Category: Stockie Dokie

Matein KhalidI was neurologically programmed to disbelieve every communique issued by the Indian or Pakistani military in the wartime and thus missed the spectacular 50% rise in the shares of A​VIC Chengdu Aircraft, a Shenzhen listed vendor of the $39 million J-10 fighter jet that downed three Indian ​$250 million Rafales, a MiG-29 and Sukhoi-30 while Frenc​h, British and US intelligence told sources in Reuters, Bloomberg, CNN, the NYT and the Financial Times about these catastrophic losses the Indian media

Matein KhalidThe smoke signals from Geneva came even faster than the one in the Vatican that announced the arrival of Pope Leo XIV on the world stage. If the US-China trade marathon was a Bollywood movie, Scott Bessant would be​ ​dancing wet and wild with the Chinese Vice Premier Lifeng in their Jet d'Eau or kowt​owing on those little abraas that criss-cross the Rhône river​ since it is too hot to throw lovey​-dovey snowballs at each other in the ski

Matein KhalidI  have not exactly been reticent in my conviction since last autumn that King Dollar was on the precipice of a seminal monetary regime shift that could mean 40% downside risk on its trade weighted index, as in 2001-06. Yet not in my wildest dreams did I anticipate that the New Taiwan dollar would surge 8% against the greenback, its best performance in 42 years, in only 2 sessions, boosted by a FX short covering squeeze on the prospect of

Matein KhalidSterling's wild swings in Planet Forex literally shaped my path in life after high school. Magret Thatcher's monetarist revolution and North Sea oil bonanza had taken cable to 2.40 while the Pakistan military's judicial murder of Prime Minister Bhutto on April 4th​, 1979 meant that we were expelled from the Commonwealth. So I was easily able to persuade my parents that Matt should not follow my Dad and grandfather to London for an education in the sceptred isle but

Matein KhalidMy idea of nirvana Xanadu and Lotus Land is an eme​rging markets strategy bull session in the Waldorf cigar lounge with two bros who can dissect the best money making ideas in EM FX, EM sov debt and EM equities in the dozen odd countries where we see macro fairytales and masala shorts in sectors/countries on the precipice of emergi​ng nightmares from Brazil to Hong Kong, the macro stars are aligned for 3X payoffs in the right puppies!The don't

Matein KhalidThe last time the U.S. Dollar Index plummeted 9% in the first four months of a year was way back in 1973, when Richard Nixon sat in the White House on the eve of Watergate, the October War in the Sinai/Gulan, the Arab oil boycott and a savage 40% bear market in U.S. equities.Last week provided a respite from the tsunami of greenback selling that had taken the euro to above 1.15, sterling to 1.34 and gold to $3,500

Matein KhalidGold's spectacular bull market since its mid-2022 bottom at 1600, amid the most brutal monetary tightening by the Fed since the Volcker era under JayPo (now branded as a "loco" and a "major loser" by President Trump) has climbed seminal macro walls of worry. A surge in the US Dollar Index to 110 in Jan'25 did not kill gold's bull run nor did tough love sledgehammer rate hikes after Powell discovered that post Covid inflation was not transitory.Biden White

Matein KalidOnly the poetic genius of an Irishman can do justice to the epic Big Boy sumo wrestling match in history - between Shogun Trump and Sensei Powell-san as panic spreads at the speed of light across the digital arteries of the global banking village. W.B. Yeats's immortal versus echo in my brain - things fall apart, the center can​not hold, mere anar​chy is loosed upon the world

Matein KhalidThank God my macro instinct flashed a "get out" SOS in late February and I dumped King Dollar for Bonnie King Charlie's British pound before New Year late last year and thus averted fate worse than death/Matty miskeen. My macro guardian angel now whispers a few subliminal ideas.One, Chinese factories shed 20 million workers last week and hiring is down 30%. So the youth unemployment rate, declared a state secret in the PRC with the usual bullet in the

