Nutstuff out tomorrow/ thursday.

To explain the talk of “Peace ”: Rubio pronounced: “Operation "Epic Fury" has ended”. President Trump announced this to Congress. 
Now we're apparently at the "Project Freedom" stage, and negotiations on the nuclear issue.
So to Explain: By declaring the end of Operation "Epic Fury," the Trump administration avoided the need to obtain Congressional approval for a military operation lasting more than 60 days. If necessary, a new operation will be launched, or any further military action will be part of the "Project Freedom", whose stated goal is to "defensively" release the ship bottleneck in Hormuz that never existed before Trump spent $100bn?!

Anyway: Whats very clear was HF’s were massively UW US stocks. For weeks markets have been childishly simple: stay long, let the underweight cohort choke on their own caution, and allow the mechanical bid to do what it always does when positioning is wrong, force prices higher until disbelief turns into panic buying. It has worked. Handsomely. But markets rarely reward those who linger at the scene of the crime…
Lets see how the CTA bid now looks…

Now lets think about a WHAT IF ITS PEACE psychology.? Do we actually sell the $ and the peace!? Most perverse might be a Market that can be so ironic it may now even buy not sell defence stocks!? 

Nutstuff has added to Digital Assets MSTR US & STRC, and is also adding to Wifi DABBA DBT (token) the Indian Helium/ HNT. ( see Nutstuff tomorrow). 

Lets think ENERGY: Near term: The +40%+ ytd will be -10-15% quickly. 
INVERSELY: on the other side: Buy Airlines:
UAL US!  Should track WIZZ EASYJET etc / Eu Industrials; FRESNILLO BASF & MITTAL
Also Watch Chinese Stocks; I add to KWEB US ETF or BABA TENCENT & BIDU as the “Key 3!” 
XSG LN / XEROS: again solid move on full guidance, back to Oct 25 levels! 
Caveat here is: to all those unloading Energy and commodities here; all these bottle necks dont just get sorted anytime.

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Nutstuff is publishing again tomorrow…
A reminder that this Telegram is “Free” and is simply designed to supplement being a Nutstuff subscriber. I publish Nutstuff 2-3x / week so this fills the gaps! I will on occasions flag actual stocks HERE going forward but this is really designed to alert you and remind you to key thematics that matter in wider sense or are connected to Ideas that generate Alpha. (Stocks that make us money! ) www.nutstuff.co.uk SUBSCRIBE if you dont already!

PORTFOLIO & MARKETS: +14% YTD is a good result and we are not stuffed full of roaring semiconductors! 
I am much more interested in waiting for my Digital asset exposures to pick up! My Uranium Fuel plays I will mention: Great news and reactions on both ASPI yesterday and LIGHTBRIDGE/LTBR US today. In COMMODITIES: POWER NICKEL/ PNPN CN. 
Now its ironic that for all the UK misery out there, am happy to flag huge sources of alpha in last 12+mths and YTD: TUNGSTEN WEST / RASPBERRY PI / SCANCELL. 
UK “Spec sits”: UK FARMING STOCKS (with assets not just in UK! ) & FOOD: I would still own CAMELLIA / CML LN, AEP LN (see today and that a chart!!!) also added some REA LN alongside recently. 

TRUMP on his way to China: I can see deals fr many but on Peace there is “only one person who can/will open Hormuz”….
this made me 😹 https://x.com/cryptoxiaoxiang/status/2054344180198146469?s=61

UK: 🇬🇧: Tomorrow Bill Gross on the UK and my missive: “Britain Now Feels Like A Wetherspoons Carpet”.   By Will Nutting. “Britain currently feels like a Wetherspoons carpet after closing time. Sticky. Fraying at the edges. Covered in mysterious stains nobody wants properly explained. Somewhere in the distance a fruit machine flashes beside a broken cubicle door while two exhausted policemen”…… 1200 words! 

ENERGY stocks : I have much greater exposure here than I do to AI in Portfolio weight to be clear… here’s why! 

TELECOM PLUS/ TEP LN: sorry, this has been a shocker! I have had a good chat with management. Understandably the dividend cut p*issed off a lot and I now see the Deutsche banks downgrade was dubiously motivated!  More tomorrow. 

