Articles written by
Matein Khalid

Post-Ukraine NATO Threat To Russia Is Far Greater Than Before

A New Global Energy Order Emerging With US Supplies As Pivot

Dangerous game Putin is playing

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 […]

Parallels Seen With Stagnation After Invasion Of Czechoslovakia

A humanitarian tragedy and economic disaster

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 […]

Horror show on Wall Street

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 […]

Bitcoin highly co-related to Nasdaq

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 […]

Vietnam is beneficiary of major macro trends

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. […]

China’s brutal bear market

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 […]

A possible game-changer for crude, gas and financial markets

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 […]

Case for rally in risk assets

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 […]

Byju’s post-IPO market cap: something is wrong with this world

By Matein Khalid Every time I noticed a Garuda flight in Jakarta airport, visited the ancient Thai capital of Ayodhya or saw the Ramayana frescos in the royal palace complex in Bangkok or bantered with the Sikh ladies in Singapore’s Changi airport, I was reminded about India’s ancient civilizational links with Southeast Asia. In fact, Vietnamese slang still calls Indians “Klinga”, after the ancient Kalinga kingdom in […]

Markets take South African virus in stride

By Matein Khalid I will never forget watching the 2006 soccer World Cup final in Berlin on TV with my two then nine year old twins, eating pizza and watching our common idol Shakira come out in her belly dancing costume and exchange karate moves on the world stage with her Spanish Harlem (El Barrio) with homeboy partner as she sang “hips don’t lie”. Trust me as […]

Paytm IPO debacle and possible cycle peak

By Matein Khalid Speculative manias in the financial markets invariably culminate in hysteria and greed run amok. So the 25% fall in the $2.5 billion Paytm IPO, India’s celebrated fintech could well be a cycle peak for the current zeitgeist, just as the busted IPO of Reliance Power was in the Dalal Street asset bubble of 2007-08. Mr. Marketji is obviously unimpressed by Paytm’s brand name investors […]

Killer virus does what Biden couldn’t

By Matein Khalid Brent crude is now down 11% to 73 and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) is now down a shocking 13% at 68. President Biden may wish to remember the old Persian proverb “do not wish for anything too badly. You may just get it”. Biden had green lighted a release from the American Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) last week but oil traders actually bid up […]

OIL, GAME THEORY AND REALPOLITIK

By Matein Khalid Von Neumann’s Game Theory can model strategic behaviour in the global oil market, as once Admiral Yamamoto used it to model the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour and the IDF used it to model Israel’s pre-emptive strike against Nasser’s Egypt in June 1967. So the US strategic reserves release signals the Biden White House’s displeasure with petro-inflation. Biden’s move was priced into the oil […]

Lebanon’s dream gives way to nightmare

By Matein Khalid I remember a time when Lebanon was called “le rêve d’orient” by its Francophile elite. This was definitely the case in the affluent enclaves of Ashrafieh, Beit Mary and Rue Munot where the jeunesse dorée partied with Galic abandon in the mid 1990’s. This was a time of hope for a country still haunted by the nightmare of a civil war that had witnessed […]

Black hole of emerging markets

Matein Khalid The Middle Kingdom has been a black hole for emerging markets equitywalas since mid-2020. The PBOC kept monetary policy far too tight at a time when the global pandemic necessitated some credit acceleration. The economic slowdown after the Wuhan virus was worse than Street consensus. The property developer Evergrande’s $300 billion debt woes unnerved the Chinese banking system and yuan debt market. The geopolitical rhetoric […]

Get real, get hedged, in and out

Matein Khalid Trend is your friend until the trend comes to an end. So this has been a fabulous year to own US equities and I have surfed the Big Board/Nasdaq wave for high stakes with even occasional high octane leverage to bet on the right puppy. I am now paranoid about the risk of a major market selloff in November. After all, as Dr. Henry Kissinger […]

