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Tag: risk

Technology Sector Serves Up Critical New Pension Risks…
That was quick. Half the year gone already but no World War III, no AI ending humanity and no gains for all those crypto lemmings who increased the wealth of the Trump family by $1.4 billion. The Donald deftly sidestepped the crypto shake down with the reassuring deflection of a practiced mobster – “The stock market is going up…Everybody’s profiting”. Sure, Jan. Between Love Island and the upcoming weekend sports-fest one can understand people lacking a little financial focus. So, I will keep it brief today. I’d like to take a look at a number of technology sector financial milestones which have been achieved and then flag a couple of unintended consequences, and probably pension risks. First, the milestones….
- Tech-heavy Nasdaq Index gained 20% in H1 vs S&P 500 up 9.5%.
- Semiconductor/chip sector went rocketed 82% in the same 6 months (Nvidia, Broadcom, Intel etc)
- Memory chip stocks like Sandisk, Micron, Hynix and Samsung are up a whopping 120% in H1.
- Research house, Gartner, say AI spending will hit $2.6 TRILLION in 2026.
- The AI hyper-scalers – Google, MSFT, Amazon and Meta – are set to spend $650 billion on AI infrastructure in 2026.
- The combined weight of AI-focused stocks across hyperscaling, semiconductor chips, power, hardware and software tots up to 51% of the total value of the S&P 500 index.
- Nine major AI companies accounted for almost half of global technology borrowing, raising $122 billion in corporate bonds in a single year to fund data centres and infrastructure.
So, my first observation based on these milestones is that, if your pension is tracking global/US stock markets, then there is a strong possibility you are ‘running’ a significant bet on AI without actually realising it. It’s what the pensions/wealth industry might refer to as a ‘concentration risk’. And, I think the following headlines are flagging a few other AI risks right now….
- OpenAI Leans Toward waiting Until Next Year For IPO – New York Times
- Tesla Caps Employee AI Spend At $200 Per Week After Adoption Push – The Information
- OpenAI in early talks to give 5% stake to US government – The Guardian
OpenAI, as a reminder, is attached to almost $1 trillion of AI infrastructure projects and the ‘mood music’ in the above headlines is not great. These projects have been funded by trillions of equity and debt from technology and banking partners. So, these partners must be wondering why OpenAI feels the need to grease Donald Trump’s tiny toddler fingers. I’m wondering too, but speculation gets us nowhere. Of course, the complete anti-Donald antidote is truth, numbers, facts and genuine science. So, I was intrigued to come across some excellent research by former colleagues of mine at Quant Insight. These guys use big AI computational power and principal component analysis (PCA) to strip out all the ‘noise’ attached to the pricing/trading behaviour of financial instruments in the equity, debt and FX markets. The benefit of this huge analytical undertaking is to identify the key factors/drivers of a share price or bond price in the current market environment/regime. This is what they found was driving the $10 trillion semiconductor sector ETF (SOXX) which rocketed 80% in Q2 alone….

It turns out that the biggest external (macro) factor driving the share prices of semiconductor companies was….. lower cost of corporate borrowing. Now think about these companies involved in heavy capex manufacturing and infrastructure activities. A glance at the financial milestones above and trillions of dollars of planned investment spend means these tech companies need external funding given their own revenues and cash flow can’t keep up with the pace of investment required. This means technology companies are now borrowing which was never really a feature of these high margin/cash flow companies previously. For pension funds this ALSO means the whole AI infrastructure story is not just a stock market story. Hidden behind the headlines, there is a borrowing, credit, balance sheet story. Now, think about that 51% exposure of the S&P 500 index to AI. You think you’re getting equity and AI exposure but….. you’re also acquiring an exposure to a credit (lending) book as large as many dedicated private credit funds. Now check out the recent headlines on private credit funds.

Actually don’t. Enjoy the weekend sport first!
July 3, 2026
Tales On Tour

Events dear boy. That was Harold Macmillan’s famous response to the query about what can cause government failure. Undoubtedly, there is significant truth attached to that guidance. However, we are currently in an era of unmatched clown-car incompetence, chronic short-termism and self-interest at the highest levels of political power. On Brexit’s 10^th anniversary we are about to welcome the 7^th occupant of 10 Downing Street since that embarrassing day. Who knew Ed Milliband’s scuppering of his brother David’s bid for leadership of the Labour Party would facilitate Brexit passivity and bonkers trade assumptions across the UK political spectrum? Meanwhile, the Russians are discovering Vladimir Putin is the worst military leader in Europe since Olaf the Hairy accidentally ordered 80,000 Viking helmets with the horns on the inside(thank you Blackadder). And, of course, how can we forget the failed casino, burger, vodka, sneaker, NFL, airline, crypto toddler himself….the Orange Emperor with no Hormuz close (!) babbling about reflection swamps in Washington. Prepare for Algae-fa to be designated a single-celled terrorist organization. Despite that swampy distraction, it turns out that the Donald is going to go down in history as the worst-returning oil acquisition strategist after his Venezuela and Iran escapades (unless you have an insider trading account). We seem to be receiving months’ worth of news in mere days so forgive me if I’m a bit event focused. But, I’m not the only one….let’s go on an events tour.

Prediction markets are the hottest thing in the finance world right now. Regulators in the US decided companies like Kalshi and Polymarket were trading derivatives, rather than betting platforms for events from sports to elections to wars. Famously, a US Special Forces sergeant was arrested having placed a trade on Polymarket to win $400,000 on the probability of Maduro losing power in Venezuela….. just before he hopped on a Black Hawk chopper to abduct Maduro and his wife. Maduro isn’t the only one suffering right now. Sports betting companies like Paddy Power/Flutter, William Hill and Bet 365 are losing out to these new ‘events prediction’ players. Kalshi sports volumes are up 300% since the World Cup started and is now valued at $22 billion. For context, global leader Flutter/Paddy Power is currently valued at $17 billion slightly more than Polymarket’s $15 billion value underpinned by a recent $600m investment from the New York-based Intercontinental Exchange (ICE). That’s a big bet but after a recent trip to the UK, I’m beginning to wonder about another event prediction…

