By Matein Khalid Oscar Wilde once spoke of his friendship with Lord Alfred Douglas, the fabled Bosie, as “the love that dare not speak its name”, in Victorian London, when Sherlock Holmes and Jack the Ripper roamed amid the fog and the gaslights! The love that dare not speak its name in my life is, of course, my obsession with foreign exchange markets, a love that mesmerizes […]
By Matein Khalid The US dollar is the traditional safe haven currency during times of geopolitical or financial stress even when the cause of a risk aversion spasm is ultimately American, such as the failure of Lehman Brothers in 2008, Obama’s epic budget battles with the Republicans in 2011 and the Trump White House’s drone hit on Iran’s most revered Revolutionary Guard commander on 3 January 2020. […]
By Matein Khalid I had published an article expressing my shock at the abysmal corporate governance and financial disclosure at NMC Healthcare, the London listed UAE’s largest private operator of healthcare clinics and hospitals. NMC Healthcare shares were at 1816 pence on the LSE when I published my article in the Gulf and UK financial press on 30 December 2019. NMC Healthcare has now plunged to 775 […]
By Matein Khalid Thankfully, I was not in the global markets during the Black Death, the Great Plague and the Spanish flu pandemic but coronavirus cases have now crossed 40,000 infections and this is way beyond a local Wuhan outbreak. Despite the blowout 225,000 US January non-farm payrolls growth data, I am alarmed by the global recession SOS in the capital markets metrics I track. One, the […]
By Matein Khalid My tactical idea last week to recommend buying sterling against the US dollar (cable) at 1.30 for a 1.34 target is 200 pips in the money now that the Bank of England kept the policy rate unchanged at 0.75% despite Governor Carney’s smoke signals. Sterling closed at 1.32 on Friday evening and will be well bid next week – hopefully. I expect Governor Bailey […]
By Matein Khalid NMC Health PLC, the UAE’s leading private operator of medical clinics and hospitals with a footprint in 17 countries was founded by Abu Dhabi based Indian-Udupi businessman B. R. Shetty and listed on the London Stock Exchange. NMC plunged a shocking 45% in five trading sessions after Carson Block of Muddy Waters Capital, one of the world’s preeminent short selling specialist hedge funds, accused […]
By Matein Khalid I had recommended buying the Tadawul ETF iShares MSCI Saudi Arabia (symbol KSA on NYSE) on November 30 to benefit from the post-IPO surge in the price of the Saudi Aramco IPO shares on the Tadawul. This tactical trade was a beauty even before Saudi Aramco shares soared 20% on its Thursday December 12 to peak at 38.7 Saudi riyals (SAR). As I expected, […]
By Matein Khalid I had recommended SAP shares at €82 in the Gulf financial press in early 2018 as its then CEO Bill McDermott committed the firm to the digital transformation of the UAE at Dubai’s World Government Summit. I published a second article on August 7, 2019 tilted “German software colossus SAP shares will more than double by 2023!”. The shares were €104 in Frankfurt on […]
By Matein Khalid I first encountered Lebanon as a teenager after the fabled Choueifat College opened its first UAE campus in Sharjah, fleeing the civil war in the Chouf. My ignorance of the country I was to know and love as my own patrie was monumental. When a classmate told me he was a Darzi, I assumed his father was a tailor since Darzi means “tailor” in […]
By Matein Khalid I literally laughed when I heard that Goldman Sachs put a valuation range of $1.6 to $2.3 trillion on the Saudi Aramco IPO. One, a valuation range of $700 million only means the Goldie analyst bankers (deal promoters?) are clueless about what Saudi Aramco is really worth. Two, I cannot fathom how the financial markets will assign a valuation of 17 to 23 times […]
By Matein Khalid So Boris Johnson was elected the leader of the Conservative Party by 66% of the Tory membership and thus he, not Jeremy Hunt, will go to Buck House to present his credentials to Her Majesty the Queen. This increases the risk of both no deal Brexit and a potential Tory vote of no confidence in parliament, led by Mrs. May’s Chancellor of the Exchequer […]
By Matein Khalid George Soros once observed “the big money in emerging markets is made when things go from Godawful to just plain awful”. So true. The point of maximum pessimism in an emerging market is often an opportune moment to accumulate its shares, ideally after a political, economic or financial systemic shock. I sold my entire Pakistan equities portfolio in summer of 2017 after the Supreme […]