BITCOIN & DIGITAL ASSETS: ‘Futility to Humility to Utility to Ubiquity”. “If there was ever a time Bitcoin was designed for, it is now”. The Clarity Act should be imminent: https://www.banking.senate.gov/newsroom/majority/chairman-scott-senators-lummis-tillis-release-market-structure-bill-text-ahead-of-banking-committee-markup Trump just told you what to do! 
Nutstuff added STRC last week and am watching MSTR as is now back to a premium. I will discuss tomorrow the single most interesting Idea in Digital assets land which is finally going to work. 

INFLATION outpacing wages is a reality, and Inflation is not just Oil. I look at all constituents of all 4 CPI measures! 
ENERGY: I have much greater exposure here than I do to AI in Portfolio weight to be clear…
I agree with a number of people much smarter in the Energy and Bottle-necked commodities space that long-term energy investors should ignore short-term volatility and let “them" (the bears) bank their victories on minor pullbacks, as what I see as the fundamental supply/demand gap will eventually trigger a massive upward rerating of energy equities. To put it succinctly: ”the global economy is entering a period of "forced rebalancing” and the physical market is now in a state of terminal deficit that only triple-digit oil prices can solve.”  Focus = The Nutstuff Portfolio Energy Basket. 

The Nutstuff Portfolio is +12% YTD. Interestingly our ‘bar-bell’ is working well so far during the recent so-called “painful rotation” we read and hear so much babble about! Yes, I see the degree to which Retail investors are ‘all-in’ here and a huge amount of AI & tech FOMO, afraid am happy to take a lot of the other side of that. Out tomorrow on Nutstuff, I have written an update to my “AI thoughts from the hip”. Rest assured we ARE however being dynamic here, and I have added to a Nat Gas name and a Software co. (Not MSFT!) as the 2 latest Portfolio changes. (Again details tomorrow.) Interestingly we have 11 positions +5% to +36% in the last week alone and tomorrow I will have a detailed “Connect the dots” on the Nutstuff Portfolio YTD, I will go through themes & conviction as increasingly resembles exactly what we expected at the start of the year: the physical world beginning to reassert itself over the financial abstractions layered on top of it. Ex GS Jeff Currie, puts the argument for owning pounds in the ground rather than operating assets rather eloquently "Almost all commodities are nothing other than dirt and diesel. So, if you're out of diesel you've got a problem with everything". If no change in Hormuz soon then reality will bite in the next few weeks. Finally on Bonds where there is endless babble too. Nutstuff as a “Never Bonds” investor has written continually about “The Quickening’ as a glorious impending “coliseum bloodbath” when it comes, this happens because simply WTF would anyone lend money to any western govt for <10%?!! 10% real rates Indebted western economies REALLY dont work! Put simply Bond markets are finally violently reminded investors that capital still has a cost and that duration is not a law of nature but a function of liquidity. *Finally, the Lunacy of UK Energy policy is now being seen for all its double standards and illogicality. A Government in secret loosening Russian Oil sanctions is the stuff of madness. As I wrote to some friends: I think the modern British disease is that the moment you point out an obvious contradiction in energy policy you are immediately accused of being “pro-Putin”, as though acknowledging where diesel physically comes from is now tantamount to waving a hammer and sickle outside the Kremlin. Honestly the point here is not that Russia good or sanctions bad. The point is that Britain increasingly behaves like an upper-middle-class vegetarian secretly eating kebabs in the minicab home whilst loudly lecturing everyone else about animal cruelty. It is f* lunacy. We ban drilling in the North Sea, import the exact same molecules via India or Turkey at greater cost and emissions, then congratulate ourselves on our moral rectitude and courage. I say a simple foff. It is not strategy. This is national moral BS & self-delusion wrapped in a Just Stop Oil bag. www.nutstuff.co.uk SUBSCRIBE if you dont already!

Nutstuff was published yesterday.

3 Things Today:

1. From meetings this week I now more than ever see tokenisation of tangible assets is where new railroads of blockchain meets finance will go, and then I think we will all see and discover the true “value” of AI!”

2. Today a New Mega-Cap added: “sometimes markets become so obsessed with Ferraris that they forget aircraft carriers exist.”