Macroeconomic strategists are currently analysing the impact of another economics-light Labour leader in Andy Burnham taking the PM reins in the UK. And lurking in the background is the crypto puppet, Nigel Farage, anticipating a general election win in a few years. At last, thanks to the excellent Sally Nugent on BBC, the ‘ordinary man’ mask is slipping off Nigel (the car crash interview is worth a watch) as are the Reform Party’s electoral hopes. However, Westminster intrigue could amount to a financial distraction. It was acutely apparent during the worst of the Iran war volatility that the UK’s sovereign debt/bonds did worse than most other major advanced economy financial assets. That’s a very worrying signal. It means the UK is considered a ‘vulnerable’ sovereign risk. So, here’s an event prediction not being discussed in the UK financial or political press right now. My personal view is that the UK’s 8^th political leader (after Burnham) will be the IMF/Troika who will have to impose financial sanity on the nation. Just saying, but there’s a huge amount of evidence that the UK has failed to do very much over the last 3 decades…

In recent weeks, both on a recent IMI panel in Dublin and at a business lunch in London, the theme of under-investment was raised as a huge factor in UK decline. It is striking that the UK has quietly lagged at the bottom of the G7 rankings by corporate spending in 24 of the last 30 years. UK investment averaged 23.7% of GDP between 1970 and 1990. But, after that it fell by a quarter, to an annual average of just 17.9%. In contrast, other major OECD economies have, on average, kept their investment levels above 20% of GDP. Back in 2024, I also had highlighted this shocking lack of long-term planning:

“The Institute for Public Policy Research estimates the under-investment in business at $500 billion less than what other comparable OECD countries have invested since 2005. Public sector investment (infrastructure) was a further $200 billon below the G7 average. All in, this chronic lack of investment places the UK 27^th out of 30 OECD countries.”

Thatcherism might need to be reviewed. At least, the English football team is in better shape these days. In fact, sport is on my mind too.

Closer to home, the return of world-class tennis to Ireland at the Dublin ATP Challenger Tour event at Elm Park opened eyes up to the possibilities of showcasing memorable sporting experiences. There is a reason why sports franchises, festival events, city-break tourism and concert tickets continue to smash valuation records. The experiential industry plays to scarcity, living in the moment and shared memories. Check out the acceleration of NBA franchise valuations from 2020 to 2025. Utah Jazz was acquired for a record $1.66 billion in 2020, but in 2025 the LA Lakers were bought for a new record franchise value of $10 billion. That’s a 6x shift in asset values. So, just as Big Tech companies have become bigger than sovereign states (and borders), it feels like sport will be a border-less global platform. Indeed, the recent reports about an ice hockey franchise coming to a Dublin home (in Cherrywood) and a brand new stadium could be flagging some very interesting long-term thinking? Follow that puck, and reach for the stars….literally.

One can marvel or guffaw at SpaceX’s peak post-IPO valuation near $3 trillion, but there are big lessons for Europe. Global business in many communications and technology sectors is dominated by quasi-monopolies. That global monopolistic ‘north star’ for start-up founders in the US seems to be a cultural differentiator. Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Netflix, Nvidia and Meta dominate their sub-sectors and have benefitted from the massive depth of US capital markets prepared to back global domination. We should, of course, celebrate the recent $3.6 billion exit by the founders of Fin/Intercom. But, at a strategic level, Europe needs to mobilize all its financial innovation and resources to plot the building of trillion dollar global champions over the coming years. So, on a positive note for both Europe and the UK, I’m looking at one huge sector still fragmented and missing the economies of scale which digital dominance can deliver. I’m thinking banking where London is still a major financial centre combining centuries of financial experience, stable common law, a concentration of necessary skillsets and….rapid innovation.

The UK is the second biggest fintech hub on the planet behind only the United States. In 2025 UK fintechs raised $3.6 billion across 534 separate deals, more deals than the next five European countries combined. Also, London is home to Revolut, now worth around $75 billion and the most valuable private tech company in Europe. In fact, 8 of the top 10 fintechs in Europe come from the UK. It’s entirely possible London will produce Europe’s first trillion dollar financial services company. Ironically, with my monopoly/north star thinking cap on, the much-maligned fragmentation of Europe’s banking market could help the growth of a new trillion dollar financial franchise. Currently, Europe is home to over 9,000 banking entities. That’s not sustainable, but we might have to wait for events dear boy.

June 25, 2026
Watch Big Leadership Changes…

We do need heroes. As Irish rugby lost one this week (F.S. RIP), I was reminded of those dark days in the 1970s and 1980s and the importance of uplifting heroes at a time when Ireland needed leadership and inspiration. Regular readers of this weekly piece will know I have been very concerned about leadership on a global level for quite some time. The challenges of the breakdown of world order, AI, Ukraine, Gaza/Lebanon, climate change and the success of misinformation at the expense of truth, are crying out for leaders. At times, the challenges feel overwhelming. However, we can still be inspired and encouraged. Think back to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24^th February 2022. The consensus view was that Ukraine would be conquered in a matter of days. As the conflict moves into its 5^th year and surpasses even the duration of WW2 for the former Soviet Union, all is utterly changed. And, Europe might have a genuine hero.

The 82^nd anniversary of the pivotal D-Day “Operation Overlord” landings of World War II were celebrated this weekend. Melvin Hurwitz, 99 years old and one of the last surviving veterans of the Omaha Beach landing, was back there again. As was Ukraine’s President Zelensky. Melvin took the opportunity to pull Zelensky close to him and the stage microphones picked up the veteran’s words – “You’re the saviour of the people. You’re my hero”. Zelensky quickly responded, “No, no. You saved Europe. You are our hero”. Classy stuff. Two men, who both know the value and ideals of defeating totalitarian aggression. Meanwhile, a criminal grifter in Washington presides over the East Wing of the White House lying in ruins and the South Lawn playing host to a UFC fighting cage. Institutional vandalism on full display. Trump is not alone in being exposed by true heroes. Vladimir Putin woke up last Friday morning for his “Davos-for-Dictators” world economic forum to see the host city, St Petersburg, 1,100 kms from Ukraine, buzzed by drones and rocked by explosions at fuel/energy and Baltic Fleet military facilities. Incredible. Four years ago, drone “technology” amounted to grenades dropped through tank turret hatches from quadcopters purchased at Circuit City. This year Ukraine will manufacture 4 million drones of dizzying long-range and short-range capabilities.

Arguably, Friday 5^th June 2026 might well have been D-Day (drone day) for Vladimir Putin. Ukraine is ‘winning’ this war. Russian supply chains and oil refining assets are being decimated, and military casualties at more than 1,000 per day are exceeding the numbers of replacement troops being rushed to the front lines. The Ukrainians are now destroying Russian battlefield positions without using any ground troops, just unmanned ground vehicles and watchful lethal drones in the skies. At a fraction of the cost of the annual $1 trillion US defence budget, Ukraine has changed ‘war gaming’ assumptions and possibly revealed the obsolescence of large portions of modern military weaponry and delivery equipment. Ukraine is not the only European technology leader receiving attention this week.

