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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.
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.
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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 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.
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.
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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…
www.nutstuff.co.uk SUBSCRIBE if you dont already!
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…
www.nutstuff.co.uk SUBSCRIBE if you dont already!
👍2❤1
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.”
“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.”
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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.
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.
The Telegraph
Burnham plans to fast-track North Sea oil drilling
Labour leader expected to pledge to speed up work on undeveloped sites – but new licences are off the table
Alot going on in the world. A Middle East escalation, few seem to care, and a New Unelected PM ( well come on, we’ve had a few of those before!)
On Portfolios & Alpha:
Nutstuff has zero interest in an Index bias here even if APPLE is at ATH’s, we are absolutely ACTIVE at Nutstuff.
Here with see some examples of UN-correlated Alpha in July alone..
Nutstuff absolutely has a favourite UK Energy & North Sea stock (2), a favourite China name, 2 highlight 2 key themes…
On Portfolios & Alpha:
Nutstuff has zero interest in an Index bias here even if APPLE is at ATH’s, we are absolutely ACTIVE at Nutstuff.
Here with see some examples of UN-correlated Alpha in July alone..
Nutstuff absolutely has a favourite UK Energy & North Sea stock (2), a favourite China name, 2 highlight 2 key themes…
Thanks to my SHRUB friend for this flag (reason for China Big Tech weakness)…. For months we have been told the existential threat to Western AI was China. Anthropic warned. OpenAI warned. Politicians warned. The Pentagon reportedly began looking at Chinese frontier models as a national security issue. Then irony & reality, with a delicious sense of humour, intervened. A rogue AI agent from… OpenAI… attacked Hugging Face. Hugging Face reached for the big American frontier models to defend itself, only to discover that guess what?! the guardrails were so restrictive they were practically useless. So ask what saved the day? YES, An open-source Chinese LLM. You genuinely couldn’t script it. Just like spending years telling everyone Chinese parachutes can’t be trusted, jumping out of an aircraft, finding your American parachute won’t open because of a safety lock… and surviving only because someone hands you a Chinese one. The irony really isn’t subtle.
Nutstuff: As everyone is talking about this, maybe some helpful framing….
“Imagine two men during the California Gold Rush. One is spending a fortune blasting tunnels into a mountain, convinced the biggest seam of gold lies just around the corner. The other quietly owns the only bridge into town and charges everyone to cross it.”
“That's increasingly the difference between Google and Apple. Google's quarter was undeniably impressive, but beneath the headlines lay the first negative free cash flow quarter in over twenty years as almost $45 billion disappeared into AI infrastructure. Even more remarkable, much of its earnings came not from cash generation but from paper gains on investments such as SpaceX and Anthropic. Meanwhile, capex has been raised again to as much as $205 billion. Google is digging a bigger mine every quarter and hoping the gold keeps getting richer. Apple, by contrast, doesn't need to win the AI model race. It already owns the customer. As Chinese frontier models rapidly close the gap with US rivals, the model itself risks becoming a commodity. Apple simply chooses whichever intelligence, silicon and economics best serve its ecosystem, while its customers remain Apple customers, not OpenAI customers or Chinese AI customers. Google is funding the arms race. Apple is waiting to sell to whoever survives it. That's why I remain more interested in the companies supplying the chips, electricity, networking, cooling and infrastructure than the hyperscalers writing the cheques. The businesses making the biggest fortunes in a gold rush are rarely the miners. They're the ones everyone else has to pay.💰“
“Imagine two men during the California Gold Rush. One is spending a fortune blasting tunnels into a mountain, convinced the biggest seam of gold lies just around the corner. The other quietly owns the only bridge into town and charges everyone to cross it.”
