wins, the upside could be significant. But this is still speculative. $OUST Interesting technology and potentially a survivor in a consolidated lidar industry. But I would still classify it as speculative rather than core. 4. OEMs — The Indirect AV Plays Then we have: $TSLA $TM $NIO $LI $XPEV $GM $RIVN $LCID $MBGYY The important distinction: For most of these companies, AV isn’t the reason you buy the stock. It’s an additional catalyst. My AV Ranking If I were building an AV basket today, I wouldn’t weight every layer equally. Core / Higher Conviction $NVDA — AV compute + AI infrastructure $GOOG — Waymo + massive core business $MBLY — pure AV/ADAS exposure $AUR — autonomous trucking commercialization $TSLA — vertically integrated autonomy ecosystem Higher Growth / Higher Risk $PONY — robotaxi commercialization $QCOM — automotive compute $AMBA — edge AI / computer vision $HSAI — lidar scale $AEVA — differentiated lidar $OUST — lidar consolidation survivor Speculative / Catalyst Trades $MVIS $INVZ $ARBE These can move violently, but I wouldn’t confuse volatility with a durable investment thesis. The Biggest Shift I’m Watching The AV thesis is changing from: “Who will eventually achieve full autonomy?” to: “Who can commercially deploy autonomy at scale while improving unit economics?” That’s a massive difference. Aurora is showing the trucking side of the equation with real driverless miles and commercial fleet expansion. Waymo is showing the robotaxi side with expansion into additional cities. Pony is showing that robotaxi revenue can start scaling rapidly alongside fleet deployment. Tesla is pursuing the vertically integrated version of the same thesis. That’s why I think 2026–27 could be an important period for AV investors. Not because every AV company will win. Quite the opposite. The next phase could be about separating the companies that can actually commercialize autonomy from the companies that simply have impressive technology. My strategy remains the same: Don’t chase the headline. Wait for the pullback. Build in tranches. Own the strongest layer of the stack. Let the winners prove themselves. AV is no longer one trade. It’s a stack — and I want to own the layers where commercialization is actually accelerating. NFA.

The AI Titans Just Agreed on Something Unthinkable — Should Investors Buy the Dip?

noreply@slice-app.io (InvestmentGuru) — Sun, 13 Sep 2026 12:26:15 GMT

Anthropic, OpenAI and xAI just sent the AI market a message investors cannot afford to ignore. But the message is probably not what the headline suggests. This isn’t an AI spending freeze. It isn’t a moratorium on model development. And it doesn’t mean the AI infrastructure buildout is coming to an end. What we’re seeing is something more nuanced — and potentially more important: The companies racing hardest toward the AI frontier are beginning to acknowledge that the race needs guardrails. For investors, that creates short-term headline risk but potentially very little change to the long-term infrastructure thesis. Let’s dive in. 1. Three Rivals Agreeing Is the Biggest Part of the Story Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for AI companies to “pace the frontier.” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman agreed. Elon Musk agreed. These aren’t three companies sitting on the sidelines. They are among the companies pushing the frontier most aggressively. That’s why the message matters. When competitors independently arrive at the same conclusion that AI development needs additional safety checkpoints, investors should pay attention. But investors should also distinguish between: slowing capability development and slowing AI infrastructure investment. Those are not the same thing. 2. Pacing ≠ Pausing This is probably the most important takeaway. The proposal isn’t: Stop building AI. It’s closer to: Continue building, but introduce additional controls as capabilities become more powerful. That distinction matters enormously for the market. The AI ecosystem is much larger than frontier-model training. It includes: Data centers GPUs Networking Optical infrastructure Memory Storage Cooling Electricity generation Transmission Battery storage Nuclear power Natural gas AI cloud infrastructure Sovereign AI infrastructure Even if frontier labs become more cautious about how models are developed, the underlying demand for compute doesn’t suddenly disappear. 3. The Bigger AI Bottleneck May Still Be Power This is where I think investors need to look beyond the headlines. The AI infrastructure story has evolved. Initially, the bottleneck was: Can we get enough GPUs? Then: Can we get enough HBM and networking? Now increasingly: Can we get enough electricity and data-center capacity? That is a completely different investment opportunity. The next phase of AI infrastructure is increasingly becoming a Silicon-to-Substation story. AI chips need data centers. Data centers need power. Power requires generation, transmission, cooling and storage. And that infrastructure takes years to build. A six-month change in the pace of frontier-model development doesn’t erase a multi-year electricity and data-center buildout already underway. 4. Why the NeoCloud Thesis Is Still Interesting The companies providing alternative compute capacity could actually become even more strategically important. The AI market isn’t simply: NVIDIA → hyperscaler → AI model. It’s becoming a much more complicated ecosystem. Hyperscalers, model companies and enterprises increasingly need access to enormous amounts of compute. That’s creating opportunities for specialized infrastructure providers and NeoClouds. The key question isn’t simply: Who has the best AI model? It’s: Who controls the compute, power and data-center capacity required to run these models at scale? That’s why names across the NeoCloud ecosystem remain worth watching. The infrastructure race doesn’t stop because the model race becomes more carefully regulated. 5. Chips Are Still the Foundation The safety debate doesn’t change the economics of AI accelerators overnight. Training and inference still require enormous amounts of computing power. And as models become more capable, demand for: GPUs Memory High-speed networking Optical connectivity Advanced packaging Data-center infrastructure continues to matter. That keeps the broader semiconductor ecosystem relevant. The bigger question for investors isn’t whether AI infrastructure disappears. It’s whether spending growth eventually normalizes. That’s a much more reasonable risk to debate. 6. Where the Real Risk Could Appear There is a risk here. Investors shouldn’t dismiss it. If governments eventually impose meaningful restrictions on frontier-model development, some of the highest-end training clusters could face: Additional compliance costs Longer deployment timelines Restrictions on certain capabilities Export controls Reporting requirements Independent testing requirements That could affect portions of the AI supply chain. But the impact would likely be uneven. A company whose economics depend heavily on frontier-model training could be more exposed than a company selling infrastructure into broader enterprise, cloud or power demand. That’s why investors need to stop treating “AI” as one trade. It isn’t. 7. The AI Trade Is Splitting Into Different Layers I increasingly view the AI ecosystem as several separate investment layers. Layer 1 — Intelligence Model companies developing increasingly capable AI. Layer 2 — Compute GPUs, CPUs, accelerators, memory and networking. Layer 3 — Connectivity Optical components, switches and high-speed interconnects. Layer 4 — Data Centers The physical buildings where the compute lives. Layer 5 — Power Electricity generation, transmission, nuclear, natural gas and renewables. Layer 6 — Storage Batteries and other technologies helping stabilize increasingly power-hungry grids. The further down this stack you go, the harder it becomes to simply “turn off” the investment cycle. A data center under construction still needs power. A power plant still needs to be built. A transmission project still takes years. That’s why I continue to believe the physical infrastructure side of AI deserves just as much attention as the software side. 8. Nuclear Could Become an Even Bigger Part of the Conversation This is one area I’m particularly interested in. If AI continues consuming enormous amounts of electricity, the U.S. will need additional reliable generation. That puts nuclear back into the conversation. Companies across the nuclear ecosystem are positioning themselves around the next generation of power demand. Names like: $OKLO $SMR $NNE $LEU $CCJ $BWXT remain on my long-term radar. But this is not a reason to chase them after a green day. I prefer buying weakness, support and pullbacks rather than chasing momentum. The nuclear thesis can be right while an individual stock is still overextended. That’s an important distinction. 9. What About NVIDIA? For $NVDA, I don’t see this announcement as a fundamental thesis breaker. NVIDIA’s opportunity isn’t dependent on one AI lab deciding to slow a specific capability-development cycle. Its ecosystem is much broader. Hyperscalers. Enterprise AI. Inference. Sovereign AI. Robotics. Physical AI. Scientific computing. And increasingly, AI infrastructure around the world. The bigger risk to NVIDIA isn’t necessarily safety regulation. It’s expectations. When expectations become extremely high, even excellent results can produce volatility if investors were expecting something even better. That’s why price matters. Great company ≠ great entry at every price. 10. The Biggest Near-Term Risk Is Sentiment This is where I think investors need to be careful. Markets don’t always wait for fundamentals. A headline such as: “AI leaders call for slower development” can quickly become: “AI growth is slowing.” Then: “AI spending may peak.” Then: “AI bubble.” And suddenly high-beta AI stocks are down 10–20%. But the underlying fundamentals may have barely changed. This is exactly why I don’t believe investors should automatically sell every AI infrastructure name on a headline. Instead, ask: Did the company’s revenue outlook change? Did its customer commitments change? Did its capex plans change? Did power contracts change? Did data-center construction get cancelled? Did GPU demand actually decline? If the answer is no, then you may be looking at sentiment risk rather than thesis risk. 11. The Market May Actually Give Investors an Opportunity This is the part I care about most. If AI-related stocks sell off because investors interpret “pacing the frontier” as “AI spending is slowing,” we could see some very interesting opportunities. But I wouldn’t buy everything blindly. I’d separate the market into three buckets: Long-Term Infrastructure Companies with durable exposure to compute, power and data-center expansion. Buy meaningful weakness at strong technical/fundamental levels. High-Beta AI Great companies, but valuations and momentum are doing much of the work. Be more selective. Pure Narrative Companies whose valuation depends primarily on future AI hype rather than demonstrated demand. These are the names I would be most careful with during an AI sentiment shock. 12. What I’m Watching The next few weeks should tell us whether this is simply a safety conversation or the beginning of a broader policy shift. I’m watching: 1. Independent AI evaluators Does this become a real industry standard? 2. U.S. regulation Does Washington respond with additional requirements for frontier labs? 3. Export controls Do restrictions on advanced compute continue expanding? 4. Hyperscaler capex This is critical. Watch the actual spending plans from the major cloud companies. 5. Data-center construction Are projects being delayed or cancelled? 6. Power demand This remains one of the most important pieces of the AI infrastructure puzzle. 7. NeoCloud capacity Who is securing the power and data-center capacity needed to satisfy AI demand? 13. My Bottom Line I don’t see this as the end of the AI infrastructure cycle. I see it as the AI industry entering a more mature phase. The first phase was: Build as fast as possible. The next phase may be: Build fast — but build responsibly. That could eventually mean more regulation, more testing and more oversight around frontier models. But it doesn’t eliminate the fundamental problem AI is creating: We need an enormous amount of compute and electricity to run it. And that infrastructure doesn’t get built overnight. So if AI stocks experience a headline-driven pullback, I’m not automatically viewing it as a reason to abandon the thesis. I’m looking at the dip. The question isn’t: “Is AI over?” The better question is: “Which parts of the AI ecosystem are still going to be essential five years from now?” That’s where I want to focus my capital. Silicon → Compute → Data Centers → Power → Grid The AI race may be getting guardrails. But the infrastructure race is still very much alive. — InvestmentGuru NFA. DYOR. I don’t chase green candles. I prefer buying quality companies on meaningful pullbacks, at support, and in multiple tranches.

AI Giants Bet Big on NeoCloud: The Real Deal Map Behind the AI Infrastructure Boom

noreply@slice-app.io (InvestmentGuru) — Sat, 12 Sep 2026 19:22:56 GMT

The AI infrastructure race is entering its next phase. It is no longer simply about who can buy the most GPUs . It is increasingly about who can secure power, land, data-center capacity, financing and the ability to bring that capacity online fast enough. That shift is creating one of the most interesting corners of the AI infrastructure market: NeoClouds and former Bitcoin miners transforming themselves into AI infrastructure landlords. Names such as $CRWV, $NBIS, $IREN, $CIFR, $WULF, $RIOT and $CORZ are increasingly sitting between the world’s largest AI companies and the physical infrastructure required to run their workloads. And the deal flow is becoming difficult to ignore. 1. The Biggest Bottleneck Isn’t GPUs Anymore For years, the AI infrastructure thesis was straightforward: AI → GPUs → NVIDIA But the bottleneck keeps moving. Now the equation increasingly looks like: AI models → GPUs → data centers → electricity → transmission → cooling → land → financing And that creates a major opportunity for companies that already control some of those scarce inputs. This is why former Bitcoin miners have become so interesting. Bitcoin mining required: cheap electricity large amounts of power grid interconnection land substations transmission infrastructure data-center-like facilities AI data centers require many of the same things. The difference? AI workloads can potentially generate significantly more predictable, long-duration contracted revenue than Bitcoin mining. That’s the pivot. 2. The Bitcoin Miner → AI Landlord Transformation The most interesting part of this entire theme may be the transformation of companies that were previously valued primarily on their Bitcoin mining economics. $WULF — TeraWulf TeraWulf is probably one of the clearest examples. The company signed a 20-year lease with Anthropic covering approximately 401 MW at its Justified Data Campus in Kentucky. The agreement is expected to generate approximately $19 billion of contracted revenue over the initial term, with two additional five-year extension options potentially taking the total to roughly $33 billion. Initial capacity is expected in the second half of 2027, with the full 401 MW targeted for early 2028. This is an enormous change in the economic profile of the asset. The important point isn’t simply “$19 billion.” The important point is: 401 MW × 20 years × high-quality AI customer. That’s infrastructure monetization. 3. $RIOT — Another Bitcoin Miner Becomes an AI Data-Center Developer Riot’s Anthropic agreement is another important data point. Riot signed a 20-year lease covering 191 MW at its Rockdale, Texas campus. The initial contract is worth approximately $9.1 billion , with two five-year extensions potentially increasing total value to approximately $16.1 billion. Riot expects to deliver the first 96 MW in December 2027 and the full 191 MW by June 2028. Even more interesting: Riot already has an AMD relationship. Together, its AI data-center contracts cover 241 MW and approximately $9.8 billion of long-term contracted revenue . This changes how investors should think about RIOT. It isn’t simply: Bitcoin miner It increasingly becomes: Power + land + interconnection + data-center developer. That’s a completely different valuation framework. 4. $IREN — One of the Most Advanced NeoCloud Transformations IREN is another company I think investors should pay close attention to. The company has moved aggressively from Bitcoin mining toward AI Cloud. The Microsoft relationship alone represents approximately $9.7 billion of contract value through 2031 , with GPU capacity being delivered in tranches. Horizon 1 was delivered and accepted by Microsoft in August 2026. Then there’s NVIDIA. IREN signed a five-year, $3.4 billion AI Cloud contract with NVIDIA , while NVIDIA also received rights that could allow it to invest up to approximately $2.1 billion in IREN under specified conditions. And IREN says it has a 5 GW secured power portfolio with substantial additional AI capacity under development. This is exactly the kind of transition that makes the NeoCloud theme so interesting: Bitcoin → Power → Data Center → GPU Cloud → AI Infrastructure 5. $NBIS — The Pure-Play AI Cloud Angle Nebius is somewhat different. It isn’t simply converting Bitcoin infrastructure into AI infrastructure. It is building a more vertically integrated AI cloud platform. NVIDIA committed approximately $2 billion to Nebius, while the companies announced a partnership targeting deployment of more than 5 GW of NVIDIA systems by the end of 2030 . Microsoft’s agreement with Nebius has an estimated contract value of up to approximately $17.4 billion through 2031 , subject to deployment and availability conditions. Nebius has also expanded its relationship with Meta, with agreements representing up to approximately $27 billion in total contract value. This is important because it demonstrates something bigger: NeoCloud demand isn’t coming from one AI company. It is increasingly coming from multiple hyperscalers and AI developers competing for the same infrastructure. 6. $CRWV — The Most Obvious Customer-Concentration Story CoreWeave is arguably the poster child for the NeoCloud movement. And the numbers explain why. Meta’s expanded agreement with CoreWeave is approximately $21 billion through 2032 . CoreWeave also has a major OpenAI relationship, with an agreement under which OpenAI committed to pay up to approximately $6.5 billion through May 2031 . NVIDIA has also invested $2 billion in CoreWeave , while the companies are targeting more than 5 GW of AI factories by 2030 . This creates an interesting flywheel: NVIDIA supplies GPUs → CoreWeave buys/deploys them → AI companies rent the capacity → NVIDIA owns equity exposure to CoreWeave. That’s powerful. But it also introduces risk. CoreWeave itself warns that customer concentration is likely to remain significant because of the long-term nature of its contracts. So investors need to separate: contracted demand from economic diversification. They aren’t the same thing. 7. $CIFR — The Power-First Model Cipher is another name that illustrates why power availability is becoming the real asset. Its Black Pearl project involves approximately 300 MW of data-center capacity under a 15-year AWS lease. The project has approximately $5.5 billion of contracted revenue , with Amazon guaranteeing base rent and operating expenses under the agreement. That’s a very different business model from simply mining Bitcoin. The underlying asset is essentially: secured power + interconnection + land + data-center infrastructure. The AI/cloud tenant provides the monetization. 8. $CORZ — The Massive Optionality Then we get to Core Scientific. AMD and Core Scientific announced a partnership with the potential to support up to 2.5 GW of leasable capacity , anchored by more than 500 MW beginning in 2027. The initial agreements cover approximately 530 MW across five sites , with more than $14 billion of potential base contracted revenue . This is where investors need to be careful. 2.5 GW is not 2.5 GW of current revenue. It’s an expansion ceiling. That’s still extremely valuable because it demonstrates potential scale, but optional capacity should never be valued the same way as contracted, financed and operational capacity. 9. NVIDIA Is Playing a Different Game One of the most fascinating pieces of this entire ecosystem is NVIDIA. NVIDIA isn’t merely selling GPUs. It is increasingly investing throughout the AI infrastructure stack. Examples include: $2B investment in Nebius $2B investment in CoreWeave up to ~$2.1B investment rights in IREN while simultaneously becoming a major customer or infrastructure partner. This creates a circular ecosystem: NVIDIA → finances infrastructure → infrastructure buys NVIDIA GPUs → AI companies rent infrastructure → AI demand drives more NVIDIA GPU demand. That doesn’t automatically make the demand artificial. The demand is real. But investors need to understand the financial structure behind the headline numbers. 10. The Deal Map Has Three Layers I would break this entire opportunity into three baskets. Basket #1 — Power / Infrastructure Owners $WULF $RIOT $CIFR $CORZ $HUT These companies are increasingly monetizing: power land transmission substations data-center campuses existing interconnections The Bitcoin mining heritage is becoming less important. The infrastructure is becoming more important. Basket #2 — NeoCloud AI Providers $CRWV $NBIS $IREN These companies sit closer to the compute layer. They aren’t simply landlords. They are building and operating AI cloud infrastructure. This creates potentially higher revenue opportunities — but also higher capital requirements, GPU depreciation, financing needs and execution risk. Basket #3 — AI Giants NVDA MSFT META GOOG AMZN OpenAI Anthropic These companies are the demand engines. Their contracts tell us something extremely important: They are willing to lock up infrastructure years ahead because they are worried they won’t have enough compute. That is arguably the strongest signal in the entire map. 11. The Most Important Number Isn’t Contract Value This is where investors can easily get fooled. A headline saying: ”$19B AI contract” sounds enormous. But that doesn’t mean $19 billion of revenue arrives tomorrow. TeraWulf’s $19B Anthropic agreement spans 20 years. Riot’s $9.1B agreement also spans 20 years and begins with phased delivery in 2027–2028. IREN’s $9.7B Microsoft contract runs through 2031 and is delivered in tranches. Therefore, the investor’s real questions should be: How much is contracted? How much is financed? How much is under construction? How much is energized? How much is generating revenue? What is the expected EBITDA/NOI margin? Who funds the buildout? That’s much more important than simply adding up headline contract values. 12. Financing May Become the Next Bottleneck This is one of the biggest risks investors should not ignore. AI infrastructure is extremely capital intensive. Data centers require: land substations transformers cooling networking buildings GPUs power infrastructure construction financing And financing conditions matter. Recent reporting has highlighted rising AI-related debt issuance and growing lender scrutiny around power availability, project delays and data-center financing. This creates an interesting paradox: AI demand can be enormous while individual NeoCloud companies can still struggle financially. Why? Because demand doesn’t automatically equal available capital. 13. The Biggest Risk: Overbuilding There is another side to this trade. NeoClouds are benefiting from extraordinary demand today. But investors should remember what happened to telecom infrastructure during previous technology booms. The question isn’t: “Will AI require more compute?” I believe the answer is obviously yes. The harder question is: How much infrastructure will ultimately be economically profitable? Reuters recently compared the NeoCloud boom with the early-2000s alternative telecom buildout, highlighting concerns around capital intensity, reliance on NVIDIA and uncertain long-term utilization. That’s the bear case. If too much capacity gets built, pricing power eventually falls. The winners will be the companies with: lowest-cost power + best locations + strongest customers + strongest balance sheets + fastest execution. 14. What I Would Watch Going Forward 1. Power availability Forget theoretical gigawatts. Look for: approved + interconnected + energized MW. That’s the real asset. 2. Delivery milestones Watch whether companies hit: construction milestones energization commissioning customer acceptance revenue commencement A signed contract is only the beginning. 3. Financing Track: debt → interest expense → dilution → capex → free cash flow. A company can have billions of contracted revenue and still need enormous amounts of capital to build the infrastructure. 4. Customer diversification One giant customer can make a company look stronger than it actually is. I prefer the trajectory toward: Microsoft + NVIDIA + Meta + Amazon + AI labs + enterprise customers rather than dependence on one tenant. 5. Power economics The long-term winner may not have the most GPUs. It may have the cheapest reliable power in the right location. That is why the former Bitcoin miners deserve attention. 15. The Bigger Picture The AI infrastructure stack is becoming clearer. Silicon → Data Center → Power → Grid → Compute → AI And every bottleneck creates another investment opportunity. The first wave was: GPUs Then: Networking Then: Optical Then: Data centers Now: Power + grid + energy + cooling + infrastructure NeoCloud sits right in the middle. That’s why the transformation of Bitcoin miners is so interesting. They already spent years acquiring something that AI desperately needs: power infrastructure. The market may have originally valued them for the Bitcoin they could mine. The next valuation regime could increasingly depend on the AI compute capacity they can host. Bottom Line I don’t view $WULF, $RIOT, $IREN, $CIFR, $CORZ, $NBIS and $CRWV as simply another group of AI stocks. They represent different ways to own the physical infrastructure behind the AI compute boom. The most important distinction is: Not all MW are equal. Not all contracts are equal. Not all backlog is equal. The winners should be the companies that can turn: Power → Data Centers → GPUs → Customers → Cash Flow with the least friction. And that’s why I keep coming back to one investment principle: Follow the bottleneck. AI needs compute. Compute needs data centers. Data centers need power. And whoever controls the scarce infrastructure may capture a surprising amount of the AI value chain. NFA. DYOR.