Nvidia might capture the financial market headlines with its AI semiconductor chip dominance. However, it is interesting to read an increasing number of stories about AI chip competition and efforts by Big Tech like Google and Microsoft to customize their own AI chips. Let’s just say monopolistic 75%-80% gross margins enjoyed by Nvidia might not be a long-term sure thing. In fact, the entire AI chip ecosystem has a number of monopoly-like players. What about the equipment essential for every leading-edge chip manufacturing facility? Well, the standout monopolistic player in extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines is a Dutch company. ASML, based in Veldhoven, was only founded in 1984, but has just become Europe’s most valuable company with a market capitalisation of more than $600 billion. Its customers are global, Chinese, TSMC, Apple suppliers, Intel, Hynix, Samsung etc. The mention of the last two companies is deliberate. Both these Korean manufacturers of memory chips for AI are considered ‘essential’ and have earned $1 trillion valuations. My sense is that ASML (and its relatively small 53% gross margins) is even more critical for the AI chip ecosystem…..so Europe might soon have its first trillion dollar 1980s ‘baby’.

Sticking with European leadership, but at a sovereign level, Germany is fast losing stature. The failure to secure the ‘slam dunk’ certainty of a rotating seat on the UN Security Council reflects Germany’s abdication of leadership on anything from Ukraine to Gaza to China. The fact that relatively small European powers like Austria and Portugal were trusted more by voting nations to bring leadership to the UN has caused national introspection, and fury. And, the next European piece of leadership news won’t ease Teutonic tantrums. Germany’s perennial European rival, France, has just secured a whopping €75 billion investment commitment from Japan’s Softbank to focus its European data centre building efforts in the Gallic nation. Despite Macron’s domestic unpopularity, it does feel like France, with AI wonder-kid Mistral in the innovation vanguard, is stealing a European march in the global AI race. Of course, not all wonder-kids grow up to deliver.

My final thought on leadership change is in the crypto world. Bitcoin is now off 50% from its all-time highs, and one recent development hints at further trouble ahead. One of the key cheerleaders of the Bitcoin revolution has been Michael Saylor and his publicly listed MicroStrategy vehicle. Saylor’s vehicle has been a perma-buyer of Bitcoin since 2020. This dogged purchasing strategy has accumulated almost 850,000 Bitcoins which equates to 4% of total Bitcoin supply. But, last week the MicroStrategy vehicle tried to sell ….. 32 Bitcoins. Yes, thirty two at a value of just $2.5 million (circa $75,000 price). And the crypto market puked. Bitcoin has dropped below $60,000 and MicroStrategy’s share price is 78% off its all-time highs. Saylor’s strategy is now sitting on nearly $12 billion of unrealized losses. And, I’ve seen him explain and try to give comfort to investors in US TV interviews. It wasn’t pretty, or in any way financially logical. As the Strait of Hormuz continues to be strangled in non-negotiation by the “Art of The Deal” self-promoter, we should be wary of cheerleaders. They usually don’t turn out to be heroes.

June 7, 2026
Ten WOW Moments This Week
I feel good. Maybe it’s an Arsenal triumph thing? Ok, I won’t go there but I do think we need to absorb some astonishing other developments this week. Dare I say it, even Republicans are astonished by their own crime family in the White House. Currently, Republican politicians are fleeing Washington to avoid precarious Capitol Hill votes, press scrutiny and global ridicule as the world digests the single most corrupt action by any US President in history. The phrasing I use is almost Trumpian but deserved this time. A self-dealing ‘settlement’ between the Trump family and the US government (via its IRS taxation department) is truly one for the ages. The establishment of a $1.776 billion ‘slush fund’ to spend on anyone the Donald wants, as well as a full waiver on Trump family tax audits in perpetuity is finally generating senior GOP leader outrage….and rebellion. This is ‘end of days’ stuff only missing a Caligula-like attempt to appoint a loyal horse (or Eric) to the Senate. However, the real WOW stuff is to be found elsewhere. Join me on a quick whistlestop tour of developments which have genuinely earned their superlatives.
- The $5 trillion AI chip superstar stock, Nvidia, reported quarterly earnings this week. Again, as the most analysed company on the planet, the company managed to exceed revenue and earnings forecasts in the quarter, and then increased its guidance for the following quarter way ahead of the estimates in dozens of analyst spreadsheets. But, the real wow bit was Nvidia’s CFO forecasting global AI spend of $4 trillion PER YEAR by 2030.
- IPO markets have been sleepy in recent years but get ready for a very hot IPO summer. SpaceX, Open AI and Anthropic are expected to list on US stock exchanges with a combined valuation of $3.5 trillion. For context, that equates to the GDP of France! More crucially, IPO exits means investment capital is freed up to be re-invested in the next SpaceX or Google. For illustration, Founders Fund, Valor Equity Partners, and Sequoia are set for over $100B, $60B, and $20B windfalls respectively from SpaceX alone in the biggest VC exit ever.
- Ukraine rarely gets the headlines these days but something’s up. Vladimir Putin is increasingly paranoid about his personal safety as Russian advances in Ukraine stall or go into reverse. Losses are now approaching Vietnam war (57,000 US deaths) levels every 6 weeks. Meanwhile, deep-strike capabilities of Ukrainian drones into the Russian motherland are reaching targets 1,500 kilometres away. Military and infrastructure targets are being picked off at will by Ukrainian drones and there are emerging reports of large parts of Russia’s road network littered with destroyed military equipment. This writer’s personal view is that Putin’s removal and Ukraine peace could be the summer wow geopolitical moment.
- The UAE’s announcement to transform healthcare, public services and federal operations with AI — including deploying Agentic AI across 50% of government services and training 80,000 employees in AI technologies — feels like a significant inflection point. The commitment to train 80,000 public service employees is particularly noteworthy.
- The structural tailwind of generational wealth transfer continues to be under-estimated, particularly by those convinced 5 times a year that financial asset markets are going to crash. In Europe alone, €3.5 trillion of wealth will shift into new hands by 2030. That means new relationships and new wealth tools. So, please DO pay attention to this enormous structural trend and possibly take a look at NestiFi which is raising funds with Spark right now.
- The biggest stock market move this week was not actually the US, despite Nvidia’s best efforts. Actually, it was South Korea’s KOSPI index which rocketed 8% in one trading session adding more than $400 billion of value to the market. The reason for the move was Samsung’s last minute deal with its worker unions, an agreement to pay a $26 billion AI bonus to employees. Wow. However, don’t forget Samsung is now a trillion dollar company and accounts for 30% of South Korea’s stock market value.
- Not all news in Asia is good news. One can’t help feeling an untethered Japanese bond market could cause the global economy some real pain. Japan’s bonds are selling off in ways not seen since 1999. The current yield on Japan’s 30-year debt instruments is 4.2% (yields rise as prices fall). Watch this very carefully.
- Bond and debt prices rising globally are the critical risk factor right now but the M&A market is showing continued confidence that debt markets will settle down. For illustration, the electric utility merger deal in the US between NextEra Energy and Dominion Energy is a $67 billion whopper bet, and biggest ever seen in the sector. Again, AI and its insatiable demand for power is driving deals in the sector.
- As the Strait of Hormuz focuses minds on supply chains and logistics, there was a double reminder of two big trends from Japan. Logistics is a ‘hot’ sector for private equity, as is Japan. So, it was interesting $4.6B Japan-listed logistics firm NIKKON Holdings is exploring going private, with Bain Capital, Warburg Pincus, and Blackstone seen as potential bidders. That’s a helpful tailwind for our own portfolio name, Net Feasa, which has just this week teamed up with network giant, Ericsson, to deliver 5G IoT connectivity on container ships. Watch that connectivity trend too – Ericsson’s share price is up 44% and Nokia’s has rocketed 145% year-to-date. Wowzers.
- Finally, as Europe prepares a €25 billion IPO of its tank manufacturer, KNDS, with 80% ownership by French and German government… it’s worth thinking about other traditional areas of German engineering prowess. The AI data centre race for power is driving massive demand for grid/transformer equipment and you should check out Siemens’ latest margins in this activity. Margins(EBITDA) in recent years have more than trebled from 5% to 18%. The old economy and real assets can still wow.
All of the above are big themes to keep an eye on, but now it’s time to dream. Can Leinster follow Arsenal with another long-awaited triumph? That would be WOW too…..
May 22, 2026
The Truth Can Hurt ….. Investment
Forty years ago this week, reactor 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded. The human and monetary costs were in the thousands and hundreds of billions respectively. More difficult to quantify was Chernobyl’s contribution to the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, I did re-watch the excellent HBO series Chernobyl in recent days and was struck by a non-monetary factor which might resonate for those currently enduring daily White House appeals to ignore our eyes and ears. The words of Professor Valery Legasov of Moscow State University in the opening scene of Chernobyl seem almost prescient – “What is the cost of lies? It’s not that we’ll mistake them for the truth. The real danger is that if we hear enough lies, then we no longer recognize the truth at all.” For the USSR, the truth of technological decline, an obsolete economic model, and the inability of centralised power to deal with the complexity of a more connected global economy was easy to see. But fatally, not recognized. Fast forward to today, and we could be in similar TRUTH territory….

