Sunday, May 10 — Recap · 6 Episodes

Bipartisan policy and private capital are driving onshoring across chips, minerals, defense and energy.

CHIPS funding, critical‑minerals tiering and large private commitments are creating sustained industrial demand and supply‑chain reconfiguration beyond semis—extending to electricity generation, minerals processing, defense components and biotech/pharma. Procurement is shifting to multi‑year contracts, companies accept lower margins for resilience, and geographic winners (U.S. Heartland, low‑regulation states) plus private‑credit niches and alternative ETFs stand to benefit. Tactical advice: active position management and small speculative legacy/security stakes only.

Escalation in the Gulf could disrupt oil and aviation supply chains, creating MRO backlogs and margin pressure for carriers.

Strait‑of‑Hormuz shocks or broader Gulf hostilities would lift war‑risk insurance and fuel costs while removing key heavy‑widebody MRO capacity (GCC does ~30% of heavy widebody work), producing visible C/D‑check backlogs, rolling groundings and scarce hangar/time that may show up in earnings later this year into 2027–28. Short‑term WTI is softer (~$90) but longer‑dated curves stay elevated; winners include independent MROs, lessors, sole‑source parts suppliers and maintenance‑management software providers while airlines face multi‑front margin squeezes.

Technical breaks plus geopolitics point to a multi‑period dollar weakness and upside in major non‑USD currencies.

Technicals show the DXY breaking key support with a near‑term retest around 96–95 and a potential slide toward 88–90 by late this year/early 2027; EUR, GBP and AUD display breakout patterns while CAD sits on a clean trigger at ~0.74–0.75 that could project toward 0.80–0.82. The yen remains structurally weak but may offer technical bounces—positioning long major non‑USD crosses on confirmed breakouts is the recommended trading frame.

A BTC‑backed product promises ~11% dividends but depends on BTC gains, big inflows and has a material liquidity mismatch.

Stretch converts BTC upside into an ~11–11.5% variable monthly dividend using over‑collateralized structures and equity funding; management cites strong risk‑adjusted returns and rapid product scale (digital credit AUM ~ $8.5B). Sustainability hinges on bullish BTC return assumptions (~30% pa) and fresh inflows, while on‑chain liquidity (~$300–$400M) is small relative to off‑chain issuance (billions), creating redemption and leverage contagion risks—especially given heavy retail/short‑horizon buyer concentration and DeFi leverage dynamics.

Pictet uses large gradient‑boosted ensembles and tabular features to target modest short‑horizon alpha in ETFs.

Pictet trains thousands‑of‑tree gradient‑boosted ensembles on ~15 years of daily features to forecast 20‑day cross‑sectional returns and productizes the work into benchmark‑aware, long‑only AI‑enhanced ETFs (PQNT, PQUS). The model maps only ~0.40–0.45 of its view into active positions, targets ~1–2% annual outperformance, builds interpretability into training, avoids generative LLMs for production forecasting due to opacity/look‑ahead bias, and benefits from infrastructure tailwinds while keeping explicit guardrails to limit unintended factor/industry tilts.

A mayoral campaign centers on audits, fast‑track permitting and private partnerships to fix homelessness, procurement and emergency response.

The campaign highlights emergency response failures in recent fires, alleged procurement overpayments (example: an $11M listing vs ~$29M paid), a reportedly misallocated $100M relief pool and opaque donor flows (up to $500M cited), and low LAUSD outcomes despite ~$23k per‑student spending. The platform prioritizes dollar‑level audits, IRS probes of NGO fundraising, fast‑tracking routine permits, cost savings in sanitation contracts, reprioritizing Section 8 and favoring private partners over a proposed $3B convention center expansion; grassroots creative and non‑union mobilization are core to the electoral strategy.