3. FAT JABS!
Renewed Focus on ELI LILLY/ LLY US ….( we did own NOVO NORDISK too but exited a yr ago)
The new LLY GLP drug currently in Phase 3 data is just extraordinary…( a Weekend focus piece on Nutstuff coming) …”
Thematically, the valuation gap between AI and healthcare increasingly looks completely deranged when viewed through the lens of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.”
Nutstuff can see LLY as a $2 trillion + co.

***Nutstuff also agrees with this: The next GLP-1 problem won’t be efficacy it will be the massive scale. These drugs are moving from metabolic medicine into mass consumer behaviour at a speed the long-term data probably has no way absorbed. In five years the issue may not be “do they reduce weight? Is it fat or muscle?” Then, who should be on them, for how long, what happens when they stop, what happens to muscle mass/nutrition/mental health, and whether we’ve simply just medicalised a broken food system rather than fixing it.( tx G.O.)

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Latest Nutstuff will be out tomorrow/ friday. ( another new spec-sit idea to go through).

I have been travelling this week and yes 35 degrees in Switzerland and now 37 degrees in France, all in May! Lets not even talk about London becoming the middle east! Where of course Peace is still ever elusive and Oil prices dont seem to care. 
Is anyone watching what Russian Satellites are doing btw?! 

WEEKEND EVENT: (Still a few tickets left!) This Saturday 30th May 1pm-5pm: My old friend Piers Buckworth has put this 1 day event together in Mayfair. Nutstuff is one of the 3 Presenters/Hosts. 
Inside the Trade is a live one-day seminar at Princess Alexandra Hall, Six Park Place, Mayfair. Not a course. Not a webinar. It is live and three experienced market professionals giving you direct and unfiltered access to how they actually think. Whether you are new to markets or have been investing for years this event will change how you think about the process.
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/inside-the-trade-apex-trading-live-seminar-london-tickets-1980499001828

🇬🇧 A reminder that Nutstuff sat with T Blair a year ago in person and I said at the time I was blown away by his LOTFW  perspective on so many things. Good now to see him finding his voice probably inspired by the rather odious and sanctimonious Andy Burnham goading him! 

NUTSTUFF Portfolio is holding well +12% YTD.
Yes, annoyingly Digital assets are still the Portfolios sea anchor ;( but more than offset by names like QCOM & *** my Eu SpaceX ( monster alpha, wow!) and E*** my favourite EV / battery play and also 3 Key Uranium/ Nuclear names all showing their heels this week. 
On what concerns: Gold, I’d be watching for any further signs of technical deterioration here! 

On Thematics This week:

F*x you Ferrari. Enzo is turning in his grave and this is manna from heaven for Lamborghini! ( my detailed no punches pulled take on this tomorrow) remember my LONG vs my FWONK / Formula One “short”. 

F*x you Ed Milband and your Net Zero  lunacy ( well done T Blair for saying it!) 
https://x.com/thecoastguy/status/2059643434382586299?s=46
A reminder on why Nutstuff so doggedly has sizeable UK & North Sea Energy bets.

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The old man ( Buffett!) has finally put some cash to work.

And he didn’t buy Nvidia.

After building a cash pile north of $300 billion and spending years telling investors, through his actions rather than his words, that markets were expensive, Warren Buffett appears willing to commit roughly $7-8 billion to Taylor Morrison at $72.50 per share, a hefty premium to a stock trading on around 8-9x earnings. The market is obsessed with AI, crowded into a handful of mega-cap technology names and paying extraordinary multiples for future promises. Buffett just reached for a company that builds houses in a country that remains millions of homes short. Nutstuff keeps coming back to the same thought: everyone is staring vertically up the AI stack, whilst Buffett is looking horizontally across the real economy. Houses, power, infrastructure, energy and all the physical things that civilisation still requires. Reality leaks physically before it leaks financially. The most important trade in the market may not be AI itself, but everything AI and human beings depend upon. Buffett’s cheque suggests he may agree.

Sorry, Nutstuff will publish tomorrow/ Friday.   R.I.P. Alex. 