Don’t worry, we won’t go down any conspiracy theory rabbit holes. So, no need to wonder why a would-be assassin might gain access without security challenge to the Washington Hilton and within one floor of almost the entire Trump regime senior leadership at Saturday’s annual White House Correspondents dinner. If the current head of the FBI is nicknamed “J. Edgar Boozer” then the truth is closer to incompetence than conspiracy. Similarly, but with far greater global economic impact, if Germany’s normally cautious Chancellor Merz is saying that the US has “no clear exit strategy” and is being “humiliated” by Iran, then the truth is that the US does not really “hold all the cards” or the keys to “Schrödinger’s Strait” of Hormuz. The consequences are plain to see as oil prices soar past $110 per barrel again and OPEC’s number 3 producer, UAE, just left the cartel after 59 years of membership.

Clearly, the old world order alliances from NATO to OPEC are fragmenting. And, that’s before anyone dares to mention the eye-catching new Pew (March 2026) poll showing 60% of Americans now view Israel unfavourably — up from 42% in 2022. That’s almost as bad a swing as Trump’s voter approval on dealing with inflation shifting to a net MINUS 40, and national Consumer Sentiment surveys (Michigan/Ipsos) diving to the lowest levels seen since 1978. And yet….

There’s a danger we have been distracted and miss other truths. Watch what people do, not what they feel. For example US consumer sentiment might be plummeting but US retail sales are running ‘hot’ at 7.7% year-on-year growth, the fastest growth pace seen since 2022. Meanwhile, fossil fuels and Strait of Hormuz blockades (unless you’re a Russian oligarch’s yacht – I know…Russia, Russia, Russia) might be dominating the gloomy headlines but there’s more positive long-term developments accelerating at speed. If you have been unable to copy or track Baron Trump’s oil trading strategies or share the Fox Business congratulations of Maria Bartiromo on Eric Trump’s new $24 million contract with the Pentagon(yup), then there’s good news and bad news. The bad news is you’re not making millions on risk-free trading or commerce, but the good news is you won’t need a fitting for an orange jump suit. However, away from the fossil fuel supply crisis, check out the following quiet developments which could hurt your investment portfolio if you miss them…
- In 2025, for the first time in history, clean power met every single unit of new global electricity demand.
- Renewable energy sources (33.8%) officially crushed coal (33.0%) for the first time in 100 years.
- Electric vehicle (EV) sales in emerging markets have surged 80%.
- In Europe, EV sales soared 51% in March while EV sales smash through 25% of the total global market.
- Chinese company, CATL, just unveiled a battery with a 1,500km range that charges in 6 minutes
- China exports of batteries, EVs and solar cells were up 34%, 53%, 80% respectively last month.
A quick glance at the last two developments might suggest another uncomfortable truth; China is winning this global electrification ‘war’ and arguably is the winner of the Persian Gulf one too. However, there’s clearly only one country, USA, winning the global race for AI investment capital right now. The AI chip superstar stock, Nvidia, has just clocked up another $1.25 trillion increase in market value in less than 4 weeks. Nvidia’s current market capitalisation of $5.25 TRILLION is just shy of the entire value of Germany’s GDP and surpassed by only those of China and the USA itself. Google and Nvidia’s combined market value is now over $10 trillion.

AI is acting like a ‘death star’ for other investment sectors as it sucks up huge amounts of investment dollars. In Q1 of this year software stocks collapsed 29% from their highs while 81% of all venture capital funding ($265 billion out of $330 billion) went to AI start-ups, with 65% of that going to just 4 companies (Source: Pitchbook). You’ll keep hearing and reading that word “concentration” and how investment capital is racing into ever narrower niches within technology. However, it might be worth keeping a mix of old and new names on the investment radar. Here’s two to watch:

NEW: Anthropic, the parent of my new best work friend this week, Claude, is apparently trading in private markets right now at a $1 trillion valuation. Of course, it does help valuations if your annualised revenue jumps from $9 billion to $30 billion….in just 3 months.

