Moonshot play $TGEN finally starting to move after a long consolidation.. +35% from avg cost of $9.06 to $12.25

Moving on no news though is kind of strange. Not sure if it’s insider front running or just a small cap rerating. Hopefully $VRT just buys it out one day.

Cut $MRVL @ $89.5 for +2% gain

Shifted $MRVL allocation to re-add $MU long @ $199.56.

St is finally acknowledging the idea of a lengthened memory cycle. UBS just upgraded the stock, let’s see if that’s enough fuel for the stock to power through ATH

BOOM

Rumoured to be $MSFT Maia 2 chips. If this is accurate, it’s IFS’s first external customer. History happening!

$MU and $SNDK crossed ATH again last night, with $MU closing @ $208.75 and $SNDK @ $149.64, +23.8% and +30.5% respectively from when we first went long.

Meta also announced yesterday at OCP that they were prioritizing QLC NAND adoption in its data centers to reduce costs, which may have been a driver. All things considered, the supply picture for DRAM/NAND appears to be very tight through 2026, pointing to an extended memory cycle. I guess the big qn on investors' mind however is whether "this time its different?". Could the excess driven by AI spend change the pre-AI cycles of memory?

Tbh, I have no clue given my generalist background. I try to approach highly cyclical companies with more caution. However, it's also worth noting that we have barely moved into inference demand, and hence the current memory/storage demand could just be the beginning of many future AI drivers that will be exponentially more memory intensive.

From Seagate's earnings rephrased: "in the entire last 150 years, 15 billion images were created. With AI, that same number of images were created only in the past 1.5 years. The resolution of the images are incredibly high as well. Beyond that, a typical 1 minute video consumers 100x more data than one high-def image."

Excluding image and video generation (which is an incredible driver on its own), I believe to make AI truly useful (imagine GPT as a PA), it needs to have context on who you are and what you want. No one wants a PA that acts like a new-hire everyday. That requires memory. As the ability of agentic AI scales, more tasks can be handled autonomously and data can be processed faster — that requires memory/storage. For robotics to be truly useful, we need to collect and process petabytes of data from the real world with cameras and sensors everyday — that's memory/storage. For edge AI to be fast, data needs to be duplicated and stored at locations closest to where its consumed — that requires storage.

All in all, I think the long-term case for memory is very strong. Along the way however, there will be pullbacks as I think the rally will be similar to climbing a wall of worry. Any small fluctuations in memory spot pricing, no matter how short term it is, will dent confidence. However, I think the pullbacks will be BTD oppys.

Re-added a $RDDT long @ $205.36. Stock has retraced 20% from when we exited at $257.

Think r/r is decent now to give the upcoming print a shot — given that the DAU growth concerns are now known and “priced in”. Also partly a rotation move away from AI infrastructure as mentioned yesterday.

Re-added $U long @ $36.68 and $APP long @ $560.12

Similarly a rotation move to AI software beneficiaries.

APP’s e-commerce launch also seems to be going well, and stock has actually done fairly well up till the SEC investigation. Investigation seems like part of a routine process rather than findings-based, so for now I think it’s not significantly negative.

$GLD taking quite the beating today after a monstrous run.. wonder if the outflows can positively spill over into $BTC $IBIT.

Added $IBIT @ $63.58

Also added some short-dated $MSTR calls for $350 strike.

Let’s see if the genius of financial engineering can save MSTR from its mNAV decompressing below 1

Cut $IBIT @ $62 & $MSTR calls for small L. Don’t like gold’s move yesterday, esp when there’s no rotation into $BTC.

Momentum stocks have also been unwinding which is concerning, so want to be more selective with plays.

Added $SHAK short @ $92.31

Same logic as $CAVA - want to be short on high-income consumer spending. Looking for more idiosyncratic/low beta short ideas that are focused on weak fundamentals/structural decline/mgmt issues/overvaluation. Avoiding high-beta retail names as shorts for the time being, even if they might be grossly over-valued.