A Hugely sad day today, for me personally and for the Country, losing (Sir) Alex Younger to cancer, just 62. The Former head of MI6, ex Scots Guards officer, strategist, diplomat and genuinely one of the finest practitioners of British soft power of his generation. Alex was a source of charm, wisdom humility and great perspective to Nutstuff in the last 5years. Alex was a “Gentleman Spook”, ask me what the UK has produced better than anywhere else on earth through generations then it is this and Alex was as good as any! He led MI6 through ISIS, Brexit, Russian adventurism and also the early innings of the AI age, but what set him apart was not his intelligence alone, it was his innate judgement. He understood something markets, politicians and technologists consistently forget: information is abundant, wisdom is scarce. Alex could absorb complexity, strip away the noise and simply focus you in on what mattered. Yes, it was him who constantly reminded me that AI may one day outperform humans in analysis, but it cannot replicate trust, intuition, empathy, discretion or the ability to understand what is left unsaid. In an increasingly automated world, those qualities become more valuable, not less. Britain has lost a remarkably thoughtful public servant, and there are precious few of his calibre coming through behind him.

A BUBBLY Market, yes for sure. Energy/ North Sea & SAAS and Quantum (New add last week! ) see Quantinium IPO priced at $60 last night! )Nutstuff QUANTUM thoughts out tomorrow!)

China tech the good spaces/ Bitcoin et al the blow-offs down.
Ask yourself a simple question! What was Microns earnings estimate <12mths ago and now ask what % Micron is of 2027 S&P500 future earnings estimates!!!? 

THIS WEEK: A raft of learning / reading and meetings this week in Special-sit/ uncorrelated alpha space. 
***Music, my (Ocean Wall credit!) UK Spec-sit play finally really moving, I learned much more about catalysts and progress so this is VERY exciting. 
***ROBIN-HOOD/ HOOD US. Have learned a lot more. As within same vertical of REVOLUT (private) they get User interface and the Products the investors of the future want. 
***URANIUM/ Nuclear: has been a good few days and I now more than ever see the path to $300/lb for Uranium. A NEW name, tiny added into the Portfolio. 
***In Healthcare: On Marijuana and GLP1’s where my conviction further expands and abounds! Stocks specifics and Market expansion. The data is ASTOUNDING…
***On Digital Assets and Bitcoin (I have detailed thoughts) but I now finally see huge progress in “Utility” blockchain and DePIn plays which encourages as I see the 50% + draw down in Bitcoin which to many torpedoes any “store of value” arguments. I get the frustration but “it’s always darkest before dawn”…. Thoughts to come. HELIUM/ HNT has been dire but really is worth watching now. 
***Venezuela and Oil. My good friend Yurta has me looking at a UK listed dirt-cheap Energy play. 

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Nutstuff is travelling this week. Back tomorrow.  Nutstuff will be published tomorrow.  

A detailed think piece on HELIUM/ HNT and on BITCOIN and how to think about these both with their inter-relationship with AI. Yes on HNT/Helium of course a giant mea-culpa but rest-assured I absolutely see what is going on here and the opportunity vs the Tokens Market cap is a total disconnect to be exploited! Simplistically, yes Satellite benefits mobile users under the open sky but 80% of mobile data is used indoors, & demand is 1,000x higher in dense urban areas (where satellite struggles to keep up). Helium simply meets that demand with Hotspots or businesses converting their Wi-Fi through Helium Plus this is incredibly compelling if data useage is tied to HNT token consumption!
On Broader Markets: Meanwhile conflict seems fairly back on in the Middle East after the waffle and prevarication of the last few weeks and 38 separate “deals are imminent” BS from the Trump administration, 49 Tomahawks from the US into Iran and 12 Iranian Ballistic into Muwaffaq Salti (Al-Azraq) Airbase in Jordan with 12 ballistic missiles. Targets being Military: hangars of F-35, F-16, and F-15 fighter jets.   

A Nutstuff Portfolio +8.5% YTD with 5% + manageable give-back during violent rotation in spaces like Uranium and AI in the last 5 days.  My continual reiteration of having much bigger weightings in Energy & Healthcare vs AI, has been absolutely right. (Health Care has been the top-performing sector over the past month, its best five-day stretch versus the S&P 500 since 2009.) I can also see the case for adding to Banks/ KWEB US.   

NORTH SEA & UK despite all the political uncertainty has been a great place for Nutstuffs asymmetric alpha with smaller special Sit ideas ..  That said I see grim rumblings in the UK Gilt market. (More details tomorrow). A North-Sea Re-open is a simple WHEN not an IF anymore for all the reasons I have made clear for the last 18mths!  Albert Edwards once described the UK Hilt market as “a bug looking for a windscreen”. 