OLD: Samsung, the unwieldy Korean conglomerate of TV, phone and memory chip manufacture, is going to be the most profitable company in the world by 2027. Bloomberg reckon Samsung will edge out Nvidia for top spot with a whopping operating profit of $330 billion. Yep, good old memory chips (DRAM, NAND etc) are needed by Claude, Gemini and all the other agentic chatbots to remember you (and your prompts).

So, that’s all good for now. But, let’s get back to the Truth thing. And, we’re not talking about AI chatbot hallucinations, or even Trumpolini’s Jesus delusions. It’s much more basic than that. In the middle of all this AI euphoria sits the company who kicked things off with ChatGPT, Open AI, and its CEO, Sam Altman. This week we heard OpenAI are behind on planned revenues and new subscriber growth targets. These things happen in fast growing tech stories, but OpenAI is attached to $1.2 trillion of AI infrastructure deals where OpenAI’s commitment is $600 billion despite current annual cash burn of…… $17 billion. Furthermore, OpenAI does not have a huge balance sheet like Google, Microsoft or Amazon. So, credibility and confidence matters. And, I’m concerned.

Altman’s career history per various in-depth media articles (the New Yorker one is best) is littered with massive commercial relationship breakdowns and a common theme. Loss of trust. Phrases like “profound mistrust”, “lack of candour”, “consistent pattern of lying” and “deceptive and chaotic behaviour” are used to describe the CEO of a company seeking to publicly list (IPO) in New York this year with a valuation of more than $800 billion. This week Altman faces Elon Musk in court for a $150 billion lawsuit brought by the latter regarding governance at OpenAI. Let’s just say the potential damage to Altman’s credibility could have ‘nuclear’ consequences for the AI financial ecosystem. Watch carefully and remember the fragility of the Open AI balance sheet in the context of its trillion dollar commitments. Then think of Chernobyl and Valery Legasov’s most powerful words which we have cited before on these pages…

“Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later that debt is paid”
April 28, 2026
Summer Looking Hot….

Last week was biblical. Firstly, President Trump became Jesus online, before dodging to “doctor” retreat on evangelical outrage. Secondly, Vice President, JD Vance, fresh from blowing up Viktor Orban’s election chances in Hungary, told the Pope to tread carefully on….theology. And then, Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, presented a biblical verse, Ezekiel 25:17, at a Pentagon prayer service which turned out to be more fiction than truth. In fact, it was Pulp Fiction and the words delivered by Samuel L. Jackson’s character in Quentin Tarantino’s cult classic. Who needs The Gimp character with these White House slaves to ignorance?? Sadly, there’s little chance of ball gags for the Trump crime gang just yet as they ‘flood the zone’ with reality-defying nonsense. Meanwhile, our job in the macro risk world is to look behind the eye-rolling headlines connected to the on/off blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, and make sense of real events and numbers. Coincidence or not, I was about to write a rather upbeat piece before any Persian Gulf news broke. Here’s the real stuff which caught my eye away from the Oval Office clown show…

Big Tech stocks leading a $4 trillion market rebound – Bloomberg

Systematic hedge funds bought stocks at a record pace last week – Reuters

Global Venture Capital (VC) investment surged to a record $330 billion in Q1 – KPMG

Emerging Market bond sales are soaring again as investors dive back into risk – Bloomberg

It feels like markets and investors have moved on, and confidence is building rapidly. Goldman Sachs research reported that March was the best month in a decade for long/short trading hedge funds. The actual average return in one month for these type of funds was 7.7%, and will be music to the ears of investment banks who need these huge institutional generators of commissions, M&A fees and securities lending to be “feeling good” and chasing opportunity/risk. Indeed, quarterly updates from all the US investment banks showed Goldman Sachs delivering a best-ever quarter for their equities trading operation, and the Guardian has reported almost $50 billion of profits (Q1) generated by just 6 banks – Goldman, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, Citigroup, Wells Fargo and Bank of America. It’s all about confidence and we’ve been waiting a while for the IPO market to come to life. In the private equity world, and the Spark world, this public listing channel (IPOs) is critical in providing the much needed ‘exits’ while pumping liquidity flows (and confidence) through the financial ecosystem. The latest numbers look encouraging.

In Q1 there were 22 IPOs in the US with a combined stock sale value of $9.4 billion compared to just 15 exits the year before and $7.9 billion of liquidity generated (Source: PwC). So, the pace is picking up but we must brace ourselves for the ‘galactico’ listings promised later in the year. Elon Musk’s SpaceX alone could raise $75 billion on a $2 trillion valuation and the listings of OpenAI and Anthropic will be massive conduits of capital back into the AI ecosystem. War or no war, there seems to be no end to investor demand for a slice of AI action. CB Insights research showed that global venture capital (VC) markets invested $226 billion in AI in Q1 of this year. That compares to the $217 billion raised by private AI companies in ALL of 2025. Note that the ‘concentration’ effect familiar to many observers of the ‘Magnificent 7′ tech dominance of public markets can also be seen in private markets; more than 94% of the value of Q1’s VC funding was funnelled into deals worth more than $100m. But it’s not all AI giddiness…

The biggest industrial IPO this century was just completed last week. Madison Air Solutions, in the ‘hot’ HVAC sub-sector critical to hi-tech construction, officially claimed the title of the largest industrial IPO since UPS in 1999, pricing its $2.23 billion offering at the top of its range and surging 18.5% in its Thursday debut. Madison Air delivers the cooling systems for servers in the data centre space but one can’t help feeling things are generally hotting up, and could make for a very interesting summer. Of course, there are big ‘IFs” on the macro geopolitical front but the longer-term picture is beginning to reveal some emerging trends. In particular, I’m watching Jeff Bezos going BIG into physical robotics and manufacturing automation with a planned $100 billion fund named Project Prometheus. It is noteworthy how often the AI chip king, Jensen Huang of Nvidia, refers to robotics as the next multi-trillion dollar wave of the AI economy after agentic services (eg Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT etc). However, there’s another agency service which is quietly picking up speed and needs watching.

