Category: Stockie Dokie

Matein KhalidOnly after I tried to read the 277-page SpaceX IPO filing did I grasp the truth of Winston Churchill’s observation that his sceptred isle and America were two countries separated by a common language.For my Brit friends and editors, SpaceX is a rocket launch, satellite and AI business. In the legal gobbledygook of SEC/Wall Street, American lingo, SpaceX is history’s first “orbital infrastructure conglomerate”.A rose by any other name would smell just as sweet – especially when that rose

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 Treasury market, pushing the yield on the bellwether 10-year note towards 4.7 percent

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 sudden collapse of Silicon Valley Bank on the asset liability maturity mismatch that

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 when the bubble du jour bursts as they always do after the mother

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 the group and its swing producer, the de facto central bank of black

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 therefore infringed core Chinese interests in the Gulf by weaponising tanker transit through

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 storm clouds over even large, established businesses in the US, Europe and Asia.While

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 its price rise to $245 as the US-Israel and Iran competed to escalate

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, military bases and embassies in all six GCC states.These are unmistakable metrics of

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, while the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, which I consider is the four

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 and Benzi. The rich of Nairobi are even known as Wa-Benzi LOL!Ferrari (RACE)

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, as in January 15 1991, October 07 2001 and March 20 2003, the

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 socialist Marxist who wants to freeze rents, which are admittedly exorbitant in the

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 investment in 2026 since the US, Canada and Mexico hosts the FIFA World

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 US economy is in goldilocks mode, not too hot on inflation as 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 a month ago before riding a 30%+ return on FCX, the world’s largest

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 Umm Duniya’s inevitable skyline. I may even return to DXB with some fresh

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 that the IPO hit parade will continue in 2026 especially since it will

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 IPO of 2025 was worth a pop.I calculated that MDLN would be midwifed

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 for me and I even wrote a post pointing out a new paradigm

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 was a massacre for SoftBank shares in Tokyo as they plunged by almost

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? Simp​le. The 100 newly minted decamillionaires know that OpenAI can no longer hope for a trillion doll​ar exit. Its business model is toast now that

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 turbines are also made from copper and we are limit up now) and

Matein KhalidIndia’s NSE Nifty scaled a milestone on Dalal Street this morning, rising 160 points as I write to 26205. This has little to do with Nvidia/Jensen Huang’s fabulous guidance last night and everything to do with global fund managers attracted Asia’s Cinderella EM of 2025 by the BJP’s supply side policy pivot to slash the GST, ramp up post-Bihar election capex, boost consumption even as corporate EPS growth accelerates, post Diwali seasonals are a tailwind for consumer spending (when

Matein KhalidThe bloodbath in Bitcoin is symbolic of the risk aversion spasm that has now hit risk assets as varied as Japan’s Nikkei Dow, Nasdaq’s Mag-7, gold and even the EM carry trade. The AI infrastructure trade that was the high octane fuel for the most frenzied bubble in Silicon Valley history has lost its luster (price momentum is the mandate of heaven on Wall Street), though the proof of the pudding will ultimately be hostage to what Nvidia says

Matein KhalidAmazon (AMZN) shares were a doggy of the Mag-7 for most of 2025, falling as low as 161 in late April during the post Liberation Day temper tantrum by Mr. Market and trading in a narrow 200-225 range since late summer on concerns that AWS was losing ground to Microsoft’s Azure and Google Cloud in the cloud computing league tables. Even now, at 244 it is up only 11% for 2025, 4 points lower than the S&P 500 index.

Matein KhalidJay Powell has put cold water on a December FOMC rate cut as inflation risk triggers dissent at the Fed. Yet Uncle Jay is now a lame duck and the world awaits his first MAGA Fed Chairman. My bet is on Kevin H as I doubt if even a supine Senate will confirm yes man - Stephen Miran. Why even bother to hold the FOMC conclave with 19 people pontificating their views on the future path of rates in

Matein KhalidCritical minerals have become a national security priority for GCC states as China has weaponised its dominance over supply chains, refining capacity and magnet production.These materials, including lithium, nickel, cobalt, tin, tungsten, vanadium and germanium, are essential for defence systems such as Lockheed’s F-35 stealth fighters, Raytheon’s hypersonic missiles and General Dynamics’ Virginia-class submarines, as well as civilian applications in advanced semiconductors, electric vehicles, robotics and next-generation digital infrastructure.The urgency of this challenge is illustrated by the landmark $1.8 billion

Matein KhalidThe supply glut in crude oil, the fragile geopolitics of the Levant, the Gaza wars, the thinnest sovereign credit spreads since the summer of 2006 have not ended the scramble to pick up MENA credit when the issuer is not a serial borrower/distressed credit and the bonds issue reflects improving political/economic fundamentals. The year ago, Oman and Bahrain provided some amazing opportunities for capital gains which I did my best to highlight in this post and my media columns

Matein KhalidStock exchange folklore in pre-1929 Jazz Age New York has one priceless insight for me - “you be buying when they are crying, you be selling when they are yelling”. So as I scan the markets, I realized that the mother of all yelling is taking place in the AI arena and its decibel count is loudest where the ignorance about its nuances is the highest, as in the Gulf. I am certain that when the AI bubble pops,

Matein KhalidI have made no secret about my conviction that Brazil’s Nu Bank (NU) and China’s Alibaba (BABA) are my two fave emerging market’s fintechs of destiny since 2024. Alibaba has risen almost 100% since I accumulated its shares in the mid 80’s in its New York ADR once it was evident that the Politburo had pivoted to Big Bang fiscal/monetary stimulus to goose the dormant animal spirits of investors in Shanghai and Shenzhen, gutted by the traumatic collapse of

Matein KhalidReal estate occasionally provides prescient investors the ability to make serious capital gains with minimal or even zero risk. Take the Empire of the Rising Sun and the sinking yen, also known as Japan. The ruling LDP has shed its Komeito coalition partner and is all set to embrace Sanae Takaichi as Lady Shogun or Dai Nippon’s first elected woman Prime Minister. This means higher inflation and sharper rise in property prices in the seven celestial islands of Japan