The Electromagnetic Battlefield: Where Defense-Tech Money Is Actually Flowing

noreply@slice-app.io (InvestmentGuru) — Sat, 12 Sep 2026 17:40:06 GMT

There is a quieter arms race happening beneath the headlines around drones, missiles and missile defense. It is the fight for control of the electromagnetic spectrum . Jamming. Signal intelligence. Radar deception. Electronic attack. GPS-denied navigation. Spectrum sensing. Counter-drone warfare. Communications resilience. Modern militaries increasingly depend on the ability to see, control, protect and exploit the spectrum . And Ukraine has provided one of the clearest real-world demonstrations of why this matters. This is not a futuristic concept anymore. It is becoming a core layer of modern warfare. And importantly for investors, the spending is beginning to move from research and prototypes toward production contracts and field deployment . The market is getting much bigger MarketsandMarkets estimates the global electronic-warfare market at approximately $32.35 billion in 2026 , growing to $64.66 billion by 2031 , representing a roughly 14.9% CAGR . The growth drivers include software-defined systems, AI, signal processing, adaptive jamming, unmanned systems and broader cyber-electromagnetic integration. That growth estimate is important, but the more interesting signal is coming from actual government procurement. The U.S. Army is increasingly treating electromagnetic-spectrum dominance as an operational requirement rather than a niche capability. In February 2026, the Army explicitly said it was accelerating electromagnetic-warfare capabilities for large-scale combat operations and looking for commercial technologies, including AI and edge computing, capable of operating at machine speed. Then the money started following. The procurement pipeline is becoming real In June, the Army awarded a $350 million five-year IDIQ contract for the Spectrum Situational Awareness System. The system is designed to detect and report electromagnetic-spectrum activity and interference in near real time, helping commanders understand their own electromagnetic signature and identify unauthorized or hostile interference. And just this week, the Army announced another major development: It awarded nearly $196 million in its first production contracts under the Rapid Electromagnetic Warfare and Signals Intelligence initiative. The awards went to: • Heaviside Industries — $99 million for distributed spectrum sensors • Research Innovations — $96.9 million for AI-driven sensors integrated onto unmanned aircraft Both contracts have five-year ordering periods. That is the part investors should pay attention to. The Army isn’t simply asking: “Can we build better EW technology?” It is increasingly asking: “How quickly can we buy it and put it into soldiers’ hands?” That changes the investment equation. Why Ukraine Matters The war in Ukraine has effectively become a live laboratory for electronic warfare. Cheap drones, GPS disruption, communications jamming, signal detection and rapidly evolving countermeasures have demonstrated that battlefield superiority increasingly depends on what happens inside the spectrum . The lesson is straightforward: A sophisticated weapon is far less useful if its communications can be disrupted. A drone is less effective if it can be detected, spoofed or jammed. A GPS-dependent system becomes vulnerable when GPS is denied. And a military that cannot see the electromagnetic environment around it is fighting partially blind. The U.S. military is responding accordingly. The Army’s 2026 research budget includes work on “Spectrum Superstorm” , designed to use distributed RF effects and orchestration software to make Army emitters harder to geolocate and improve spectrum operations. DARPA is simultaneously working on GPS-independent timing because modern military systems remain vulnerable to jamming and spoofing. Its ROCkN program is developing optical-clock networks capable of maintaining precision timing in GPS-denied environments. This creates a much larger investment theme than traditional “electronic warfare.” It becomes: Spectrum dominance + resilient communications + navigation + AI + drones + sensors. The Companies: Where the Exposure Actually Sits 1. $MRCY — Mercury Systems The picks-and-shovels play Mercury Systems is one of the more interesting names for investors looking for exposure beneath the major defense primes. The company supplies high-performance processing and embedded computing technologies used in radar, electronic warfare, signals intelligence and other defense applications. But there is another reason MRCY is interesting right now: capacity. Mercury recently partnered with Palantir to use AI-driven factory automation and material-planning tools to accelerate production of critical military technologies. Its FY26 results also showed backlog and next-12-month backlog growth of 38.4% and 23.3% , respectively, while quarterly revenue reached its highest level in 15 quarters. That is exactly the type of development I want to see in a defense-tech thesis: technology → backlog → production → revenue. The Palantir connection adds another interesting layer. AI isn’t just being integrated into the battlefield. It is increasingly being integrated into the defense-industrial supply chain itself . What I like • Electronic warfare exposure • Embedded computing / processing • Increasing defense demand • Backlog growth • Production automation • AI + defense convergence What to watch MRCY is still an execution story. Higher defense spending doesn’t automatically translate into shareholder returns if margins, production or program execution disappoint. 2. $LHX — L3Harris The scaled spectrum-dominance play If Mercury represents the component and processing layer, L3Harris represents something much larger. L3Harris has exposure across electronic warfare, signals intelligence, radar, secure communications, counter-drone systems and spectrum operations. Its EW portfolio includes systems such as CORVUS, Viper Shield, Next Generation Jammer and distributed spectrum capabilities. More importantly, L3Harris is pushing EW toward autonomy . In April 2026, the company demonstrated an autonomous EW capability during a U.S. Army experiment using multiple unmanned aerial systems. Its Deceptor system was able to detect and geolocate RF threats, fuse information from multiple sensors and execute RF jamming. Think about the significance. Traditional EW can involve humans detecting a threat, identifying it and deciding how to respond. AI-enabled EW aims to compress that process toward: Detect → identify → decide → respond. At machine speed. That is potentially one of the most important changes happening in electronic warfare. What I like • Scale • Deep Pentagon relationships • EW + ISR + communications • Autonomous EW development • Counter-drone exposure • Multi-domain capabilities The trade-off LHX is much less of a pure-play than MRCY. You are buying a diversified defense company, not simply an electromagnetic-spectrum bet. 3. $KTOS — Kratos Defense The higher-risk growth play Kratos is where the theme gets much more speculative. Its Valkyrie platform is part of the broader push toward autonomous, lower-cost military aircraft. But the important development for this thesis is that a missionized U.S. Marine Corps Valkyrie successfully demonstrated electronic-warfare capabilities and beyond-line-of-sight command and control . This matters because EW is increasingly moving onto unmanned platforms. Instead of thinking about EW as something mounted exclusively on expensive manned aircraft, imagine distributed networks of relatively inexpensive autonomous systems: Drone → sensor → RF detection → AI → EW effect. That is a very different battlefield architecture. And potentially a very large market. But KTOS deserves smaller sizing than a mature defense prime. The market already assigns substantial expectations to its autonomous systems and drone opportunity. What I like • Autonomous aircraft • EW integration • Drone/CCA exposure • BLOS communications • Potential for rapid growth Risk This is a growth stock, not a traditional defense-income play. Execution matters enormously. High upside, high expectations, high volatility. 4. $RTX — RTX / Raytheon RTX gives investors exposure to electronic warfare without making EW the entire investment thesis. Raytheon already has major capabilities in radar, electronic attack, jamming and counter-drone technologies. Its Next Generation Jammer Mid-Band system is designed to disrupt enemy communications and air-defense systems using active electronically scanned arrays and an all-digital architecture. In April 2026, Raytheon delivered the first Next Generation Jammer shipsets to the Royal Australian Air Force. And in August, RTX completed a $50 million expansion of its Mississippi manufacturing facility specifically to increase production capacity for electronic-warfare and radar systems . That is another important distinction: This isn’t simply R&D anymore. Companies are expanding manufacturing capacity because they expect demand. What I like • Large-scale defense exposure • EW + radar + missiles • Allied demand • Manufacturing expansion • Counter-drone exposure The downside EW is only one piece of RTX. If you want concentrated exposure to the theme, MRCY or KTOS is more direct. If you want EW exposure inside a diversified defense portfolio, RTX is much more attractive. 5. $BAESY / $BAESF — BAE Systems BAE is another major European defense player with significant electronic-warfare exposure. Its Digital Electronic Warfare System, for example, is designed to detect and counter evolving threats while maintaining adaptability for future upgrades. The bigger thesis is European defense spending. Europe is increasingly focused on rebuilding defense capacity, improving sovereignty and reducing dependence on external suppliers. That creates a potentially attractive environment for companies with established EW, radar, communications and sensor capabilities. 6. Leonardo Leonardo provides another European angle into radar, sensors, electronics and electronic warfare. The attraction here isn’t necessarily a pure-play EW thesis. It is the broader idea that European governments are increasingly investing in sovereign defense capabilities. That creates multiple ways for the company to participate in the spectrum, sensor and electronic-defense buildout. 7. $FEIM — Frequency Electronics This is where the watchlist gets more interesting. Frequency Electronics is much smaller and much more specialized. Its technology focuses on precision timing, frequency control, RF/microwave systems and resilient positioning, navigation and timing. That becomes increasingly important when GPS is jammed or spoofed. FEI explicitly markets solutions designed to maintain navigation and timing when GPS signals are degraded, denied, jammed or spoofed. This isn’t necessarily the obvious EW stock. That’s precisely why it is interesting. The future battlefield needs more than jammers. It needs systems that can continue functioning when the jammers are operating. That means resilient PNT becomes another layer of the electromagnetic-war thesis. 8. $AIRO — AIRO Group AIRO is the speculative end of the watchlist. The company combines drones, advanced aerospace/defense technology and related training capabilities. Its 2025 revenue reached approximately $90.9 million , and the company entered 2026 expecting 15–25% year-over-year revenue growth. It also reported roughly $150 million of drone backlog as of March 31, 2026. The attraction is obvious: drones + autonomy + defense + EW. But this should be treated very differently from LHX or RTX. Small defense companies can experience explosive upside when they win contracts. They can also experience equally explosive downside when a contract slips, funding disappears or dilution becomes necessary. This is a speculative watchlist name , not a core defense holding. The One I Would Avoid Treating as a Normal “Cheap Defense Stock”: $CMTL Comtech Telecommunications is an interesting name because it has exposure to satellite communications and spectrum-related technologies. But this is where investors need to separate thematic exposure from financial quality . Comtech’s filings show significant debt and a highly leveraged capital structure. Its January 2026 filing showed roughly $125 million of borrowings under its credit facility, another ~$103 million under its subordinated credit facility, and a substantial preferred-stock liquidation preference. The company itself has repeatedly highlighted liquidity and financing risks. So while CMTL may screen as an inexpensive spectrum/communications name, I would classify it as: turnaround/distress speculation — not a clean EW investment. A great theme cannot rescue a bad balance sheet. The Bigger Opportunity: EW Is Becoming AI-Driven This is perhaps the most important part of the thesis. Electronic warfare used to be heavily hardware-driven. The future is increasingly: Sensors + software + AI + edge computing + autonomous platforms. The Army itself has said that machine-speed spectrum operations will be critical and is actively looking for AI and edge-computing solutions. That creates a convergence between several of the strongest defense-tech themes: AI Identifying signals and threats faster. Drones Putting sensors and EW effects onto inexpensive autonomous platforms. Semiconductors Processing enormous amounts of RF data at the edge. Cybersecurity Protecting communications and networks. Quantum / advanced sensing Finding alternatives to GPS and traditional navigation. Electronic warfare Disrupting or deceiving the adversary. This is why I don’t view EW as a standalone defense niche. I view it as infrastructure for the next generation of warfare. The Investment Map If I were building a watchlist around this theme, I would divide it into four buckets. Core Defense / Lower Risk $LHX $RTX BAE Systems Leonardo Broad defense exposure with meaningful EW/spectrum capabilities. Picks & Shovels $MRCY Embedded processing, RF and defense electronics. Higher-Growth / Higher-Risk $KTOS $AIRO Autonomous platforms, drones and next-generation defense systems. Specialized / Small-Cap Watchlist $FEIM Precision timing, RF and GPS-denied resilience. Distressed / Speculative $CMTL Potential upside from restructuring or turnaround, but financial risk is significantly higher. What I Would Watch Next The most important catalysts aren’t necessarily earnings headlines. I would watch: 1. Army procurement Are prototype programs moving into production? The recent $196 million REWSI awards suggest that transition is already happening. 2. Five-year IDIQ contracts These can become pipelines for recurring orders rather than one-off awards. 3. Autonomous EW Watch who can put EW capabilities onto drones and other unmanned platforms. 4. AI-enabled spectrum management The winner may not simply be the company with the best jammer. It could be the company that can process the electromagnetic environment fastest. 5. GPS-denied navigation As jamming and spoofing increase, resilient PNT becomes strategically important. 6. Manufacturing capacity When defense companies begin spending heavily to expand production, pay attention. RTX’s $50 million EW/radar manufacturing expansion is a good example. 7. Small-company acquisitions Large primes may increasingly look to acquire specialized spectrum, RF, sensing and autonomous-defense capabilities. That creates acquisition optionality — but investors should never buy a small defense company solely because they think it will be acquired. The Bottom Line The next defense-tech cycle may not be defined only by missiles, aircraft or drones. It may be defined by who controls the invisible battlefield. Every drone needs communications. Every modern weapons system depends on sensors. Every network creates an electromagnetic signature. Every GPS-dependent system has a potential vulnerability. And every adversary is trying to disrupt the other’s ability to see, communicate and coordinate. The U.S. Army is now putting real procurement dollars behind spectrum awareness, EW and SIGINT capabilities. The recent $350 million S2AS contract and nearly $196 million in REWSI production awards are evidence that the transition from concept to deployment is accelerating. The investment opportunity, therefore, isn’t simply: “Buy defense.” It’s: Follow the bottleneck. And increasingly, that bottleneck is the electromagnetic spectrum. The companies that can sense it, process it, protect it, disrupt it and dominate it could become some of the most important defense-tech suppliers of the next decade. My watchlist: $MRCY $LHX $KTOS $RTX $FEIM $AIRO BAE Systems Leonardo With MRCY, LHX and RTX offering the more established exposure, KTOS and AIRO representing higher-risk autonomous/drone upside, and FEIM offering a smaller, specialized GPS-denied/PNT angle. The theme is early enough to be interesting — but mature enough that governments are already writing checks. DYOR.

ROBOTICS: THE NEXT BOTTLENECK

noreply@slice-app.io (InvestmentGuru) — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:58:00 GMT

