DMA Invest

25/08/2026

On Monday the US Treasury launched what it calls Operation Economic Outcast. Secondary sanctions now extend to digital assets, gold, aviation, technology and shipping. Nearly 60 entities, individuals and vessels were named, and several existing licences permitting certain payments to Iran were suspended. The stated aim is to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

The threat underneath it is dollar access. Any entity found laundering money for Iran is to be removed from the dollar system.

Worth being precise about where that actually bites. Inside a single bank, moving money between accounts is an internal accounting entry, and stopping it is extremely difficult. The lever works one level up. Moving funds between banks requires a clearing bank or a shared settlement platform, and access to those requires standing in the global dollar system. A bank cut off cannot borrow or lend in dollar funding markets and cannot pay other banks in dollars. Very few institutions of any real size would survive that.

Which makes the most interesting line of the day the one about restraint. Asked why enforcement has not begun, the Treasury Secretary replied: "Why would I want to blow up the global financial system?" No deadline was set. He described the announcement as a warning shot.

Now look at what the market did with it. The dollar index sits at 99.00, near the low end of its range. Gold is at 4,704.60, close to its highest since May. Bitcoin is at 80,870, up 2.59%, on the same day digital assets were formally named a sanctions category. Brent is at 91.28 and has not come down.

If the instrument of pressure is access to the dollar system, the assets that settle outside it get a bid. Both did.

This is the third warning shot this month. The yen on 1 August, long-bond buybacks on 19 August, dollar access on 24 August. The 30-year yield is roughly where it sat before the second one.

So the open question is whether a threat this large works better when it is not used, or whether markets are already treating it as one that never will be.

Not a recommendation. DYOR. NFA.

24/08/2026

NVIDIA reports Q2 FY2027 on Wednesday after the close. Here is what the last filing actually said, and what would still move the stock.

Last quarter, ended 26 April: revenue $81.6 billion, up 85% year on year and 20% sequentially. Data Center a record $75.2 billion, up 92%, with networking alone at $14.8 billion, up 199%. GAAP gross margin 74.9%. GAAP net income $58.3 billion. Cash from operations $50.3 billion against $27.4 billion a year earlier.

One line worth pausing on. GAAP diluted EPS was $2.39. Adjusted EPS was $1.87. GAAP came in higher, which runs backwards adjusted figures normally flatter the result. The gap is gains on NVIDIA's equity holdings, which the adjusted number strips out. So the headline GAAP figure contains something other than selling chips.

Guidance for Wednesday: revenue of $91.0 billion plus or minus 2%, roughly 12% sequential and 95% year on year, with GAAP gross margin of 74.9% plus or minus 50 basis points. It assumes zero China Data Center compute revenue. Last quarter there were no Hopper shipments to China at all, against $4.6 billion in the same quarter a year earlier.

The pattern nobody prices: this would be the fifth consecutive quarter where a beat was followed by a lower stock. August 2025 lower, November 2025 down 3%, February 2026 down 5%, May 2026 lower again on a beat and a raise.

Three things that would actually matter. Margin, because on Sunday Bloomberg reported NVIDIA is raising AI server prices by over 15% as memory costs climb, the same cost pressure that had Samsung raising foundry prices last week. China, because guidance assumes none of it. And commitments, at $119.0 billion in supply obligations against $25.8 billion of inventory.

One more thing. From this quarter NVIDIA reports two platforms, Data Center and Edge Computing, instead of its previous segments. Comparability breaks at the exact print everyone is watching.

So here is the question. After four straight quarters of beats being sold, what would it actually take to change the reaction?

Not a recommendation. DYOR. NFA.

20/08/2026

Merck and Moderna reported topline Phase 3 data yesterday. INTerpath-001 tested intismeran autogene, an mRNA therapy built individually for each patient, coding up to 34 neoantigens drawn from their own tumour's mutational signature, combined with Keytruda in resected high-risk melanoma. It met the primary endpoint and key secondary endpoints.

Moderna closed at 174.38, up 176.97% on 199 million shares. Merck closed at 152.20, up 12.60%.

Same trial, same drug, same result. One moved fourteen times more than the other.

The difference is the denominator. Keytruda is one of the largest drug franchises in the world, so for Merck this is incremental. For Moderna, oncology is the entire thesis.

