Powerof3

creepto enthusiast

[First Squawk @FirstSquawk]

THREE SOURCES TELL AXIOS KEY GAPS IN IRAN TALKS WERE RESOLVED DURING WEDNESDAY'S NEGOTIATIONS WITH QATARI MEDIATORS.

[First Squawk @FirstSquawk]

TRUMP’S SOCIAL POST ON AGREEMENT WITH IRAN SURPRISES NETANYAHU, ISRAELI SOURCE SAYS – CNN

[First Squawk @FirstSquawk]

IRAN HAS NOT YET GIVEN A FINAL RESPONSE, BUT LIKELIHOOD OF APPROVAL IS HIGH GIVEN US ACCEPTANCE OF IRAN-PROPOSED TEXT. - FAR NEWS

[First Squawk @FirstSquawk]

TRUMP CONFIRMS IRAN DEAL SIGNING IMMINENT, DOCUMENTS IN NEAR-FINAL SHAPE, WITH AGREEMENT ENSURING IRAN WILL NOT OBTAIN A NUCLEAR WEAPON.

[First Squawk @FirstSquawk]

TRUMP SAYS KHARG ISLAND OPERATION IS NOW OFF THE TABLE, CLAIMS HORMUZ HAS BEEN OPEN FOR MONTHS, AND EXPECTS FORMAL STRAIT REOPENING UPON DEAL SIGNING AS EARLY AS SATURDAY OR MONDAY.

[First Squawk @FirstSquawk]

NETANYAHU'S OFFICE CONFIRMS FINAL IRAN DEAL WILL INCLUDE REMOVAL OF ENRICHED URANIUM.

[First Squawk @FirstSquawk]

THE REPORTED FRAMEWORK INCLUDES REMOVAL OF IRAN'S ENRICHED NUCLEAR MATERIAL, DISMANTLING OF ENRICHMENT INFRASTRUCTURE, LIMITS ON MISSILE PRODUCTION, AND AN END TO IRANIAN SUPPORT FOR REGIONAL PROXY GROUPS; ISRAEL IS NOT A PARTY TO THE MEMORANDUM.

[First Squawk @FirstSquawk]

IRAN FOREIGN MINISTRY SAYS NOTHING HAS BEEN FINALIZED AND NO FINAL DECISION ON AN AGREEMENT HAS BEEN REACHED, DISMISSING REPORTS AS SPECULATION. - IRNA

[First Squawk @FirstSquawk]

AL ARABIYA REPORTS PROPOSED US-IRAN DEAL INCLUDES 60+ DAY CEASEFIRE, HORMUZ REOPENING WITHIN 30 DAYS, PHASED SANCTIONS RELIEF TIED TO RESUMED IRAN OIL EXPORTS, CONTINUED NUCLEAR TALKS DURING CEASEFIRE, AND HALT TO HOSTILITIES ON ALL FRONTS.

[Renny @rennyzucker]

This is going to get very old and stale very quickly.

There absolutely will be AI native hedge funds but they don’t be using models that you can plug-in to in any meaningful way.

Not the good ones at least.

[Illiquid @illyquid]

Bruh, $amat footprint in Singapore is largest outside the US and they are more than doubling cleanroom space.

https://t.co/nsJhuTnbl4

[₿ΞΞnThereDoneThat Capital 賢い @BeenThereCap]

Remember that whole "Moore's law is dead in semiconductors" thing?

Nope.

https://t.co/8hWn35zp9E

[Serenity @aleabitoreddit]

Still think this US list from $MRVL to $ARM to $INTC was goated.

Just as a recap if new followers were wondering what US equities I like.

Especially because I've been talking about international companies recently.

[Serenity @aleabitoreddit]

I think my personal style of investing is a bit different, just some reflection:

It's inherently discretionary, based on stuff markets don't know yet. And a culmination of life experiences?

If you look at $AXTI, $RPI, $SIVE, $IQE and others.

Lot of it is guessing on unstructured relationships then seeing if it's right or not down the line.