BITCOIN: some signs of stabilisation … better so than Gold right now! 
Love this thought from JV: "If you think the world of human beings is going to dominate commerce, it's not. It's AI agents. So if you ask me what is a direct play on agents dominating humans going forward, I believe Bitcoin is a direct play on that. AI agents need to transact. They need to move value autonomously, instantly, without asking a bank for permission, without a human counterparty, without a clearing house.  Bitcoin is the only monetary network that operates 24/7, requires no identity verification, has no counterparty, and cannot be shut down by any government.  It is not designed for humans. It turns out it is designed for what comes after humans dominate commerce. It is clear you need decentralised identity and verification to control agent systems. Bitcoin is simpl;y the direct play on that world arriving.  The AI agent economy does not need Visa. It actually needs Bitcoin”.

NUTSTUFF THOUGHTS: 
Jeremy Clarkson is a Nutstuff recipient, and his cancer news is another tragic reminder (too damned many recently!)  of something markets periodically forget: health comes before everything. (See the latest Shingles vaccine news on effective Dementia treatment, wow!).
Before politics, before wars, before Bitcoin, before AI, before stock prices and before wealth. You can own Ferraris, farms, hedge funds, rockets or half the internet, but the moment a doctor walks into the room with bad news, every other number on the balance sheet suddenly becomes irrelevant. It is also a reminder that whilst investors spend their days obsessing over artificial intelligence, perhaps the biggest opportunity of all remains human intelligence applied to keeping people alive longer and healthier. The real battle for civilisation is not whether ChatGPT beats Anthropic or whether Bitcoin reaches $1 million. It is whether people like Clarkson are still around twenty years from now, annoying bureaucrats, and reminding us that life is supposed to be lived rather than optimised. Which is perhaps why the news hit so hard, because unlike almost everyone else in public life, Jeremy appears exactly as advertised. No filter, no consultants, no focus groups, no strategic authenticity workshops. Just Clarkson. And perhaps that is the key lesson for markets too here: Everyone is staring at AI presentations while life keeps reminding us that the things which matter remain stubbornly physical. Elon Musk is now worth more than Bitcoin, which tells you civilisation still places a higher value on people building rockets, satellites, robots, power systems and factories than on digital scarcity alone. OpenAI increasingly resembles a Michelin-starred restaurant selling £100 of culinary delight for £30 and wondering why profits remain elusive. The technology is extraordinary; the economics resemble a particularly enthusiastic bonfire of capital. Meanwhile Russia appears perfectly happy to remind Britain that gunboat diplomacy did not entirely disappear with the Empire, Ferrari has somehow convinced wealthy collectors to spend €550,000 on an electric car they do not want in order to buy a Ferrari they do want, Labour increasingly resembles a Venetian oligarchy where the same surnames endlessly circulate around Westminster, and governments across the West have simultaneously discovered that anonymous citizens talking freely to one another online are apparently a greater threat than debt, energy shortages, migration or national decline. Then there is Iran, don't get me started on Qatari “back door deals” with Iran sanctioned by the US and where what began as demands for total surrender appears to be ending with wider sanctions relief, oil exports, foreign investment and hundreds of billions of dollars flowing back towards Tehran. Which leaves one wondering whether anyone actually won at all. As ever, the more Nutstuff looks at markets, the more convinced we become that reality leaks physically before it leaks financially. The important stories are still healthcare, energy, shipping lanes, power grids, infrastructure and security. Everything else is mostly noise. The older we get, the less convinced we are that AI will be the defining investment story of the next twenty years. The defining story may simply be keeping human beings alive long enough to enjoy them.