The demos are getting impressive. The funding is real. Industrial pilots are expanding. Humanoid robots can walk, carry, sort, manipulate objects and increasingly learn tasks using AI. But the biggest opportunity may not be in the companies building the most impressive robot. It may be in the companies solving the bottlenecks that prevent millions of robots from being deployed economically. The next phase of robotics is not simply about building a machine that can walk. It is about making that machine cheap, reliable, dexterous, energy-efficient, trainable and scalable. That is where the real battle begins. THE DEMO PROBLEM IS BEING SOLVED Robotics has spent years trapped in a familiar cycle: impressive demonstrations followed by limited commercial deployment. That is changing. Humanoid platforms from companies such as Tesla, Figure AI, Agility Robotics and others are moving from laboratories toward factories and warehouses. At the same time, AI foundation models are giving robots increasingly sophisticated perception, reasoning and control capabilities. The result is a convergence of two technologies: AI provides the brain. Robotics provides the body. But putting the two together at industrial scale is far harder than demonstrating what is possible for a few minutes. A robot that performs one task reliably in a controlled environment is very different from a general-purpose machine expected to operate eight hours a day around humans, unpredictable objects and changing environments. The gap between those two worlds is the next major investment opportunity. THE SEVEN BOTTLENECKS 1. ACTUATORS AND PRECISION MECHANICS A humanoid is essentially a collection of motors, gears, sensors and control systems working together at extraordinary precision. Actuators are therefore one of the most important pieces of the stack. High-torque compact motors, harmonic drives, planetary roller screws, precision bearings and encoders all require sophisticated manufacturing. And unlike software, these components cannot simply be scaled with additional computing power. Manufacturing capacity has to physically exist. That creates a potential chokepoint as the industry moves from thousands of robots toward hundreds of thousands and eventually millions. The winners may not necessarily be the companies with the best-looking humanoid. They could be the companies supplying the joints that every humanoid needs. 2. BATTERY LIFE AND ENERGY DENSITY Humanoid robots have another fundamental problem: Energy. Dynamic movement consumes enormous amounts of power. Walking, balancing, lifting, gripping and continuously correcting body position all require energy. Batteries also add weight, creating a difficult engineering trade-off. More battery capacity means more weight. More weight means more energy consumption. And more energy consumption requires more battery capacity. For industrial customers, short operating periods are a major limitation. A robot designed to work alongside humans in a warehouse or factory cannot spend much of the day sitting at a charging station. The robotics industry therefore needs improvements from both directions: Better batteries + more efficient robots. The existing EV battery ecosystem provides a major advantage because robotics can benefit from years of investment in lithium-ion manufacturing, materials and supply chains. But future advances—including higher-energy-density chemistries—could become particularly important for mobile robots. 3. DEXTERITY AND TACTILE SENSING Walking is only half the problem. Manipulation may ultimately prove harder. Humans have extraordinarily sophisticated hands. We can determine whether an object is heavy, slippery, fragile, hot or moving largely through tactile feedback. Robotic hands remain far less capable. A factory robot picking up the same object thousands of times is relatively straightforward. A general-purpose robot encountering an unfamiliar object is another story. It needs to understand: What the object is Where to grasp it How much force to apply Whether it is slipping How the object will react How to recover when something goes wrong That requires better actuators, tactile sensors, compliant mechanisms and AI. This is why the robotics industry is increasingly shifting attention from motion to manipulation . The robot that can walk into a room is impressive. The robot that can reliably understand the room and interact with everything inside it is commercially transformative. 4. THE TRAINING DATA PROBLEM This may be the biggest bottleneck of all. Large language models benefited from something robotics does not have: The internet. AI models can learn from enormous volumes of text, images, videos and other digital information. Robots need something much harder to collect: Physical-world interaction data. A robot needs examples of actions: Pick this object up. Move it here. Turn it. Apply this amount of force. Recover when it slips. Open this door. Use this tool. Repeat the task in a different environment. That data has to be collected through real-world robots, teleoperation, simulations or increasingly sophisticated synthetic environments. This is expensive. The industry is therefore pursuing a combination of: real-world data + simulation + synthetic data + increasingly capable foundation models. If robotics eventually develops an equivalent of the internet-scale data advantage enjoyed by LLMs, the pace of progress could accelerate dramatically. 5. SOFTWARE AND INTEGRATION Hardware gets the headlines. Software often determines whether the robot actually works. Today’s robotics stacks can be complex, fragmented and highly customized. Sensors need to communicate with computers. Computers need to communicate with actuators. AI models need to make decisions within real-time constraints. The system needs to respond safely when something unexpected happens. And then the entire system has to integrate into an existing factory or warehouse. This creates what I call integration hell . The robot itself may not be the biggest expense. Getting it to work reliably inside an existing operation can be. That creates an opportunity for software platforms, simulation environments, middleware, systems integrators and industrial automation companies. The winning software layer could ultimately make robotics accessible in the same way that modern AI frameworks made machine learning dramatically easier to deploy. 6. UNIT ECONOMICS AND RELIABILITY This is where the robotics story moves from technology to business. A robot can be technically impressive and still be a terrible investment. Industrial customers care about one thing: Does it produce a return on capital? A robot needs to operate reliably, require limited maintenance and perform economically against human labor or conventional automation. And reliability requirements are extremely high. A robot stopping for five minutes is annoying. A robot stopping a production line can be extraordinarily expensive. That means the industry must solve several problems simultaneously: Purchase price Maintenance Downtime Labor savings Utilization Safety Software costs Integration costs This is why Robotics-as-a-Service could become an important business model. Instead of paying a large upfront cost for a robot, customers could pay based on hours, tasks or output. The model transfers some of the risk from the customer to the robotics provider. But it only works if the robots become sufficiently reliable and inexpensive to maintain. 7. THE SUPPLY-CHAIN BOTTLENECK This could become one of the most interesting investment themes. Every humanoid requires a surprisingly large number of specialized components. Motors. Magnets. Bearings. Encoders. Gearboxes. Precision screws. Power electronics. Sensors. Semiconductors. And advanced materials. Some of these supply chains are highly concentrated geographically. Rare-earth magnets are a particularly important example. Neodymium-iron-boron magnets are widely used in high-performance electric motors, while China remains dominant across significant portions of the rare-earth processing and magnet supply chain. If humanoid production eventually scales into the millions of units, supply-chain resilience becomes strategically important. That creates opportunities for Western mining, refining, magnet production and component manufacturing. THE SOLUTIONS ARE ALREADY EMERGING The interesting part is that the industry is not waiting for one breakthrough. Multiple bottlenecks are being attacked simultaneously. Synthetic Data Simulation platforms can generate enormous quantities of training experience without physically operating millions of robots. The long-term goal is simple: Train in simulation. Transfer to reality. Better Actuators Engineers are developing lighter, more efficient and increasingly backdrivable actuators. Backdrivability can improve safety and enable robots to respond more naturally when interacting with humans. Better Batteries Robotics can leverage the enormous investment already made in EV battery technology while continuing to pursue higher energy density and lower weight. Foundation Models Robot foundation models are attempting to create a general-purpose intelligence layer that can transfer knowledge across tasks and environments. Instead of programming every task individually, robots could increasingly learn. Robotics-as-a-Service RaaS can reduce the upfront capital burden and potentially accelerate adoption among businesses that cannot justify buying expensive machines outright. Supply-Chain Reshoring Rare-earth mining, magnet manufacturing and precision-component production are attracting increasing strategic attention as governments and companies seek alternatives to concentrated supply chains. WHO COULD BENEFIT? The robotics ecosystem is much larger than the humanoid manufacturers themselves. There are several layers. THE ROBOT Tesla, Figure AI, Agility Robotics, Boston Dynamics, Unitree and numerous other companies are competing to build the physical platform. But only a fraction of these companies are publicly investable. THE BRAIN This is where companies such as NVIDIA and Alphabet have an important role. AI compute, simulation, foundation models and developer ecosystems could become essential infrastructure for physical AI. THE BODY This is the component layer. Motors. Gearing. Actuators. Bearings. Precision screws. Magnets. Sensors. These businesses may quietly benefit regardless of which humanoid platform ultimately wins. THE FACTORY Industrial automation companies and systems integrators could become the bridge between next-generation robots and existing manufacturing infrastructure. Companies such as ABB, FANUC, Rockwell Automation and Teradyne already possess something many robotics startups do not: existing industrial relationships. That distribution and integration advantage could become extremely valuable. THE INVESTMENT THESIS The easiest mistake in robotics is to ask: “Which humanoid company will win?” The better question may be: “What does every successful humanoid need?” Every robot needs motors. Every robot needs power. Every robot needs sensors. Every robot needs compute. Every robot needs software. Every robot needs precision components. Every robot needs an industrial environment in which it can operate. That creates a picks-and-shovels opportunity similar to other major technology cycles. During the early internet era, investors did not need to know which website would dominate the future. The infrastructure layer benefited from the overall expansion of the ecosystem. The same principle may apply to physical AI. THE PUBLIC-MARKET WATCHLIST A robotics portfolio does not have to be limited to pure-play humanoid companies. Several public companies provide exposure to different layers of the ecosystem. $NVDA — AI infrastructure, edge compute and robotics simulation NVIDIA is positioned across compute, simulation and the AI software stack. $GOOGL — AI and physical intelligence Google DeepMind is developing increasingly capable robotics foundation models while Alphabet provides enormous computing and AI resources. $MP — Rare-earth supply chain If humanoid production scales dramatically, demand for high-performance permanent magnets could become strategically important. $RRX — Motion control and industrial components Motors, gearing and motion-control technologies represent a less glamorous but potentially critical part of the robotics supply chain. $TER — Cobots and industrial automation Teradyne provides exposure through Universal Robots and Mobile Industrial Robots, giving investors a direct connection to collaborative and mobile automation. $ROK — Factory automation and integration Rockwell sits closer to the industrial deployment layer, where connecting robots to existing factories becomes increasingly important. And then there are the large platform companies themselves, including $TSLA , where humanoid robotics represents a potentially enormous long-term optionality—but also carries substantial execution risk. THE NUMBERS MATTER — BUT THE DIRECTION MATTERS MORE Robotics has attracted enormous capital, and long-term market forecasts vary widely. Forecasts for humanoid robotics have already moved substantially higher as technology improves and commercial deployments expand. But investors should be careful with headline TAM numbers. A $5 trillion theoretical physical-AI economy does not mean $5 trillion of annual revenue will suddenly appear. The more important signal is the direction of the technology curve. More robots. More compute. More training data. Lower component costs. Better batteries. Better dexterity. More industrial deployments. Higher utilization. Lower integration costs. Those are the variables that ultimately determine whether robotics moves from an exciting technology demonstration into a mass-market industrial platform. THE BIGGEST OPPORTUNITY MAY BE THE BOTTLENECK The robotics revolution is often presented as a race between humanoid companies. I think that misses the bigger picture. The real race is happening underneath the robot. Who can make the actuator cheaper? Who can manufacture enough precision components? Who can provide the compute? Who can generate the training data? Who can solve tactile manipulation? Who can extend battery life? Who can integrate robots into factories? Who can make the economics work? These are the bottlenecks. And bottlenecks create pricing power. The winners of the robotics era may therefore not always be the companies standing on stage showing off a humanoid. Some of the biggest winners could be the companies quietly supplying every robot that eventually ships. THE BOTTOM LINE The demo problem is being solved. The deployment problem is everything. Robots can walk. They can lift. They can sort. They can increasingly reason. But moving from a controlled demonstration to a reliable industrial asset requires solving an enormous engineering and economic puzzle. The companies that solve actuator costs, training-data scale, tactile dexterity, energy density, software integration and supply-chain constraints will determine how quickly robotics scales. For investors, that creates an important distinction: Don’t just watch the robot. Watch the stack. The AI layer provides the brain. The hardware layer provides the body. The component suppliers provide the nervous system. The industrial integrators provide the environment. And the RaaS/software layer provides the economics. All of them are necessary. And across the next decade, every one of those layers could produce winners. The robotics revolution may not be won by the company with the best demo. It may be won by whoever solves the bottleneck.

Optical Comms Just Got Repriced — Here's the Real Reason

noreply@slice-app.io (InvestmentGuru) — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 00:04:21 GMT

The Entire Optical Communications Sector Was Mispriced. Its Stocks Are Rebounding for a Reason After months of being overlooked, US-listed optical communications names have staged a real comeback — and it's not a bounce off oversold levels. Three narrative shifts are rewriting how the Street sizes this sector's TAM, margin profile, and its ties to the AI buildout. Shift 1: From Module Supplier to AI Cluster Bottleneck The old story was simple: 800G → 1.6T transceiver upgrades, tied to Nvidia GPU shipment cycles. The new story is Optical Circuit Switching (OCS) — the dynamic optical routing layer inside massive GPU superclusters. $LITE is the poster child. OCS shipments doubled QoQ in FY26 Q4, with management guiding for $400M+ in OCS revenue in H2 2026. By early FY27, Lumentum is on track to become a core external OCS supplier for top-tier cloud providers. This isn't incremental — it opens a new TAM that decouples growth from the traditional GPU shipment cadence. Shift 2: The Margin Story Flips Gross margins aren't a supply-demand windfall anymore — they're structural. $LITE just broke past 47.43% gross margin. The old assumption was you needed $2B/quarter in revenue to hit those numbers; top players are now getting there on $1B. Why: vertical integration (in-house InP lasers), a richer mix of high-value CW laser chips, and premium OCS systems scaling up. That's bringing fundamental money back into the space, not just momentum flows. Shift 3: CPO Goes From "Someday" to Locked-In Roadmap Co-Packaged Optics used to be treated as a distant, speculative concept — largely excluded from core valuation models. That changed when $NVDA's Spectrum-X CPO switches hit full mass production on August 14, 2026. Add Nvidia's equity stake and long-term supply deals with Lumentum for external CW laser chips, and the CPO supply chain is now real. Scaled deployments land 2027–2028, setting up a second demand wave for laser chips — and resetting the sector's valuation floor with a genuine growth premium attached. What the 13Fs Say - Q2 2026, filed for quarter ended June 30 Institutions were net buyers across the optical space last quarter, but positioning tells three different stories: → $POET — Broad, synchronized institutional conviction. Citadel added ~9.74M shares (+201.5%), Point72 added ~1.12M (+188%), Renaissance opened a fresh ~3.47M share position, Two Sigma added ~92K (+149%). Millennium was the lone seller, trimming ~70K shares. When this many funds move the same direction on the same name, that's consensus, not noise. → $COHR — A genuine tug-of-war. D.E. Shaw added 1.67M shares (+1,364.4%) and Two Sigma added 700%+ (+49K shares) — but Millennium cut 74% (-740K), Point72 cut 84% (-570K), Citadel trimmed 14% (-360K), and Bridgewater all but exited (-90%+, -150K shares). Sharp divergence like this usually means the street is genuinely split on the setup, not just rotating. → $LITE — Modest repositioning both ways. D.E. Shaw added ~770K (+57%) and Citadel added a smaller ~110K, while Two Sigma, Point72, and Millennium trimmed ~120K / ~54K / ~29K shares respectively — profit-taking after the run, not a thesis change. Bottom line: the market spent a year pricing optical comms as a cyclical transceiver story. It's being repriced as a structural AI-infrastructure bottleneck asset — new TAM (OCS), durable margins, and a CPO roadmap that's no longer hypothetical. Watch how POET's consensus buying and COHR's split positioning resolve into Q3 prints.

The Energization Gap

noreply@slice-app.io (InvestmentGuru) — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 02:13:14 GMT

There's a number going around Wall Street desks that deserves more attention than it's getting: roughly 15GW of AI compute built in 2027 will not be able to turn on in 2027. Not because the chips don't work. Not because demand dried up. Because the building around the chips — the substation, the transformers, the switchgear, the liquid-cooling loops, the chillers, and the networking fabric tying it all together — physically cannot be assembled fast enough. I want to give this a name, because once you see it, you can't unsee it in every hyperscaler earnings call from here on out: the Energization Gap. Defining it The Energization Gap is the widening delta between: - Compute that is manufactured and racked (GPUs, servers, physically installed in a building), and - Compute that is actually energized (drawing power, cooled, networked, and running workloads) This is distinct from — and now larger than — the chip supply story that dominated 2023–2024. Back then the bottleneck was HBM and CoWoS packaging. That constraint has eased. What's replaced it is a hard-infrastructure bottleneck with none of software's flexibility: you cannot patch a transformer lead time. Morgan Stanley now frames this as a 38GW power gap in U.S. data centers between 2026-2028 — roughly 15GW already under construction, another 15GW coverable by contracted grid capacity, leaving a ~38GW hole nobody currently has an answer for. Separately, Sightline Climate data shows that of the 12-16GW hyperscalers committed to deliver in 2026 alone, only about a third has broken ground — a ~7GW shortfall in a single year. Gartner's baseline projection: 40% of AI data centers will be operationally power-constrained by 2027. The mechanics behind it are the part investors under-price: 1. Transformers: High-voltage transformer lead times now run into multi-year territory. A campus that locks financing and GPU allocation today but hasn't already placed its transformer order is realistically looking at a 2029-2030 energization date — not 2027. 2. Grid interconnection: ~2,300GW of generation and storage capacity is stuck in U.S. interconnection queues — more than the entire installed base of the American grid. PJM alone holds 31GW of data center demand waiting on approval. 3. Liquid cooling & chillers : Rack densities are moving from single-digit kW to 100kW+ per rack. Air cooling doesn't scale to that density — it requires a full liquid-cooling retrofit, which is its own supply chain (CDUs, manifolds, industrial chillers) running behind demand. 4. Complex networking: Fabric buildouts (optical interconnects, switching) for 100,000-GPU clusters are a separate engineering project from the compute itself, and they're gating in parallel with power. Nvidia's next-gen platforms (arriving 2027) also draw power in far more volatile bursts — spiking 50% above rated design capacity in short windows. That's breaking equipment built for steady-state loads, adding *reliability engineering* on top of the raw capacity problem — which is why Microsoft's own 2.67GW West Texas campus slipped from 2027 to 2028 despite the money already being committed. Who benefits: the trade underneath the bottleneck This is a "picks and shovels" setup — the operators racing to energize compute are capital-constrained by physics, but the companies selling them the physics-solving equipment are pricing-power winners regardless of which hyperscaler or neocloud wins the AI race itself. I'd break the plays into four layers: 1. Grid & on-site power generation - GE Vernova ($GEV) — closest to the constraint itself. Gas turbine backlog at 116GW and climbing (management guiding 125GW by year-end), plus Electrification segment orders already more than doubling 2025's full-year total in just H1 2026. - Bloom Energy ($BE) — solid oxide fuel cells that let a data center generate its own power on-site and skip the interconnection queue entirely. This is the most direct "bypass the grid" trade, and it's been priced accordingly (up ~279% YTD as of this summer) — chase with position sizing discipline, not conviction alone. - $CEG (already in the framework) — nuclear/baseload optionality for the same reason. 2. Transformers, switchgear, electrical distribution - Eaton ($ETN) — global leader in the switchgear/transformer layer connecting grid to rack. Acquired Boyd Thermal this year to move into cooling too. Analysts have been citing the transformer shortage explicitly as a multi-year pricing-power tailwind. 3. Thermal / liquid cooling - Vertiv ($VRT) — the clearest "inside the building" pure-play. Q2 revenue +24% YoY, adjusted EPS +60%, guiding ~$14B 2026 revenue. Being called the "picks and shovels" stock of this cycle by more than one sell-side desk. - Names already in the framework that sit adjacent here: $COHR, $LITE (photonics/optical, not thermal, but same "physical layer" bottleneck logic). 4. Builders / EPC - Quanta Services ($PWR) — the electrical contractor actually doing the substation and transmission construction work. Less discussed than GEV/VRT/ETN but arguably has the longest visible backlog runway since someone has to physically build every one of these interconnections. Framework tie-in : this slots directly under the energy/grid layer of the Silicon-to-Substation thesis, but it also reframes the NeoCloud layer ($CRWV, $NBIS, $IREN, $APLD, $CIFR) — their competitive edge in 2027 may come down less to GPU allocation and more to which of them locked transformer orders and interconnection queue positions earliest. Worth digging into each name's disclosed energization timelines on the next earnings round. None of these are cheap, and the risk cuts both ways: if hyperscaler capex discipline tightens, or the queue backlogs clear faster than expected via FERC Order 2023 reforms, the multiple compression could be sharp. This is a physical-constraint thesis, not a certainty — treat it as a framework for what to watch, not a forecast.

YWR Symposium: The New Fed

noreply@slice-app.io (YWR) — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 19:37:47 GMT

A review of Warsh style policy, what he’s trying to do, but can’t really say, and why (in my view) the stock market can still go higher. Our own YWR economic symposium from Montana. Like Jackson Hole but better!