$RPI is the perfect example:

1. Nobody really thought of Raspberry Pis for AI growth. Mainly people bought one or two just for class + education + hobbyist.
2. After OpenClaw, just noticed all my friends and people just buying Apple Mac Minis / RPIs for AI applications.
3. Found validation of that trend online with lot of people sharing video tutorials on AI orchestration with RPI.
4. AI was their ideal perfect growth vector, did some modeling, and thought it was compelling.

Earnings comes out and I was right.

Everyone in media was calling it a meme stock because there's nothing online that shows revenue growth from AI (was 14% forecasted revenue growth, turned out to be 58%, my projection was around 55%).

So it was a mix of guessing next industry trend (AI using lightweight hardware instead of GPU clusters), real life trends, then revenue forecasting off my guess.

For stuff like $AXTI:

1. Everyone called it a joke when I bought at ~$12. LLMs would hallucinate and say "hyperscalers/govs would have known about this by now and fixed this vulnerability with InP substrates"
2. Or would conflate very nuanced parts of InP substrate stack, where there's multiple different chokepoints in upstream processing.
3. So part of this was just discretionary based on what I've seen over InP substrate breakdowns, industry trends, etc.
4. Then also guessing the major supercycle was photonics (this was before everyone caught onto $LITE, and others). Or before you saw the $141B TAM projections from GS.
5. AXT owned 40% of InP supply chain, without them the supply chain just gets cripped).
6. All the "analysts" were forecasting steady InP substrate growth, few hundred million TAM, etc. or export controls.
7. Everyone kept trying to say $AXTI was overvalued based on TAM estimates. But if it's a few hundred million TAM you just think that's a joke and go into game theory over allocations.
8. Then I just had to guess, how much would this be worth if it were a NAND style bottleneck, what MC could it reach based on control, how much would hyperscalers price it as, etc.

A lot of the current research outputs from Goldman Sachs, or earnings reports from the Epiwafer companies, were confirmed after I published my piece on AXT. If you did research back then, lot of the same material /framing wouldn't have come up.

With stuff like $XFAB as you're seeing now, a lot of it is just pure guessing:

1. Not really any CPO materials, how much their MTP process makes in revenue, etc. Everyone online keeps saying they're not a photonics player.
2. But if you go through ASE docs or Gov websites, they all kinda cite XFAB as a major emerging player here.
3. $NVDA also evaluating them right now (maybe it's successful who knows).
4. No clear revenue around this area because their main silicon photonics process is still precommercial, but if you guess it's trying to create a EU supply chain to compete with $TSEM, once pre-commercial shifts to commercial, maybe similar but less volume contracts?
5. Then just seeing updates over the next few months to see if anything confirms this thesis guess.

_

I think a lot of information discovery still can be done with LLMs I'm seeing online. But it's also really hard to make a bunch of unstructured inferences based on unrelated material or even just trends you're seeing in real life.

So probably better to just do what's standard, eg. do valuation forecasting based on current numbers

Stuff like $AAOI, if they're projecting $471m/M h1 2027 and you see MC at $12B, probably undervalued might be a good idea to go long for next years.

Stuff like Samsung Electronics is easier, see what people are modeling for operating profits for 2027, 2028 then just seeing if it's undervalued or not at current levels.

Maybe something harder is $JBL. I haven't really seen any great volume numbers around 1.6T LRO, but you can just make a guess on how popular that might be then project how that might impact current MCs.

Or picking just good names everyone kinda agrees like $TSM, $INTC, $MRVL is also solid.

So a lot of things is just building up your life skills then applying that to markets. I don't think it's that can be taught with courses and stuff.

Of course, much of what I'm doing is just high conviction inference based on unconnected parts. Could always be wrong.

[Palobar @panpalobar]

#gold #silver #preciousmetals
"It never was my thinking that made the big money for me. It was always my sitting. Got that? My sitting tight!"

Quick Note>
1. There is NO pattern of "higher HIGHs, higher LOWs" in silver yet. These are NOT true highs and lows; that is why these same calls in February (and in the past) have failed.

2. The $95.56 level that I noted in February kept us on the safe side. Silver failed to close > that level and declined 37%. Above $95.56, the bulls are in control. Below $75, the bears will be in control.