We have written before about Waymo and autonomous driving passenger miles growing rapidly. So, the most recent data from start-up funding database, Crunchbase, is striking. Autonomous vehicle start-ups have already raised a record $21.4B across just 34 deals in 2026 year-to-date, versus $5.9B across 99 deals in all of 2025. Waymo led with a $16 billion round at a $126 billion valuation, while Shield AI raised $2 billion and Wayve raised $1.3 billion. Again, automation and human-collaboration are very much our future, and are driving (!) investor animal spirits. This also confirms the theme of a book I cite often, The Future Is Faster Than You Think, and highlights how technologies are converging – think battery power, AI, and robotics in combination. Feel free to follow the ridiculous Trump headlines, but there’s a danger you’ll miss the bigger picture. It’s hotting up out there….

April 20, 2026
Time To Look At The Big Savings Picture

As Artemis II hurtles towards a lunar orbit we are reminded of how distance can give us new perspectives on our little planet. So too for time and our savings habits. Funnily enough, those perspectives are more reminders than new lessons. And, it’s definitely a good week for reminders. Top prize for memory-jogging was the Reform UK’s housing spokesperson, Simon Dudley, whose outstanding contribution to post-Grenfell safety debate was that “everyone dies in the end” while attacking current safety regulations. Thus ended Dudley’s 23-day reign as Reform housing guru – even Igor Tudor’s stint at Spurs was 44 days. Of course, on a bigger stage, Pam Bondi learned a very old lesson this week that in a lawless society, the shelf-life of an Attorney General is limited no matter how good the cosmetic surgery. Let’s not go there with ex “ICE Barbie”, Kirsti Noem, except to say that these evangelical-political types really do have the most astonishing fetishes hidden in those bible-stacked closets. Poor Cricket clearly knew too much. Now, let’s take a look at areas of investment where we might need to know a bit more.

In the week of Ireland’s first Savings & Investment Forum, we must applaud any efforts to put our savings capital to better use. The critical impetus is to move from a ‘savings’ no-risk culture to an investment wealth-creation culture. However, I’m personally concerned the investment options in new tax and incentive frameworks might be quite narrow. So, as luck would have it, the most striking thing I read this week highlights the dangers of a relatively ‘narrow’ approach to investment. Credit to Ben Carlson of A Wealth of Common Sense for highlighting the updated findings of Hendrick Bessembinder’s work. If that name sounds familiar it’s because we quote Bessembinder’s work extensively in our EIIS Private Portfolio brochure and newsletters. The Professor of Finance at Arizona State University in a 2018 research paper made a very powerful case for diversification, or a ‘portfolio approach’ to investing. His view, and mine, is that ‘picking winners’ is beyond the capability of all but a handful of people on the planet. Hence, my encouragement to build multi-year portfolios. His research covering S&P 500 stock returns since 1926 flagged two key features of investing:

**60% of all stocks underperform risk-free government bonds(Treasuries).

**Only a tiny 4% of the entire stock market’s securities (company shares) account for the vast majority of investor gains.

The enormous concentration of performance in just a few stocks is strong justification for just buying ‘the market’ or indexing. Think about the Magnificent 7 or MANGO stocks these days and the ‘cost’ of not being invested in a single name like Nvidia (350,000 % outperformance since 1999). Now, let’s take a look at Bessembinder’s latest updated research with a full 100 years of data in the analysis. The inclusion of an extra 10 years of data shows that concentration of performance has accelerated into an even smaller pool of stocks:

“Over the 1926 to 2016 period studied in Bessembinder (2018), 89 firms accounted for half of the $43 trillion in net wealth creation. After including outcomes for the most recent nine years, just 46 firms account for half of the $91 trillion in net wealth creation over the full century.”

Wowzers! $45 trillion of wealth generated by just 46 companies accounts for more than half of ALL returns over time. However, I want to concentrate on the almost 60% of stocks who don’t even beat cash/Treaury bonds. That’s not a figure which helps the marketing departments of private client stockbrokers or active fund managers. But….. it does help those of us who are trying to increase investment in private assets including venture capital, private equity and infrastructure projects. You might wonder why, given it seems to ‘prove’ that investing can result in many companies failing to beat cash – at last count there’s more than €340 billion in Irish bank accounts. Well, one of the most common rebuttal arguments of investing in young venture capital type opportunities is that “most companies fail”. Now check out that figure from the PUBLIC markets. Yes, 60% of those publicly listed companies fail to beat cash in performance terms. So, here’s the mindset change required for investing in private markets – many of the investments won’t better cash but it’s worth it if you can just find a few winners in your portfolio. Furthermore, that should not merit a guffaw from a professional advisor that those winners are too rare to justify investing in the asset class. Repeat slowly back to him/her that 46 companies over 100 years delivered half of ALL returns in the S&P 500. This week we also received a reminder of what private markets can deliver for early stage investors.

SpaceX has filed paperwork to IPO in June. The plan is to raise $75 billion of new money at a valuation of….. $2 trillion. For historical context, please note that the previous global record IPO was Saudi Aramco which raised $29 billion in 2019. In 2025 the entire US capital markets raised a total of $44 billion across 202 IPO listings. For the valuation curious, SpaceX looks like it’s hoping to raise money at circa 100x this year’s revenues. I think the big picture pointer here is that private asset ‘winners’ can generate an outsized proportion of your overall investment returns while the majority will destroy wealth/purchasing power. However, the big learning reminder today is that this outcome is not much different to what happens in those orderly, liquid, mature public markets.

Hopefully, Europe and Ireland will grasp that lesson and understand that diversification should not stop at publicly listed investments. Each asset class has its own risks but the bigger picture doesn’t look too different, be it public or private assets. FORTY SIX companies tell that 100 year old story. Now, Europe must think about how it can fund its own SpaceX and mobilise the €14 trillion of European household savings sitting in wealth destructive low-yield bank accounts. Yep, FOURTEEN TRILLION. It seems apt as we look to the skies and the possible this week, that Artemis is both the Greek goddess of hunting….and transitions.

