Matein KhalidMy mystical vegan-pivot makes Christmas goose taboo for the rest of my life but my quest for those rare geese that lay golden eggs for me on the stock exchanges continues unabated.Alibaba (BABA) was despised/dissed by everyone I respected, from CNBC honcho Jim Cramer to my Indian luminati (but never Illuminati) friends in the DIFC and even hedgies in New York and London who told me […]
Matein KhalidWho would have thought that an elegiac hillbilly like J.D. Vance would articulate the requiem for the Western Alliance and NATO at Munich even as Donald Trump prepares for his alpha male sword dance in the Saudi desert, though I really hope POTUS-47 does not try to take on Putin in judo because the little guy is a certified black belt, who can pulverize DonnyT on […]
Matein KhalidAn English poet once lamented, “golden boys and golden girls must, like chimney sweeps, also turn to dust”. The fate of pre-pandemic Silicon Valley unicorns, whose dreams of a wildly successful IPO amid the market mania of 2021 was deflated by a killer virus and the Powell Fed’s most draconian monetary tightening since the Volcker era may also turn to dust. This is as true in […]
Matein KhalidSpaceX is up 7X since my post in 2020, when we invested at $46 billion pre-money and it is now $350 billion. I do not recommend anybody put new money in this or any of the big AI plays. There are 300 AI startups that were rejected by two Palo Alto brand name VC partners I respect in the past year and this sector will be […]
Matein KhalidV.S. Naipaul once said that ancestral memories are like “trap doors to a bottomless past”. This was my first thought when I heard about the death of HH Prince Karim Aga Khan, the 49th Imam Zaman of Islam’s Ismaili sect and unquestionably the world leader who has inspired me most in my lifetime. I am not an Ismaili. In fact, my direct ancestor, the Mukhi of […]
Matein KhalidThe selloff in emerging markets FX before Trump granted a 30 days reprieve to Canada/Mexico on his 25% tariff threats created multiple trading opportunities. I would stay away from Mexican peso as it is easily the most liquid, most shortable currency in the EM FX constellation. The Sherlock Holmes dog that did not bark in this case was the measured ping pong on tariffs with China, […]
Matein Khalidt is significant that President Trump, despite his bluff and brinkmanship with 25 percent tariff threats against Mexico and Canada, chose only to impose a 10 percent tariff on China.China is Washington’s only real peer competitor in great power realpolitik and its preeminent rival in Cold War 2.0.A 10 percent tariff is not a threat to global economic stability as would have been the 60 percent tariff Trump had […]
Matein KhalidTrump’s vision of Gaza as a “riviera of the Middle East” at his press conference with Netanyahu, whose IDF warplanes, drones and tanks just butchered 45,000 Gazans is as deranged as it is surreal. Trump views Gaza as a New York real estate development opportunity as if he was gentrifying Spanish Harlem or the Bronx. I can imagine his zest at the idea of Trump Towers […]
Matein KhalidThe ideologues of MAGA assured us that Tariff Man’s threats were pure bombast and Wall Street believed them, the reason equities and crypto went ballistic after the election of POTUS-47. Yet Trump’s tariff threats were all too real and the global markets must now pay a bitter price for history’s second worst economic own goal after Brexit.The 25% tariff on Mexico will immediately send its economy […]
Matein KhalidIn a week where Nasdaq’s fabled AI trade was slammed by the emergence of Chinese startup DeepSeek and the vision of a much lower cost efficient and less intensive energy usage performance models, it is ironic that Microsoft (MSFT) shares have traded down to 413 on its Azure stumble even though the world’s preeminent software franchise will be the prime winner from lower cost AI hardware […]
Matein KhalidThe ghost of Austrian School economist Joseph Schumpeter must be turning in his grave since his theory of creative destruction in capitalist societies just got vindicated with the vengeance by the meteoric impact of Chinese AI start up DeepSeek, whose competitive threat has triggered a trillion dollar plus bloodbath on Nasdaq as futures are down a 1,000 points, the Volatility Index is up a ghastly 40% […]
Matein Khalid“O liberty, what crimes are committed in your name!”. So lamented a Girondist noblewoman as she gazed at the guillotine that would snuff out her life minutes later in Robespierre’s reign of terror during the Great Revolution. French history then went dark. The Catholic-Royal revolt in the Vendée was crushed in literal rivers of blood. Napoleon’s reign ended in the slaughter and defeat of Waterloo. Marshal […]