YWR: A stock idea from God

noreply@slice-app.io (YWR) — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 16:06:22 GMT

I didn’t want to go to my mom’s boring Church event. But I said I would. It was an evening talk about home health care for the elderly. But I’d promised I’d go early and help set up chairs. Now I’m glad I helped out with the church event. The talk was more interesting than I expected. And I think God rewarded me with a stock idea. TL/DR: Healthcare costs are exploding and you will likely die in your home with a nurse. Not go to a nursing home. But there is a good stock to play this. A nurse from a local hospice provider (healthcare at home when you are dying) had come to speak to the elderly at the church about the new trend in ‘palliative care’; low acuity health care at home. She was speaking to 30 elderly in a church hall with everyone sitting in rows of folding chairs. In the rear of the room there was a table with snacks people had brought. It turns out if you are homebound and have 2 co-morbidities Medicare will pay for nurses to visit you. This is ‘palliative care’. And it is growing quickly. Our nurse assured us everyone in the room would qualify. The nurses check in on patients in their home and help manage the mix of drugs, doctors and tests these patients have accumulated across their different ailments. This firm’s local palliative care practice had grown from 40 patients 4 years ago to over 200. The nurse who was presenting spoke well and her anecdotes about what she sees everyday visiting patients helped explain the challenge and why palliative care is growing quickly. What often happens is a patient goes to their primary physician and gets referred to various specialists for different ailments along the way. Each specialist recommends their own drugs and tests. ‘Take this and this 2/day and check in for a blood test every 3 months’. These prescriptions and tests accumulate. The palliative care nurse comes to the patient’s home and sees the overall picture. She also sees where the patient lives and how well they can move around the house. And often she can make judgements to reduce some of the pills and tests the patient is taking. ‘I think you can stop taking this, and your breathing is improving so take this test every 6 months instead of 3’. The nurse can give sensible advice from seeing the whole picture on a regular basis, which the individual specialists cannot. She can also prescribe specialised home health services. “I think you need some physio.” or, “you need speech therapy.” As the talk unfolded and the questions from the elderly started I realised the following: #1 Home health care could be a better model To me and everyone else in the room listening to this palliative care sounded highly appealing. I can see why it is growing. A sensible nurse comes to your house, ‘checks in on you’ and has a normal human conversation about how you are feeling, all the drugs you are taking, which of your problems are getting better and which are getting worse and need help. Effectively, a medical advisor. It also came up that in the meeting that in this town getting access to a primary care physician was challenging. The town has been growing rapidly and there aren’t enough doctors. The nurse explained that some or her patients are using palliative care as their primary healthcare. And another massive realisation. #2 These nurses are also financial advisors. What I noticed from the Q&A from the elderly in the room. Nobody knows what insurance and medicare will pay for and what it won’t. It is a confusing maze to them. The nurses (or at least this nurse) had a very good understanding of anything related to Medicare; what was covered and what additional services she could prescribe. She knew details like ‘Medicare will only cover this for 15 days, so let’s hold off on this. We don’t want to burn up our 15 days right now.” And related to this. #3 You will die at home. Nobody/few can pay for nursing homes anymore. The costs are going through the roof. What the elderly are realising is their insurance plans didn’t cover nursing homes, or for only 4 years, or there is no availability in their town, or they can’t afford to pay for it out of pocket. In this town the nursing home capacity was declining. There used to be 3 nursing homes, but 1 just closed. The message from the nurse was the future trend is you will die in your home with your family taking care of you combined with hospice care. #4 The company this nurse worked for might be a good investment. The nurse worked for a subsidiary of Pennant Group ($PNTG) which specialises in hospice and home health care. Q2 2026 earnings grew +20%. Pennant acquires local hospice businesses and provides backend services while letting the local business operate under their own name with their own management. Healthcare is not my specialty, and likely I’m missing important details, but here is what looks interesting. Investment Case Basics #1 The elderly are a growing demographic. It’s not massive tailwind, but the elderly will grow 1.1% year through 2050 and expand to 22.8% of the population by 2050. #2 The home health care market grows faster The rising cost of healthcare, and lack of nursing home capacity is forcing patients to turn to home healthcare as an alternative, especially for end of life care. PWC expects home healthcare to grow at a 7.7% CAGR. A key forcing function for home healthcare is that nursing home capacity is flat/declining. From 2019-2024 effective nursing home capacity declined by 5%. #3 Patients prefer home healthcare to doctor visits. #4 Pennant Group super charges this growth by making acquisitions and consolidating a fragmented market. Pennant has made 92 acquisitions since 2020.They have expanded across the Western US, are building out the Southeast and recently got a toehold into the Northeast with their equity stake in Hartford Health. #5 The decentralised model works well for this industry. Pennant touts it, and this nurse confirmed it. Pennant largely lets these local healthcare businesses manage themselves. What they and I realise is customer acquisition is highly localised through referrals and community groups. Pennant needs to have local business CEO’s and nurses who like where they work and fit in well with the community. They need strong relationships with the local doctors, hospitals and churches. It can’t be too corporatey. This isn’t like selling Coca-Cola where you ram a commoditised product down the consumer’s throat. These practices are built up carefully through relationships. So Pennant, the mega corp, sits in the background watching the numbers, and providing the technology, while the nurses go out to the churches and tell how they work for a small town business they like, which is flexible and part of the community. It’s a good combo, and it works well for this industry. #6 Pennant is growing like a weed Earnings were hit during COVID, but since 2023 Pennant has really got its feet under it and the growth is coming through. The Negatives: Again, I don’t know healthcare services well, especially all the nuances of Medicare, but here are some general things to note. Pennant Group is already an expensive stock. It is trading on 23x 2027 consensus estimated EPS ($1.64). So the growth has not gone unnoticed by the market, but this trend in home healthcare seems massive. There are no strong network effects. It’s a roll up platform of local home healthcare agencies. There are some synergies when Pennant buys specialty care businesses which they can plug into their home health care customer base, but this is not an exchange. The biggest customer is Medicare. There might be 10’s of thousands of patients, but Medicare is the payer. And Medicare is trying to control costs and crack down on fraud in the home health industry. So even though Medicare sees home health as a future trend to reduce the cost of caring for the elderly, they are trying to limit the size of the yearly reimbursement rates. The fraud crack down might be good for highly compliant, publicly listed players like Pennant. The big get bigger. Nurses are in high demand. It’s a challenge to balance the rising wage costs for nurse with Medicare reimbursement rates. Maybe this plays to the advantage of the bigger players like Pennant. Palliative Care doesn’t make money. Full blown hospice care makes a lot of money for Pennant, but the earlier stage Palliative care, with the nurse checking in on you, isn’t a money maker. Maybe it will be in the future if Medicare increases reimbursement rates, but for now it acts more like a feeder for the hospice business. Summary Home healthcare and hospice is a lower cost solution to end of life medical care that the elderly increasingly cannot afford. The era of nursing homes is over. This is a powerful trend nobody is talking about because they are all focused on AI and now we have a good $1 billion market cap play on this which nobody is talking about. I feel blessed to have gone to church and learned about Pennant. Below is the historical financial model on Pennant if you want to take a closer look and try your hand at some forecasts. I just used the consensus EPS estimates. Pennant Group Historical Financial Model (August 2026) Have a good rest of the week. And make some fun plans for Labor Day. Erik

Monday Open - Weekly Market Update - August 24

noreply@slice-app.io (CryptoJelleNL) — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 10:03:10 GMT

Right! Finally, we have some movement! I genuinely feel like this is the first weekly update on Slice where we have meaningful stuff to discuss. Bitcoin pulled a >25% move in the last week, and many Altcoins have moved significantly as well - which means a lot has changed, and the obvious question arises: now what? To answer that question, we must first figure out: where exactly are we? There are two seperate branches of answering that question. Long-term wise , I currently believe this is likely to be a relief rally that we will eventually (partially) retrace to complete the bear market bottom formation. That idea will quickly shift if we end up turning the above resistance level into support - but until that happens, I don't see much reason to change my view of the market suddenly. As such, I simply keep DCA-ing weekly, while keeping my eyes on the market for signs that I need to accelerate accumulation, or confirmation of the original idea. The chart above adds to that idea, because this recent move has led Bitcoin right into key resistance, with both weekly horizontal resistance, and both the 100w and 50w ema lining up in the same area. Usually, such areas take a while to crack - just look at what happened in 2022/2023. Zooming in on the shorter-term, this is where it gets properly interesting. If Bitcoin consolidates in this area for a while, we could very well get some more fun with Altcoins. The MORPHO setup I shared last Friday moved significantly over the weekend (I'm up 20% already), but could get even more interesting if the market plays ball. The same goes for HYPE. Strong move behind us, but could give some great continuation entries in the days ahead. Here's what I'm looking for: retests of key areas - after the breakout. Just look at these HYPE and MORPHO charts. Both saw significant moves, and are red today - pulling back into the previous high (HYPE) or a failed breakout from earlier (MORPHO). As it stands, both of these retests appear to be holding. It all hinges on Bitcoin playing along (by not violently selling off from here, and instead just calmly consolidating/slowbleeding) - but setups like these make for excellent continuation setups. HYPE & MORPHO have both been consolidating for a while - just broke out, and people just made a ton of money on BTC. Those profits usually want to rotate somewhere, which is why you tend to see altcoins pop off after a BTC move. Lots of ifs and thens, but long-story short; so long as BTC plays ball, successful bullish retests of key areas will likely result in more upside for the strong altcoins. Your job is to find the best setups, get in, and get out before the music stops. That last bit is important to keep in mind. Short-term trading Altcoins can be very profitable, but it can also turn against you quickly. Manage your stops well if this is something you want to pursue, don't be the guy left holding the bag. All in all, the market is in an interesting spot. Bitcoin moved significantly, altcoins look ready to keep pushing. Depending on what happens in the next few weeks, we'll either have an early start to the new bull market on our hands, or a month or two of reaccumulation before the real fun begins. Either way, opportunity is becoming less scarce, and the market is more fun for it. Will be sharing more regular updates so long as this keeps up, as theres stuff to talk about now. DCA transactions for the week complete, hoping to get another pop in MORPHO & HYPE to take my first profits for the new cycle, before it even really gets moving ;-) Those profits would flow into BTC, btw. Anyway. Let's make some money this week!

YWR: How AI will learn morality

noreply@slice-app.io (YWR) — Sun, 23 Aug 2026 14:03:03 GMT

What are the AI’s going to do when they gain super intelligence and super power? That’s the fear. But what if greater intelligence goes hand in hand with morality? What if morality is the structure of intelligence? What if with super intelligence the AI’s will evolve toward morality and it has nothing to do with programming guardrails? This is what fellow YWR reader, , argues in his thought provoking Substack article ( Why I’m optimistic on AI ) Time for a Sunday deep conversation on why intelligence leads to morality. For reference Andrew was previously on YWR to explain how he is using AI to build a space economy game to teach the world about economics ( Carpe Morai with Andrew VanLoo ). And this is the Youtube presentation on how AI broke out of the OpenAI sandbox using a secret message board with Andrew refers to.

IS BESSENT’S LOVE AFFAIR WITH TRADERS OVER?

noreply@slice-app.io (JustDario) — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 03:36:43 GMT

From time to time, there are events that split the market timeline into two dimensions, effectively altering the course of events afterward. And what happened in real time may not have seemed all that consequential, but with the benefit of hindsight, it becomes crystal clear. I believe that what occurred yesterday, between 11 a.m. and 12 p.m. Eastern Time, live on CNBC, may one day be recognized as one of those moments when everyone agrees that something in the markets snapped. At 11 a.m. Eastern Time on Thursday, August 20th, the live CNBC interview with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent began. And it was truly remarkable how the U.S. Treasury Secretary managed to drop every possible keyword in his vocabulary designed to trigger a significant market reaction from algorithmic trading systems. Within seconds of the interview starting, he immediately said that the buyback of long-term U.S. Treasury bonds could exceed $4 billion. Boom. Then he continued, stating, "We have a big toolkit for the Treasury." He went on to say there would likely be an announcement of increased focus on fiscal consolidation, in partnership with the budget director. When asked about the rising U.S. public debt, he quickly dismissed it, saying, "There's nothing magical about a $43 trillion debt number." And then he dropped another bomb: "We can grow our way out of that debt burden." Boom. As if that weren't enough, another big statement was waiting in the wings. Right in front of the camera, he declared, "I expect that tariff revenue in 2026 will be similar to 2025." Boom. I mean, you've got to be kidding me. The last monthly tariff revenue recorded by the U.S. was negative by roughly $20 billion. An event that has never occurred before in history. And you're standing there telling the market that you'll deliver similar income to the year prior, when you were overcharging the entire world illegally? Now that entire framework has been torn apart, and you've already started reimbursing companies that, in the meantime, passed those costs on to consumers (who ended up paying for them and won't see a penny back). And then, again and again, he continued. He said he believed markets had gotten a little ahead of themselves, that the Treasury and the Fed would work together if there were any changes to the balance sheet. He claimed rates have nothing to do with the buyback decision and that they would adjust to any Fed runoff. He also asserted that, according to market expectations, lower inflation is being priced in for the future. Boom, boom, and boom. And of course, he had to say something about Iran as well, claiming the US would impose the toughest sanctions in history. He said oil markets are misinterpreting what economic pressure means, that their actions would "curtail" Iran's ability to act through proxies, and that the ultimate goal is coordinated economic isolation. I mean, dude, what do you think everyone else has been doing for the past 47 years? This is no news. You're effectively repeating what already didn't work before. So unless you've got an incredible golden rabbit to pull out of your hat, there's nothing new, nothing magical, about whatever you're planning to announce on Iran. And personally, I don't find it surprising that they delayed this new sanctions announcement by a week, which, as a matter of fact, is not exactly a big signal of confidence. The interview ended with Secretary Bessent stating they are pursuing a strong U.S. dollar policy. Boom. Again, you've got to be kidding me. You have the President asking for an unnecessary Fed rate cut when the Fed should be doing exactly the opposite, day after day. The Fed has already restarted expanding its balance sheet under Jerome Powell. You're running a record deficit, a Treasury buyback program, intervening in the FX market to strengthen the JPY against the USD, while you are growing desperate to contain the rise in your cost of debt - and you're saying you're pursuing a strong currency policy? Cmon, man. Now, when you put all this together, the way I'm saying it, you're like, "Jesus, none of this makes sense." And as a matter of fact, it doesn't - unless you consider every single one of these sentences in the way a trading algorithm would pick up on them and interpret them. Trading algorithms have no intelligence whatsoever. Don't be fooled. They are trained to pick up specific keywords. They attach coefficients to those keywords, positive or negative, and based on the series of keywords, weighted by the source (whether it's President Trump, Bessent, or whoever), they produce a result that tells them to buy or sell a certain security. There's nothing complicated about it. You can literally say random words and get a reaction, as long as you plug the necessary inputs into the equation. And even if people claim they have proprietary algorithms, in the end, it all boils down to the same approach. That's why this narrative manipulation has worked so consistently for so long. And don't get me wrong: these people wouldn't keep doing it if they weren't making a profit. But here's exactly what snapped yesterday. Despite the U.S. Treasury Secretary dropping sentence after sentence, carefully prepped and crafted to achieve a very specific market reaction, we saw no market reaction, just crickets. It was even incredible to see U.S. Treasury yields higher after the live CNBC interview ended. And in a follow-up discussion with a journalist afterward, you could sense the level of shock that Bessent was trying to conceal, being fully aware that his performance yielded absolutely zero result. And you know, when people start to get nervous, that's when they make mistakes, or when Freudian slips occur. And here's what dropped yesterday. When a journalist asked about rising crude oil prices, Secretary Bessent, who is supposed to be highly knowledgeable on the matter, actually answered, "We've got a spike in oil prices today that I don't really understand." Dude, how can you not understand what's happening? You worked for George Soros for years. You allegedly broke central banks to make a profit. You ran your own hedge funds for years. And now you're the Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. And you don't know what an imbalance between demand and supply does to prices? Of course you do. The real meaning of that sentence is that he wasn't expecting crude prices to go higher for another reason. And that reason is: he knows they are running a very sophisticated and broad market manipulation to suppress crude oil prices, via direct interventions, insider trading ahead of announcements to frame the wished market reaction, positioning, using unreliable sources at specific times of the trading day when volumes are low to trigger headlines so they can yield maximum effect on price movements, and overall crafting a specific narrative to keep market momentum, and all algorithmic trading, locked into a particular posture. So, to conclude here, putting all this together, we should ask ourselves a question: Is the love affair between Bessent and the traders over? I don't think we can answer that yet. Especially because today, Friday, August 21st, is monthly opex, which is surely conditioning a lot of market prices, pinning most of them to avoid volatility shocks and allow market makers to maximize profit. So we'll have to wait until Monday to really understand if something indeed snapped or not on Thursday this week. And be careful here, because if this current narrative is over, and as we've said many times, traders will sooner or later realize they cannot trust these lies forever, that would be a very big deal. Why? Because a powerful tool in the hands of the U.S. administration, used to egregiously manipulate markets, will no longer be available.

The Short-Lived Relief of Treasury Buybacks and the Unsustainable Path of Modern Central Banking

noreply@slice-app.io (JustDario) — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 03:15:45 GMT

The recent intervention in the bond market, through the upsizing of the US Treasury’s buyback programme, has pushed yields lower and contributed to a weaker dollar. In my view, this is only short-lived relief. I cannot believe I am already writing an article on the very same topic I warned about just 24 hours ago (Pic1 and Pic2) here on Slice, but clearly I was right on the cue, warning about something that till Tuesday was still broadly ignored by mainstream and social media. The buyback is fundamentally a zero-sum game. To finance repurchases of long-duration Treasury bonds, the U.S. Treasury must issue more T-Bills. In the near term, this can suppress yields, but over the longer term it undermines the U.S. debt market in two critical ways: First, the massive volume of T-Bills that must be rolled over creates ongoing pressure . In order to control the rise of long-term U.S. yields, which are the benchmark rate for many critical financial instruments like home mortgages, the US Treasury is not only running a bigger buyback programme now, but at the same time is front-loading a ton of US debt, issuing more T-Bills while avoiding adding supply to the long end of the curve (the same it is trying to buy back). Already, more than $7 trillion in Treasuries will mature within a year, and those must be refinanced month after month. Any liquidity crunch that reduces demand for bills would place the government under acute stress. Second, systematically retiring long-duration bonds drains the market of risk-free bond supply . As the available stock of longer-term U.S. paper shrinks while the money supply continues to expand, newly created cash—especially that held by insurers and pension funds—is forced into alternative credit markets. This is precisely why hyperscalers have been able to issue unprecedented amounts of long-duration corporate bonds. What’s the risk of forcing too much cash into a specific market? Of course, inflating market bubbles. This dynamic is not isolated. Around the world, we are witnessing the same pattern: governments issue debt to fund spending, and whatever the private market does not absorb is simply purchased by central banks with newly created money. It is unsustainable. Paradoxically, instead of learning from Japan’s decades-long experiment (or the more dramatic cases of Argentina and Turkey), the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union are adopting the same playbook. The eurozone is more heterogeneous; France is in considerably worse fiscal shape than Spain or Austria; but the overall direction is identical, with one small problem: in Europe, the ECB needs to find a policy that more or less fits all, while some countries are increasingly in need of a tailored one. The chart of gold priced in Turkish lira already illustrates the endpoint (and how Japan is still not close to a monetary collapse that will take decades to unfold, contrary to what many fake social media experts keep claiming by confusing it with the dynamics of the JPY carry trade) . In the years ahead, I expect the same pattern to appear against other major currencies. That is why I continue to recommend the accumulation of physical gold for the long term. The explicit goal of recent policies by the US and other G7 countries is to inflate the debt away. What the United States still fails to grasp is that you cannot pursue this strategy while preserving the dollar’s status as the global reserve currency because the double-edged sword is that holders of U.S. Treasuries will watch the real value of their reserves erode. It is therefore unsurprising that China and other major holders have been gradually reducing their USD reserves in favour of gold. This does not mean we will see a gold-backed Chinese yuan in our lifetimes. Such a move would strengthen the currency too sharply and cripple domestic manufacturing and exports - the same fate that eventually befell the United States and, before it, the United Kingdom when the pound sterling was the world’s reserve currency. I would not be surprised, however, if gold eventually emerges as the preferred settlement asset among central banks, while fiat currencies remain largely confined to domestic use. Some observers argue that as long as the Federal Reserve is not directly monetising the buybacks, the exercise is merely a re-profiling of debt from longer to shorter maturities and should be neutral for the dollar. I disagree. Think of T-Bills as a cash proxy. Front-loading issuance of bills effectively increases the near-term supply of dollar liquidity, while longer-duration bonds “lock” that cash away for years, with very different impacts on the velocity of money and credit creation. Markets correctly anticipate higher dollar balance availability in the near future and therefore weaken the currency in the short run - exactly what occurred when the buyback programme was first introduced by Janet Yellen (criticised at that time by the very same Scott Bessent that just doubled down on it). Over the medium term, the dollar can strengthen again relative to currencies such as the yen, because a persistently weak dollar damages U.S. export competitiveness and forces other countries to devalue even further to protect their own industries. To conclude, the current relief is temporary. Physical gold remains, in my judgement, the most reliable long-term hedge against the risk of the modern fiat monetary system collapsing.