Matein Khalid"We went eyeball to eyeball and the other guy blinked" - JFK said about Nikita Peasantovich Shoe Bangarov after Stalin's henchman in the Red Terror back down in the Cuban missile crisis. Trump has gone eyeball to eyeball with the bond market and Xi Jinping but only the Dragon Empire's Emperor for Life has blinked while the bond vigilantes have gone berserk in the netherworld of MAGA. The sting of the century is pure Trumpian genius even though the

Matein KhalidAs I sensed a few hours after the NYSE opened on Liberation Day, the masters of the universe on Wall Street and the White House have knowingly ignited the mother of all Lehman/Liz Truss moments in the global capital markets. Like Shakira's hips, my Bloomberg screen does not lie as it speaks to me in its ominous green phosphorescent flicker.​The Volatility Index is once again above 50 and in Wall Street this is the day of judgement, especially for

Matein KhalidWe are now living "ten days that shook the world" in real life, as John Reed did that fateful autumn long ago in Lenin's shadow as the Bolshies stormed the Winter Palace in October 1917 before he was resurrected to begin his next life as the chairman/CEO of Citicorp in 1984. Is this just a magic realism joke? No. The fall of Tsar Nicki and Tsaritsa Alix imperial regime marked a seminal moment in human history, as did the

Matein KhalidTariffs are to economics what leeches are to medicine, what voodoo dolls are to risk management and what astrology is to astronomy. The very fact that Trump believed in this nonsense with rigid consistency for 40 years as a solution to the very real havoc meted out by Davos Man and the apostles of globalisation to Joe/Jane Sixpack in Middle America is both laughable and tragic. Laughable because the very idea of American women stitching sneakers for Nike in

Matein KhalidThank God last night was just a manic Monday and not Black Monday, even though I saw doomsday options trade in the index futures market on Sunday night and the VIX was 60 at the open. This is 100% evidence that some major financial institution is in distress because 60 VIX is a 3-sigma event that I have seen only in 9/11, the GFC and the pandemic.It was surreal to see mass liquidation in even safe haven assets like

Matein KhalidIn a financial panic, investors sell what they can and not what they must. So the most ominous data points for me is the dramatic widening in US corporate credit/high yield spreads, which means Mr. Market is now certain that default risk will strangle capital markets as varied as auto finance, subprime mortgages, student loan and credit card receivables. The widening of Asian sovereign credit default swaps also attests that the business model of export driven emerging markets is

Matein KhalidThe auguries for the CoreWeave (CRWV) IPO on Nasdaq are not too bright. Nvidia is down 10% in the last two trading sessions, the grapevine on the Street suggests that the pricing on CRWV will be below the $47-$55 range. While revenue growth has been spectacular since 2022, margins, accounting and loan repayments are a red flag. If this IPO flops, the ripple effect will be a bite of the reality sandwich for Silicon Valley's obscenely unrealistic, inflated private

Matein KhalidIt took Trump 2.0 to finally dethrone King Dollar. The US Dollar Index has fallen from 110 to 104 as Planet Forex has finally concluded that aggressive tariffs on Canada, Mexico, China and the EU, coupled with stagflation risk in the US and Powell's dovish take on a potential dual mandate pivot to easy money at a time when Germany ramps up defense spending by €900 billion and sheds its Constitutional fiscal straitjacket. The Ukraine peace deal, Xi's Big

Matein KhalidIf ever any investor needed a real time lesson in emerging markets risk, the timebombs in Ankara, Jakarta and Bogotá to provided it. President Erdogan ordered the arrest of his top rival Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu and triggered a 10% plunge in the lira against the US dollar, an exodus of offshore money from the local T-bill market and a horrific meltdown in Istanbul bank shares.Indonesian equities also had a 7% plunge on news that Fin Min Sri Indrani

Matein KhalidRisk assets went ballistic this week as DonnyT did his tariff man war dance, hurled his Tomahawk at Canada, Mexico, China and EU as Liberation Day begins on April 2nd in Year Zero of the Ten Thousand Year MAGA Empire. Long years ago, America made a tryst with destiny and now comes the time, we must redeem our pledge to The Donald, the Don of Dons and swear to remake the world as he wishes.Sadly, the Powell Fed is

