Dan Watson

biotech/defense/oil/gas investor, gardener, grandfather, father, husband, lousy golfer, imperfect follower of Christ, pro-Ukraine, pro-USA

[Dan Watson @MaxD56808233]

@RealCandaceO We will pass on soon, Hopefully not yet, and I am grateful that I can still see bravery & a nation that will never surrender to evil
“Better to fight for something, then die for nothing “
George S. Patton
God bless all in Ukraine 🇺🇦
#SlavaUkraini
https://t.co/rdPKEfHTEY

[Defense of Ukraine @DefenceU]

Where words fail, music speaks.

📹: moisei.bondarenko / Instagram

[Dan Watson @MaxD56808233]

@HFI_Research agree "all wars should stop", but in the meantime both oil & defense companies are heavily spending/upgrading/expanding =
@VisualCap
https://t.co/d48ifMYIu1
$KTOS $FANG $CVX $XOM $RTX $LMT $AVAV $LHX
https://t.co/1fh9tAw0lb
https://t.co/FQx3tmt0Fy
https://t.co/A942ewpe3i

[💙Brittney💙 @AZ_Brittney]

Trump completely lost it on Kristen Welker.

He said she was crooked, stupid and walked out of the interview!

I stand with Kristen Welker and all of the journalists Trump has attacked over the years.

Who is with me? ✋

[Ted @TedPillows]

¥2,000,000,000,000 erased from Chinese stock market today.

"Everything Crash" has started.

[Max Blumenthal @MaxBlumenthal]

It will soon become clear that when Israel chose to attack Dahiya yesterday, it was not only working to shatter negotiations between Trump and Iran

It was also consciously instigating an escalation that would inevitably place US regional bases under Iranian fire

What an ally

[Joe Kent @joekent16jan19]

President Trump’s rhetoric towards Israel is the correct response but Bibi laughs it off because we are still giving Israel $3.8 billion annually, access to our most sensitive technology, & spending around $1 billion a day on this war.

[Prem Thakker @prem_thakker]

Just hours ago, Trump said he was gonna call Netanyahu to tell him not to attack lran. “I call all the shots. Netanyahu doesn't,” he says.
And now, Israel just attacked Iran.
So Trump was either blatantly lying to you on behalf of Israel, or he’s letting Israel walk all over him.

[Geiger Capital @Geiger_Capital]

Israel just bombed Iran, in direct defiance of Trump saying not to do it…

They do not want a deal.

Trump was pulled into this war and now he can’t get out. Took over his entire 2nd term.

[Rep. Melanie Stansbury @Rep_Stansbury]

THIS ⬇️ is why we have a free press. To all our journalists out there—and especially our women journalists (we see you!)—don’t stop asking the hard questions! 💅

[Joe Scarborough @ScarboroughNow]

63 federal courts threw out all of Trump’s BS claims.
All of them. The Supreme Court rejected all of Trump’s BS claims. He now screams and cuts off interviews because he constantly lies about elections being rigged. He’s projecting again.

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

Last night, the House chose to stand with Ukraine, and I was proud to cast my vote.

We passed military and reconstruction aid for Ukraine, plus hard new sanctions on Russia.

We did it over the objections of Mike Johnson and Republican leadership, who spent over a year trying to keep this bill from ever hitting the floor.

Eighteen Republicans crossed the aisle and did the right thing.

Why does this matter?

Because when a giant authoritarian state invades a smaller democracy, there is no gray area. There is no “both sides.”

Vladimir Putin is a thug. He started an unprovoked war. He flattened cities. He stole children from their families. Helping Ukraine isn’t charity. It’s the test of whether we still mean a single word we say about freedom.

I heard every excuse. The war’s winding down, they said, so let’s wait and see. Nonsense. You don’t strengthen a democracy by going wobbly the second things get hard. You don’t stop the next invasion by telling the world American resolve comes with an expiration date. Putin is watching. So is every dictator who dreams of taking what isn’t his by force.

This bill still has to clear the Senate and survive a presidential signature. The odds are long. But the House did its job. And we said it plainly: no country gets swallowed whole just because a tyrant wants it.

I’ll keep fighting to see this through. Ukraine’s fight is our fight, and we do not abandon our friends.
https://t.co/16OTeNW1dD

[Dan Watson @MaxD56808233]

@DefiWimar inflation everywhere coming faster & higher, negative impact on all consumers (except mega-wealthy)
tough choices ahead for all- cut back on all things un-necessary, the AI spend can't help everyone & doesn't put food on table or gas in car?
@VisualCap
https://t.co/kEbd4W9DaV

[(((Tendar))) @Tendar]

The Antipinsky Refinery in Tyumen, Russia, is burning.

This refinery is around 2,000 km (1,200 miles) from the Ukrainian border.

[Dan Watson @MaxD56808233]

@Danny_Crypton nevertheless, SPACEX will get funding & AI bubble will go on continue as multi-layered tech race is on with China =
https://t.co/0TCupnQKQS
https://t.co/JOzwEsE7P2

[Rand Group @randgroup]

Copper can't keep up with AI. That's not an opinion, it's physics.

Every data center being built right now is replacing electrical connections with light. NVIDIA confirmed it with $4.5 billion in direct investment.

I mapped 25 public companies across the photonics value chain:

Every AI cluster being built today hits the same wall. A hundred thousand GPUs mean nothing if the data can't move between them fast enough. Copper maxed out years ago and photonics replaced it: lasers, optical fiber, and transceivers that push data at the speed of light. The AI transceiver market doubled in two years. NVIDIA committed $4.5 billion across three photonics companies this year alone. This is where the infrastructure money is going.