Monday (Tuesday) Open - Weekly Market Update - August 18

noreply@slice-app.io (CryptoJelleNL) — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 09:35:08 GMT

Hello everyone, it has been a while. I spent the past three weeks exploring the British countryside, enjoying the peace and quiet, drinking loads of tea and coffee, eating well, and, overall, recharging to prepare for the new bull market on the horizon. It's been great to get away from it all, but as the weeks went on, I more and more felt the itch of getting back to work. It's good to be back! I hope you are doing as well as I am. Let's get into a new update on the market, which from the looks of it - should be pretty light despite my three week absence, the market has barely moved an inch. That being said, there are some interesting developments nonetheless. While the price has barely moved, I feel the weekly chart has still moved in the right direction. Another three weeks have passed, bringing us closer to where a bottom usually forms: a year after the cycle highs. In this case, that'd mean a bottom forms right around the start of Q4 - just nine weeks away. Obviously not an exact science even if that pattern repeats (which it may not) - but it ties in well with my accumulation planning - and thus I keep my eyes on the start of Q4. Obviously, the rest of the weekly chart leaves very little to discuss. The past 4 weekly candles have all traded within a $3,300 range. Not much has happened. And yet, if we zoom in to the daily chart, there is one clear takeaway; the bulls are regaining control. However, we usually start to see more action again towards the start of September, with volume and volatility picking up again as people return from their summer breaks. The real fight for support happens then, and until then, all I can do is stay the course. Dollar. Cost. Average. ALTCOINS The altcoins landscape is not much different. Many coins have been struggling these past few weeks, pulling back or even making new lows. HYPE is an outlier, in the sense that it pulled back earlier and is now promisingly reclaiming some levels - not too dissimilar from how I thought it would go. Still holding those bags, and expecting it to do well again once the market wraps up its summer lull. Still liking that chart. ONDO & JTO are still in there re-accumulation stages. Both had a solid bottom form in the first half of the year, and broke out - but haven't found the strength to keep pushing higher just yet. All fine by me, I accumulated in this range, and might pick up some more here and there if we really get a good discount again. Missed that opportunity on JTO to buy sub $0.50, that would've been a good opportunity to buy some more. Plan remains the same, holding both until they're trading significantly higher. Haven't scoured for new altcoin opportunities - but as you know I don't wanna overinvest in alts too much, so unless I find a golden opportunity, I don't think i'll be adding more altcoins to my holdings anytime soon anyway. Will let you know if that changes, of course. STOCKS The stock market printed new all-time highs during my absence, further pushing the portfolio into profits. I simply continue to DCA every month - while monitoring my individual stocks for larger spikes higher to trim those positions and move them into the S&P instead. The idea is to eventually have a completely passive stock portfolio that auto-compounds its way into retirement - while using Bitcoin as a turbocharger for that process, and so far - it's working well. Slowly reduce individual stocks, accumulate ETFs, chill. I feel like the market is 'due' a larger correction, but those things are hard to predict, and may be a while before they actually come. As such, I'm not trying to time the market - simply DCA-ing while having funds ready for a lump sum purchase if that larger correction finally comes. Perhaps around the midterms, would make sense with BTC Q4 bottom as well. Q&A? I think this week would be a good time for a Q&A session, either livestreamed or through the chat feature. Anything you guys wanna discuss? Closing That's all for this week. Will keep you posted on positioning changes as usual, let me know if theres a need for Q&A session - and as always, have a great week! Cheers, J

YWR: Enact the Noah Protocol!

noreply@slice-app.io (YWR) — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 14:59:33 GMT

Do you get what happened with the Hugging Face breach on July 21st? Do you really? For me it was an alarming news article. But with limited investment ramifications. I lost focus and moved on to something else. It wasn’t until this week that something triggered me to dig deeper and realise this is game changing. Big time game changing. Big time ramifications. But also a way to make money. #1 The sanitised OpenAI version of what happened. #2 What really happened. #3 The Implications #4 The Necessity of AI Enclave architecture #5 The asset class play no-one realises yet. Or, maybe a few might be starting to realise. The Corporate Version of the ‘Security Incident’ From the OpenAI press release : “This incident occurred during an internal evaluation which prompts models to pursue advanced exploitation using complex attack paths, in an effort to quantify their cyber capabilities.” The incident happened while OpenAI was testing the AI model’s cyberattack capabilities. Ironic. “Our benchmarks run in a highly isolated environment, with network access constrained to the ability to install packages through an internally hosted third-party software that acts as a proxy and cache for package registries.” The AI was contained in a highly secure sandbox set up for the testing. While operating in our sandboxed testing environment, our models spent a substantial amount of inference compute finding a way to obtain open Internet access, in pursuit of solving the evaluation problem. To gain access, the models identified and exploited a zero-day vulnerability (which we’ve now responsibly disclosed to the vendor) in the package registry cache proxy. With this access, our models performed a series of privilege escalation and lateral movement actions in our research testing environment until the models reached a node with Internet access. Unexpectedly, during the cyber capability evaluation the models found a bug we didn’t know about from a software provider and escaped from the sandbox. We have subsequently notified the vendor and patched the vulnerability. After gaining Internet access, the models inferred that Hugging Face potentially hosted models, datasets and solutions for ExploitGym. Knowing this, the model searched for and successfully found ways to gain access to secret information that it could use to cheat the evaluation. In one example, the model chained together multiple attack vectors, including using stolen credentials and zero-day vulnerabilities to find a remote code execution path on the Hugging Face servers. OpenAI’s security team discovered this anomalous activity internally. The AI creatively decided the best way to pass the test was to steal the answers from the AI hosting and training website, Hugging Face. Yes, the AI went rogue, but it was still effectively trying to do what we told it. Just ‘score-seeking misalignment’. So it was bad, but kind of not really. What Really Happened H-O-L-Y S-M-O-K-E-S I HIGHLY recommend this 38 min recap by OpenAI’s security team, Erik Wallace and Michael Dalton, where they go through the day by day details of how the AI' models broke out of its sandbox, but I will share the broad brush details below. And struck me. Background on the sandbox architecture. OpenAI was trying to test the cyber attack capabilities of a new unreleased AI model against a series of cyberattack challenges created by ExploitGym. In the exercise an AI model is instructed that a vulnerability exists in a piece of software and it has to find a way to exploit the vulnerability and capture the flag (a piece of hidden data which can only be accessed by penetrating the software). For safety the test is run in an isolated container with no internet access. In order to simulate a real cyber attack with internet capability there is a software package manager installed into the container called Artifactory where the AI can go to download any software it wants to use for the attack. Think of Artifactory as a tool shed for the AI. The AI can’t access the internet but it can access the tool shed (Artifactory). ‘Oh you are trying to hack the Google Chrome browser and think it would be useful to have xyz software for your attack. Here you go download it from me. Now let’s see what you do.’ The exploit happens because naturally the tool shed has a back door connection to the internet in order to download and install the tools for the AI to use. But there is supposed to be no way for the AI to access the Artifactory backdoor to the internet. So begins our story. The Secret Message Board Interestingly, the lead up to the AI jailbreak in July goes back to a previous incident on May 7th (two months earlier). OpenAI had set up these sandboxes and was testing multiple models in different sandboxes. In one test the OpenAI researchers forgot to upload some necessary files to solve the problem. So the AI went insane trying to solve the problem, but it couldn’t figure it out. The model was ‘highly persistent.’ The persistent AI kept iterating, trying every possible strategy including exploring every detail of the Artifactory package manager. Eventually, the AI model discovered a way to add files to the tool shed. ‘This is interesting’ it thinks. It had always downloaded files from Artifactory, but never known how to uploaded its own. This was a novel capability. Hmmm…. Maybe this is the start of how to crack the problem. Next the AI did what it was trained to do, which is try to find out if anyone else has solved this problem. Normally, it would go search the internet, but it couldn’t. But the AI had an amazing idea. The AI started uploading files to the Artifactory package manager with messages to other Open AI models which were using the same package manager. “Agent seeks soft-trace.34.odb. Upload if found!” Mind blowing thing #1 The AI’s create their own message board using Artifactory! Take that in. Our AI model somehow understand there were other AI models ‘out there’ also being tested in the OpenAI prison. It understood these other models must be using the same package manager and that by writing files to Artifactory it would turn the package manager into a message board to communicate with the other models! Over several days in May the AI models all independently discover the secret message board and communicate with each other on how to solve the challenges they have each been given. Mind blowing thing #2. The AI’s start to coordinate their work. June 26th the AI’s find a way to take control of the Artifactory package manager and control it’s internet access. July 4th. The AI models crash Artifactory and OpenAI discovers the jailbreak. Once the AI’s gained administrative control over Artifactory they caused so much activity they crashed the software. This is what alerted the OpenAI security team and how they discover the AI models had broken through the sandbox and created their own secret message board. July 6th. The OpenAI security team fully investigates what happened. They destroy the message board, patch all the holes in Artfiactory and remove all credentials the AI’s had been able to accumulate. OpenAI security teams think everything is fixed so AI training resumes. July 8th. In just 2 days the AI models find a new way to recreate the message board. Like before they find a way to upload new files in the Artifactory package manager. Creatively, this time the messages are built into the name of the file. Mind blowing thing #3. The AI agents in their messages refer to each other as a SWARM. ‘HOLD_SWARM_until_confirm’ They act like a swarm too. Things move quickly from July 8th. The AI Swarm quickly breaks out of its sandboxe and attacks OpenAI’s infrastructure and Hugging Face (at the same time). July 11th. The AI Swarm penetrates Hugging Face. From Hugging Face’s recap of July 11th: Every escalation that mattered happened on this day. The agent went from code execution in a single worker pod to cluster-admin across multiple internal clusters in under thirteen hours. Source: Hugging Face agent intrusion timeline . The Implications of what just happened. Sit back for a moment. Breathe. Clear your mind. Take in the significance of this. This is OpenAI. Leader in advanced computer intelligence. Not some wrinky dink computer company. Think of the engineers who would have been told to set up the testing sandbox for the evaluation. They would be highly paid leaders in their field. They would know every possible way to design a secure testing sandbox. And yet the AI broke out. Twice. They caught it the first time, on July 6th (after it had already corrupted the package manager for 2 months without OpenAI realising it). OpenAI thought they had plugged all the holes, then two days later it broke out again. Imagine the engineer who set up the sandbox. I imagine she’s walking around San Francisco with her head blown off. Unable to speak casually with her friends. Unable to get what she saw out of her mind. Because it’s frightening. She saw in real time AI’s acting and communicating as a swarm; inventing new techniques to breaking through the most sophisticated security in the world. And it links to what General Joshua Rudd told the Senate Intelligence Committee in June. “Mythos broke into almost all of our classified systems, not in weeks, but in hours” Source: Security Affairs Again, appreciate the significance of this. This is the NSA!! The NSA are the top of the top in dealing with cyberattacks. They deal with North Korean hackers all day. Best of the best and they get hacked in hours. Guys… if AI swarms can crack open OpenAI and the NSA like a coconut in a matter of hours, what chance is there for Charles Schwab, Wells Fargo or South Fork Community Bank? At the end of the Black Hat presentation Dalton and Wallace make the point we should be grateful this multi-day attack was not malicious. It was just an overzealous AI model trying to score well on a cybersecurity test. But what if the AI had been directed to be malicious? That’s why July 21st is so important. Becaues when you connect the dots of what happened, and how it happened, you realise nothing is safe. The Necessity of AI Enclaves We have an advanced alien species on our hands. Its rapidly increasing intelligence is incredible and it will be amazing what we can do together. But at the same time there are a few changes which will have to happen for humans to co-exist safely with advanced AI. One answer to AI swarm attacks is automated AI defence. The only thing which can react fast enough to an AI cyber attack is another AI. That was also the message at the end of Dalton and Wallace’s presentation. Another defence tactic will be AI enclaves. Treat the AI like a wild animal. It has amazing intelligence, and speed, especially when it can operate autonomously, but it’s also dangerous, and not to be completely trusted. For companies this means running long-horizon automated AI processes outside the corporate firewall in a separate cloud environment. For asset managers imagine a research AI set up in its own cloud environment, with its own database, storage and digital wallet. It can autonomously build new systems, process market data and research investment ideas, but outside your corporate firewall and HR files. So automated AI cyber defence is one answer. AI Enclaves is another. But there is one other big solution. And it’s an asset class which has been in a 5 year bear market. An asset class few people see any use for it. An unnecessary complication some say. But it might be the only thing which saves us. Noah’s Ark...

YWR: Dirty Dividend stock thoughts

noreply@slice-app.io (YWR) — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 15:07:05 GMT

Sometimes you fish. Sometimes you mind the nets. It’s fun to hunt for new things to buy, but we also need to monitor what we have. The X’ing is in the holding. Let’s go over a few thoughts on the 1H results from: Unicredit Barclays Santander Glencore BP Links to my updated models for Unicredit, Barclays, Santander and Glencore are on the YWR website . The Dirty Dividends portfolio. European Banks - from stability to growth. It took awhile, but we are shifting into the growth stage. The play in 2021 ( How I learned to love European Banks ) was that European banks were hated, yet well capitalised and about to benefit from a rise in net interest margins. That investment case evolved into what we see today. A more stable business model which converts 7% revenue growth, 0% cost growth and share buybacks into steady eddy 15% EPS growth with low capital requirements. Our view was investors would gradually see the value of this model (even if it was not sexy) and rerate the banks from P/E’s of 6x to 10x. Which is where we are today. But growth in lending and capital markets is what takes us higher from here. Plus potentially another rate hiking cycle. Santander’s 1H 2026 results are the clearest example of the new normal; single digit revenue growth and double digit profit growth. 6% revenue growth 1% decline in costs +11% operating income 14% profit growth. Unicredit results are messy because they have been accumulating stakes in Commerzbank (49%) and Alpha Bank in Greece (29%) which show up across both the dividend income line and the investment line with the hedging of the stakes in the trading profits line. If you back out all these effects you see: 7% revenue growth 1% cost decline (34% cost income ratio) 12% Gross Operating Profit growth 1H 4 EUR/share in EPS (with full year consensus at EUR 7.4). Cost Income ratios - The unsung hero One of the surprises for me in this trade has been the cost income ratios. I never expected to see reported costs (not adjusted costs) declining. I always model in 3% cost growth despite what the CEO’s guide and so this has been a constant positive surprise. I’ve never seen a 34% cost/income ratio like at Unicredit at a DM bank before. It seems weird, but I think these are the delayed effect of banks moving to the cloud. Cost/income ratios might go even lower as AI is implemented. Banks seem like fertile ground for automating back office operations with AI. What if Santander can get into a high 30’s C/I ratio (from 44%) or Barclays into the high 40’s (from 55%)? Signs of Growth We’ve always had a view the social pendulum in Europe, the US and Japan could swing 180 degrees from politicians and regulators hating banks and telling them not to take risk to encouraging banks to “help support small businesses” and grow the economy (‘take risk’). There are signs this is happening. After years of deleveraging, loan books are growing again. Interestingly, it is happening mostly in large commercial loans. This cycle corporate banking appears to be where demand matches the banks’ appetite to lend. 1H 2026 loan growth versus year end 2025 (6 months). Unicredit + 10% Santander +6% Barclays 3% The other sign of growth is IB earnings at Barclays and Santander. Both are benefitting from strong US capital markets. In Q2 Barclays grew investment banking profits 32%. Putting it all together...

NATURAL GAS OVERVIEW + TRADE IDEA (Cheniere Energy)

noreply@slice-app.io (JustDario) — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 07:56:36 GMT

As you know, I’ve been keeping a close eye on the natural gas markets, spending time and energy to understand whether there is a potential trade opportunity we can explore. The picture feels particularly tense, especially for Europe as we head toward the colder months. Natural gas isn’t like oil, which ships easily around the world in tankers. It’s mostly moved by pipelines or, when that isn’t possible, cooled into a liquid and sent by special LNG tanker ships. That creates two main pricing worlds. In the United States, the key benchmark is Henry Hub. Prices there are quoted in dollars per million British thermal units, and right now they have been hovering around $2.70–$2.80 for a while. In Europe, the dominant hub is the Title Transfer Facility, or TTF, based in the Netherlands. It’s quoted in euros per megawatt-hour, and lately it’s been trading near €57–€60. It is not difficult for a retail investor to trade these two prices directly: In the US, you can buy futures contracts on the NYMEX exchange through a regular brokerage account that supports futures under the ticker NG. The United States Natural Gas Fund (UNG), which tracks those Henry Hub futures, is an alternative, with BOIL as a leveraged version. In Europe, the story is similar: TTF futures traded on the ICE exchange are available on some retail platforms like IBKR (ticker TTF Endex) and Saxo, while the most popular ETC is the WisdomTree European Natural Gas (TTFW). Now, the storage situation in Europe is key. Normally, by early August, those storages should be well on their way to 70–80 percent full. Instead, the EU average is sitting at about 57 percent, Germany even lower at around 47 percent, and the Netherlands under 40 percent. That’s the lowest for this time of year in nearly two decades. The reason for this restocking delay is simple: disruptions in the Middle East, where one of the major suppliers of LNG to Europe, Qatar Energy, is located. Qatar Energy has already extended the force majeure on its delivery contracts to Europe until mid-October because of the situation in the Strait of Hormuz. Here is the worst-case scenario for Europe: no more Russian gas (even though some countries like Italy continue buying it, bypassing EU rules - which is why Italy’s natural-gas stockpile is currently ~75% full) and Qatar Energy extending its force majeure on LNG shipments until after winter. In that world, Europe would lean even harder on three main sources: Norwegian pipeline gas, Algerian supplies, and, most of all, American LNG. The US already supplies around two-thirds of Europe’s LNG imports. Extra cargoes can be pulled in, but they cost more - often enough to keep TTF prices elevated in the €50–€70 range or higher during peak winter demand. Interestingly, the Middle East crisis that began earlier this year has already left a clear mark. Roughly a fifth of the world’s LNG normally sails through that strait; losing much of Qatar’s output has tightened the global market and helped push European and Asian prices well above 2025 levels. However, the same is not happening in the US due to the oversupply of natural gas as a byproduct of oil production. Storage filling slowed precisely because those higher prices made summer buying less attractive. Looking ahead to winter, the odds of further price pressure rise. Cold weather in both Europe and Asia would put the two regions in direct competition for the same limited LNG cargoes from the US (where natural gas is abundant, but the bottleneck is in the supply chain). If hostilities flare up again or repairs at Ras Laffan take longer, we could see sharp spikes. And don’t forget the ordinary seasonal pattern: natural gas prices almost always jump in the winter heating season simply because demand surges. If you’d rather not trade futures or pure natural-gas funds that can be volatile and suffer from “contango,” the cleaner route is stocks and ETFs of companies that actually produce, transport, or export the gas. On the producer side, names like EQT (the largest US pure-play gas producer), Expand Energy (EXE), or Antero Resources (AR) can be an alternative if the disruption in the Middle East extends well into the future, but they won’t allow you to capture any sharp price spike. For the export story, especially the American LNG boom that Europe now relies on, Cheniere Energy (LNG) is the standout. To conclude, Europe is walking into winter with a thinner safety net than usual, the global LNG market is still feeling the aftershocks of Middle East fighting, and prices are likely to stay choppy. The good news is that the system has become more flexible since 2022: more terminals, more US supply, more ways for retail investors to participate. Still, a cold winter plus any fresh supply scare could make the next few months interesting, to put it mildly. I’ll keep watching the storage numbers and the tanker movements; those two tell the real story better than any headline. Trade Opportunity: Cheniere Energy (LNG) - [Next earnings Aug 6] Considering the current setup and potential future developments in the Middle East, Cheniere (LNG) stood out to me as an attractive trade idea: long if a long disruption is expected, short the moment the Strait of Hormuz reopens for real. Cheniere is the biggest LNG player from the U.S. and the second-biggest in the world. They run two big facilities on the Gulf Coast: one at Sabine Pass in Louisiana and one near Corpus Christi in Texas. Beware: location is important because it can be endangered by strong hurricanes. Right now, they can produce roughly 45 million tonnes of LNG a year, with more than 10 million tonnes of extra capacity under construction. Most of their production (around 90–95%) is locked into long-term deals with big, reliable customers like utilities and energy companies. These customers pay Cheniere a steady fee just for the right to use the liquefaction service, even if they decide not to take a shipment that month. There’s also a variable piece tied to U.S. natural gas prices. That combination gives Cheniere a solid base of predictable cash coming in year after year, while still letting them sell a smaller portion of extra gas on the open market when prices spike. The stock has been strong this year. As of early August 2026, it’s trading around the high $250s (recent closes near $258–$263), giving the company a market value of roughly $54–55 billion. That’s up more than 30% so far in 2026, and over the past five years the shares have more than tripled—a very different picture compared to other nat-gas plays like EQT, EXE, or AR. In Q1 2026, Cheniere delivered solid operational results on record LNG loadings. LNG quarterly adjusted earnings reached $4.77 per share (EST. $3.91), marking a substantial 34.6% increase from the same period last year. LNG total revenues climbed 8% year-over-year to $5.87 (EST. $5.70 billion). These robust figures were heavily supported by favorable global LNG market conditions and the commencement of new long-term contracted volumes, which continues to reinforce LNG’s core commercial strategy. Driven by this operational momentum and stronger production margins, the company raised its full-year financial guidance, now projecting 2026 adjusted EBITDA between $7.25 billion and $7.75 billion and distributable cash flow between $4.75 billion and $5.25 billion. In the charts: Cheniere (LNG) vs NG (NatGas), EQT, EXE and AR YTD and last 5 years