Nutstuff is away.
VERY happy to see my Healthcare/ Wellcare/ Longevity plays really kicking in: went through Moderna/ MRNA joining LLY US.
Also see ATAI US & CMPS US here finally showing some alpha.
A mesmerising Gallipoli yesterday, Troy today… ( more on that tomorrow).
Honestly Gaza, Ukraine and Iran; you would think lessons have been learned from history…

Honestly, I wasnt going to bother watching “Citizen Vigilante”. (If this means nothing then you are living under a stone, maybe happily so!) but if Elon Musk has gone out of his way to inflame so many and advertise it then I’m going to watch this film. Not because I expect it to be good; let’s be honest, it’ll probably be about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the face but because it looks like the sort of gloriously over-the-top nonsense that knows exactly what it is. Think Sisu, only with even more things exploding and more senseless shooting for no obvious reason. It might be dreadful. It might be brilliant. It might somehow manage both simultaneously. But the moment politicians, censors and the professional nanny-state brigade start hyperventilating and telling me I’m not allowed to watch something, my instinct is to put the kettle on and do exactly that. Nothing sells a film better than people desperately trying to ban it. Sitting here in Turkey, surrounded by magnificent mosques and centuries of Islamic history, it also strikes me how Europe has become almost incapable of having an adult conversation about uncontrolled immigration, integration, parallel communities and Islamist extremism without immediately descending into hysterics. Those are real issues that deserve honest debate, and pretending they don’t exist helps nobody, not Muslims, not non-Muslims and certainly not liberal democracy. If anything, constantly trying to censor uncomfortable conversations merely fuels the anger and mistrust that produced a film like this in the first place. If liberal societies want to defeat extremism, they should do it with confident institutions, consistent justice and free debate, not by treating grown adults like children who need protecting from films. Sometimes the most revealing thing isn’t the movie itself. It’s the sheer panic it creates among the people trying to stop you watching it. ( Nutstuff)!

https://x.com/stephen55state/status/2071633648919465985?s=46

This Telegram is free but it is worth subscribing or “free-trialing” Nutstuff.
www.nutstuff.co.uk

Nutstuff is in SAMOS 🇬🇷 ; Of Polycrates' fame. Maybe fitting to be visiting the place of the 5th century BC where an enlightened tyrant accredited to be the backer of new technologies and economies lived!

More tomorrow on alpha and ideas, +6% is where I am happy being and just maybe, here comes a nice sell off just as everyone babbling about nothing but Semiconductors and AI.
MUCH more interesting is that the HACK US security ETF is at new all time highs. At the heart of AI and digital assets sits Security, “not a feature but the foundation”.
There is a Digital asset at $25m mkt cap with 1bn tokens that is listed on Coingecko and Revolut where they have a platform just rolled out to swiss banks whereby any bank wanting to test their infrastructure against actual real attacks as opposed to synthetic data can do so. They arrive in the UK imminently. ( details in Nutstuff tomorrow)

THINGS TO DO: I’ll still take the China side here, KWEB US, BABA , TENCENT actives here, even GOLD feels interesting on technicals…

Then there is SOCCER ⚽️…

“Waking up this morning, it occured to me that America’s relationship with football is now becoming oddly symbolic of its relationship with the rest of the world. The moment some idiot on social media suggested FIFA might simply overturn the USA’s defeat to Belgium and wave them through to play Spain, millions thought, “Well… that sounds plausible.” Not because they know anything about football, but because for decades America has behaved as though rules are optional when you’re carrying the biggest stick. Lose a war? Redefine victory. Blow up another country? Call it democracy. Rack up $40 trillion of debt? Print more dollars. Slap tariffs on allies, sanction half the planet, bomb whoever looks at you funny, then act surprised when people stop applauding. Trump’s foreign policy often resembles an overweight bull charging through a china shop, convinced every broken plate is evidence of strength rather than clumsiness. The trouble with karma is that it doesn’t arrive in a Hollywood explosion. It arrives quietly, through lost trust, alternative alliances, weaker demand for your debt and a world that gradually discovers it can get on perfectly well without asking Washington for permission. Football, unlike geopolitics, remains gloriously honest. The referee blows the whistle, the score is the score and Belgium goes through because Belgium scored more goals. Reality is a deeply unfashionable concept in modern politics, but rather like compound interest, geography and physics, it has an irritating habit of keeping score whether you approve of the result or not.” WFN/ Nutstuff.