“That's increasingly the difference between Google and Apple. Google's quarter was undeniably impressive, but beneath the headlines lay the first negative free cash flow quarter in over twenty years as almost $45 billion disappeared into AI infrastructure. Even more remarkable, much of its earnings came not from cash generation but from paper gains on investments such as SpaceX and Anthropic. Meanwhile, capex has been raised again to as much as $205 billion. Google is digging a bigger mine every quarter and hoping the gold keeps getting richer. Apple, by contrast, doesn't need to win the AI model race. It already owns the customer. As Chinese frontier models rapidly close the gap with US rivals, the model itself risks becoming a commodity. Apple simply chooses whichever intelligence, silicon and economics best serve its ecosystem, while its customers remain Apple customers, not OpenAI customers or Chinese AI customers. Google is funding the arms race. Apple is waiting to sell to whoever survives it. That's why I remain more interested in the companies supplying the chips, electricity, networking, cooling and infrastructure than the hyperscalers writing the cheques. The businesses making the biggest fortunes in a gold rush are rarely the miners. They're the ones everyone else has to pay.💰“
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Nutstuff heading to New Orleans to see both my daughters, am back monday!
WHAT A WEEK:
Good to have 3i UK recovering. We have 5x digital assets +>8% and also a spec sit name like NEBIUS ( a tech name I really do like that we bought as a minnow 2+ yrs ago; and despite AI dump is back +32% this week). Also YET MORE great Legal progress in US on mass marketisation on Peptides. ( a big Nutstuff thought piece out on this and psychedelics 2 days ago; 4-5 “Must own” names!)
I also want to be very clear again; Nutstuff intensely dislikes the S&P500 here. 24 stocks =52% mkt cap, a levered bet on 1 theme all in a week when a Chinese AI?! rescues a US AI gone rogue! <5% weight in Energy is daft.
Next week however may prove to be one of the most important earnings seasons of the AI era. For 3 years investors have only asked one question: “How much more can they spend?” Next week they may start asking a far more important one: “What return on capital are they actually earning?” That maybe changes everything?!
2 THINGS:
1. NORTH SEA / UK ENERGY: 2 of my 3 key names both +11% again today.
Let’s be clear. Andy Burnham and his new sidekick haven’t suddenly discovered oil. Andys discovered simple brutal economic reality & maths. As ever, much of the media has muddled up two very different things: approving existing licences such as Jackdaw and Rosebank, which the Government has little practical choice but to progress, and issuing new exploration licences, which is an entirely separate debate. Block Jackdaw and Rosebank and the taxpayer still gets lumbered with the decommissioning bill, while Norway happily pockets £10-12 billion of supply contracts and sends the investment somewhere less stupid. Britain loses the jobs, the tax revenues, the energy security and still pays for the clean-up. More importantly, when most Budget measures move the dial by £5-10 billion, the North Sea is one of the very few levers capable of putting £30-50 billion back into the public finances under the OBR’s accounting framework. There simply aren’t many policies that move the needle that quickly. The answer isn’t another Energy Profits Levy. It’s to scrap the windfall tax altogether and replace it with a stable fiscal regime that encourages companies to invest, produce and pay taxes over decades rather than months. I’ve been arguing this for two years, The Nutstuff basket is outperforming almost every other sub grp in the market.
2. BIG TECH (course you have to own some!) and I am now I hope VERY clear on what to own; my simple analogy; own the co. That owns the customer, isnt allocating 90% of its fcf to AI spending; think about this framing…. “Imagine two or more men during the California Gold Rush. A bunch are spending a fortune blasting tunnels into a mountain, convinced the biggest seam of gold lies just around the corner. One quietly owns the only bridge into town and charges everyone to cross it.” That the one Nutstuff wants to own!
WHAT A WEEK:
Good to have 3i UK recovering. We have 5x digital assets +>8% and also a spec sit name like NEBIUS ( a tech name I really do like that we bought as a minnow 2+ yrs ago; and despite AI dump is back +32% this week). Also YET MORE great Legal progress in US on mass marketisation on Peptides. ( a big Nutstuff thought piece out on this and psychedelics 2 days ago; 4-5 “Must own” names!)