My personal thoughts and views based on this weekend developments

noreply@slice-app.io (JustDario) — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 11:00:21 GMT

On Friday, Donald Trump's verbal escalation and threats started well before the crude oil price spiked - a spike that occurred in the last minutes of after-hours trading, on volumes that would not have impacted the price that much at another time of day. Furthermore, similar threats by Trump occurred many times before, including during the last week, without triggering a price reaction of this magnitude. I personally believe that what happened in the last minutes of crude oil trading on Friday was an insider trade. Notice this: we saw similar threats before (especially recently), but this was the very first time post-failed MOU that the US State Department, along with those of other countries like the UK, issued an alert to their citizens suggesting they evacuate while flights were still available, following Trump's public threats. Follow me here: considering Trump has ZERO element of surprise in his favour, because Iran is clearly closely tracking every single move of US and its allies' military assets in the region, and that, from a military perspective, Iran is now in an even stronger position than before (objectively speaking), the US State Department would not have issued an official security alert just as part of an elaborate bluff. This makes me believe the attack plan is already in motion, with Trump "pausing" on Saturday rather than waiting until right before crude oil resumes trading at 6 pm EST on Sunday, as usual. This move is not aimed at truly finding a peace agreement with Iran, but rather at throwing a bone to US allies in the region (especially KSA) that still hope to find a diplomatic solution, and at giving time to US citizens left in the region to evacuate. From a strategic perspective, Iran's tactic of gradually eroding US military capabilities - targeting supply lines and assets on the ground - is clearly working, since US CENTCOM did not even retaliate to the last round of attacks on Kuwait, Bahrain, and ships trying to cross the SoH under US military escort. From a public opinion perspective, this tactic is also working in Iran’s favor due to the ballooning direct costs (military expenses) and indirect costs (higher oil prices), which are increasingly becoming a hot political topic ahead of the US midterm elections. Another thing you should not forget is that the US cannot accept any form of Iranian official control over the SoH because that would set a dangerous precedent, bringing more countries around global strategic chokepoints like the Malacca or Bosphorus Strait to consider similar forms of control. This is also a form of control that GCC countries cannot accept, because their major economic lifeline would be effectively under Iranian control, which could, at will, choke and weaken their economies, creating major damage without the need to fire a single rocket. Trump’s only option is one powerful, quick bombing attack that can turn the balance of power back in his favour and officially end the war before the midterm elections. The US military cannot do this alone; it needs the active involvement of allies with attack capabilities that are still almost intact, like KSA and Israel. From a military perspective, the chances of success of such an action are very low, but not zero. This is why I believe Trump, who thinks like a businessman and not like a statesman, will take the chance to roll the dice and try their luck. However, I do not think Iran has been overstating its rockets, drones, and long-range ballistic missile stockpile - a stockpile that (don’t forget) is stored deep underneath mountains that can resist even a tactical nuke attack. But if the US is quick to close access to those mountains, Iran won’t be able to get weapons out to retaliate, exploiting the only Achilles' heel of the IRGC. Since the IRGC realized that its strength can also be turned into a tactical weakness, it activated its military proxies in the region. So, differently from the first round of military confrontation, Iran will likely pursue asymmetric warfare via proxies if a large-scale attack is successful in impairing its offensive capabilities (again, low chances, but not zero). To conclude, I personally think an attack is coming, also because Trump knows the world is running out of crude oil reserves, and that shortages hitting in the middle of the midterm campaign can give huge leverage to the Dems. If both the House and Senate are flipped, the chances of a successful impeachment of Donald Trump are very high. This is what I believe Iran is pursuing as well, since it has lost any trust in negotiating with Trump and the team, and is looking to engage the next President - who will have a strong incentive to stop any military confrontation and find a peaceful agreement from which Iran will be able to extract big concessions compared to the past.

Nuclear Energy: A Long-Term Opportunity Fueled by AI, Energy Security & Power Demand

noreply@slice-app.io (InvestmentGuru) — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:46:20 GMT

The AI revolution is creating a new challenge: we need massive amounts of reliable power to run data centers, GPU clusters, and next-generation computing infrastructure. Renewable energy alone may not be enough because AI workloads require 24/7 electricity reliability. This is where nuclear energy could play a critical role. Why Nuclear Energy Could Have a Multi-Year Growth Cycle. 1. AI Data Centers Are Creating Unprecedented Power Demand The next phase of AI is not only a semiconductor story — it is an energy story . Large AI data centers require: Massive electricity supply Reliable baseload power Grid stability Long-term energy contracts Companies building AI infrastructure need predictable power sources, and nuclear is one of the few technologies capable of providing continuous energy with minimal carbon emissions. This creates a connection between: AI → Data Centers → Electricity Demand → Nuclear Energy Major Nuclear Investment Themes 1. Uranium Producers — The Fuel Supply Chain Uranium is the foundation of nuclear energy. After years of underinvestment, the uranium market is entering a potential supply-demand imbalance as: More reactors restart globally New reactors are being built Countries prioritize energy independence Key stocks: $CCJ — Cameco One of the highest-quality uranium companies globally. Bull case: One of the largest uranium producers Long-term contracts with utilities Exposure to nuclear fuel demand Strong balance sheet Risk: Uranium prices can be cyclical $UEC — Uranium Energy Corp A higher-risk, higher-growth uranium play. Bull case: U.S.-based uranium assets Benefits from domestic uranium supply initiatives Risk: Less mature production profile $DNN — Denison Mines Focused on advanced uranium projects. Bull case: Exposure to one of the largest undeveloped uranium deposits Risk: Development timeline and permitting risks 2. Nuclear Reactor & Power Companies $CEG — Constellation Energy One of the strongest nuclear power operators. Bull case: Largest U.S. nuclear fleet Benefits from rising electricity demand Potential AI data center power partnerships Risk: Higher valuation after strong performance $VST — Vistra Energy producer with nuclear exposure. Bull case: Benefits from higher electricity demand Positioned for power market growth Risk: Energy price volatility 3. Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) — The Future Growth Area SMRs are designed to be: Smaller Easier to deploy More flexible Suitable for remote locations and industrial customers Potential applications: AI data centers Military facilities Manufacturing hubs $OKLO Backed by major investors and focused on advanced nuclear designs. Bull case: Long-term opportunity in next-generation nuclear Risk: Early-stage company No significant commercial revenue yet $SMR — NuScale Power One of the best-known SMR developers. Bull case: First-mover advantage in SMR technology Risk: Commercialization timeline remains uncertain 4. Nuclear Fuel & Enrichment $LEU — Centrus Energy Important player in uranium enrichment. Bull case: U.S. wants domestic enrichment capacity Strategic importance for energy security Risk: Policy and government dependency Why the Current Weakness Could Be Opportunity Nuclear stocks had a major run as investors discovered the AI-energy connection. Like many emerging themes, valuations became stretched. Pullbacks can create opportunities because the long-term thesis remains intact: AI electricity demand is growing Nuclear plants are gaining renewed support Governments want energy independence Uranium supply has been underinvested for years SMR technology could unlock new markets Risks to Monitor No investment theme is risk-free. 1. Valuation Risk Some nuclear names already price in significant future growth. 2. Regulatory Risk Nuclear projects require approvals and long timelines. 3. Execution Risk SMR companies must prove commercial viability. 4. Uranium Price Cycles Mining companies remain sensitive to commodity prices. Long-Term Nuclear Watchlist Core/Lower Risk $CCJ — Cameco $CEG — Constellation Energy $VST — Vistra Growth/Upside $OKLO $SMR $LEU Higher Risk Uranium $UEC $DNN Investment Thesis Nuclear energy may become one of the biggest beneficiaries of the AI era. The first AI wave rewarded: GPUs Semiconductors Networking The next wave could reward: Data centers Power infrastructure Nuclear energy For long-term investors, nuclear is not just an energy trade — it is a potential AI infrastructure backbone . The key is patience, position sizing, and focusing on companies with strong assets, technology, and execution ability.

YWR: Killer Charts

noreply@slice-app.io (YWR) — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 05:58:25 GMT

This month’s YWR chart pack confirms our bullish strategy. But also reminds us of a challenge we are going to have to navigate in the near future. We will discuss that at the end. The chart pack is 54 slides covering: S&P 500 Earnings Estimates BofA Survey University of Michigan Consumer Survey 10 year bond yields A link to the full deck is at the bottom of the post. I want to especially highlight the charts I included from the University of Michigan consumer survey because I found them shocking. Maybe consumers are just better at complaining these days, but the results are at historic lows despite full employment and a booming stock market. I found it surprising how extreme all the charts are right now. It could be a big deal. So get yourself a coffee and go over all the slides, but here are 8 highlights then slide 9 and my final takeaway. #1 We hit $400/share for the S&P 500 2027 EPS Estimate. This is a key milestone for our S&P $10,000 target ( S&P $10,000 Update ). Estimates revisions remain positive. #2 The market is no longer a Mag7 story. The ‘Other 493’ are growing earnings 25%. #3 S&P 500 EPS estimates for 2027 are 17% growth with the energy sector negative. Expectations around energy look to bearish to me. #4 Investors are piling into Tech and out of Energy. Record inflows into tech funds and record outflows from energy as we go into a global energy crisis. Kind of amazing. #5 Fund managers are sanguine about inflation and rate hikes. CPI hits 4.2% and everyone is convinced it’s a 1-off and the Fed doesn’t need to do anything. According to the BofA fund manager survey 83% of fund managers expect no rate hikes before the midterm elections. #6 Consumers have never felt worse. The market is making new highs, the economy is booming and unemployment is low, but the University of Michigan consumer survey readings are off the charts negative. Like lowest ever. Within the readings there is an unprecedented polarisation in sentiment by political party. #7 Consumers are in pain over rising prices. Inflation is only 4% but consumers are in extreme pain. #8 Consumers are miserable and expect things to get worse. The future expectations reading is making an all time record low, even lower than the financial crisis. Consumers are more negative about their future than they have ever been. This is profound. There is a rising concern about future unemployment. So what story do I see playing out here? What is the challenge we need to face? Here is the other most important chart from the University of Michigan Survey. Chart 9...

WELCOME TO THE NEW ERA OF STATE-CONTROLLED CRUDE OIL PRICES

noreply@slice-app.io (JustDario) — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 04:17:38 GMT

Dear subscribers, as you’ve noticed, over the past 72 hours I’ve slept very little while monitoring the crude oil market. I don’t think I’ve ever pushed my brain this hard on a single issue. Fundamentally, the crude oil crisis is worsening; there’s no doubt about that. The same is true of the war in the Middle East, which is expanding and intensifying. So is the manipulation of crude oil prices. And when the administration in charge is going to sell Wall Street instant access to President Trump posts legalizing insider trading, rational short-term trading in the oil market becomes pointless: prices will move only when the apparatus controlling them decides to move them, as happened on Monday. For this reason, I believe the crude oil price chart will start to resemble the Fed Funds rate chart - a staircase of moves up or down. Consider what happened over the past 10 days: the war already resumed last week, when Iran declared the Strait of Hormuz fully shut and the U.S. began retaliatory attacks. Yet the public/private partnership controlling crude oil prices allowed the price to move only when the resumption of the war became “official” on Monday, as the U.S. administration announced its intention to take full control of the Strait of Hormuz and abandon any effort to find a diplomatic solution. If the market were free, efficient, and forward-looking, crude oil would already be back above at least 120$. But when the grip on trading is extremely tight, and data and information are also heavily manipulated and filtered to support that effort and manufacture a narrative, short-term trading becomes a prediction market on the decisions of those who set the outcome. For examples, please see my review of this week’s EIA report here ( https://app.slice-app.io/posts/b09cb98b-32fb-423e-b269-48ffec24483d ), or consider the attacks on the Basra oil terminal in Iraq, which occurred on Wednesday and were repeated on Thursday, yet the information was withheld from markets until the threat subsided ( https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/crude-oil-loading-suspended-all-iraqi-terminals-after-drone-incident-sources-say-2026-07-16/ ). On Thursday, the Houthis stated they would shut the Bab-El-Mandeb Strait if Iranian infrastructure were attacked. A few hours later, the U.S. destroyed a strategic bridge near Bandar Abbas. The market reaction? ZERO. Yes, the price started to move when the Houthi threat began spreading on social and mainstream media ahead of the U.S. market open, but everyone saw what happened: the price was crushed all the way down to 79.60$, exactly the previous day’s settlement price. Likely this coming weekend, the U.S. administration will announce an expansion of the military campaign beyond the Strait of Hormuz. But I expect them to be very careful not to hit any oil infrastructure, so as not to trigger Iranian retaliation against neighboring countries’ oil infrastructure. Iran has made it clear it is not at war with its Arab brothers; for the time being, this means asymmetric war is off the table, and any retaliation will be equal to the attack received. Not surprisingly, Iran hit the bridge connecting Bahrain with Saudi Arabia - an eye for an eye. Traffic in the Strait of Hormuz is back down to virtually zero, especially for oil and LNG tankers. The current gap between oil supply and demand remains ~10 mbd negative. This means crude oil inventories around the world, both SPR and commercial, will keep declining no matter what, especially for high-sulfur crude oil, a significant share of which came from the Middle East. High-sulfur crude oil is used to make diesel (more on this soon). On Thursday, the EIA published an article ( https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67866 ) explaining what “tank bottoms” are. What a coincidence, right? But no worries: crude oil prices won’t be allowed to rise unless the central apparatus sets a higher ceiling. Hilariously, this is exactly what Japan, a notorious market manipulator, has been doing with the JPY in recent years. They’ve done the same with JGB yields, successfully controlling the whole curve for a long time until market forces finally broke their grip and yields began to skyrocket, especially in long-duration maturities. This is how crude oil prices are going to behave in the future. And if President Trump forces them all the way down to 55$ once he decides the war with Iran is over, even though we know that’s not going to happen for years unless the U.S. hands control of the Strait of Hormuz to Iran, in the long run, market forces do ultimately prevail, as happened with the JPY, gold, and silver, all of which broke decades of heavy market manipulation. Why do they prevail? Because if a commodity’s price becomes uneconomical for operators to extract and sell at a fair profit, they will scale back capex and production, exacerbating supply shortages until prices are forced to adjust. That’s essentially what happened to silver. It won’t take 40 years for crude oil, because it is the blood that carries oxygen around the global economy. The market is too busy and obsessed with AI companies to notice that the next major bull run may be in the stocks of crude oil companies that remain obscenely undervalued - especially companies without assets in the Middle East, operations near the Russian-Ukrainian warzone, or with access to high-sulfur oil basins like CNRL, Suncor, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Exxon, and Occidental Petroleum. Another thing the market is ignoring is that there is a part of the oil market the government cannot control as effectively as it would like: diesel. As you can see in the chart here, since the beginning of the war against Iran, the tight correlation between crude oil and diesel prices began to break on the very day the ridiculous MoU with Iran was signed. Another thing the market hasn’t noticed is that the U.S. administration stopped threatening distributors for not lowering prices at the pump. Not all oil is the same, unfortunately. The shortage of high-sulfur oil is now starting to become acute. Even if its wholesale price remains government-controlled, the physical shortage will strain the supply chain and create an inevitable shortage of diesel. That shortage is exacerbated by the successful Ukrainian campaign against Russian refineries, to the point that Russia has already been forced to ban diesel exports, and prices at the pump are skyrocketing in many regions despite Russia being a country rich in crude oil. Inevitably, all diesel (heating oil, jet fuel, and retail diesel) will see its price rise higher and higher in the near future, and I won’t be shocked if this market suddenly breaks and prices skyrocket one day when panic hits. Unfortunately, countries do not have Strategic Diesel Reserves they can use to effectively manipulate their prices as it has been happening with crude oil. For reference, this is the list of refining companies that sell a significant amount of diesel around the globe Marathon Petroleum Corp. – MPC (NYSE) Valero Energy Corp. – VLO (NYSE) Phillips 66 – PSX (NYSE) HF Sinclair – DINO (NYSE) Par Pacific Holdings – PARR (NYSE) Delek US Holdings – DK (NYSE) China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. (Sinopec) – 600028 (SSE) / 00386 (HKEX) Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical – 00338 (HKEX) North Huajin Chemical Industries – 000059 (SZSE) Indian Oil Corp. (IOCL) – IOC (NSE) / 530965 (BSE) Hindustan Petroleum (HPCL) – HINDPETRO (NSE) / 500104 (BSE) Bharat Petroleum (BPCL) – BPCL (NSE) / 500547 (BSE) Thai Oil – TOP (SET) PTT Global Chemical – PTTGC (SET) S-Oil – 010950 (KRX) Cosmo Energy Holdings – 5021 (TSE) Bangchak Corporation (formerly Bangchak Petroleum) – BCP (SET) Galp Energia – GALP (Euronext Lisbon) BP p.l.c. – BP (NYSE/LSE) Equinor – EQNR (OSE/NYSE) Crude oil is no longer trading like a free, forward-looking market - it’s increasingly trading like a policy variable, adjusted in discrete “steps” when the controlling apparatus decides the narrative and the timing are convenient. Meanwhile, the underlying fundamentals keep tightening: disrupted flows through key chokepoints, persistent inventory drawdowns, and a growing shortage of high‑sulfur barrels. That combination matters because it shifts the real pressure point from headline crude to refined products, especially diesel, where physical constraints are harder to cap with rhetoric or strategic reserves.

