Matein Khalid I was invited by Geneva’s Bank Syz for a fascinating discussion with its CIO Charles Monchau and some of my close friends who are family office CIOs at Zuma, a wonderful venue that I had never visited in the afternoon until now. It is always nice to see a familiar place from a totally different perspective in sunlight fortified by Evian! Danke schön/merci beaucoup/molto grazie […]
Matein Khalid Investor | Family Office CIO | Portfolio Strategist | Board Advisor | VC | Finance Professor Brazil will elect its next president on Sunday. This election will send shock waves across Latin America and the global markets because if President Bolsonaro wins, all bets are off for the Amazon rainforest and any credible hope to win the battle against climate change. Bolsonaro has accused his […]
Matein Khalid Investor | Family Office CIO | Portfolio Strategist | Board Advisor | VC | Finance Professor There will be a bloodbath in Nasdaq’s Big Tech Godzillas and size definitely matters in the tsunami of panic selling yet to come. Alphabet proved that digital advertising is not immune to global economic storm clouds as both Google Search and YouTube revenue dips were a shocker. Microsoft’s Azure […]
Matein Khalid Microsoft is down 7.8% as I write as the thesis I outlined yesterday for the 330 short is sadly playing out and now even the Azure growth franchise exhibits decelerating growth. PC shipments, IT spending, operating margins and EPS are all going to be downgraded in the next six months. I am really convinced that MSFT will trade well below 200 by early 2023. My […]
Matein Khalid Investor | Family Office CIO | Portfolio Strategist | Board Advisor | VC | Finance Professor Russia’s terror bombing of Kiev, Lviv and Odessa significantly escalates the geopolitical stakes in the Ukraine war. This tragic slaughter in the killing fields of Europe must stop if the human race has a shred of civilized DNA left in it. The bomb explosion on the Kerch bridge in […]
Matein Khalid Investor | Family Office CIO | Portfolio Strategist | Board Advisor | VC | Finance Professor Liz Truss will go down in history as the worst Tory PM in a past century that includes Chamberlain (Munich), Eden (Suez), Macmillan (Profumo sex scandal), John Major (Black Wednesday) and Bo Jo (Brexit). She has gutted the UK’s credibility in global finance, degenerated its macroeconomics into moronomics, and […]
Matein Khalid Investor | Family Office CIO | Portfolio Strategist | Board Advisor | VC | Finance Professor I have always fantasized about buying into a midtown Manhattan office building portfolio since New York City is the nerve center of global finance, banking, digital media, fashion, art and the coolest, most creative yuppies, the best and brightest of mother earth. Now my fantasy has come true. I […]
Matein Khalid Investor | Family Office CIO | Portfolio Strategist | Board Advisor | VC | Finance Professor September CPI was a disaster and now makes it impossible for the Federal Reserve to pause, let alone ease monetary policy until the Fed Funds rate reaches at least 5%, which it will by early 2023. This is not a mere opinion as opinions are like a certain body […]
Matein Khalid Investor | Family Office CIO | Portfolio Strategist | Board Advisor | VC | Finance Professor The Microsoft 320 short idea is a beauty now that MSFT has fallen to 225. This is just a valuation compression due to interest rates. Once the overleveraged consumer rolls over, I believe MSFT will fall to 150. The modern era of floating exchange rates began when President Nixon […]
Matein Khalid King Dollar, aggressive Federal Reserve monetary tightening, an oil shock, recession in Europe/China and pandemic related hits to world trade have converged to make 2022 a classic annus horribilis for emerging markets. Yet my late Dad used to say – “when the going gets tough, the tough get going”. This is why I am now hunting for potential triple baggers in the Saigon stock exchange, […]
Matein Khalid The 20 year highs in King Dollar and 18% rise in its trade weighted index in the past year has rewritten the rules of investing in the international financial markets. King Dollar has wrecked havoc with emerging market currencies and Third World sovereign bonds as any poor unlucky investor in Pakistan, Turkey, Lebanon, Sri Lanka and Egypt government bonds will attest. The World Bank estimates […]
Matein Khalid Brent crude was grossly overvalued at 124 in June and black gold has come down as supply angst is replaced by the very tangible reality of a China where 7% GDP growth is not going to come back for the rest of the decade. Thus demand destruction in the petroleum products market is inevitable. At $85, Brent is now below its level when the Russian […]
Matein Khalid A country should never be dependent on the kindness of strangers – hot money inflows from global bond markets to fund a bloated, irrational fiscal and current account deficit. This is a lesson Britain learnt the hard way in 1976 when HM Treasury was forced to go cap in hand to Washington for an IMF bailout and again on Black Wednesday, September 1992 when billionaire […]
Matein Khalid “Our currency, your problem”. John Connally, Treasury Secretary in the Nixon White House uttered these words to the world’s elite when he torpedoed the Bretton Woods regime’s gold link to the US dollar in 1971. Fifty one years later, the world is still paying a terrible price for the US dollar’s role as the dominant reserve currency. The US Dollar Index (DXY) is up 20% […]
Matein Khalid Mortgage rates in the UAE have now doubled from 2% to 4%. My view on a protracted inflation cycle and a sharp rise in credit risk during the next year as the global/UAE economy slips into recession means that mortgage rates could rise to 7 to 8%, making a mockery of the argument that this is a cash only market with juicy rental yields. When […]