3. My original idea was that the decline in gold and silver would most likely conclude by April. My max decline for gold was $4150-$4200 (spot). So far, this has been accurate.

4. The short-term situation in gold can be best described imo as "a lack of interest". (in terms of positioning).

5. In late February, I drew your attention to the Feb 17 low. Notice where the recent bounce was rejected. The high came exactly on April 17 (key date).

6. Gold has been forming "Lower highs and lower lows". The big boys are surely watching this. Under $4649, it gets into a tricky position. If we break the May low, it will attract speculative short positions.

CONCLUSION
In my opinion, the consolidation/correction is not over yet. A retest of the recent lows is still possible. I could be wrong (I have been wrong many times), but I think ~$3800s (gold) and $54 (silver) are still on the table.
This is a healthy correction after the massive moves we saw.
Long-term, much higher.

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

A man in the United States who carries a rare genetic mutation that virtually guarantees early-onset Alzheimer’s has remained symptom-free into his late 70s, defying what scientists once considered an inevitable fate.

Doug Whitney inherited a highly aggressive variant of the Presenilin 2 gene. In his family, the mutation has been devastating, ten of his mother’s thirteen siblings developed Alzheimer’s and died before age 60. Yet Whitney, now in his late seventies, continues to live with sharp cognition and no clinical symptoms of the disease.

According to a study published in Nature Medicine, he is one of only three known people worldwide with this mutation who have shown exceptional resilience. Researchers believe the key may lie in his decades-long career as a shipboard mechanic, where he worked for years in extremely hot naval engine rooms.

Analysis revealed exceptionally high levels of heat shock proteins in Whitney’s cerebrospinal fluid — protective molecules produced by the body in response to heat stress that help repair and refold damaged proteins. Although brain scans show significant amyloid plaque buildup, he has remarkably few tau tangles, the protein structures most strongly linked to cognitive decline.

This extraordinary case strengthens emerging evidence that controlled heat exposure or heat therapy may trigger beneficial cellular responses capable of protecting the brain against neurodegenerative diseases.

[Arboleda-Velasquez JF, et al. (including Doug Whitney as study participant). "Exceptional resilience to Alzheimer’s disease in a carrier of the PSEN2 mutation." Nature Medicine, 2025]

[Zephyr @zephyr_z9]

Pretty good for TTMI

"U.S. Congress are pushing the Protecting Circuit Boards and Substrates Act, offering a 25% tax credit to companies choosing U.S.-made PCBs and planning to allocate $3 billion to subsidize domestic manufacturers. $TTM Technologies and Sanmina, two U.S.-listed PCB manufacturers, are accelerating domestic capacity expansion: TTM will build large new factories in New York State and Wisconsin, bringing the U.S. total to 18 facilities upon completion."

[Serenity @aleabitoreddit]

$SIVE looks like both a chokepoint and a bottleneck for CPO next year.

Keep seeing information published from nontechnical people who miss any nuances.

Here’s the reason why:

1. CW lasers are bottlenecked signaled by $LITE earnings.

Laser fabs are heavily allocated to EML likely from former $NVDA contracts.

-> Sumitomo/Furukawa = bottleneck
-> Win Semi = bottleneck

$SIVE does fab-lite, so are they a bottleneck?

Yes, $SIVE sits in the laser bottleneck since control output supply of CW lasers from Win Semi and other fabs from allocation way early on (CEO stated they working with more capacity from other players as well).

Perfect example is Kioxia/Sandisk. $SNDK controls NAND output, so they’re a bottleneck because they control final pricing.

Demand exceeding supply from Ayar, Jabil, other pluggable vendors + Nvidia NVLink CPO ecosystem… final laser supply owned by $SIVE makes Sivers a bottleneck.

$SIVE is also likely primary/sole source for Jabil, Gen-1 Ayar, $MRVL Celestial, and other hyperscaler asic/merchant CPO routes. So no way to get around it (can’t hot-swap single channel cw lasers with Sivers)

2. $SIVE is a chokepoint over CPO.