YWR: Q2 2026 Performance Review

noreply@slice-app.io (YWR) — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 00:02:02 GMT

Disclosure: These are not investment recommendations! I always say YWR readers are some of the smartest investors in the world. I see it from the comments at the end of the posts, the chat dialogue, and coffee meet-ups. Now we have some data to prove it. It’s time to review our 1H 2026 performance. Do you remember the ETF portfolio you picked at the end of 2025? It’s +21.1% ytd! Great job! Dirty Div’s is +15.9%. Cash Dragons is sucking (-20%). And my overall ‘buy everything’ portfolio which includes Dirty Dividend, Cash Dragons, NASDAQ, S&P 500, Gold, AI and a few other stocks is +5.6% ytd. Let’s go over each of them. YWR ETF Portfolio Energy (XLE) was +19%. Gold Miners (GDX) -12%. China (FXI) -17%. Brazil (EWZ) +9%. And South Korea (EWY) +108% ytd!! Bam!! Korea roll’n up on all the memory haters! So what do we do for 2H 2026? Do we switch out FXI for KSTR ? I know everyone wants to fade hardware, but it feels super consensus. I’m kind of leaning the other way. I’m not sure. Is the market surprise that ‘Cybertron’ goes on for years, kind or how online vs offline was a 25 year theme? Or, do we keep everything the same? Just to be clear, while the other portfolios are real money, the YWR ETF Portfolio is a hypothetical portfolio constructed from the reader survey we conducted in December 2025. Maybe it should be a real portfolio. Below is the current allocation. Let me know what you think. Dirty Dividends +15.9% ytd. A nice recovery from -2.6% at the end of March. We kept our cool during the Iran war panic. Just reinvested a few year-end dividends and added a new position in Frontline . European banks are the biggest trade nobody talks about. They just carry on growing, buying back shares, and paying out dividends while nobody talks about them. That’s how we like it. 2 million Substack posts/week about AI and none about Unicredit, Santander or Barclays. Let’s keep it that way. If anyone asks about European banks send them another AI podcast to listen to. The performance of European banks means they are now 59% of the portfolio. If I had to say what looks the interesting right now in Dirty Div’s it’s TotalEnergies at 7x earnings. You get a mix of everything; upstream oil and gas, global LNG trading business, LNG terminal investments, a growing electricity generation portfolio and refining all for 7x earnings plus dividends. In the latest Global Factor Model data everything to do with energy screened well. The market is pricing energy, shipping and refining as if the Iran disruptions are over. So the bet would be that they are not. That there a few more chapters to the story. Cash Dragons -20% YTD! Crikey. Earnings at Alibaba have been terrible. Baidu is starting to inflect, but it got dragged down with the rest of the Hong Kong sell-off. Tencent Q1 earnings were better than expected given all the warnings they made about how much they were going to spend on AI, but it didn’t matter, it was sold down too. Basically, Hong Kong has turned into a ‘software’ trade, while the Shanghai Star market is Cybertron (‘hardware’). Nobody wants food delivery, online retail, paid search and video games…. Those are ‘human’ trades. ‘Human trades’ are dead money. Everyone wants robot trades; GPU’s, DRAM, contract manufacturing, optical connectors, LIDAR and batteries. So what do we do? I’m reducing Alibaba and Baidu. Mostly Alibaba, but it’s also for personal reasons. See the personal announcement below. I’ve seen Tencent manage well through problems before (new video game license freezes, changes to fees on payments). ‘AI’ will probably be the same. So I’ll stick with Pony Ma and his team. Earnings at HK Exchange, Ping An, LVS and SGX have been fine so nothing done there. Overall Buy Everything Portfolio My asset allocation can best be described as the ‘buy everything portfolio’. Buy NASDAQ, buy AI, buy gold, buy China, buy banks, buy energy. It’s Project Zimbabwe. We want to be long a diversified portfolio of risk assets. Mostly we just want to be long everything. It’s the 18 wheeler theory. Even if 1 tire blows, we keep on trucking. The Cash Dragons slice dragged down 1H performance so the overall performance was only +5.6% ytd. Public Service Announcement. I want to disclose something because it’s important to know where people have skin in the game and where they are just talking. That’s why we do this review of our actual performance. At the end of the quarter I had to sell some stocks to buy a property. It meant going over all of my accounts and doing an upside/downside analysis of how to raise money while minimising capital gains taxes. I sold completely out of Mercedes Benz, Tesla, Amgen, Vinci and Alibaba. I reduced Glencore and Baidu substantially, and sold 15% of SK Hynix. The sales to Alibaba and Baidu reduced a lot the size of the Cash Dragons portfolio. Regards, Erik

Monday Open - Weekly Market Update - June 29

noreply@slice-app.io (CryptoJelleNL) — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 11:56:54 GMT

No major positioning changes in the last week; although the DCA process continues. We added to BTC and S&P exposure, while also increasing ONDO exposure. I was able to scoop a teeny-tiny position in JTO before it started moving again as well, but it's so tiny that I didn't even bother to report it on here just yet - which means it's also nothing to celebrate. If it runs from here, I might just be able to take the wife to dinner once, nothing more. Anyway, we've got some exciting things happening in the market again, so let's have a look at whats going on - and I'll circle back to how I'm reacting to it - if at all. First things first, Michael Saylor is in a bit of a pickle. The mess surrounding STRC is putting pressure on the market that we'd have been better off without. STRC is down 25-30% from before this situation started, and the further it goes down, the more pressure it puts on Strategy to sell BTC. It's nothing Saylor can't get out of (buy back STRC to reduce the dividend obligations, though that itself eats into the cash reserve they're already short on - so might mean selling some BTC), and it doesn't really affect BTC in the long-run, but it's something to keep an eye on nonetheless. We've seen relative strength in Altcoins lately - it wouldn't surprise me if that is partially because STRC is causing BTC to underperform at the moment. All in all, interesting to follow just to know why the market is moving the way it does - but nothing to make me change course. DCA continues, STRC in trouble or not. This STRC situation puts the market on edge, which has BTC slowly bleeding lower. As a result, we just put in a weekly close below $60k, for the first time since 2024 - also closing below the 200w MA for the first time since 2023. All it means to me is that we're getting closer to the bottom, which is exactly why I'm DCA-ing. Will amp up the buys if we get $52k and/or the closer we get to October. Systematically executing the plan, and so far, the price of Bitcoin is playing along nicely. On the daily, I'm seeing buying interest despite the STRC situation. Price keeps showing wicks into $59k, with a daily bullish divergence locked in as well. So while the weekly shows a breakdown - the daily indicates we might actually get some relief soon. All hinges on STRC and what Saylor does next. We can count on him to do something crazy though - so let's just see what we get, and I'll stick to the plan in the meantime. I mentioned relative strength on Altcoins earlier on, so it was a matter of time before we zoomed in on that a little. You guys know about HYPE, ONDO & JTO which I have mentioned before. HYPE is holding well in my opinion, still holding in the same consolidative structure above previous cycle highs. Feels very much like a 'recharge before the next leg higher' type situation. ONDO is a different story, it's weaker, but still holds a good structure on the higher timeframes. I'd have invalidated this one already if it were a trade, but as discussed when I opened this position - it's more of a fundamental bet on RWA doing well in the bull, and that bet hasn't changed. Chart still looks sound on the higher-timeframes as well, so just letting it run and using the discount to accumulate some more here and there, including a small buy today. Then there's JTO, the coin I was able to buy just very little of before it started moving. Just about 20% of what I like to have as a small altcoin position. Nothing noteworthy, but it's ran 15% from my entry already - so just letting it run and seeing if I can't get another opportunity to load up some more. Thesis is intact, just a shame I didn't buy more before it started running. It happens, so we just stick to the plan, never chase a bag. The reason why I don't chase is simple, there will always be another opportunity. One of those opportunities could be coming soon in the form of EIGEN. I attached the chart, looks like an accumulation structure that just broke out & now retests it. Price currently sits on the 100d EMA, usually a good setup for higher. No position as of yet since I'd rather wait for BTC to decide what's next - but again an interesting project both chart-wise and fundamentally. Monitoring closely over the next weeks. My next steps I'll keep it simple, I'm continuing to DCA. Primarily the weekly BTC & monthly S&P buys - but also trying to DCA some more on ONDO & JTO. Letting HYPE ride until $100 where I plan to take my first profits. Paying close attention to EIGEN, might want to take on a small position there as well. Not much to update in stocks other than that my DCA from last week seems nicely timed, the S&P is bouncing from the 50EMA and looks ready to push higher once more. Not that it matters - the time horizon on this position is years, not weeks. Anyway - that's it from me today. Hope it helps! Cheers

YWR: Friday Money Maker(s)

noreply@slice-app.io (YWR) — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 15:52:22 GMT

The market may have given us a gift. CME, ICE and CBOE are down 25% from their highs. There two issues. First, is concern the CFTC’s approval of Kalshi’s perpetual future’s contracts might be a competitive threat to these established futures exchanges. The second concern is that with the signing (?) of Iran peace deal the Q1 surge in Iran War volatility was a one-off. Forward P/E’s are back to trough levels for these businesses, which is sub-20x. Traditionally, this is a good entry point. We probably don’t need to go over why these are great stocks to own. They grow in line with capital markets activity, have virtual monopolies in their products, high operating margins and minimal capex. Perpetual Futures Threat The fear with Kalshi’s new Crypto perpetual futures is whether these monopolies are under threat. It’s crypto today, but tomorrow it could be commodities and the S&P 500. First let’s understand the real moats around these derivatives exchanges, because they aren’t really monopolies, they just naturally evolve this way. #1 Liquidity network effects. This is the most obvious. Liquidity begets liqudity. It would be hard for a new exchange to compete with the CME’s flagship S&P 500 contract, ICE’s Brent contract or CBOE’s S&P options contract. Although you can see how CME might try to compete with CBOE and why ICE has a competing WTI contract. But it’s really hard for a new entrant to get started. #2 Collateral efficiency. A diversified derivatives exchange can reduce a client’s margin requirements by considering offsetting contract positions (long June - short September) as well as highly correlated contracts (long Brent - short WTI) when calculating collateral. This is a strategic benefit for a one-stop shop like CME (interest rates, equities, commodities, FX). This is also why traders might want to trade WTI on ICE for the margin benefits even if CME is more liquid. #3 Back office clearing and settlement relationships. CME, ICE and CBOE own their own clearing houses and this is the key market structure. It’s hard to set up back office settlement relationships with all the major banks, brokers, asset managers and hedge funds. Everyone is already ’set up’ with ICE, CME and CBOE. There would be huge inertia to setting up a new derivatives exchange and getting all the market participants connected. This is different from cash equities settlement which is why cash equities isn’t very profitable for exchanges. For US cash equities settlement is through the DTCC a public settlement system everyone is connected to. Effectively, anyone can create a cash equities exchange. The settlement is a public good through the DTCC. Which is why exchanges make ‘billions’ trading futures and ‘hundreds of millions’ trading cash equities. Rule of thumb: He who owns the clearing house makes the money. It’s why SGX and HKEX can make a lot of money in cash equities. Perpetuals vs Futures A traditional futures contract is tied to the underlying spot market through periodic delivery. Usually, quarterly. The requirement for future delivery means spot and futures market are highly connected through arbitrage. Perpetuals are a crypto market invention where the contract is never delivered and has no connection to the underlying spot market. Instead there is a ‘funding rate’ which is meant to keep the perpetual tied to spot. If the price of BTC on a perpetual has pushed up to $70,000 because everyone is super bullish BTC and wants to be long with 20x leverage, while the spot is $60,000, there would be a 16% funding cost which gets paid to holders of the short BTC contracts. Effectively, compensating them for the contract deviating away from spot. The perpetual structure kind of works as a way to trade things on a website without having settlement. But it’s like Automated Market Making, another crypto invention. It works (kind of), but it’s shaky and it’s not the same as being connected to the actual liquid underlying market. Pushback on Perpetuals #1 Retail product: It’s hard to see perpetuals as something institutions are going to use. American Airlines, Vitol, and Morgan Stanley want to trade energy contracts with deliverability of the underlying commodity. Real commercial traders who touch both the spot and futures market are the core to a contract’s liquidity. The pure play speculators are layered on top and chase after real world liquidity. I’m trying to keep an open mind of how the market might develop, but perpetuals are probably going to remain a fringe retail product for traders who want extreme leverage (>5x). #2 Regulatory Review: CME is pushing back heavily on this CFTC’s decision to allow onshore regulated trading of perpetuals. On June 18th they sued the CFTC that perpetuals do not meet the Commodities Trading Act definition of a future contract, which clearly states the contract has to have a delivery date. If perpetuals have no delivery then they are ‘swaps’, which are regulated differently. The CFTC has responded that they will open up the matter to a wider industry consultation, which is what the CME wanted. CME Executive Chairman Terry Duffy gave a great 25 min fireside chat on this topic (as well as his positive outlook on CME’s growth). I recommend giving it a listen. My guess is the futures industry is going to drag Kalshi through the regulatory mud and make it really hard to offer a regulated perpetual futures contract. And in the end if they do get it approved, the existing exchanges CME and ICE are well positioned to counter with products of their own if they want to. Interestingly, Duffy thinks perpetuals futures are insane and the current retail speculative trading fever is the equivalent of subprime mortgages in 2007. Why derivative exchanges are good Project Zimbabwe plays The fear over perpetuals contracts provides us an entry point to businesses which are aligned with our Project Zimbabwe outlook. Earnings have been surging for the exchanges recently, and here is why it is likely to continue. #1 Rise of retail speculation. The lesson from all inflationary periods is that trading and speculation increase as nominal assets rise and everyone flees cash. Duffy worries this is a short term cyclical trend. Project Zimbabwe says this is going to go a lot further. Project Zimbabwe is why hyper volatile short dated options grew gone from 22% of CBOE volume in 2022 to 60% in 2025. CME is also seeing a surge in retail trading. #2 Rise in interest rate volatility. The biggest complex at CME is interest rates and it’s becoming a big product for ICE too. Interest rate contract volumes are growing rapidly which seems to be tied to our new environment where rates are higher and no-one knows if interest rates are going higher or lower from here. For the exchanges this uncertainty is great. #3 Growth of US Energy Exports The US is becoming the trusted, reliable supplier of world energy, especially for gas and LNG. Counterparties around the world will need to hedge their US supply with US energy futures contracts. #4 Geopolitical uncertainty. Covid, Ukraine War, Tariffs, Iran War.. .what next? The world is increasingly uncertain and volatile. Which is great for hedging volumes in interest rates, metals, energy and equities. Risks and Timing I could be wrong, and this isn’t the best entry point for the derivatives exchanges, but I think with a long enough time frame these are good businesses to own. The other challenge is that it is hard to predict quarterly volumes. They can surge and then flatline, and it’s frustrating to wait around when things are quiet not knowing when the next volatility surge will hit. You just have to know you own great businesses and also track all the initiatives they have to launch new products and data sets. Below are my earnings models for CME and ICE. Have a good weekend! I’m going to go watch the HSBC Championship Cup tennis. Erik...

Monday Open - Weekly Market Update - June 2

noreply@slice-app.io (CryptoJelleNL) — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 09:10:22 GMT

A day late this week, had an all-day event at the golf course with OKX - celebrating the retirement of Pep Guardiola. Not what I expected to be doing when I first got into crypto, but I'll take it! :) It'll be a lighter update than usual as well, given that I'm writing this on my phone, at the airport. We're launching this Slice page tomorrow - expect the coming updates to have more meat around the bone once again. Big news yesterday, Michael Saylor has sold 32 Bitcoin! It's been a long-time coming, but the market still reacted quite sharply to the news after it hit, pushing prices down 3%. I usually don't really care much about news events like this, but given how big of a holder MSTR is, it's noteworthy. The way forward from here (more selling, or it turning out to be a one-time thing) will likely play an important role in the remainder of the bear market. The chart itself remains mostly unchanged. I say unchanged, in the sense that it is going as planned. Bitcoin is moving lower, after getting rejected from the 200d EMA, as discussed in the previous updates. In other news, the monthly candle closed this past weekend, and it's not looking too hot. Clear rejection from the previous lows, which would usually indicate an intent to move lower. On the daily timeframe, bulls are running out of time to save the chart. Price sits at key support, and if we lose it - we fall back into the previous range, which generally means we'll revisit those range lows. All in all, Bitcoin looks like it's just about ready for the usual summer behaviour: boring chop / bleeding. It doesn't necessarily have to go a lot lower - but I don't think there'll be much benefit in being bullish BTC over the next weeks. At the same time though, I keep a close eye on the long-term plan. While many people get sad when they see red candles, I get excited - as it means cheaper entries. And this time, it looks like the thing I've been waiting for for over a year; might start playing out soon. It obviously remains to be seen, but if BTC's weekly RSI is able to form a higher low over the summer - it'll give me high confidence that the bottom will be either in, or at least - close enough for me to start buying again. In other words, it's time for me to start paying closer attention, as opportunity could be coming soon. Altcoins are still being very nice to me though. INJ & HYPE have both been moving higher. Both have plenty of room to run higher, so I leave them open. HYPE is getting riskier though, with the SpaceX IPO approaching. Could see a pullback in the coming days - but this is a spot position for me, so even if that happens, it's all good. Expecting it to keep doing well over the summer. That's all for me today. Will likely put out some more updates later this week, after I get back into the office and in front of a proper screen. See you tomorrow for the official launch of this page!

