02-01-2026
With Kevin Warsh emerging as Trump’s nominee for the next Fed chair, the market is quickly repricing for a more hawkish Federal Reserve and a firmer dollar. Traders broadly view Warsh as favoring tighter overall financial conditions, given his preference for a smaller Fed balance sheet and skepticism toward prolonged liquidity support. [web:2][web:5][web:8] That stance has already translated into a stronger USD and pressure on traditional “debasement” trades like gold. [web:5][web:8] In this backdrop, I chose to sell down my gold exposure, leaning into the view that a hawkish-leaning Fed and a bid for the dollar could cap upside in bullion.
The potential strengthening of the dollar also has cross-asset implications. A more attractive USD yield profile and reduced tolerance for inflation overshoots can tighten global financial conditions, especially in markets sensitive to funding costs and currency differentials. Japan stands out here: if the rate spread between the U.S. and Japan widens further, it may eventually force the Bank of Japan to react with its own hikes or policy normalization. Rather than wait for that stress to show up in risk assets, I am proactively trimming my Japanese equity exposure, acknowledging the twin risks of a stronger dollar and a less benign rates backdrop for Japan.
Amazon’s recent emphasis on gaming initiatives over pure cloud expansion sends a subtle but important signal: capital allocation may be shifting at the margin, and management could be sensing softer near-term returns from incremental AI infrastructure spend. While AWS remains a core AI platform, prior reports of capacity constraints and uneven revenue capture from AI workloads already planted doubts about the smoothness of the AI monetization curve. [web:6][web:15] If Amazon is now leaning more visibly into gaming and entertainment as a growth vector, it raises the question of whether hyperscale AI demand is normalizing from the earlier euphoria.
Against that backdrop, I decided to reduce exposure to NVIDIA and Micron. Both have been prime beneficiaries of the AI buildout trade — NVIDIA on the compute side, Micron on high-bandwidth and advanced memory. A less linear AI spending trajectory from major cloud players introduces more earnings volatility risk just as expectations and valuations are rich. At the same time, my uranium and nuclear energy exposure via URAA has delivered around a 20% gain, and the fund itself is both leveraged and highly volatile, with very large short-term swings historically. [web:7][web:13] I am trimming URAA to lock in part of that move, recognizing that parabolic returns in leveraged thematic products rarely persist without major drawdowns.
Finally, I am closing out my position in HSBC after a solid run. The bank has benefited from a higher-rate environment, improving margins, and its leveraged position to Asian growth, but much of that optimism now feels priced in. With macro uncertainty picking up again around Fed policy, global growth, and regional politics, I prefer to realize gains rather than stretch for the last few percentage points. Selling HSBC here frees up capital and risk budget for opportunities where the risk-reward still feels asymmetric, instead of clinging to a name that has already delivered on its thesis.
,01-23-2026
Reports surfaced that China is preparing a roster of local companies to purchase NVIDIA’s new H200 GPUs. This development signals that even amid U.S.–China technology tensions, the pull of NVIDIA’s advanced chips remains strong. China’s hyperscalers and AI startups continue facing pressure to secure compute power, and despite export restrictions, the appetite for AI infrastructure hasn’t diminished. The market seems cautiously optimistic, eyeing whether regulatory approvals will loosen or find gray channels for controlled exports.
Seeing this, I decided to reinitiate a modest long position in NVIDIA. The move is more tactical than speculative — a way to capture upside if demand materializes sooner than expected. NVIDIA’s fundamentals remain compelling with AI-driven demand pillars from both training and inference. However, the broader market backdrop still feels unstable following the Greenland crisis. Volumes across tech sectors show hesitant accumulation rather than conviction buying. For that reason, I am keeping position size conservative, allowing room to adjust if volatility returns.
The ongoing Greenland crisis continues to shape the global conversation around resources and supply chains. Control over Greenland’s vast rare earth reserves has become a proxy for influence in the semiconductor ecosystem. Rare earth elements sit at the core of chip manufacturing, EV motors, and clean-tech hardware — sectors all central to U.S. industrial strategy. The geopolitical tension has underscored one thing: resource security is technology security.
In that light, I believe this episode could mark a turning point for U.S. self-sufficiency efforts. Some analysts interpret the Greenland standoff as a strategic push by Washington to accelerate domestic semiconductor independence. If access to rare earths can be stabilized, it strengthens the foundation for American chip production beyond reliance on offshore supply chains. Against that backdrop, Intel (INTC) looks positioned to benefit from both federal incentives and heightened strategic importance.
Trump’s administration has hinted at taking a more direct role — possibly equity investments or co-funded initiatives — to bolster Intel’s operational capacity. The company’s foundry service plans align neatly with the “Made in America” doctrine reshaping U.S. technology policy. Acting on this view, I added a small position in Intel to capture potential upside from renewed capital inflows and production mandates. The trade complements my NVIDIA exposure: one reflects global AI demand, the other domestic manufacturing revival. Together they capture opposite ends of the same theme — technological power and the resources that sustain it.
,01-19-2026
Trump’s recent shift toward easing tensions with Iran caught the energy market off guard. After months of sharp rhetoric driving oil prices higher, this sudden tone reversal has traders reassessing the geopolitical risk premium. Historically, crude tends to price in a few dollars of “fear value” whenever the Middle East looks volatile. Now, that buffer seems unsustainable. The futures market started to fade those premiums rapidly, which presented what looked like a clean short setup.
From a technical perspective, oil had been hovering near resistance levels that hadn’t been tested since the previous conflict flare-up. Open interest began to decline as speculative longs took profit, while volatility cooled across the front-month contracts. That combination — declining volume, softening volatility, and a fading headline risk — usually spells exhaustion. I took a short position with a medium-term horizon, anticipating at least a 7–10% correction as the market reprices toward fundamentals rather than fear.
Beyond headlines, the fundamentals don’t justify sustained high prices. Inventories have started to rebuild, and Chinese demand — one of the two major global growth engines — remains patchy. Unless new disruptions occur, oil’s path of least resistance appears lower, at least until refiner margins or winter energy demand pick up meaningfully.
The AI trade has been a monster. NVIDIA became the de facto proxy for artificial intelligence itself, its market cap swelling as every new model and chip architecture made headlines. But over the past few weeks, an emerging theme has entered the conversation: the shortage of memory, not GPUs. High-bandwidth memory (HBM) has become the new gold dust in the AI supply chain. Without it, even the most advanced GPUs can’t achieve performance targets.
That’s why I decided to rotate out of NVIDIA and reallocate into Micron. The logic is simple — while NVIDIA dominates the AI processing side, Micron sits at a supply chokepoint that’s just starting to get recognition. As hyperscalers scale up data centers, the next bottleneck — and profit driver — could come from DRAM and HBM producers. Micron, with its strong R&D pipeline and rising ASP (average selling price) trends, feels like the more leveraged play for the next earnings cycles.
Elon Musk keeps hammering the point that the future runs on electricity. Whether it’s solar, batteries, or EVs, every path converges toward electrification. That idea isn’t just a tech vision — it’s becoming an investment thesis across sectors. The global transition from fossil and nuclear baseloads toward sustainable generation looks increasingly inevitable as storage costs fall and renewable infrastructure scales globally.
Position-wise, I translated that conviction into a derivative structure. I shorted LEAPS puts and went long LEAPS calls on a clean electricity ETF, essentially structuring a long-term bullish spread with income on premium decay. The goal isn’t to chase short-term moves but to build exposure to the multi-year transformation of the global energy mix. Nuclear remains steady but slow; electricity — and especially renewables — move with momentum and innovation. The asymmetry of upside feels worth the wait.
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