April 3, 2026
When Words Are Definitely NOT Our Bonds…
There’s only one thing sicker than an Irish parrot outfit this morning. That’s the global bond market. The biggest bully of them all is sick of the nonsense. Not just the front-running of the US President’s social media posts. The Financial Times rightly flagged this week the gob-smacking scale of corruption and ‘insider’ trading going on close to the Oval Office but, in real financial terms, the pricing reactions of equity and oil markets to Trump’s Monday TACO were relatively muted. Of course, oil prices dipped below $100 earlier in the week but they’re back above $110 now. Similarly, the S&P 500 spiked for a day but it too is back slightly below Monday levels. Arguably, Trump’s words have been losing credibility since his first TACO retreat on tariffs in April last year but there’s a much more dangerous aspect to this credibility failure now. Truth has officially fled the higher echelons of US institutions and that impacts the biggest contracts of them all, United States Treasury bonds’ (or IOUs) credit worthiness with the rest of the world. Here are the headlines you’re not reading…
- The yield on the US 10-year Treasury bond has deteriorated/risen by 13.5% (in yield or cost of money terms) since the Iran war began.
- The yield on the US 20-year Treasury bond has deteriorated/risen by 11% in the same period (25 days!!).
- The yields on US Treasuries are used to price almost everything so the average cost of a mortgage in the US is now at a 7 month high despite job creation being at a multi-year low.
- It’s not just the cost of US assets. The global disruption caused by the Iran ‘operation’ has driven Japanese government bond yields up by 16%.
- UK bond yields above 5% are the highest seen in 20 years.
The price moves above are the ones that really count. And their message is very clear: the damage done to energy infrastructure and global supply chains is inflationary. The bond traders don’t believe a word of what is coming out of the White House and Pentagon propaganda machines. The opening up of the Strait of Hormuz is dependent on Iranian cooperation and the ability of logistics companies to commit their ships and crews to a safer and insurable environment. At current levels of reduced shipping activity, the world is losing 11 million barrels of oil every day, as well as numerous other critical distillates like ammonia, diesel, helium, urea etc. The key point is that bond markets do not “price” temporary cost spikes or supply squeezes. The bond market is explicitly contradicting the Trump regime and suggesting longer-term disruption. In fact, the French government have laid out the following observations:
- 30-40% of Gulf oil refining capacity is destroyed.
- That is the worst energy infrastructure destruction since WW2.
- Full repairs could take 3 years.
Thanks Donald. Actually, you don’t need to thank him. Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, went full North Korea at this week’s National Republican Congressional Committee fundraiser by presenting Trump with a new award. The Guardian reports:

“The president has done so much for the American people and we want to honour him, in some small way, some token of our appreciation for his leadership,” said Mike Johnson, the US House speaker. “So, tonight, we have created a new award.” Johnson then introduced the “America First” award, made up of a golden eagle statue. “We could think of no better title for what that is,” said Johnson. “That’s this beautiful golden statue here – appropriate for the new golden era in America.”

Idolatry and empty words. Asia might have other words right now. Latest headlines suggest crisis:

Pakistan is reducing government working hours to save energy

India is diverting gas from factories to homes

Philippines declares a national emergency

Japan to temporarily lift coal power plant curbs over Hormuz crisis

Clearly, bond markets are looking East and not West for the true story. Indeed, it was striking how most commentators and traders earlier in the week were looking to Tehran to verify whether the US President was telling the truth about ‘negotiations’. Yes, an autocratic theocracy is now more credible than the leader of the ‘free world’.

It’s a very strange world, but I suspect the bond market will have a very big say about how events unfold in the Middle East from here.
March 27, 2026
The War Of Unintended Consequences…

I know. The headline should read “LAW” but where’s the law these days? Certainly, it’s nowhere near Washington as the new Trump fund raising “squeeze” is an emailed request for cash donations in exchange for “private national security briefings” straight from the desk of The Don himself. I kid you not. Anyway, let’s get back to the war, or ‘excursion’ per the Orwellian Oval Office. Clearly, things on the Iran war front are not going to plan. My particular favourite summary of the moment is a delicious one from The Economist: “Although Donald Trump claims to have destroyed 100% of Iran’s military capabilities, the remaining 0% is wreaking havoc on the global economy.” Now, the purpose of this article is not to re-hash all the negative first-order global impacts of the war ranging from higher fuel prices, to supply chain disruption, to inflation, to reduced growth….to interest rate hikes. Yuk! None of this helps financial markets or business in the near term but I’m intrigued by some of the second-order possibilities which could emerge from an extended period of uncertainty. I’m thinking of three areas in particular:

AI Infrastructure: The simple math of a shock to the global economy is that financial flows dramatically shift. Quickly. Extra money will be needed to meet higher energy bills, economic stress etc. That money must come from somewhere else in the system. So, one thing to consider is that the hundreds of billions Saudi Arabia , UAE, and Qatar committed to the funding of AI infrastructure projects might just be needed to rebuild energy infrastructure closer to home. Current estimates of the cost of the attack on Qatar’s Ras Laffan LNG hub is up to $20 billion per annum . And the worst bit, the rebuild could take 5 years – so let’s call that $100 billion. There is a teeny weeny bit of irony here given the US tech broligarchs’ man in the big house (and ballroom) has screwed up royally. Current estimates suggest $4 trillion is needed to build data centres, processing chips, training models, memory chips and storage by 2030. A squeeze on access to that investment capital will favour the biggest balance sheets and cash flows like Google, Microsoft and Amazon. Not for the first time, I worry about OpenAI’s positioning in the middle of all this AI excitement (remember the famous FT graphic) and being attached to more than $1 trillion of AI projects. So might its bankers worry, watching its tiny balance sheet.

Electric Revolution: There was a theory for years that Saudi Arabia was deliberately keeping the oil price lower in order to delay the electric/renewable revolution. Their thinking apparently was that if energy was cheap it would remove the urgency to seek alternatives to fossil fuels. So, with Asian buyers already paying over $170 per barrel of oil we are beginning to see some interesting developments. In a little more than 2 weeks, Chinese EV player, BYD Co, is seeing its showrooms packed with customers wanting to switch to EV models. From Bloomberg….”At a BYD Co car dealership in Manila’s financial district, demand for the Chinese company’s electric vehicles is so high that Matthew Dominique Poh said he’s seen a month’s worth of orders in just the past two weeks.” This feels similar to the Covid-19 acceleration of remote working. Also, spare a thought for US auto manufacturers who have scaled back their EV ambitions to keep the Dearest Leader happy and have written off $55 billion of EV projects. Timing is everything they say…..Get ready for some pretty interesting EV headlines in the coming months.

Defence: Ukraine was the wake-up call when the world’s second most powerful military power turned the Kremlin’s “3 day operation” into a battlefield quagmire which has decimated its stores of equipment and weaponry, incurred more than 1 million of its own military casualties and incredibly has now lasted longer than the Soviet Union’s WW2 conflict with Nazi Germany. Fast forward to today and we are witnessing the world’s most powerful military gain almost total superiority over Iran but now staring down the barrel (!) of a strategic disaster that “nobody ever expected” per the stable genius hurling ketchup against the walls of Mar-a-Lago. The trapping of 20% of the world’s fuel supplies in the Strait of Hormuz and the destruction of critical energy infrastructure in UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar has been achieved with drones which cost as little as $20,000 but require the US to quickly run through their stores of $2m missile air defence weapons. Astonishingly, the Pentagon is looking for an additional $200 billion of budget to fund this “excursion”. However, the bigger picture is that military strategy and economics have utterly changed. Drone warfare developed on the battlefields of Ukraine is the scary future. For some it will be opportunity. Check out the IPO this week of the Ukrainian drone software company, Swarmer, on the Nasdaq. The IPO price was $5 per share but by the close of its first day of trading the share price was $55. Just the 950% gain in one day of trading. Oh, and last year Swarmer had generated just $300,000 of revenues. The US military-industrial complex is having its “ChatGPT” moment and will soon embark on a massive drone warfare investment programme.