World’s first $3 trillion business

Matein Khalid In the winter of 2018 on the eve of a trip to South Africa with my close friends from Roshni, an enclave of some very special people just outside Johannesburg. I had published an article in the GCC/British media (I used to write for newspapers and magazines then) on software stocks (https://lnkd.in/dTgHd9Wp). My analysis convinced me that MSFT was a superlative buy just below $100. […]

Lira on precipice of a catastrophic collapse

Matein Khalid I have been a consistent bear on the Turkish lira from the time President Erdogan, a political populist and former soccer player, decided that he was a better monetary economist than the four central bank governors in Ankara that he sacked in the past decade. I pleaded with my friends in Dubai/Pakistan not to bottom fish in the Turkish lira during the post coup meltdown […]

Crypto appeal to institutions growing

Matein Khalid In retrospect, the news that China had banned Bitcoin mining/trading in July and the subsequent sell-off to BTC in the early $30,000s was an ideal opportunity to accumulate the world’s most credible digital currency. Beijing fulmination against crypto is routine and BTC has always recovered from PRC inspired sell-offs. The euphoria now is mainly due to the fact that the SEC has agreed to the […]

Education has the power to transform

Matein Khalid I found this letter from Erin Bali, co-founder of Udemy in 2010, utterly inspirational (thanks ZoPa). It is available on page 96 of the S1 Udemy just filed with the SEC last week for a Nasdaq IPO. S1-page 96: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1607939/000119312521291460/d163445ds1.htm Education has the power to transform the lives of human beings and nothing is more cruel than a country that denies education to its poorest, […]

Energy best performing sector

Matein Khalid My periodic please-all summer asking my friends to accumulate energy stocks on the 77-65 Brent sell off in July has been vindicated with a vengeance this autumn as energy is the best performing sector in both September and October with the XLE now up a stellar 46%, who could have imagined that Oxy would rise from 10 to 35 when Brent was $35, the world […]

A milestone moment

Matein Khalid Today is the milestone moment for Manju and I as well as a special constellation of our close friends who shared my conviction that Udemy was destined to morph into the world’s pre-eminent EdTech marketplace. These were the same special friends/investors who entrusted us to invest $17.5 million in a syndicate we led to buy Udemy shares in the pre-IPO market at a valuation of […]

Still skittish about October market

Matein Khalid The history of Wall Street has taught me to be nervous on Mondays in October. This Monday is also crowded with meetings with strategic partners and friends from across the seas and the Gulf. So my market call must be short and sweet. I had given 10 reasons why September augured to be a dodgy month for the US stock market. Despite Friday’s impressive index […]

A disaster since summer

Matein Khalid Brazil stock market performance unfortunately vindicates General Charles de Gaulle’s morose prediction “Brazil is a country of the future and always will be”. In my Wall Street salad days, we were neurologically programmed to buy Brazilian equities when crude oil/soft commodities price boomed, when the global economic growth was in acceleration mode and when a right wing pro-Uncle Sam President with close ties to the […]

A cow ready to be milked

Matein Khalid I had recommended a strategic buy on Airbnb (ABNB) at 137 in July after a 20-point hit as I saw multiple catalysts for a bull run (https://lnkd.in/gEfT4Bwy). Since ABNB opened at 176 on Nasdaq today, I have now decided that I have to milk this cow via leveraged longs/put sales/out of the money calls to an obscene scale and the risk/reward calculus on high valuation […]

Brent at a post-pandemic high

Matein Khalid Brent crude has now reached a post-pandemic high of $77 and reinforced my conviction that energy will be the best performing sector of September 2021. Saudi Arabia and Russia have ignored the Biden White House’s call to pump more oil and the quota discipline in OPEC+ is intact while Libyan oil remains offline due to the civil war and the US’s Afghan debacle means Biden […]

Evergrande need not be Lehman 2.0

Matein Khalid My call to buy the US stock market last night when the Dow was down 850 to 950 points is a money maker for now, as the Dow futures are up 250 points in the pre-market after an incredible 300 point rally in the last hour of trading on the NYSE last night. Faint heart never won fair lady or sold index put spreads at […]