I also want to be very clear again; Nutstuff intensely dislikes the S&P500 here. 24 stocks =52% mkt cap, a levered bet on 1 theme all in a week when a Chinese AI?! rescues a US AI gone rogue! <5% weight in Energy is daft.
Next week however may prove to be one of the most important earnings seasons of the AI era. For 3 years investors have only asked one question: “How much more can they spend?” Next week they may start asking a far more important one: “What return on capital are they actually earning?” That maybe changes everything?!
2 THINGS:
1. NORTH SEA / UK ENERGY: 2 of my 3 key names both +11% again today.
Let’s be clear. Andy Burnham and his new sidekick haven’t suddenly discovered oil. Andys discovered simple brutal economic reality & maths. As ever, much of the media has muddled up two very different things: approving existing licences such as Jackdaw and Rosebank, which the Government has little practical choice but to progress, and issuing new exploration licences, which is an entirely separate debate. Block Jackdaw and Rosebank and the taxpayer still gets lumbered with the decommissioning bill, while Norway happily pockets £10-12 billion of supply contracts and sends the investment somewhere less stupid. Britain loses the jobs, the tax revenues, the energy security and still pays for the clean-up. More importantly, when most Budget measures move the dial by £5-10 billion, the North Sea is one of the very few levers capable of putting £30-50 billion back into the public finances under the OBR’s accounting framework. There simply aren’t many policies that move the needle that quickly. The answer isn’t another Energy Profits Levy. It’s to scrap the windfall tax altogether and replace it with a stable fiscal regime that encourages companies to invest, produce and pay taxes over decades rather than months. I’ve been arguing this for two years, The Nutstuff basket is outperforming almost every other sub grp in the market.
2. BIG TECH (course you have to own some!) and I am now I hope VERY clear on what to own; my simple analogy; own the co. That owns the customer, isnt allocating 90% of its fcf to AI spending; think about this framing…. “Imagine two or more men during the California Gold Rush. A bunch are spending a fortune blasting tunnels into a mountain, convinced the biggest seam of gold lies just around the corner. One quietly owns the only bridge into town and charges everyone to cross it.” That the one Nutstuff wants to own!
Overnight a couple of comments:
1st THE FED & Rates:
Fed Chmn Warsh “talks like a Hawk but flies like a chicken”! (Tx DP)
Nutstuff sees all this as simply yet more WTFU to the lunacy of western economy debt levels; and yes, something changed this week, and I don’t think the market has fully appreciated it. For the best part of 15 yrs investors believed central banks set financial conditions. Increasingly, they now realise they don’t. The Fed held rates and yet the bond market tightened anyway, sending the 30-year to its highest level since 2007. I still say higher! = more “Hard assets” everyone!
EQUITY MARKETS & PORTFOLIO: more tomorrow in Nutstuff!
Great to see huge alpha from my “Perceived Victims of AI” stocks added 6 weeks ago as Korean Adr’s were trading at 30% premiums for next to no reason! I said Nutstuff loved a Korean BBQ but this should now finally be resonating!
An old Nutstuff adage: “when everyone loves something it must go down when everyone hates something it may go up”, Honestly all the blabber out there is STILL on stuff that isn't working. Can any of you name the S&P100 stocks here at ATH’s?! There are many!
Meanwhile, nearly 10% of all HY issuance this year is hyperscalers and yes of course, 52% of the S&P500 in 24 stocks! (not for long). Think of these in a rather non-PC analogy; essentially many of these are simply the FAT & GREEDY all taking part in a debt fueled electricity eating competition ( especially when the only thing fat about them up until 2 yrs ago was their margins and FCF) all that vs the owning the echosystem that makes it. Take META the “arch time waster” as Jim Mellon calls it, why would anyone own any of the likes of these now?! ( and yes does Nutstuff think a number of these key tech bottleneck names will be worth more in the next 2-3yrs, YES! We have exposures but are pared back here. Now another adage “however much you love your boat dont park it under a waterfall”!
