Matein KhalidUS President Donald Trump’s recent state visit to China has done little to end the stalemate in the Strait of Hormuz. If anything, Iran appears to have been emboldened enough to escalate Gulf tensions through drone strikes near the Barakah Nuclear Energy Plant in Abu Dhabi and rocket attacks targeting sites in Saudi Arabia.Brent crude trading at about $110 a barrel has coincided with a brutal sell-off in the US […]
Matein KhalidThe last four years were a succession of black swans that could have easily derailed the bull market on Wall Street but did not though the short term corrections on Nasdaq were both savage in their intensity. These black swans include the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Powell’s U-turn from “inflation is transitory” to the swiftest, most brutal Fed interest rate tightening policy since Paul Volcker, the […]
Matein KhalidWith SanDisk (SNDK) up 4000%, Western Digital Corp (WDC) up 900% and Micron Technology (MU) up 680% in the past year, I guess every investor who prostrated before the Chip Gods has every reason now to cash out now that memory Xanadu has been attained.The Philly Chip Index 50 day moving average is now 35% below its current level, so this is where strategic support lies […]
Matein KhalidIt is significant that Abu Dhabi joined Opec from the moment the emirate exported its first barrel of oil in 1967, four years before the birth of the UAE itself. For 59 years the UAE was a member of Opec enduring an era of multiple shocks, wars, revolutions, recessions, banking crises, oil price wars, supply shocks, embargoes and the pandemic.Saudi Arabia has been the ultimate power broker within […]
Matein KhalidAs the world’s leading trading power, China’s vast export engine fuelled a $1.2 trillion current account surplus in 2025. At the same time, it is the largest importer of crude oil globally, with around 40 percent sourced from the Middle East.This exposure gives Beijing a clear stake in Gulf stability – prioritising secure maritime transit through energy chokepoints and uninterrupted access to the GCC’s trillion-dollar development pipeline.Iran has […]
Matein KhalidThe US-Israel war with Iran has now stretched beyond five weeks, inflicting extensive damage on energy infrastructure, airports, ports and commercial and technology hubs across the six GCC states.The closure of the Strait of Hormuz to Gulf oil and gas exports is, in itself, an economic catastrophe. It forces the GCC to conclude that energy export security is not national security.Drone and missile attacks triggered a sharp decline in visitor […]
Matein KhalidThe past eight weeks have seen a multi-trillion-dollar market cap meltdown. Wall Street developed a sudden aversion to software companies, viewing them as victims of the AI revolution. At the same time, the war in the Gulf has led to a sharp rise in the Volatility Index, the US dollar and US Treasury bond yields.These are macro headwinds for high-beta Nasdaq sectors, including software, and have cast financial […]
Matein KhalidThe moment Qatar Energy declared force majeure and cut output at Ras Laffan, the largest LNG complex on the planet, once Iranian missiles and drones began raining down on America’s Gulf allies, I knew that the time had come to hedge Strait of Hormuz chokepoint risk with by buying the shares of US LNG colossus Cheniere Energy (LNG) at $220. Yet I was stunned to see […]
Matein KhalidThe geopolitical convulsion in Iran has led to panic buying in Brent crude as Saudi Arabia’s largest refinery Ras Tanura and Qatar’s LNG mega complex at Ras Laffan shut production even as tanker traffic in the Straits of Hormuz comes to a halt amid soaring war risk, insurance premia, IRGC attacks on oil tankers and a 3X spike in VLCC/LNG freight costs. This is a disaster […]
Matein KhalidFive days of continuous Israeli and US bombing of Iran, the killing of Ayatollah Khamenei and at least five dozen other senior military and political leaders of the Islamic Republic, the de facto closure of tanker traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, the shutdown of Saudi Arabia’s Ras Tanura refinery and the world’s biggest LNG complex in Qatar, as well as retaliatory drone and missile attacks by Iran on airports, seaports, hotels, […]
Matein KhalidMr. Market is a metaphorical schizophrenic pendulum who swings between extremes of fear and greed, thus giving us a chance to make money at inflection points on both ends of the spectrum. So here we are in a surreal world of extreme fear on Nasdaq where the PEG ratios for Procter & Gamble is 5.4, for Coca Cola is 3.64, Johnny-Johnny is 2.4, Pepsi is 3.25, […]
Matein KhalidI dedicate this post to my dear friend Abdulla Saeed Al Naboodah who has Ferrari in his spirit, bloodstream as well as in his garages. I went gaga on the Ferrari IPO in 2015 as I viewed the world’s preeminent luxury car maker as unique since it restricted supply to an elite global community rather than peddled product to any joe who could afford a Beamer […]
