Simon B. Trader

Salutations!
I trade. It is my job.
And I write. That's my job, too.
Research. Macro. Eco. Love 'em.
Not financial advice. Do your work.
Sometimes write funny.

[Simon B. Trader @simonbetrader]

Weekly trading recap: 2 closed WINS, 4 positions open

Good week, so I'll keep it short: RR was intraday snipe at around support level, closed at daily top. Target too wide, but still a win.

BVI overstayed it's welcome (held almost 6 days), closed at 1R, good enough.

As for open positions...

DHL, KER and GLE are basically all bets on European short-term weakness (post ECB hike drift, fiscal shenanigans and gov't bond selloffs, diesel records), helped by today's Saudi cutoff for EU refiners.

HOC is basically a gold/silver bet dressed as a stock. Now that the ECB, Fed and BoJ all hiked, precious metals will breathe a sign of relief for the time being. I want a part of that.

As always, all my positions are tracked LIVE on my web.

[Simon B. Trader @simonbetrader]

So...

Sep 12 - Dario Amodei releases "AI pacing" paper
...
Sep 15 - Gemini 3.8 goes live
Sep 21 - Grok 4.7 goes live
Sep 22 - Claude Opus 5.5 goes live
Sep 22 - GPT-6 Sol and GPT-6 Luna go live

Yup, definitely slowing down.

[Simon B. Trader @simonbetrader]

This is basically $116B sitting in the same 25 names.

$SMH and $SOXX share 23 holdings and around 75% of their weight.

SMH is more concentrated with Nvidia around, 22.5%, TSM around 10%. Top 10 is basically 72% of the fund.

Fun fact: Aschenbrenner held $2.04B SMH puts before he imploded.

SOXX leans MU and AMD instead, Nvidia is capped at 9%.

[Simon B. Trader @simonbetrader]

@JavierBlas BOOM, oil down 2%.

Narrative driven markets.

[Simon B. Trader @simonbetrader]

@Nigelgd1 What explanation?

This is realpolitik, plain and simple.

[Simon B. Trader @simonbetrader]

@Osint613 Man REALLY loves renaming stuff.

[Simon B. Trader @simonbetrader]

@JavierBlas I actually think the message is:

"If you think you can squeeze me until midterms... you're kinda right. But I know I won't be able to do a single thing about that, so I'll pretend it doesn't matter. Anyways, no skin off my wallet... ehh, I mean back."

[Simon B. Trader @simonbetrader]

Hah, analysts grapple, but markets already decided that pre-shutdown flows are miracously guaranteed. Boom, oil down 2%.

Never mind that even the most optimistic forecasts said that roughly HALF of pre-strikes flows would be back online in a MONTH, not earlier.

Only confirms that we are in a "narratives-first, fundamentals-second" market phase.

[Simon B. Trader @simonbetrader]

Why is BofA comparing proceeds and equity value? That skews the comparison.

SpaceX raised about $86 bn (proceeds, dark bar on chart), but listed at something around $1.75 tn (equity value).

Take it private tomorrow and the whole $1.75 tn goes to the light bar (take private equity value).

Doing the comparison this way the take-privates would "defeat" IPOs almost every year last decade or so, even in years there more companies went public than were taken private.

And for that matter, 2026 looks fat on the chart mostly because of precisely one jumbo IPO (SpaceX).

It would make more sense to just compare companies that "IPO-d" and that were taken private side by side.

[Simon B. Trader @simonbetrader]

Kudos to Langone for sticking with his beliefs, but he's been saying something similar (just change numbers) for the last 40 years he's owned Lilly stock.

But, I gotta admit, he was right in 2023 when he said it would be the first drug company to hit $1 tn market cap and it really did last year.

[Simon B. Trader @simonbetrader]

Before this spin piece becomes a sensation...

Traffic to almost ALL websites fell in the past 2 years and the reason is simple: large language models/AI.

People visit far less websites and ask ChatGPT/Claude/Gemini etc, instead. Proven time and time again by data.

You can even see it on the chart, the dropdown coincides with the emergence of generative AI.

And when Google inserted AI answers into search results, that number went down even more.

[Simon B. Trader @simonbetrader]

What matters is HOW MUCH oil flows, not IF it flows.

"Restarted" covers anything from a teeny tine trickle to full flow.

Before shutdown the pipe moved about 5.5M barrels a day, of which roughly 4.5M was crude loading at Yanbu.

Yanbu itself is absolutely CRUCIAL with Hormuz being as it is. So I get that restoring the E-W pipeline is a priority, but miracles don't happen overnight.

I think it was Kpler who said that half of the flow can be restored in like a month. A month has NOT passed. Also Saudi told EU that "sorry, no crude in October".

So, what really matters now is how much oil will be flowing? 1M bpd? 0.5M bpd? Anything less than that is basically worthless for export.

Funny thing, Brent dropped $2+ just on the headline, with no numbers published. Of course...

So I'm gonna be watching for some numbers from the Saudis, and if they aren't satisfactory, I think that $2 comes back with a roar.

[Simon B. Trader @simonbetrader]

@NOELreports BREAKING: Boss of organisation admits it is powerless and completely useless, continues to take pay

[Simon B. Trader @simonbetrader]

BREAKING: Possible yentervention.

[Simon B. Trader @simonbetrader]

I'm sorry, Mr. Lula, but have you been living under a rock?

It has always been like this.

Countries with the biggest leverage cause the biggest disruptions, especially when paired with populist leadership.

Which is, unfortunately, again beginning to be the norm (in a remix of the 1930s).

[Simon B. Trader @simonbetrader]

@Rory_Johnston Or, maybe the explanation is even more straightforward, Asia simply paid a premium? Contracts be damned.

[Simon B. Trader @simonbetrader]

@TreasuryBonds1 Welp, time to unfollow.

[Simon B. Trader @simonbetrader]

That's what you get for being a welfare state.

But UK is not an outlier, fiscal megalomany is rampant in all developed economies. France is on its way to Greece, US long yields going ballistic, Japan... being Japan.

The global economy is a constantly reinforcing spiral of debt. In other words, it's a creditors' world.

[Simon B. Trader @simonbetrader]

Oh, really?

Let's not forget that the price of SHIPPING oil (as in moving it from point A to B) is now approximately 20 - 25% of the cargo value.

Before the war this used to be single digits.

Sure, tanker scarcity allowing operators to command a premium is a temporary tailwind, but costs skyrocketed as well.

Besides transport there's also more expensive insurance and crew pay, oh, and let's not forget the risk of getting hit by a drone or a friggin' missile.

So it's not all roses...

[Simon B. Trader @simonbetrader]

That's the deal with biotech and pharma companies. Rapid rise, equally swift fall.

You create a groundbreaking drug and it either gets copied and sold cheaper in a few months, or you just watch as your patent clock slowly ticks away, and since investors price future earnings...

Turnarounds in this segment is no easy business. You basically NEED TO come up with another blockbuster, but given that research, development, testing and passing regulatory hurdles takes years, I would put failure rate at somewhere north of 70%.

[Simon B. Trader @simonbetrader]

EU and global power shouldn't be used in the same sentence.

This over-regulated, over-bureaucratized, anti-competetive, suicidal in welfare and immigration policy, culturally, politically, economically, militarily and industrially fragmented (Union? haha) random collection of states is doomed to fail.

The founders' idea might have been noble and great, but failed along the way. As it often does, when you start regulating just for the sake of regulation and putting bureaucrats in charge of growth.

I used to be excited about free flow of goods, common labor market (partially), the ability to travel... but seeing the costs (economic woes, passive stance towards immigration, weak military, failing democracies), it's just not worth it.