Matein Khalid Three generations of Gulf Arabs have been enraptured with German luxury auto brands like Mercedes, BMW, Porsche and Audi. But please, please, do not fall in love with German homes or CRE as the Fatherland faces the mother/mutti of all property meltdowns. New construction starts have plunged a ghastly 50% in H1 2023. Hundreds of property developers, squeezed by the sharp spike in borrowing costs, […]
Matein Khalid I expected a bond market bloodbath ever since the yield on the 10 year US Treasury note rose above 3.50%. Why? One, the neutral rate of interest, called R* in the vocabulary of the Federal Reserve monetary economists and the bond trading desk of Wall Street. This is the rate of interest where the economy is in neither growth or recession mode and R* neither […]
Matein Khalid Literature is often a better guide to navigate the emerging markets than the cold algorithms of modern finance. This is definitely true with the magic realism genre of Latin American writers like Argentina’s Borges, Colombia’s García Márquez and Mexico’s Carlos Fuentes, the three men for whom I have struggled to achieve fluency (without success) in Spanish/Castellano. So when I think of emerging market equities in […]
Matein Khalid Saudi Arabia’s unilateral 1 MBD output cut in Vienna last week did not trigger a credible rally in crude oil prices. Au contraire, Brent ended the week at $74.80 and West Texas a tad above $70, down 2%. Prince Abdulaziz’s warning to the oil bears to “watch out” has failed for the second time since April’s shock OPEC+ supply cut. It is obvious that both […]
Matein Khalid The $7 trillion foreign exchange market can be merciless if you read its macro smoke signals wrong or ignore the hoofbeats of the leveraged herds who determine its positioning, politics of central banks, government policy and above all the psychology that shapes sentiment. The biggest consensus trade for 2023 was supposed to be the dethronement of King Dollar amid a robust Chinese reopening recovery and […]
Matein Khalid President Erdoğan recalled his pro-markets ex-Wall Streeter Mehmet Şimşek as Finance Vizier and the head of MIT who negotiated his diplomatic rapprochement with Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the UAE as Foreign Minister but all hell has broken loose in the money markets of Istanbul as I write. The Turkish lira has plunged 7% this AM as state owned banks have stopped the dollar sales […]
Matein Khalid My muse is the Kingdom tonight – not the kingdom of heaven but the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Prince Abdulaziz reinforced Saudi Arabia’s role as the swing producer of OPEC+ at Vienna with a voluntary 1MBD output cut and his energy diplomacy gave UAE a 200,000 barrel a day quota increase. The impact on oil prices has not been dramatic as Brent is now $77 […]
By Matein Khalid Bubbles are a recurrent phenomenon in financial markets, from Dutch Tulips in Rembrandt’s Amsterdam to Kuwait’s Souk al Manak, Japan’s Nikkei Dow to the dotcom debacle in 2000, the credit bubble in 2007 to the crypto SPAC roller coaster in 2021 and now the global hype over artificial intelligence (AI). Is there a bubble in AI stocks even though some have been blowout winners […]
Matein Khalid I have been fascinated by the global commodities markets ever since I lost a semester’s tuition at Penn trading silver futures at EF Hutton. Family folklore tells me that my ancestral clan traded physical commodities in British India for generations and the Great Depression plus General Yamashita’s assault of Fortress Singapore devastated my paternal grandfather’s godown/inventory, though cousins in Paris and Dubai are still among […]
By Matein Khalid The global EV market has entered a cutthroat, even Darwinian competitive dimension now that Tesla (TSLA) has initiated a price war to capture market share, though a plunge in gross margins is the blood sacrifice for market dominance. So TSLA’s Q1 earnings were a predictable horror, with a fall in operating income/margins after successive price cuts. Tesla can succeed in this strategy in the […]
Matein Khalid I must thank Saudi Arabia’s prince Abdulaziz for the very welcome 7% (pre-market) rise in APA Corp (APA), Marathon Oil (MRO) and Schlumberger (SLB). My three large cap stooges in the universe of black gold. The Saudi Oil Minister had sent numerous smoke signals that speculators were shorting paper oil, whose volumes are often 15 to 20 times the 100 million barrels a day consumed […]
Matein Khalid Get set for a spectacular rally in bank shares that has already begun in the pre-market. First Citizens will acquire the loans/deposits of SVB from the FDIC injects badly needed confidence into the US banking system. Deutsche Bank is also a false alarm as the 40% spike in its credit default swaps on Friday was due to panic selling in European banks rather than any […]
Matein Khalid There was no way Uncle Sam was going to allow a mass extinction event to destroy thousands of VC funded tech and life science startup to be wiped out due to the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB). The “flight to quality” trade, illustrated by a steep plunge in the yield of the 2 year US Treasury note from 5.07% last Wednesday to 4.35% is […]
Matein Khalid If banks were people, Standard Chartered Bank (SCB) would be a plain Jane spinster, always a bridesmaid but never a bride, jilted at the altar by her suitors and now at the nikah by First Abu Dhabi Bank. I had a near heart attack when I saw the shares rise 20% in London as the grapevine said a major Abu Dhabi bank was going to bid for […]
By Matein Khalid King Dollar that saw a 20% rise in the world’s reserve currency (our currency, your problem) died in late September 2022 and the greenback is now 8% below its high on US dollar index (DXY). All G10 currencies have risen at least 7% against the USD. So its weakness is just not […]
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Matein Khalid Three millennia of Chinese history and the neonlit grandeur of Macau are a testament to the fact that passion for speculative assets is a recurrent theme across untold generations in the Middle Kingdom. Yet even I was stunned by the swiftness and intensity of the bull market in China/Hong Kong that began in late October after a sell off triggered by foreign selling after President […]
Matein Khalid Was King Dollar dethroned in November? The trade weighted US Dollar Index rose 20% from June 2021 to November 2022, its biggest bullish run since the year before the Plaza Accord in 1985. The macro ballast behind the King Dollar trend gained huge momentum after the Powell Fed abandoned its “inflation is transitory” mantra and began to raise interest rates in early 2022. The US […]
Matein Khalid Don’t fight the Fed is a Wall Street cliché that makes total strategic and tactical sense as America heads for Turkey/cranberry sauce this Thanksgiving. While the S&P index is up 12% since its October low on euphoria over a CPI dip, hopes (misplaced) of a Fed pivot, a fall in the 10 year US note yield to 3.77% and a 4% drop in King Dollar. […]
Matein Khalid Tesla (TSLA) was a fairytale in 2020 when it soared 740% and then 50% in 2021. The fairytale has morphed into a nightmare in 2022, with the shares down 52% from their January highs of 402 to 168 as I write. What went wrong? One, 2022 has been an annus horribilis for NASDAQ, which is down 32% YTD. Since Tesla has a stock market beta […]
Matein Khalid An asteroid collision with earth 65 million years ago created a mass extermination event that wiped out the dinosaurs. This is an apt metaphor for the monetary tightening of the Powell Fed in 2022 that wiped out so many emerging growth segments in Nasdaq, including several notable electric vehicle (EV) startups now on critical life support. Most wannabe Teslas all over the world are going […]
Matein Khalid My digital purdah came to an end with a bang and not a whimper as Powell made it clear that it is “very premature to think about a pausing”. This was a cold shower to the bulls and the DJIA went from +350 to -500. What an ouch! The Treasury bond market resumed its bloodbath. Chairman Powell’s message to the Street was precisely what I […]
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 […]