Current short basket include $FIVE @ ~$145 avg, $CAVA @ ~$64.5 avg, $CRCL @ ~$127 avg, $SHAK @ $92.31 avg

This might have been the exact top of the REE plays — $MP was around $93 and $USAR was $38 then.

Furthermore, given Trump’s deal with Australia for REEs this week, it reinforces my point that the U.S. and its domestic companies don’t actually have much access to the *truly rare* heavy REE that China has banned — which runs counter to the $MP and $USAR rally over the past few months. If you look at Australia’s largest REE producer, $LYC.ASX, they’re now also making the same moves as China — expanding into ionic clay deposits in Southeast Asia to harvest the *truly rare* heavy REE.

However, while my thought process and conclusion were right, I think my execution was a let down (as usual!). If my logical conclusion was that China wasn’t going to relent on REE exports easily — since they actually want to secure domestic supply, unlike what the market perceived as a temporary move for negotiation leverage — then the natural second-order thinking would’ve been that trade talks wouldn’t go smoothly, and Trump would likely retaliate in an attempt to pressure China to relent on REE exports. A better course of action would’ve been to further risk off the portfolio. Hindsight is 20/20. Live and learn!

All things considered, though, I think the U.S. will be the first to back down. The U.S. midterms are getting close. Furthermore, inflating the asset bubble is their way of stimulating the economy without direct spending — while simultaneously imposing high consumer taxes through tariffs. (Otherwise, why is the admin considering buying equity stakes in hocus pocus houdini quantum computing names..?)

Hence the two parallels of the U.S. economy: (1) the S&P, and (2) the real economy. The S&P will do well, but the real economy might suffer. That’s also why we’re short high-income consumers.

Added more $BABA @ $168.05 2 days ago. $BABA AI capabilities are still very much undervalued by the market imo — like $GOOG a few months ago.

*TRUMP TO MAKE AN ANNOUNCEMENT AT 3PM IN WASHINGTON

3am local time later, then $INTC call at 5am. Looks like another all-nighter 😭

On $INTC, some views into print. May be wrong so pls develop your own conviction.

Mgmt has mentioned 2 things to look out for in previous calls: 1) LBT wants to first see the performance of 18A on their internal products for himself before he reaches out to secure external customers, and 2) they’ll be sharing more on their AI strategy going forward - likely in inference.

Hence the incremental datapoints would be 1) commentary around 18A yields and customer outreach, 2) PL performance and HVM ramp, 3) commitment to pushing ahead with 14A and 4) AI strategy.

IMO the financial numbers isn’t that impt for Intel now, given its basically a call option on US foundry capabilities at this point — at least to me. Well unless this print and guide is a total bomb like Q2’24 (RIP WSB grandma). Never say never. Option pricing is saying a +- 9.3% move post print.

Also almost impossible to accurately model financials beyond company guidance given there’s lots of ongoing restructuring (severance costs and reuse etc) and foundry margins is just a wildcard.

I don’t expect any significant logo drops around foundry; will probably (and hopefully) be “we are very happy with Panther Lake and will be looking to bring more wafers in house and also start reaching out to customers once yield stabilises”.

Negative foundry commentary is a BIG NONO however, and should not happen given how Intel has reiterated in Oct PR that PL is on schedule for HVM later this year.

Assuming there are no extraordinary events, my wild guess is that we beat on rev and gm%. May still see a small pullback despite this but I think it will stabilise given that the print is just a clearing event for the market to continue dreaming — again, that is if there are no extraordinary events. Please don’t bomb this LBT.

Man, $SNDK is an absolute monster. Trimmed 25% @ $161 (+40% from initial entry @ $114.67) to raise ammo in case INTC bombs.

Added new $TTMI long @ $58.16

High-end PCB manufacturer; levered pure-play on GOOG <> Anthropic TPU deal + proliferation of custom silicon. Also has restoring tailwinds.