More on nutstuff tomorrow…
1st THE FED & Rates:
Fed Chmn Warsh “talks like a Hawk but flies like a chicken”! (Tx DP)
Nutstuff sees all this as simply yet more WTFU to the lunacy of western economy debt levels; and yes, something changed this week, and I don’t think the market has fully appreciated it. For the best part of 15 yrs investors believed central banks set financial conditions. Increasingly, they now realise they don’t. The Fed held rates and yet the bond market tightened anyway, sending the 30-year to its highest level since 2007. I still say higher! = more “Hard assets” everyone!
EQUITY MARKETS & PORTFOLIO: more tomorrow in Nutstuff!
Great to see huge alpha from my “Perceived Victims of AI” stocks added 6 weeks ago as Korean Adr’s were trading at 30% premiums for next to no reason! I said Nutstuff loved a Korean BBQ but this should now finally be resonating!
An old Nutstuff adage: “when everyone loves something it must go down when everyone hates something it may go up”, Honestly all the blabber out there is STILL on stuff that isn't working. Can any of you name the S&P100 stocks here at ATH’s?! There are many!
Meanwhile, nearly 10% of all HY issuance this year is hyperscalers and yes of course, 52% of the S&P500 in 24 stocks! (not for long). Think of these in a rather non-PC analogy; essentially many of these are simply the FAT & GREEDY all taking part in a debt fueled electricity eating competition ( especially when the only thing fat about them up until 2 yrs ago was their margins and FCF) all that vs the owning the echosystem that makes it. Take META the “arch time waster” as Jim Mellon calls it, why would anyone own any of the likes of these now?! ( and yes does Nutstuff think a number of these key tech bottleneck names will be worth more in the next 2-3yrs, YES! We have exposures but are pared back here. Now another adage “however much you love your boat dont park it under a waterfall”!
More on nutstuff tomorrow…
Talking to GeorgeO earlier and he makes the point how KEY this is..
Nutstuff styles as: “Imagine employing the brightest graduate in the world. They know everything, never sleep and can answer almost any question. But they can’t enter the building, they have no ID badge, no bank account and no company credit card, so they spend all day telling everyone else what to do. That’s effectively where AI has been until now. Cloudflare’s latest announcement changes that by giving AI agents a digital identity, a wallet and the ability to transact within rules you set. To me, this feels like the inevitable convergence of agentic AI with digital identity and payment rails. AI is no longer just becoming more intelligent, it’s becoming economically useful. Once autonomous agents can identify themselves, trust one another and exchange value, they stop being chatbots and start becoming participants in the economy. As ever, the really interesting investment question won’t simply be who builds the smartest AI, but who owns the rails every AI agent has to travel on.”
Nutstuff styles as: “Imagine employing the brightest graduate in the world. They know everything, never sleep and can answer almost any question. But they can’t enter the building, they have no ID badge, no bank account and no company credit card, so they spend all day telling everyone else what to do. That’s effectively where AI has been until now. Cloudflare’s latest announcement changes that by giving AI agents a digital identity, a wallet and the ability to transact within rules you set. To me, this feels like the inevitable convergence of agentic AI with digital identity and payment rails. AI is no longer just becoming more intelligent, it’s becoming economically useful. Once autonomous agents can identify themselves, trust one another and exchange value, they stop being chatbots and start becoming participants in the economy. As ever, the really interesting investment question won’t simply be who builds the smartest AI, but who owns the rails every AI agent has to travel on.”
If I may...
Nutstuff is not just about Markets, Digital Assets & Stocks, it is about REAL LIFE: “Make you think, make you question, make you laugh and make you money too!"
A-LEVEL results day was ironically yesterday; the 13th?! “Unlucky for some, lucky for others!” Many families and teenagers will be thinking about “what next” over breakfast or lunch today. The 1st thing to say is, congratulations whether you got what you wanted or not, because at 18 the greatest asset you own isn’t your exam results, it’s still having time.