I know its Politics but Farage resignation is a fascinating move, clearly decisive and bold and brought about by a relentless media…

Nutstuff Thoughts.
British politics has just become infinitely more interesting. Nigel Farage’s decision to resign and stand as an independent is vintage Farage, taking the fight away from Westminster, the media and party machinery and putting it directly before the electorate. It is a bold gamble, but it also exposes Reform’s biggest weakness. If one man can walk away and leave the entire movement in doubt, then perhaps it was never a fully formed political party in the first place. As I argued recently in my Daily Mail piece, the right only wins when it unites. Tonight there will be some very quiet smiles in Camp Kemi because, whatever anyone says publicly, a weakened or fractured Reform fundamentally changes the electoral arithmetic. At the same time, every ambitious figure on the right will now be recalculating. Rupert Lowe and others in Reform must decide whether their loyalty is to Nigel Farage the individual or to Reform the party. Those are no longer necessarily the same thing. Politics is a ruthless business. Ambition, influence, ministerial office and the chance to shape government have a habit of concentrating minds. Whatever happens next, today’s decision is about far more than Nigel Farage. It is about whether the British centre right continues to divide itself into competing camps or finally learns the lesson that has repeatedly kept Labour in power. History suggests that oppositions rarely lose because the government is loved. They lose because they cannot stop fighting each other.

Nutstuff is absolutely sure now that there is more to Nigel Farage standing down than meets the eye! ( more in full letter tomorrow). 

On investable thematics:
Nutstuff contrarianism on China and Oil ( classic weekend Economist pontificational
negative Waffle) 3 key UK Energy Portfolio posns up like scalded cats! 
Both these playing out well here from +ve calls whilst away still doing alot of LOTFW! 

The now real China Tech “mean reversion” is long overdue with KWEB +3% / Bidu & AliBABA (+12% overnight) leading…
AliBABA Sept $120 calls looking + >2x already in a week! (🎩 Shrub)

On WARS; the word is sadly RE-escalation. Today’s headlines will be dominated by two wars. The first is the Middle East, where the ceasefire has effectively collapsed and the market is slowly waking up to the fact that energy is once again becoming an instrument of statecraft. The second is Ukraine, where several fascinating conversations over the last 24 hours leave me increasingly convinced that the Western media’s portrayal of what is happening on the ground is becoming detached from reality. I won’t go into detail until I’ve had time to verify more of what I’ve been told, but the common theme is escalation, not de-escalation. Markets have an extraordinary ability to ignore uncomfortable realities until they become impossible to ignore. Meanwhile, something far more constructive is quietly happening elsewhere. The long-overdue mean reversion in Chinese technology stocks finally appears to be underway. I’ve written repeatedly over the past few weeks that investors had become incapable of distinguishing between China the economy and China the equity market. They are not the same thing. China undoubtedly faces profound structural problems—property, demographics and debt among them—but valuations had already discounted an extraordinary amount of bad news while policy was becoming steadily more supportive. It is pleasing to see prices finally catching up with what always looked like common sense. As for the Middle East, don’t make the mistake of thinking this is simply another spike in the oil price. If the Strait of Hormuz becomes unreliable not only because of missiles but because sanctions, insurance costs and shipping finance make it prohibitively expensive to transit, every airline, refinery, utility and petrochemical company with long-term liabilities starts asking where it can secure dependable barrels. Increasingly, the answer is the United States. Not necessarily the cheapest oil, but the safest, the easiest to insure and the easiest to finance. Yes, China is reducing its dependence on imported fossil fuels through nuclear power, renewables and electrification, but let’s not deceive ourselves into believing the world has somehow stopped needing hydrocarbons. Aviation, shipping, heavy industry and petrochemicals still depend on them. The transition is real, but so is demand. Every new geopolitical shock increases the premium attached to reliability. Markets obsess over the daily oil price; I’d pay much closer attention to who is quietly signing the next 10- and 20-year supply contracts. Reality leaks physically before it leaks financially.     

Only Silver lining to last nights ⚽️ exit is Hapless Hopeless Starmer slips away quietly and on time! Then again Andy Burnhams sit down with Political heavyweight Gary Lineker?!! Was really grim…  

3 THINGS HERE:  
MARKETS/ HUGE SUCCESS WITH LLY/ATAI “takeout” +64%./ MEMORY WEAKNESS: Nutstuff added DRAMA Shorts 2 weeks ago and RE-iteration. ( and yes I still do own ASML!)   