Matein KhalidTwo tragic plane crashes in Azerbaijan/South Korea and now terrorist outrages in Las Vegas and New Orleans take the joy out of New Year’s Day but all we can hope that the world will be reinvented with a modicum of rationality when Donald Trump swears the oath to uphold the US Constitution on January 20th. The political messiah of MAGA is also a geopolitical/trade time bomb […]
Matein KhalidIt is an ironic twist of history that the world’s largest Muslim country, an archipelago of 18,000 islands, whose ancient Sumatran kings once funded countless monasteries/temples at Nalanda, the Harvard/Oxford of Vedic India two millennia ago. Sumatra was then known as the kingdom of Srivijaya when Mauryan India’s ruler was Ashoka, imperator of the Magadan superstate. Fast forward 22 centuries and the two best performing emerging […]
Matein KhalidJim Cramer renamed his dog Nvidia and I have renamed my periodic Mag-7/MAGA bull sessions with my fellow Nasdaq junkies as Nvidia Nights and why not? I shared my convictions that Nvidia was headed to 150 two years ago when NVDA traded at a pre-split price well below $20 a share in late 2022 when Powell’s monetary tough love had slammed Nasdaq and the AI frenzy […]
Matein KhalidThere is no geopolitical risk premium in Brent crude even though history just went fast forward and literally ballistic in the Middle East as the IDF bombed Hamas into the Stone Age, decapitated Hezbollah’s command/communications networks, killed Nasrallah, forced Iran’s most valuable proxy militia to sue for a ceasefire in Lebanon, destroyed Iran’s Russian S300 anti-missile defense systems and escalated its air assault on the Houthis […]
Matein KhalidUS money center banks/I-banks had their best year in 2024 since the pre-Covid Stone Age. My fav turnaround names Citi and Wells Fargo exceeded my wildest expectations while the prospect of light touch regulation and M&A/IPO underwriting jackpot made Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley go ballistic. Despite the post Dec FOMC fireworks, this sector will have winners if bought at the right price even though risk […]
Matein KhalidI am still puzzled by the frenzied selling in the bond market after the FOMC cut its dot-plot projections from 4 to 2 for 2025 at its Dec 18 conclave. Why? Mr. Market had already priced in two rate cuts in 2025 after he was spooked by the uptick in core PCE/CPI data. Inflation risk in Trumpnomics is exaggerated but with the President elect now wanting […]
Matein KhalidsTrump 2.0 will be all the more potent in reshaping America’s economic destiny since the White House, the Senate and the House are all blood red. Tariffs/mass deportation can mean inflation shocks but deregulation, AI adoption and DOGE will have a disinflationary impact on the economy.Trump will apply punitive tariffs on a selective basis on specific countries (notably China) but his economic team is too world […]
Matein KhalidThe dramatic events of last week in Syria have only boosted President Erdogan’s role as the preeminent regional powerbroker in the heart of the Arab Levant as Turkish armed/financed Sunni militias engineered their collapse of the 54-year-old Assad dynastic tyranny in Damascus. Syria is once again a de facto Turkish protectorate, as it was in the five centuries since Sultan Selim Yavuz vanquished its Mamluk rulers […]
Matein KhalidThe late summer and autumn of 2024 may well go down in history as the Berlin Wall moment for the Middle East as the collapse of the nightmarish Assad dynastic dictatorship will have a seismic geopolitical fall out across the region. Iran has lost its land bridge/weapon supply conduit to its proxy militia Hezbollah, itself decapitated and militarily degraded by the IDF in Lebanon. Baathist Syria […]
Matein KhalidI wrote a column on Vornado (VNO) as a buy at 18 in Sep’22 as it was slammed by the pandemic, its debt load and the Fed’s draconian rate hikes. So VNO’s price ascribed a $450 a square foot value to its prime Manhattan office/Fifth Ave retail portfolio even though its occupancy rate was 91% as the pandemic raged. To help my Dubai friends grasp that […]
Matein KhalidThe S&P 500 Index was the ultimate Thanksgiving gift to investors in US equities though the party poopah sectors like Big Pharma were the proverbial turkey. The post-election spike was only the icing on a cake that has been a dream for investors in the SPX, now up 27% with 53 record closes. America is 4% of the world’s population and 25% of its GDP but […]
Matein KhalidThe weekend Crony Club dinners in the finest watering holes/pizzerias of Dubai are as long as they are liquid and our sole focus is to exchange money making investment ideas and wildest new jokes. So I found out that my buddies were more interested in my calls on the Mag-7 than in my philosophical reveries on MAGA. So paisanos, viola!I had outlined my Tesla (TSLA) strategy […]