Matein Khalid The year 2022 has been an annus horribilis for Pakistan’s sovereign debt, even by the dismal standards of the emerging markets. Political stability has been illusive as the populist, incompetent PTI government of Imran Khan lost a no confidence vote in parliament and the fragile PDM coalition has not been able to restore credibility on macro policy as the free fall in the rupee to […]
Matein Khalid Brent’s rise to $103 is entirely rational on short covering, the Friday rally in risk assets and the absence of any firm commitment by Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and UAE, to boost output during President Biden’s state visit to the kingdom. Apparently, the Jerusalem Declaration and fist pump diplomacy have not been sufficient to reset relations between the Biden White House and MBS. This rally is […]
Matein Khalid My strategy recommendation to my friends was to short Brent crude at or above $120 for the $65 target I got from the world’s pre-eminent oil economist/OPEC watcher Ed Morse. The short Brent idea has been a money gusher now that Brent has plunged 7% in today’s session to 99 as I write. The fall in oil prices was inevitable. King Dollar is at 20 […]
Matein Khalid This is definitely not the best of all possible Panglossian macro worlds as the S&P 500 is 20% below its January peak, growth stocks continue to get crushed on Nasdaq while credit spreads have almost doubled and Brent crude is at $114. The Powell Fed waited too long to tighten with its myopic mantra of “inflation is transitory” and has pivoted to monetary tightening at […]
Matein Khalid Massive buying of Treasury bonds since last evening when we hit 3.18% yield on the UST 10. UST 10 yield fell to 3.00% in Asia, 2.97% in London and is now only 2.94% in New York. This is a very unusual move in a 24 hour period. I think some major financial institution is in trouble and fear is making big money move cash into […]
Matein Khalid King Dollar is now on a rampage that will redefine global capital flows and have a seismic impact on the economies, financial markets and even politics of Europe, Asia and EM, which should now invite Britain to join their club since sterling is a mere 1.25 and Bo Jo antiques would make him an ideal third world tinpot dictator though bring your own booze to […]
Matein Khalid The mini crash in crude oil in Asia was triggered by the rumour that China’s zero Covid policy means that Beijing will join Shanghai, the world’s largest port and the PRC’s financial capital, in a draconian lockdown that will gut demand for petroleum products in the world’s second largest oil importer. Brent has fallen almost $40 from its post-Ukraine invasion high and it’s evident that […]
Matein Khalid A paranoid autocrat is never a rational decision maker and has historically sent untold millions of humans to their deaths for nothing. So Adolf Hitler ranted and raved in his Berlin Führerbunker even though it was obvious that Nazi Germany had lost the war by late 1944. Stalin cynically starved millions of people in Ukraine and Mao’s Great Leap Forward cost 50 million lives in […]
Matein Khalid The Russian invasion of Ukraine is both a humanitarian tragedy and an economic disaster. Something is dangerously wrong in a world where its second largest oil producer is now a pariah state that makes a mockery of international law and will soon be crippled once its banks are ejected from SWIFT. Russia and Ukraine are also the source of almost one third the world’s wheat/corn […]
By Matein Khalid The wicked witch of Wall Street waved her ursine broomstick over the global financial market in mid-November and all hell broke loose on the US equity indices. The Nasdaq was slammed by 18% at its recent 13,350 low and has broken its 200 day moving average and dozens of its high multiple components are down 30, 40 and even 50% from their highs. The […]
By Matein Khalid It is not the end, it is not even the beginning of the end but it is the end of the beginning. Churchill’s famous words express my own feelings about the latest psychotic Bitcoin cycle. This crypto-puppy was at an all time high of $68,990 last November but then plunged to $33,000 in its January lows. So whatever crypto is, it is definitely not […]
Matein Khalid As multinational diversify supply chains from China, Vietnam obviously benefits. Vietnam has always fascinated me yet it is a frontier market I have not had the opportunity to visit, thanks to the pandemic lockdowns in Ho Chi Minh City. Yet I still believe that Vietnam is the beneficiary of major macro trends that are transforming the geopolitics, economics and financial markets of South East Asia. […]
By Matein Khalid 2021 was a classic annus horribilis in the Chinese stock market as even a wannabe bottom fisher in Alibaba at 160 like moa can attest. Yet the 37% plunge in MSCI China index and Hong Kong red chips was the worst financial performance in the Middle Kingdom since the 2008 global financial meltdown. The pain was most concentrated in Chinese internet and property developer […]
By Matein Khalid As the 5% crude oil plunge in both WTI and Brent on fears of Omicron demand shock demonstrates, the fate of the virus is inextricably linked to global economic growth, Fed policy and thus commodities returns. Yet thanks to black gold’s stellar performance the GSCI Energy index was a winner in 2021, up 47%. Even Brent rebounded 4% to 74 a barrel in its […]
By Matein Khalid The financial markets gave a green light to risk assets after the December FOMC conclave because the Federal Reserve has shifted its monetary strategy from post pandemic money printing to a traditional anti-inflation stance. Chairman Powell’s decision to drop his “inflation is transitory” argument and the FOMC’s decision to double the taper with three planned rate hikes in 2022 is thus a game changer […]