$NVDA use $COHR, $LITE (which likely sources external cw capacity from Japanese competitors)

$AVGO is likely vertically integrated as well.

However: the entire ecosystem around it from ASIC programs (Marvell, AlChip, etc) and merchant programs (Ayar, Lightmatter, Lightelligence)

Are all likely designed around $SIVE.

Ayar for example, likely tried to multi-source with $MTSI / $LITE back in 2022 but their lasers probably couldn’t match the level of Sivers specification with arrays (removed Lumentum / Macom from their supply chain site recently)

If there’s no alternative at least for the initial generations (obviously they’re working to multi-source). That makes $SIVE a structural chokepoint to go through for lasers.

Even if you look at the 1.6T LRO $JBL designed, they achieved a “drastic moat” with performance built around $SIVE likely sole source.

$SIVE is also the foundry level reference laser design for $GFS, which your hyperscalers use like $AMD (likely using Sivers + maybe Ayar for gen1):

If every major player, who hasn’t achieved vertical integration (Nvidia/Broadcom) is using Sivers for CPO…

That makes them a chokepoint.

Just look at the entire CPO $NVDA NVLink ecosystem partners: every single one are all likely using Sivers. And they all use $GFS as well (where Sivers is default reference).

So $SIVE is both a chokepoint and bottleneck when CPO really scales up H2 2027, over one of the biggest architectural shifts of all time (near $0 -> $81B or $91B TAM in the next 1 1/2 years from GS research note)

This is why I say $SIVE looks like it could be the next $75B $LITE over the next couple years.

All of this should play out next year.

And it’s still trading less than a company with $50M in purchase agreements that buys Sivers lasers to repackage them.

[Esfandyar Batmanghelidj @yarbatman]

Iran has included three important tests within the terms the MOU it is negotiating with the United States. These tests are intended to give Iran's leaders confidence that Trump, a counterparty they see as highly unreliable, is ready to make credible commitments, opening a pathway for further diplomacy.

First, the Iranians are testing the credibility of American security commitments by insisting that the MOU encompasses a Lebanon ceasefire. They are not doing this for the sake of Hezbollah or Lebanese Shias. Rather, they want to see if Trump can restrain Israel in its own backyard. If Trump is able to do that, then he might be able to defend his own deal with Iran from further Israeli sabotage.

Second, Iran is insisting on a nominal fee for vessels passing the Strait of Hormuz. This is not because they want more revenue, which would be negligible. They are insisting on this arrangement because they want to test whether Trump will endorse a deal that includes a clear instantiation of Iranian sovereignty and authority, especially one that did not exist before the war. Iran believes in the logic of a win-win agreement. Trump does not. Forcing him to accept a fee forces him to give Iran a "win" and to defend it as such from the Iran hawks in his circle. This is politically meaningful.

Finally, Iran is insisting on a the release of frozen assets. The sums in question are a tiny fraction of the economic cost of the war and the release of assets is not as valuable as sanctions relief that Iran will also be targeting. But by insisting on the release of funds at an early stage of the negotiations, Iran can test whether broader economic commitments, such as sanctions relief, will be credible. Iran will only consider the promise of sanctions relief to be credible if Trump's sanctions bureaucracy allows Iran to move and spend its own money. The Iranian side will insist on transactions that push the Trump administration to set new precedents for how sanctions relief can be operationalized, especially through guidance to banks.

For many in Washington, these demands seem unreasonable. But that is entirely the point. Iran's leadership won't tolerate a kind of narrow deal that allows U.S. policymakers to avoid putting political capital at stake. Iran wants a deal that reflects the unprecedented nature of the war and ensuing crisis. To meet the moment, the diplomacy has to be transformative.

Iran's leaders don't trust Trump, so they are testing him. So far, he is failing these tests.

[tphuang @tphuang]

Another key one to watch is Tungsten, where China is starving of Tungsten Carbide & powder. China accounts for 80% of global production & you can see the huge px jump in March followed by huge decline of Tungsten px in China.

But Tungsten px gap w/ global mkt is growing.