1. MKTS: Markets increasingly feel like www.nutstuff.co.uk SUBSCRIBE if you dont already! standing in front of a liquidity firehose while still staring nervously at yesterday’s headlines. Consensus positioning feels deliciously wrong. Its very clear what IS now working. Yes pockets of Digital assets ARE waking up here finally ( more in Nutstuff tomorrow) It is however NOT Memory which is still the thing everyone blabbers on about.  Yes, Memory has entered what feels To me like a bear market, Nutstuff has repeatedly said WTFU to the China factor! Chinese DRAM competition will intensify: ChangXin Memory is now the world’s 4th-largest producer, Apple is testing its chips for devices sold in China, and Nio has taken a stake. Nutstuff happy to repeat call of 2 weeks ago: Vocally said Short/ avoid MU & SNDK and Koreans. That call stands!   

2. HUGE RESULT 🚀 Big success for NUTSTUFF PORTFOLIO if this deal announced overnight goes through. Eli LLY BID FOR ATAI US! +64%! Their move for AtaiBeckley is another reminder that my long-held neuropsychiatry thesis is steadily moving into the mainstream. Nutstuff owns Lilly alongside the picks-and-shovels winners *** and manufacturers distribution and innovators such as *** Only Silvecanabis psychedelics, peptides and precision neuroscience are no longer niche themes.   More tomorrow. 

3. MARKETS/ HUGE SUCCESS WITH LLY/ATAI “takeout” +64%./ MEMORY WEAKNESS: Nutstuff added DRAMA Shorts 2 weeks ago and RE-iteration. ( and yes I still do own ASML!) 

More tomorrow…

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A Nutstuff Friday thought: as the Korean BBQ and AI/Tech related sell off marches on. ( annoying as it is to be reminded Nutstuff very vocally sounded the exit here with my big China piece 2 1/2 weeks ago…)

“The West still talks about China as though it’s a giant factory making trainers and toasters. It isn’t. The Chinese aren’t putting gold on their chips or Coca-Cola in their Lafite; they’re relentlessly climbing the technology value chain. Just this week, Beijing-based Moonshot AI unveiled Kimi K3, a 2.8 trillion-parameter open-weight model that it says rivals the best systems from OpenAI and Anthropic in coding and reasoning. Whether every benchmark stands the test of time is almost beside the point. The point is that the frontier is no longer exclusively American.
Ask yourself a simple question: beyond Xi Jinping and perhaps Yao Ming, how many prominent Chinese entrepreneurs, engineers or business leaders can you actually name? Most people struggle. That ignorance matters because markets punish complacency. Nobody is suggesting China’s command economy is one to emulate, nor would many envy its political system. But Western arrogance, ignorance and condescension towards China’s technological capabilities have become investment risks in their own right. While almost 45% of the S&P 500 has become a one-way bet on a handful of AI winners, China has quietly built world-class capabilities across EVs, batteries, robotics, drones, industrial automation, advanced manufacturing and now frontier AI. History suggests that when investors become convinced innovation can only happen in one country, they’re usually looking in the rear-view mirror. Nutstuffs
Point is that the opportunity isn’t necessarily to bet against America; it’s to stop underestimating everyone else.”

WHEN POLITICAL IDEOLOGY SMASHES INTO THE BRUTAL REALITY OF HUGE SPENDING ASPIRATIONS VS TREASURY DATA THAT IS 12mths OUT OF DATE. WE KNOW WHO’s LEFT ALREADY ✈️
I SAID IT 18MTHS AGO & SAYING IT AGAIN, DOWNSCALING NET ZERO AND RE-INVIGORATING THE NORTH SEA IS THE ONLY NEEDLE - MOVER FOR THE TREASURY!
So, guess what: Burnham to announce plans for new North Sea oil drilling https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2026/07/18/burnham-to-announce-plans-for-new-north-sea-oil-drilling/

UK ENERGY/ NORTH SEA ALPHA: As an inevitable relaxation of Net Zero has beeen a 2yr+ call here and the valuations of North Sea and some UK listed Energy assets were some of the most mispriced Equities anywhere Globally. So If Prime Minister Burnham truly is serious, this validates one of Nutstuff’s highest-conviction UK calls of the past two years: the North Sea is the only genuine fiscal needle-mover left. Ignore the politics and read the OBR. That’s why we’ve backed Jersey Oil & Gas, Harbour Energy, EnQuest, Serica, Kistos, Ithaca, Pantheon and Orcadian while most investors wrote the sector off. Taxes redistribute wealth; energy creates it. The market may finally be catching up with the arithmetic.