Matein KhalidSomething is dangerously wrong in a world where the price of gold rises 30% and silver surges a surreal 65% in a single month, as we witnessed in January 2026. True, an American carrier strike force with a full complement of 80 F-18 Hornet war planes and missile destroyers laden with Tomahawk cruise missiles has sailed from the South China Sea into the Gulf. Once again, […]
Matein KhalidZohran Mamdani’s election as Mayor of New York City is the worst nightmare for the Big Apple’s commercial landlords, the reason why the shares of SL Green and Vornado have been sandbagged on the NYSE. The last thing a soft Manhattan office market with a plunge in inbound foreign tourism and spike in the 10-year US Treasury yield needed was a 35 year old self declared […]
Matein KhalidMarriott (MAR) is the world’s preeminent hospitality business with 1.7 million hotel rooms located in 9800 properties in 140 countries. Sadly, its shares were a Cinderella last year, underperforming the S&P 500 index with only a 14% return due to the decline in inbound foreign travel to the US triggered by Trump’s tariff threats, immigration crackdown and restrictive visa rules. Hopefully, Marriott will prove a better […]
Matein KhalidThe tragic images of the bloodbath in Iran, caused by the regime’s crackdown on protests have horrified the world and amplified the price surge in both oil and precious metal markets, with silver at $95 an ounce and tin up almost 30% in the first two weeks of 2026.Emerging markets will unquestionably be the dominant theme of 2026 now that the macro data suggests that the […]
Matein Khalid2026 has started with a bullish bang for my Dr. Copper trade, even though a single trading session when half of Asia is still getting over its New Year’s Day hangover is hardly an optimal sample size. Yet as I see LME spot copper trade at $12500 a metric ton, I feel exhilarated as this is precisely the breakout I flagged for my friends and readers […]
Matein KhalidMy very best wishes to my friends and readers for a wonderful Christmas break and may the New Year bring the world the peace the human race so richly deserves. I will be in Alex/Cairo to revisit and pay my homage to the genius of Pharonic antiquity supplemented by the Ptolemaic, Roman, Byzantine, Umayyad, Fatimid, Seljuk, Mamluk, Ottoman, French, British and even Soviet brutalist influences on […]
Matein KhalidThe Indian equity markets have experienced one of Asia’s most frenetic IPO bonanzas in 2024-25 even if no less than 50% of all new flotations are now trading below their offer price. Despite the decline of the Indian rupee’s new low against the dollar beyond 91 and Dalal Street’s underperformance relative to my fave emerging markets Argentina, Poland and Brazil in 2025, the macro omens suggest […]
Matein KhalidI was sure the Medline IPO would be a winner since I have tracked this business since it was acquired in a $30 billion leveraged buyout by Blackstone, Carlyle and the San Fran private equity house Hellman & Friedman after the bankers priced the deal at 29, I even wrote a post several hours before the New York open, reiterating that the largest private equity incubated […]
Matein Khalid2025 was the year I was convinced that silver would outperform gold in a classic late cycle acceleration trade that is a recurrent theme in full throttle precious metal bull markets. This means, silver has a tendency to lag gold’s ascent until an inflection point at which prices breakout and then accelerate sharply on the upside. This inflection point was $36 an ounce in spot silver […]
Matein KhalidOracle’s Q2 earnings vindicated my call to stay short Microsoft and SoftBank as public market proxies for OpenAI, whose $500 billion valuation should realistically be marked down by 50% to reflect current ground realities which will get much worse. I was aghast to see Oracle slump by another 11% on Nasdaq but not at all surprised when Microsoft shed $18 in last night’s session/after market. It […]
Matein KhalidWhen the rats scramble to escape a sinking ship as hungry sharks circle the blood red water, the end is near. 100 insider Johnnies sold $6.5 billion in OpenAI shares in a recent employee tender. Why bailout now at $500 billion if OpenAI is a slam dunk for a trillion dollar IPO next year? Simple. The 100 newly minted decamillionaires know that OpenAI can no longer […]
Matein Khalidwant my Arabic friends to address me from now on as Abu Nuhas or Father of Copper. Why? The red metal that has been human kind’s best mineral friend for 30,000 years is also the best conductor of electricity known to man, woman or beast as the AI revolution necessitates a multi-trillion dollar demand shock in upgrading the power grid as the world electrifies, decarbonizes (gas […]