Matein KhalidStarting in 2016, the US has morphed into the world's largest LNG exporter, eclipsing Australia and Qatar. Trump is determined to achieve global energy dominance as he exploits the geopolitical leverage American LNG exports give him in his relations with Europe, Asia and the GCC. He has pledged to dramatically expand US natural gas production via his "drill baby drill" ethos, rescinded Biden's environmental pause on new LNG projects, embrace deregulation and pledged to attract trillions in foreign investments

Matein KhalidI have warned my friends that US recession risk was rising alarmingly in the past month as I saw the price of oil and money (2-year Treasury note yields) tank in unison while metrics of consumer/business confidence nosedived. Now Wall Street has accepted my thesis that the tariff trauma will lead to a deflation Big Chill and not an inflation spike in the US economy. Nasdaq is down 760 points as I write, a mini crash. The S&P 500

Matein KhalidThere is no economic reason why OPEC+ chose to add barrels to the global oil market at a time when bearish psychology and positioning dominates trading as attested by the plunge in speculative long positions in both the West Texas Intermediate and Brent IPE futures contracts. The only explanation is that both Saudi Arabia and Russia faced political pressure from a Trump White House that wants lower gasoline prices on the eve of the Ukraine peace summit in Riyadh,

Matein KhalidThere is no doubt in my mind that the epic US equities bull market is now over since the S&P 500 index broke its 200 day moving average while I was at the wonderful StanChart suhoor with so many old pals from the 1990's Al Mankhool salad days when the Mexican food at Zodiac/Bordertown in the Imperial Suites provided the hottest salsa (mirchi) in Rolla road, where I also lived in a ritzy duplex called the Pearl of Rolla.There

Matein Khalid2024 was the annus horribilis for luxury stocks as ​the Dragon Empire's cultural DNA under Xi Dada pivoted to Maoist austerity, inflation hit the mass affluent wannabe Gatsbys of Europe and boonie America and Incredible India's bling-bling badshahs and bhabhijis discovered the hard way that the speculative stock market mania on Dalal Street can and did end in tears. Obviously, Gandhian values are not exactly consonant with Champagne wishes and caviar dreams but at least designer dhoti and Danone

Matein KhalidSome guy wrote to me that I was bearish for 4-years. Poppycock! In mid-Jan, I wrote a bullish analysis of Prologis (PLD), the world's largest industrial REIT. PLD was 105 then and 124 now. An 18% return in 6-weeks is a gift for those with the IQ to grasp my logic. Which poor Densa could not. What about VNO at 18, Citi at 60, Wells Fargo at 57 and Meta at 200? Get real!The EM trade has been a

Matein KhalidHad Warren Buffett, oracle of Omaha, been born North Indian, he would have summarized Wall Street's temper tantrum since last Friday with his famous observation "only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming nanga punga (naked)". When history's most iconic value investor ran up $300 billion in cash, I knew that the tide had run out for this deliciously profitable but utterly loony-tune money making carnival of greed on Wall Street. Yet the biggest stock

Matein KhalidI butcher the great Regency poet William Blake's surreal ode to tigers and dark satanic mills "China, China burning bright/in the forest of the night/what immortal hand or eye/could frame thy fearful symmetry". JD is up 8% overnight, Alibaba is up 72% since my $85 golden goose post 3-months ago and the KWEB is up 24% YTD. The PBOC is easing monetary policy. Fiscal stimulus is the imperial diktat from Beijing. The animal spirits of 1.3 billion souls in

Matein KhalidMy mystical vegan-pivot makes Christmas goose tab​oo 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 that Chinese Big Tech was a no-no because while Ma was Ma, Xi

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 the tatami mat.The risk premium on European assets just got fatter as Uncle

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 Palo Alto as it is in the Silicon Fens and the tech hubs

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 toast when the music stops, as it 100% will. The circus clowns in

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, the reason why the spike in volatility on the offshore yuan has reversed.The