To Nutstuff (who never went to University but had a place in the US, not taken up, there IS a story!) here’s the important caveat: if you’re rocket-scientist smart and genuinely want to build rockets at SpaceX, become an AI researcher, doctor, engineer, or compete at the sharp end of hedge funds and private equity, then absolutely get yourself into the very best university you possibly can, work your a**se off and exploit every door it opens.
Excellence and credentials still matter enormously where they actually matter. But if you’re borrowing £50,000 and surrendering three brilliant years simply because everyone else is “off to Uni” to study something you don’t particularly care about, dare to consider another route. Dare to be different. Buy a globe. Spin it. Work in a bar, work on a boat, learn Spanish, better learn Russian, sell something, build something, start a business and c*ck it up, get fit, fall in love, get your heart broken, run out of money, learn to cook, understand compound interest and become bloody good at using AI.
The brutal truth is that nobody owes you an interesting life. Your parents can’t organise it, your school can’t grade it, and a university can’t guarantee it. Turn up, be useful, put the phone away, read loads and learn to write, tell stories, sing songs and tell jokes, speak properly, and don’t mistake followers for friends, credentials for intelligence or being busy for achieving something. Learn about the relevance of investing (Nutstuff can help; we offer hugely preferential rates for anyone on full-time education) and definitely some betting alongside investing.
Put simply, University is a fantastic answer when there is a bloody good question. Otherwise, at 17 you possess something far more valuable than a degree or a certificate: the freedom to take risks, make mistakes and start again. Qualifications can depreciate. Curiosity, experience, relationships and initiative will compound. So, essentially, go to MIT or buy a globe, but don’t sleepwalk into either.
Nutstuff is not just about Markets, Digital Assets & Stocks, it is about REAL LIFE: “Make you think, make you question, make you laugh and make you money too!"
A-LEVEL results day was ironically yesterday; the 13th?! “Unlucky for some, lucky for others!” Many families and teenagers will be thinking about “what next” over breakfast or lunch today. The 1st thing to say is, congratulations whether you got what you wanted or not, because at 18 the greatest asset you own isn’t your exam results, it’s still having time.
To Nutstuff (who never went to University but had a place in the US, not taken up, there IS a story!) here’s the important caveat: if you’re rocket-scientist smart and genuinely want to build rockets at SpaceX, become an AI researcher, doctor, engineer, or compete at the sharp end of hedge funds and private equity, then absolutely get yourself into the very best university you possibly can, work your a**se off and exploit every door it opens.
Excellence and credentials still matter enormously where they actually matter. But if you’re borrowing £50,000 and surrendering three brilliant years simply because everyone else is “off to Uni” to study something you don’t particularly care about, dare to consider another route. Dare to be different. Buy a globe. Spin it. Work in a bar, work on a boat, learn Spanish, better learn Russian, sell something, build something, start a business and c*ck it up, get fit, fall in love, get your heart broken, run out of money, learn to cook, understand compound interest and become bloody good at using AI.
The brutal truth is that nobody owes you an interesting life. Your parents can’t organise it, your school can’t grade it, and a university can’t guarantee it. Turn up, be useful, put the phone away, read loads and learn to write, tell stories, sing songs and tell jokes, speak properly, and don’t mistake followers for friends, credentials for intelligence or being busy for achieving something. Learn about the relevance of investing (Nutstuff can help; we offer hugely preferential rates for anyone on full-time education) and definitely some betting alongside investing.
Put simply, University is a fantastic answer when there is a bloody good question. Otherwise, at 17 you possess something far more valuable than a degree or a certificate: the freedom to take risks, make mistakes and start again. Qualifications can depreciate. Curiosity, experience, relationships and initiative will compound. So, essentially, go to MIT or buy a globe, but don’t sleepwalk into either.
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