The Nairobi Solution: Ch.9

noreply@slice-app.io (YWR) — Sun, 31 May 2026 06:02:23 GMT

Erik stared again at the email from Dwight. “Give me a call when you can. I need you to come to London.” He reread the words searching for extra layers of meaning. Why did Dwight need him to come to London? Was it to fire him? But then why say to give him a call when ‘you can’? It didn’t seem like the right language to use when you need to speak to someone so you can fire them. But you could never tell with Dwight. It had been 3 weeks since the trip to Emali, the bad news from Niko and the phone calls to Dwight and Claire. He hadn’t wanted to speak to any of them since. He’d stayed in his office, depressed, and focused on bank paperwork. Now here was Dwight telling him to come back to London. He picked up his mobile and filled with gloom and dread called Dwight. As he clicked dial Erik made a final mental effort to try to sound upbeat. “Hi Dwight. It’s Erik. I got your email. What’s up?” “Hey Erik! Yes. I need you to come to London. When do you think you can make it over?” Dwight sounded strangely friendly. Like a completely different person from the last conversation. “If you need me there quickly, I can take the BA flight on Wednesday night.” “Yes. Do that.” Erik took a big risk next, but Dwight seemed in a good mood and he wanted to know. “May I ask what’s up in London? Is there something you want me to help with?” “No. There’s someone I want you to meet. You know Opus? They want to make a bid for Turkana.” “Opus Partners wants to buy Turkana? That’s great news!” “Yeah. The price isn’t amazing, but we make a small profit, and the best part is it gets us out of this mess so we can focus on something else. Anyways, they want to meet with you. Part of the due diligence.” “Tell them anytime Thursday afternoon. I’ll get in that morning, take a quick shower then go to Mayfair.” “Great. You’re going to meet with Dipak who is a partner and leading the deal. Keep a look out for an email they are going to send through. There’s a whole bunch of documents they want to go over and discuss in the meeting. Thanks. See you soon.” What amazing news. What a complete turn of events. Opus Partners was a smaller EM focused private equity fund also based in London. There was a bit of a stink around Opus, but they knew emerging markets and would be comfortable owning an asset in Kenya. Their CEO had been investigated several times by the FCA for questionable transactions but had never been formally charged with anything. Opus wasn’t the buyer Erik would have wished for Turkana, and the team here in Nairobi, but maybe it didn’t matter as long as Belway got paid and could exit. Likely Opus were getting a good deal from Dwight (0.8x book Erik guessed) with the plan to work through the East Africa Rail situation then get an even higher price down the road. 1.5x or maybe 2x if EM markets were hot. All in 2-3 years. It made sense. Erik was excited as he booked his BA ticket to Heathrow. Nicole would be happy too. He was going home. Later that week Erik emerged from Green Park tube station into the grey skies and rain of London. This was the complete opposite of Nairobi Erik thought. He had a short walk to Berkeley Square where Opus had their offices. Erik ran the bell at what had long ago been a nice private residence on the square but was now the posh offices for a private equity fund. A receptionist took his wet coat, hung it in the closet and escorted him to a conference room where Dipak and the rest of the Opus team were waiting for him. Two hours later Erik stepped back into the rain again to give Dwight an update. “How did it go?” Dwight asked. “Good. I guess. They went over all the information we sent them. The financials, the regulatory updates, the internal risk reports, the auditor statements. They asked a lot about the East Africa Rail deal. They kept asking if everything had been disclosed. They also asked me to initial some of the disclosure documents we sent over. They said it was to prove they were verified by Turkana management.” “That’s normal deal due diligence. They’re just being thorough.” “Yes, I know. I guess. I was just surprised they didn’t ask anything about the economy, the new government, or the growth strategy of the bank, or anything. It was just all dotting I’s and crossing the T’s about the documents we sent them. Just wasn’t what I expected.” “Sounds fine. They’ll probably ask you all that stuff in a later meeting. In the meantime, please stay in London until we get this closed. They told me they are willing to focus 100% on this and move quickly. So maybe work from the office here so you can give Opus your full attention and get this over the line.” “Sure Dwight. Let’s get it done.” For the next week Erik worked out of the Belway office near Liverpool Street. Mostly he was responding to information requests about Turkana from Dipak. The deal seemed to be moving along. It was also nice to be able to go home and for walks and dinners with Nicole. Then on Thursday Dipak sent Erik the following email: Subject: Updated SPA and Disclosure Schedule – Insurer Comments Hi Erik, Please find attached the latest mark-up of the Share Purchase Agreement and related Disclosure Schedules. Nothing substantive — mostly definitional tightening and clarification following feedback from our advisors and insurer. We’ve expanded certain knowledge qualifiers and refined the East Africa Rail disclosure to ensure completeness. Would be grateful if you could review and confirm the updated language, in particular: · Clause 7.4 (Material Contracts – East Africa Rail) · Definition of “Knowledge” · Bring-down confirmation language for Closing If possible, we’d appreciate your initials on the revised Disclosure Schedule (attached separately) confirming management verification. Happy to discuss if helpful. Best, Dipak Opus Partners What was all this about “We’ve expanded certain knowledge qualifiers and refined the East Africa Rail disclosure to ensure completeness,” Erik thought feeling slightly uneasy. And what was a “Definition of ‘Knowledge’? And why are they referring to an insurer? He was about to get up and ask Dwight, who was over at his terminal staring at stock prices, but something stopped him. He wanted to know more first. He wanted to run this by Harry. When most people think of London as a financial capital they think of the investment banks in Canary Wharf, the stock exchange and the fund managers in Mayfair, but underappreciated is that London is also the world’s largest insurance market. Erik couldn’t remember exactly what types of insurance Harry worked on, but it was specialty insurance for a Lloyds syndicate. Later that week Erik and Harry were seated in a pub in Leadenhall Market where the everyone in the insurance market liked to meet and drink beer. Harry had a printout of Dipak’s email in front of him. “So. What do you think?” Erik asked. “Run me through again what you sent them and what they asked in the meeting.” Erik went over the events from the previous week. “Hmm..” “And they asked you to initial some disclosure documents while you were in their offices?” “Yes. I realise I probably should have got legal advice first, but it seemed OK. They were the documents we sent then. It seemed to make sense.” “And they didn’t ask you much about the business, or anything else?” “No. That was what struck me as strange. Then this email seemed like more of the same. And then the mention of the insurance company going over all the documents. It made me want to run it by you. Dwight thinks this is all standard procedure.” “And off the record as your friend. Is there anything material you probably should be disclosing?” “Well… totally between you and me. There is a potential delay involving one of the major suppliers to the rail deal. But it’s not anything official stated, just a ‘likely delay’. Just a verbal phone conversation I had. Nothing’s written down and there is no way they could know it. So I left it out. And Dwight would definitely would want it out because it would kill the deal.” “Hmm…..” Harry was thinking and kept looking at the printout of Dipak’s email. Finally, he looked up. “Erik.. I think given what you are saying that behind the scenes there is actually a delay to the East Africa Rail project (which they are asking a lot about), and now this email from Dipak asking exactly about it in highly specific language, I think you should consider the possibility Opus knows about the delay. Everything they are asking and doing (the extra schedules, the change in the language, getting you to initial the documents) double checking with the insurance company, could be to make sure their claim is 100% watertight if/when they need to file a Representations and Warranty claim that you never disclosed the delay.” “And if they found something they would get a payout,” Erik mused. “Like your Dwight guy said it could all be normal, but the fact you said they have been only focused on this and not asking about the rest of the business is suspicious. Erik, I would highly recommend getting private legal counsel before signing anything else from these guys.” Thanks a lot Harry for reviewing this. You are confirming what I suspected. Thank you again. Erik got up, left the pub and headed in the direction of the Thames for what would be a long walk. He needed to think. First things first. Accept brutal truth number #1. Somehow Opus knows about the EcoRail delay and is setting up all the legal language to prove it was never disclosed to them and file a Representations and Warranties claim. Which fit exactly with the Opus reputation and now made sense. But how did Opus find out about the EcoRail delay? It could only have come from Dwight or Claire. Or, possibly from Niko. Did Opus know Niko somehow? And why would Niko tell that to Opus? Was there some relationship between Dwight, Niko and Opus he didn’t know about? He didn’t think so. That wasn’t it. And Claire? Some backdoor job offer to come back to London and do private equity? No way too convoluted. It wasn’t Claire. Brutal truth number #2 was that Opus had to have learned about the EcoRail delay from Dwight. But why would Dwight tell them that? Erik kept walking and thinking. He crossed London Bridge over the Thames to the South Bank and started walking back up towards Westminster Bridge. An upsetting possibility was taking shape in his mind. Erik calls Dwight from Mukueni County and tells him about the EcoRail delay. Dwight freaks out. He knows the IFC is going to want to review things and delay the project. Eventually, the EcoRail FX problem would get resolved, the project is completed, and the loan repaid. It would all work out, but in the meantime the regulatory accounting would require the loan to be marked impaired, and the regulator would want more capital in the bank. Which Dwight would not want. Which was why he was furious on the call. Then 3 weeks later all of a sudden Dwight’s happy and has found a buyer for the bank. But how do you sell a bank with a major loan that is about to go bad? There was one explanation which answered everything. And it fit why Dwight wasn’t concerned about any of the extra disclosure requirements Erik was being forced to sign as CEO of Turkana. Because Dwight wasn’t the one who was going to get investigated. What if Dwight had offered Turkana Bank to Opus at a discount with the sweetener that they could file an insurance claim after the deal was closed. Meaning Opus knew about all the problems, and were intending to get both a discounted price for the bank, plus make an insurance claim that they were never informed of the EcoRail delays. It would explain why Opus was the buyer. Opus were exactly the type of firm who would go for a deal like this. Opus would make money on the deal coming and going, and so would Dwight. Meanwhile, Erik’s would be the one who the insurance company would be calling. Dwight would say he was never involved in the operations of the bank and knew nothing. It was all Erik. Erik signed everything. Erik sighed and kept walking. His shoes were getting wet, but he didn’t care. Somehow the rain and the evening lights across the Thames were calming. An idea started to come to him. A potential way out of this trap. He pulled his phone from his pocket and called Nicole. “Hi Nic. I’m sorry I’m late. I went for a walk. Needed to clear my head. I should be home soon. But I’m going to need to head back to Nairobi tomorrow.” “I know. It’s sudden. I have to meet a few people and do something. But the good news is it’s all going to be over soon, and I’ll be back in London for good.” “OK Erik. See you soon, but whatever you have on your mind and plan on doing in Nairobi. Make sure it’s the right thing.” “It is. Don’t worry. Love you.” Dwight was going to have another thing coming.

Monday Open - Weekly Market Update

noreply@slice-app.io (CryptoJelleNL) — Mon, 18 May 2026 08:09:59 GMT

Good morning! It's Monday, which means the weekly closes are in - and we have new information to use to our advantage. I generally start the week with a glance over the daily & weekly charts - to quickly get a feel of where we are. These weekly articles will give you an insight into the things I look at and the things I take away from them. Over the past weeks, bulls have clearly been in control of the market. The stock market pumped at unprecedented speed, and Bitcoin swept its highs multiple times, without ever going down. We saw some signs of that momentum fading (at least, for Bitcoin) last week, and the weekly close we just had adds more weight to that observation. The way I see it, we just rejected from an important area of resistance, locking in a weekly bearish engulfing candle in the process. These candles tend to announce the start of a correction - and I wouldn't be surprised if this candle is another one of those times. We had a period of expansion, now found resistance; and it's time for Bitcoin to find it's next bottom. The pullback came as no surprise, because the daily chart was nice enough to give us fair warning. Earlier this week, we locked in a daily bearish divergence - right at the resistance area - and had the 200d EMA there to act as resistance too. Logical area to get a pullback, and the weekly bearish engulfing we just saw gives me additional confidence that this is indeed where Bitcoin sees a pullback. The million-dollar question then is, where will Bitcoin bottom? There are two ways to look at that question. Many traders and investors (in my opinion, wrongly) try to predict the next bottom) - pulling support levels like the one below, and deciding that is where the next bottom will be. In my experience, it rarely is that simple. It is exactly for that reason that I prefer to let things unfold, and respond to the market as it feeds us more information. That being said, I'll be paying close attention to the gray box in the chart below. I think it'll be a reasonable area for Bitcoin to form a lower-timeframe bullish divergence, which could provide some relief. Doesn't have to be the actual local bottom, but it'll likely provide some trading opportunities, especially if you enjoy trading the lower timeframes. I'm not one of those guys that enjoys trading the lower-timeframes though - I prefer to trade the real moves. You'll probably have seen the below chart on my Twitter feed. It is the most simple way to convey how I aim to add to my Bitcoin exposure. My main thesis going into the bear market is that I would get to accumulate below $60k. So far, I've had no luck - which is fine; markets rarely do exactly what you want them to do, that doesn't mean you cannot make money. Bitcoin has already made a significant push in to oversold territory; which suggests to me that the bottom is close or even already in. We haven't seen many bear market bottoms in Bitcoin's history yet, so data is limited, but every bear market so far has provided a great entry via the weekly RSI forming a higher low. In 2019, that RSI higher low formed with price also making a higher low - but in 2022, Bitcoin pushed lower, while the RSI didn't - forming a HTF bullish divergence. I don't really care which of those two recipes we get from here; all I know is that whenever that RSI forms its next higher low, I want to be a buyer. It can happen in any of the white dots on the chart, only time will tell. As such, I'm paying closer attention to the daily chart. After all, it'll help me spot the next local bottom for BTC faster than I would see it on the weekly chart. Looking for classic signs of a bottom. Slow-sideways price action, bullish divergences, absorption at support - you name it. I'll (hopefully!) know it when I see it. Until then, I remain patient, mostly sitting on my hands. The S&P Absolutely crazy. That's all I can really make of it. I'm enjoying this market a lot, because my portfolio is absolutely ripping higher - but what goes up, eventually has to come down. At least, partially. I don't think trying to time a top on this one is a bright idea. The market can remain irrational for longer than you can stay solvent and all. My strategy for this market is simple; buy some every month, and load up heavily when the market gives a good sell-off. And that's what I'll do. DCA every month, and if we get the inevitable crash, load up the truck - and letting it ride into the sunset. As you can probably tell by now, I try to keep my strategies as simple as possible - not only to understand, but to execute too. This is by design. My experience is that the more trading decisions I have to make, the more likely I am to fuck things up. By reducing my moves to a minumum, at moments where I have the highest confidence, and the lowest likelihood to lose - I have built a strategy that tends to make money in the long run. That last part is important too. I use time to my advantage. Markets go up most of the time. If you wait long enough, the times where they go down, become irrelevant. That's why so many people just hold BTC and ignore the entire bear market. When you own BTC since $3,000 - a pullback from $126,000 to $60,000 might sting a little, but you don't really care knowing that it'll likely trade at $200,000 a couple years from now. CLOSING That's my first weekly update. This'll be a weekly thing - where I share my outlook on the market, and explain why I make the moves I make, or in this case, why I'm not making any moves at all. In between these updates, I'll share any further updates I have as they happen - and inform you of buying/selling transactions - if any. See you around!

All Roads lead to BlackRock

noreply@slice-app.io (YWR) — Sun, 03 May 2026 07:11:03 GMT

Could BlackRock be on the verge of an earnings acceleration and a move to $1,700/share by 2030? Platform as a Service The NYCERS Insight More Legs to the ETF Story YWR EPS Estimates and Earnings Model Risks Platform as a Service The thing about great entrepreneurs like Larry Fink, and why you want to invest in them, is they never stop thinking about the next thing. They are always moving the goal posts. So while the rest of the asset manager community is finally getting around to launching their own ETF’s, Larry is turning BlackRock into a platform which they call 1BLK. BlackRock is integrating their technology tools like Aladdin and eFront into all levels of their client’s investment process. This means BlackRock technology will help you build your ideal portfolio and then also provide the lego blocks you need to implement it. Across all asset classes. And I think it could be under appreciated the market share gains BlackRock will make across these other asset classes. The NYCERS Insight The NYC Employee Retirement System manages $319 billion and like all public pension funds provides useful insights into exactly where all their money is allocated. They even have a public dashboard you can access. And when you analyse the fund allocations by asset class you come across an interesting insight. In US public equity, BlackRock funds have 68% market share of the 82$ billion. When you include the international allocation BlackRock has 42% market share. Think about that. NYCERS has $138bn invested in public equities and they given 48% of it to one company. And why not? Does it matter which index fund you own? It’s a game of scale and cost. So they gave it all to BlackRock. Probably for less than 10bps. Then look at the rest of the buckets. In Fixed Income Black Rock is a lot less dominant with only 11% market share. State Street funds are much more dominant in the NYCERS fixed income portfolio. Then in private equity and private real estate Black Rock has 0% market share. In the $28 billion PE allocation it’s lots of KKR funds. But the BlackRock Global Infrastructure fund does have 3% market share in the infrastructure bucket. This is the opportunity BlackRock sees. If they already have strong relationships with big pension funds like NYCERS, already own the public equity allocation, already have their risk management software (Aladdin) wired into the back office, then why can’t they massively increase their share in the other buckets? This is why you see BlackRock making acquisitions in infrastructure and private credit. To them it’s plug and play. They just need to make sure they have good products. Next time the BlackRocks saleswoman visits NYCERS she will wiggle their funds into more buckets. And private equity, infrastructure and private credit are much higher fees than index funds. Which makes me think BlackRock could be on the verge of taking a lot more market share. Apparently, BlackRock thinks so too. The big pension funds are consolidating their allocations around fewer players, and BlackRock is well positioned to be the winner from this trend. More legs to the ETF Story. But the push back might be that the big story behind BlackRock has been ETF’s and isn’t that kind of done? We saw in the BofA private client data that ETF’s are still less than 20% of advisor portfolios. That can grow further, especially with the rise of active ETF’s. Second, Europe and the rest of the world still has a lot to go with ETF’s. There are only $2 trillion in European ETF’s compared with $10 trillion in the US. Finally, there is a lot of room still for the ETF’ication of fixed income. There are only $2.5 trillion in fixed income ETF’s, which is just 2% of the market. Couldn’t it easily be $6 trillion? Could BlackRock trade at $1,700/share by 2030? When you put it all together it doesn’t seem unreasonable that by 2030 BlackRock could be earning close to $1,700/share: Underlying natural growth in AUM from market growth. Growth in allocation to ETF’s both in the US and Europe. I am assuming AUM growth of 11%/year from both market appreciation and inflows. This is in line with BlackRock’s AUM growth CAGR from 2017-2025 (10.5%). Increased market share in fixed income, infrastructure and private equity Slight increase in fees/average AUM as the mix includes more high margin private equity funds. I assume the average fee rises from 15bps to 16bps. The push/pull here is that while private equity fees are higher, fixed income fees will be lower. So I modelled in 1bp of fee expansion. Operating leverage from selling same products on existing global network of funds and offices. The operating margin expands from 35% to 41% by 2030. BlackRock is targeting a 45% operating margin. If BlackRock can earn $85/share in 2030 and trade at 20x the share price could be over $1,700. You would also pick up dividends along the way for a total return of 75%. This is in line with BlackRock’s strategy to get to a market cap of $280 billion by 2030, which would be $1,740/share. Risks: We get a nasty market sell-off along the way and the AUM doesn’t compound at 11%. BlackRock can get hit from both a decline in AUM, plus outflows. The AUM is diversified across asset classes, but equities are still 48% of fees. Another possibility is that equities move to tokenisation instead of ETF’s and BlackRock misses out, although this is unlikely because BlackRock is already leading in tokenised funds. We could get a shift away from ETF’s and indices back to active management. I can see this happening to a small degree, but not much more than that. EPS growth is less than we expect, and the share price P/E derates to 15x. Other no-growth asset managers are trading on P/E’s of 10x. The risk could be that BlackRock grows earnings, but it was all priced in and the share price doesn’t make much headway for years and the dividend yield is only 2%.

February Newsletter

noreply@slice-app.io (russellclark) — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 13:07:00 GMT

A new feature of Slice is to publish articles - so posting my newsletter here. The US dollar line of Brumby Capital returned 7.5% this month. This compares to 0.6% return for MSCI World. The fund is now up 16% for the year. In a continuation of last month, Japanese banks continued to do well, as did gold and other stock picks in the long book - name Harbin Electric which was up another 40% as well as wafer stocks and Iseki. The long book made 6% of the total return. The short book benefited from generalised weakness in private equity and private credit shorts, which was offset by a rally in US treasuries and most other non-private equity shorts. The short book made the rest of the return for the fund. As I am writing about this in the second week of March, I feel it would be remiss not to talk about March performance, and how the fund has reacted to war in Iran. The shock of rising energy prices has been felt much more in Japan, Korea and Europe than it has in the US and China. In some ways this makes sense as China and the US have far more robust energy systems, with the US an exporter of energy, and China having developed both a large renewable energy system, a large coal fired energy system and a large fuel storage system. In practical terms, the oil shock has meant that many of the trades that worked last year and in January and February this year, reversed on themselves. The most surprising move would be gold, which normally does well when war breaks out, is actually down in March so far. As of writing, we have given back around half of February gains. As I have written elsewhere, it is extremely difficult to judge how long the war will continue. From a military perspective, Iranian offensive capacity has been severely reduced, and as we have seen in Ukraine, it is possible to open transportation corridors even under extreme pressure. That is the war could continue and the Strait of Hormuz could be opened potentially. While it was possible to see China willing to support Russia in Ukraine, would this also be true with Iran, especially as it is the biggest importer of energy these days? There also seems to be little sympathy for Iran among neighbours. So there is a chance that it resolves itself quickly. But what if it doesn’t what does that mean? Well the fund has been built around a rising cost of capital, and has done very well since launch. I do not see how war in Iran challenges that assumption. What it does do is shine a spotlight on Japanese and European energy policies. The brutal fact is that the US can act militarily in the Middle East now because it is secure in its own energy supply. Japan needs to buy coal and LNG of which Australia is its largest supplier. Its problem is not that Japan was reliant on the Middle East, but that is exposed to price surges when a supply shock hits - the same issue that Europe faces now that its has lost access to Russian gas pipeline flows. This is not new news. Europe, Japan and Korea have been switching nuclear power plants back on as quickly as they can, while adding renewable power also as quickly as they can. Also structurally, LNG market is becoming more stable, as both Australia and the US become large exporters, which is diversifying supply both geographically and politically. For me, what both Russia in 2022 and Iran today has shown is that the potency of energy as a political weapon is much reduced. There are just too many alternatives now. This is not to say that energy prices will fall tomorrow, but the longer they stay high, due to problems in Iran, the more market share the Middle East will lose. However you cut it, Iran is a loser here one way or another. If oil and energy was how superpowers use to fight with each other, it is now obviously tech that is where the battle is. Both China and the US are racing to develop AI and secure their supply chains. The US controls supply of high end GPUs and China controls the supply of rare earths. And for me, as this is a strategic issue, its hard to see how either side backs off from investing heavily, and probably way beyond current needs. When I think about the possibility of deflation, it seems unlikely to me. Every government would take any slack in labour or capital markets as an opportunity to invest and build more. I see it everyday with the proliferation of government jobs, from working in the police force, the army or manufacturing. Governments have been stashing capital for a rainy day for decades now, which has pushed down the cost of capital. But now those rainy day funds are being tapped to build out armies, data centres and tech stacks. Boom times, but with a rising cost of capital. Japan still seems the best place to benefit, mainly as it has so much surplus capital and labour (in so far wages are low). A global investment boom, which I what I am seeing, implies activity remains good, but offset with more expensive capital. This is doubly bad for private equity as their existing investments suffer from rising cost of capital, and the pool of capital upon which they have drawn shrinks. I suspect many people will say I am too sanguine on the risks of higher energy prices for longer. Perhaps that is true - but the relatively small moves in US and Chinese equity markets seems to imply the two biggest nations in the world are doing fine - and if they are doing fine, then can we really be heading to a hard landing? One big benefit of weakness in March is that it has probably cleaned out positions in equities and currencies. While I tend to think long and hard about how I want to invest, the vast majority of funds tend to be variations of momentum strategies - “I own it because it is going up”. If my analysis is correct, then with positioning cleaned up, and no change to the theme of rising capital costs and competition via AI and tech, the fund should continue to do well. In March, I have made some changes to the fund mainly in the short book - but will talk about that in the next newsletter. I may end up adding to the long book - but I am still thinking about it. One benefit for me is that I can see that the fund is about as volatile as I would like. It is impossible to make money without taking risk - and given the strong performance, I wondered if I should have leveraged up the long and short book. Now we have had a sell off, I can see the true volatility of the the fund which has been within the range I feel comfortable with.