The monthly charts make it clearer than the daily ones. Merck's move is a new high on a trend that has been running for eighteen years. Moderna's is one green candle off the floor of a collapsed bubble, from roughly 480 in 2021 to under 30 this year. A rebound and a continuation are not the same thing.

Which raises the question worth arguing about: does a single Phase 3 readout justify repricing an entire platform, or only one asset?

Not a recommendation. DYOR. NFA.

19/08/2026

The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index closed Tuesday down 4.98% in a single session, below its 10-day EMA with RSI at 47.76.

The trigger wasn't chip demand. It was the 30-year Treasury yield reaching 5.32%, its highest since 2007, with Japan's 10-year at a three-decade high, Germany's 30-year at its highest since 2011 and France's since 2008.

Long rates set the discount rate. High-multiple growth is priced on cash flows years out, which makes it the longest-duration equity exposure there is. When the long end moves, that is what breaks first.

On Wednesday's open the Korea Exchange suspended program sell orders for five minutes, a sidecar, the circuit breaker for algorithmic selling. It is a mechanism most people never see because it rarely fires.

Worth holding onto: SK Hynix is down 11.19% this week and still up 57.85% over six months. The unwind has barely touched the rally that came before it.

So which is the anomaly — this week, or the six months before it?

Not a recommendation. DYOR. NFA.

18/08/2026

Two days ago I posted that markets were pricing almost none of the Iran conflict. Volatility had just closed at its lowest level of 2026 and four major indices sat at the top of their ranges.

Since then: the VIX is up 12.6%, Brent has risen for a third straight session to $91.45, and the Nikkei snapped a five-day winning streak with a 2.7% drop.

But the clearest move isn't in equities. On Monday the 30-year Treasury yield touched 5.311% the highest since June 2007. Japan's 10-year hit a three-decade high. France is paying the most to borrow since 2009.

The 60-day memorandum expired Monday and Trump said he isn't interested in extending it. Five vessels transited the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday. None on Sunday. Thirty-one the weekend before.

The repricing started in the bond market, not the fear gauge.

The question now is whether equity volatility catches up, or the bond market is wrong.

Not a recommendation. DYOR. NFA.

17/08/2026

Berkshire Hathaway raised its Delta Air Lines stake to 8.7% last week.
Most of the coverage stopped at that number. The interesting one is the 1.3 points above it.

Cross 10% of a company and you become a Section 16 insider: every purchase and sale disclosed within two business days, and any profit taken inside six months goes back to the company. Buffett has said in public that he keeps Berkshire below that line because it complicates life.

Berkshire has crossed it once with Delta. In February 2020 the stake was 11.2%. Over two days at the start of April it sold about 13 million shares and landed at 9.2%. Then it sold the rest and stayed out of airlines for six years.

The filing itself: Schedule 13G/A, signed 14 August. 57,320,000 shares, up from 39,809,456 in March. Sole voting power, zero. Shared voting power, all of it. Rule 13d-1(b), with the certification that the shares are not held to influence control. Position reported as of 30 June, filed on the 45-day deadline.

One more thing worth separating. Delta's June quarter is being reported as record revenue of $17.7bn, up 14%. That is the adjusted figure. On GAAP the same quarter shows $19.76bn, up 18.7%, and net income of $1.60bn, down 25%. Both numbers are disclosed. Only one of them is in the financial statements.

The next amendment is due 14 November.

Not a recommendation. Just what the documents say. Sources in the first comment.

16/08/2026

The US–Iran deadline expires tomorrow. Sixty days after the Islamabad memorandum was signed on June 17 and the two sides can't agree on whether it's even being extended.

Meanwhile, what actually moved in those sixty days wasn't diplomacy. The US naval blockade was reinstated on July 14. CENTCOM's count as of mid-August: more than 55 commercial vessels redirected, three disabled, two boarded. One Panama-flagged ship took two Hellfire missiles into its engine room after ignoring warnings.

12/04/2017

Betting against Tesla was a very dangerous game to play.

Tesla's stock is up 46% so far in 2017.

25/12/2016

Trump's Cabinet

Trump’s $6 billion cabinet: Mostly men, mostly white and not much government experience

24/08/2015

Black Monday !

Asian stocks swooned further on Monday, touching multi-year lows, as the meltdown in China's equity markets accelerated in early trade.