Here's the full value chain:

🔬 MATERIALS & WAFERS

This is the bottom of the chain. Every laser and transceiver starts as a wafer substrate: indium phosphide, gallium arsenide, germanium, specialty glass. Nobody above this layer can produce anything without these inputs, and right now the most critical one, indium phosphide, is the tightest material in the entire AI supply chain. The gap between demand and capacity is getting worse, not better.

I think this is the most asymmetric layer on the map. Investors chase the transceiver companies and ignore who grows the substrates underneath them. But NVIDIA is writing checks worth billions in cash and warrants to lock up supply from this exact layer. First link in the chain, last to get attention, and the one that chokes everything above it if it breaks.

Tickers: $GLW, $AXTI, $IQE, $AIXA, $AMS

💡 CORE PHOTONIC DEVICES

This layer converts electricity into light and back. Without it, zero data moves through fiber. NVIDIA dropped $4 billion into two companies here this year just to secure production capacity, and both of them joined the S&P 500 within weeks of each other. That should tell you how fast this went from niche to essential.

The supply gap is not closing. The companies shipping next gen lasers at volume can be counted on one hand, and switching suppliers takes years of requalification. Order books stretch past twelve months. Every next generation GPU cluster consumes more of these components than the last, and no one can substitute them on short notice. I watch this layer more closely than any other.

Tickers: $IPGP, $COHR, $LITE, $LASR, $SIVE

🔌 COMPONENTS & MODULES

The companies here take raw lasers and detectors, package them into finished transceivers and modules, and ship them straight to hyperscalers. If the layers below are the engine, this is the vehicle that actually reaches the customer. Hyperscaler purchase orders land here. The revenue acceleration shows up here first.

What I like about this layer is that you can underwrite it today, not in two years. These are businesses with signed capacity commitments and product already moving. The consolidation angle matters too: larger photonics players have already started absorbing standalone module companies, and whoever remains independent gains pricing power as options thin out.

Tickers: $AAOI, $MTSI, $VIAV, $LPTH

⚙️ SYSTEMS & EQUIPMENT

No company above this layer can manufacture a single photonic component without the machines built here. One of these names holds 100% of the EUV lithography market with zero competitors. Others supply the bonding equipment for co packaged optics or the process control instruments used across the majority of advanced packaging lines. If photonics is the gold rush, this is the layer selling the picks.

My honest take: this is where the smart, patient capital parks. Equipment companies have pricing power and multi year order books that generate cash through full capex cycles. They attract holders who don't panic on the first pullback. The stocks don't run 1,000% overnight, but they compound while everything above them swings, and that tradeoff is worth more than most people give it credit for.

Tickers: $ASML, $BESI, $ASM, $LPKF, $MKSI

🔍 TEST, METROLOGY & YIELD

The most ignored layer on this map, and arguably the one with the cleanest business model. Every wafer, laser, and transceiver has to be tested and verified before it ships. As speeds climb and photonic devices get more complex, the testing challenge compounds fast. The industry is now constrained not only by what it can build but by what it can prove actually works.

Yield is money. Better defect detection means better margins for every company upstream, which is why foundries keep buying test equipment even when they slash budgets everywhere else. These are capital light businesses tied to every unit of production across the chain. Last check before product hits the customer, and one of the few layers where demand doesn't cycle down when the rest of semis softens.

Tickers: $CAMT, $FORM, $AEHR, $ONTO, $VIAV

🧠FINAL THOUGHTS

The NVIDIA capital concentration tells the whole story. One company wrote $4.5 billion in checks to three photonics suppliers in a single quarter. That is a company locking down the one input that could bottleneck its GPU deployments: the optical interconnect.

Returns across this sector have been historic over the past twelve months. But separate the revenue growers from the narrative trades. Some of these companies are printing real quarterly numbers that would impress in any sector. Others are carrying multi billion dollar market caps on sub $100 million in annual revenue. Same sector, wildly different risk.

Every generation of AI infrastructure from here forward needs more photonics. Not less. The copper to light transition inside data centers is early. Co packaged optics is barely in deployment, and 1.6T transceivers are ramping with 3.2T already on roadmaps. The chain locks together: stress on any single link reprices every link above it.

[Garry Kasparov @Kasparov63]

More of CNN's false equivalence language. Ukraine is not targeting St. Petersburg, but striking military installations, Russian warships, and oil refineries. It's the Russian terror state that strikes cities and targets civilians. https://t.co/Cy7DgqtkuT

[Tom Nichols @RadioFreeTom]

“Our conclusion: the Iran War is worse than a failure. It's a strategic calamity with no notable achievements and potentially trillions in direct and indirect costs to the US and global economy.”

[Dan Watson @MaxD56808233]

@HFI_Research true, and stockpiles are in decline everywhere=
@OilandEnergy @TankerTrackers
https://t.co/G6iwsh44v4

[Spencer Hakimian @SpencerHakimian]

Iran just bombed U.S. military bases in Kuwait.

Marco Rubio said the war was over this morning.

[Open Source Intel @Osint613]

UPDATE:

63 injured, 1 dead in Iran's attack on Kuwait's airport. Seven required emergency surgery. Casualties include civilians, workers, and passengers.

[CALL TO ACTIVISM @CalltoActivism]

🚨SENATOR VAN HOLLEN JUST LEFT MARCO RUBIO SPEECHLESS:

“Netanyahu said he's been waiting 40 years to do this. Turns out he finally found a president who was both stupid and reckless enough to join him."

🔥🔥🔥