Clearly, not all of the above is cheery stuff but it does feel like some ‘leaders’ in business, technology and investment are now facing very different prospects than they planned for just a few short weeks ago. And, there doesn’t seem to be a “TACO” option this time.

March 20, 2026
What’s The Crack…?
God bless the Taoiseach, Micheál Martin’s script writers for his St Patrick Day’s trip to Generalissimo Trump’s Oval Office. The Taoiseach might succeed in avoiding eye contact with Secretary of State, Marco Rubio’s over-sized shiny shoes chosen by the Boss (no seriously), but the usual exchange of pleasantries laced with some colloquial Irish banter could scupper the whole event. As the non-strategic ‘genius’ of trapping 20% of the planet’s oil supplies in the Strait of Hormuz begins to hurt the entire global economy, it would probably be best to avoid slipping “That’s gas!” into the chat, or “Now we’re suckin’ diesel!” or even “What’s the craic?”. Zero craic for the Taoiseach’s advisors anyway. But, on a broader level, the Trump regime bluster is beginning to crack. Current commentariat thinking is that Trump will avoid an Iran quagmire by declaring ‘victory’ soon and flooding the media with the usual deflections and outright lies. Bizarrely, this time I wish that messaging strategy would work. However, there’s a tiny flaw in this plan. Or, as Captain Blackadder used to say to Private Baldrick, “It’s bollocks”.

The opening of the Strait of Hormuz is in the gift of the new hardline regime in Tehran, not Washington. Yep, that regime change thing isn’t going so well. Unless the US puts boots on the ground, there won’t be much need to crack hydrocarbons in the Persian Gulf for the foreseeable future. Oil production volumes in the region are already being wound down but the bottom line is that the global economy is ‘missing’ circa 8 million barrels of oil per day (out of approx. 100m global demand). This doesn’t sound like an earth-shattering proportion of overall demand but …..welcome to the world of commodities. Any supply/demand imbalance can lead to outsized price movements as the marginal price (most expensive barrel) sets the price for the entire market. The International Energy Agency is already describing the situation as “the largest supply disruption in history” and has released 400 million barrels from reserves. However, despite this announcement (delivery times vary) the price of oil continued to rise to over $100. That doesn’t feel like price control. And, Trumpolini can go on Fox News every night and bluster but the gas prices at the pump are the only truth for voters. It’s not the only crack in the victory messaging….

There are other critical products which travel through the Strait of Hormuz. Seaborne diesel disruption could cause global supply to fall by up to 12%. To be clear, diesel is the most macro-sensitive oil derivative product in the global economy. Think freight, agriculture, mining and industrial activity. Then think of all those ‘always winning’ MAGA voters employed in those sectors. Also, keep an eye on headlines from India and Indonesia who are both frantically seeking new supplies of urea, ammonia and other fertilizer feedstocks. Bangladesh has already closed its universities to save fuel and now we’re talking about the guts of 2 billion people impacted by the basics of food production, education and power. However, if you thought this was just a developing world problem, let’s take a look at the very highest echelon of the financial food chain.

I’ve always been conscious that financial fragilities and leverage can exist in the global economy for extended periods of time but ultimately something cracks. And, that crack can be far removed from the specific vulnerable market. We frequently write about the perils of depending on “other people’s money”. We have also written about the massive growth in a market known as ‘private credit’. In other words, private loans to private companies which do not come from banks. This market has grown five-fold since 2010 to $2.5 trillion globally. Remember these are loans from institutions (not banks) like Blackstone, Apollo, Ares, HPOS, Carlyle, Blue Owl etc. Of course, the explosion of AI investment spend on infrastructure has accelerated the growth of this asset class (private credit) but, as always with fast-growth lending, due diligence standards slip, risk management gets sloppy, and bang….. there’s a problem. Well, this multi-trillion dollar asset class already had two problems:
1. In October 2025, two companies in the US in quick succession suddenly collapsed. Private credit instruments backing auto-parts supplier First Brands and car dealership Tricolour suffered catastrophic losses. Suddenly, risk entered the private credit equation.
2. In January “SaaS-pocalypse” became a market driver as investors began to fear for the growth and security of once-robust software (SaaS) business models under threat from AI. This, in turn, affected perceptions of the security of loans extended to software companies. Companies like SAP and Oracle saw their share prices fall up to 50% from their highs.
In recent months we have been reading smallish headlines about private credit funds experiencing “difficulties”. Guess what? Depending on “other people’s money” can be tricky when headlines cause anxiety. Yep, people who invested in these private credit funds and vehicles (SPVs) wanted to get their money back. Blue Owl was the first high profile name to suspend redemptions. Then it was Blackstone limiting investor withdrawals, followed by the Big Daddy of them all, Blackrock/HPS. Now, Morgan Stanley and Cliffwater are doing the same this week. So, that’s 6 ‘financial gates’ closing as fast as the Strait of Hormuz. You don’t need to guess what other investors in other funds are thinking. Now consider the impact of a disrupted global economy and how the traditional providers of capital to the global economy are reacting. Clearly, deal conversations with Tokyo banks, UAE sovereign wealth funds and European family offices are going to be of a very different tone to those held just a few short weeks ago.

Listen carefully…that sucking sound is not Kash Patel, JD Vance (how quiet is he!) or Howard Lutnick simpering to the Dearest Leader’s latest delusions. Nope, that’s the sound of the global financial system experiencing geopolitical and leverage cracks simultaneously, and the beginnings of capital flows going into ‘flight to safety’ mode. Hopefully, stability will return to the Middle-East soon. We have stared down the barrel of threatened global chaos before. In fact, for 47 years senior US strategic security personnel gamed out the theory that the Iranians would never shut down the 2-mile wide Strait of Hormuz knowing that the US and their allies’ response would be too damaging. That theory is now dead because the White House moved first and apparently (based on this week’s Truth Social outbursts) had no coherent plan for after…..

Now, that would be gas if it wasn’t so serious.
March 12, 2026