By Matein Khalid The S&P 500 index trades at 2990 as I write. The risk-reward calculus on the broad index no longer flashes a buy signal to me. The economic data around the world has deteriorated at an accelerating pace, as the decline in global PMI’s, 9% fall in German factory orders and $13 trillion in in government debt trading at negative interest rates attest. Commodities prices […]
By Matein Khalid Goldman Sachs shares traded at 190 when I wrote this article, way below its 52 week high at 245 making it a Cinderella in global investment banking at only 8.5 times forward earnings. It is obvious that Goldman’s involvement in the $7 billion 1MDB sovereign wealth heist in Malaysia has led to global outrage, demands for a $6 billion in punitive fine by Prime […]
By Matein Khalid Thanks to the orchestrated bullishness of a dozen Wall Street sell side analysts and the mother of all short covering rallies, Uber has managed to claw back its losses from 38 to its IPO offer price of $45 though the latest management disaster and sacking of Dara’s handpicked COO and marketing lady wunderkind will slam the shares tonight. Uber has also benefited from a […]
By Matein Khalid Citigroup, the third largest US money center bank, owns subsidiaries in Latin America whose pedigrees go back almost a century. For instance, Banamex, Citi’s subsidiary in Mexico, is the second largest corporate/retail bank south of the Rio Grande. So it was no coincidence that Citi shares got sandbagged to a recent 61 as President Trump threatened to impose tariffs on Mexico’s $350 billion exports […]
/By Matein Khalid/ Despite the global fame of its brand ambassadors Leonardo DiCaprio and Snoop Dog, Alternative faux meat specialist Beyond Meat (symbol BYND) electrified Wall Street with its white-hot IPO. The recent panic in financial markets and rising geopolitical risk in the Middle East did not prevent Beyond Meat’s $240 million IPO from being a fabulous winner, rising from 25 to 89 as I write. Of […]
By Matein Khalid I had published a column in the UK/MENA press arguing that the Uber IPO was “absurdly valued” last week. I was vindicated with a vengeance when Uber priced its IPO at 45, well below the level Saudi Arabia’s uber-sovereign wealth fund PIF invested $3.5 billion in the hose of Travis (now Dara) three years ago. Uber opened on the NYSE with a whimper, not […]
/By Matein Khalid/Are we on the precipice of another spasm of intercontinental contagion in the emerging markets like 2018, or the Asian flu, tequila crisis, Russian rouble default or the Turkish banking crisis in the 1990’s. Yes. The Shanghai Composite Index has plunged 12% and (17% fall for Shenzhen) since Trump got nasty on the tortuous US-China trade dialogue. The IMF cut its global growth forecast to […]
/By Matein Khalid/ Uber Technologies goes public in the most controversial and global tech IPO since Facebook seven years ago. Uber bulls claim that the ride sharing colossus is another embryonic Amazon, a firm that will dominate the digital constellation of the next two decades. I disagree. Uber loses $4 billion per annum and has already been forced to surrender Russia/CIS to Yandex, China to Didi and […]
|By Matein Khalid|The GCC currency pegs to the US dollar have been prominent in international finance in place since the early 1980’s, in times of war and revolution, in times of economic boom and bust, in times of crude oil price surges and crashes. Yet the oil crash of 2014-16 was an inflection point in the economic history of the Arabian Gulf. Crude oil prices were $115 […]
|By Matein Khalid| Dropbox, founded by MIT students, venture financed by Sequoia Capital, is one of the world’s most valuable software startups. Even the Irish legend Bono of UB40 is an early stage investor. Its March 2018 IPO was a blowout. Dropbox broke syndicate at 21 and closed at up 50% on its first day. The shares peaked at 43 in June, but as Sophocles observed two […]
|By Matein Khalid| I had recommended buying the British pound at 1.2700 against the US dollar in successive columns in the past two weeks. Sterling is at 1.3200 as I write, the trade is already hugely profitable. Cable has now closed above its crucial 200 day moving average in a clear trend reversal. As markets dismiss the risk of a no deal Brexit, I believe the pound […]
|By Matein Khalid|If Asia is a growth warrant on the global economy, the omens look awful as the IMF just warned the financial glitterati at Davos. Asian equities were the victims of the grim macro investment themes in 2018. Four Federal Reserve interest rate hikes forced Asian central banks to raise borrowing costs to protect embattled local currencies. The Trump White House’s game of chicken on trade […]
