Monthly rollup | July 2025
- Jul 31
- 10 min read
Stocks Mentioned B2Gold (BTG BTO.TO), CoreWeave (CRWV), Nvidia (NVDA), MP Materials (MP), Texas Instruments (TXN), Venture Global (VG), Microsoft (MSFT), Dan Ives Wedbush AI Revolution ETF (IVES), Cisco (CSCO), Energy Sector (XLE), MP Materials (MP)
Highlights
July 01, 2025
B2Gold
If B2Gold (BTG BTO.TO) can dump Fekola on the balance sheet of a mid-tier producer the way they divested their Nicaraguan mines to Calibre Mining, this company has tremendous upside.
Industry gossip talks about how Agnico struggled to open up the Arctic, TMAC struggled with Hope Bay, etc, but having covered Sabina Gold & Silver throughout my career at TDV and being intimately familiar with Back River, I see the Goose mine as a company maker.
July 04, 2025
Negative rates on CHF holdings
I thought negative interest rates were so 2015 but here we go again.
There was a time when highly paid PhD economists used to criticise gold because it offered no yield and had an attached storage and insurance cost.
Now central banks print currency out of thin air and charge you for the privilege of holding it, to boot.
July 05, 2025
Israel's largest oil refinery, which supplies 65% of the country's diesel and 59% of its gasoline requirements, is going to take months to recover to full capacity.
Missiles flying overhead makes for sensational news and knee jerk buying of oil futures, but the real trade isn't in the headlines but the aftermath.
Meanwhile, Azerbaijan's NOC SOCAR has finalized its acquisition of a 10% stake in the Tamar gas field.
Oil - Waiting for the move
US crude oil stocks are below range as summer driving season progresses. This is in spite of China shunning US oil for a third straight month, the longest since 2018.
Energy Sector (XLE) has taken the long road to nowhere - is that about to change? I'm watching with interest.
The Downside of Trend Following
In Q1 last year, a trader who bet big on cocoa was up 124%. From Reuters to II to FinTwit, Paul Mulvaney was the talk of the town. He was cited as this amazing example of the dizzying gains that could come from being a trend follower.
From June 2024 to May 2025 (latest month for which data is available), $100 invested in the Mulvaney fund became $41.
To be made whole, investors will need to see gains of 144%.
Recent investors have it worse. $100 invested in March 2025 became $54.5 by May. To be made whole, investors will need to see gains of 83%.
Mulvaney's fund needs another outsized winner like cocoa just to dig itself out of this year's hole.
Ironically, the stellar gains made by 'trend following' CTAs are subject to a whole lot of 'mean reversion'.
Mulvaney fans would say he has a great long-term track record - which is true - but that's of little comfort to investors reeling from sharp losses. Historical data is good to look at, but unless you have a time machine, it is not actionable.
The drawback of making outsized bets on obscure commodity futures contracts and winning big is that it reinforces the tendency to make more such bets - and lose even bigger.
July 07, 2025
CoreWeave
CoreWeave (CRWV) loses 32 cents for every dollar in sales and runs a working capital deficit which had to be plugged with a $2 billion debt issuance recently.
As of March, the balance sheet shows $18.8 billion in liabilities on an equity layer of $1.9 billion (likely even lower equity and higher debt by Q2 close). If they did depreciate their GPUs honestly, the equity layer would carry a negative value.
This is a stock which should never have been listed. The listing is a transfer of value from public market participants to private equity, which will last until the company files for bankruptcy/ restructuring.
July 13, 2025
Reason given - uncertain investment climate in the Netherlands.
Refinery closures in the EU benefit mega-refineries in countries like Nigeria, India, etc. The second order effect is even worse - as the EU de-industrialises, manufacturing moves to countries with low cost power.
July 14, 2025
Gold in the portfolio
According to an HSBC survey, Hong Kong residents with $100,000 to $2 million in investable assets have allocated an average of 11 percent of their portfolios to gold and other precious metals.
That was up from a 4 percent allocation just one year ago.
July 15, 2025
Nvidia H20 Deception
Going by the headlines, it appears as if the US govt has approved the sale of Nvidia (NVDA) H20 chips to China.
But if you dig deeper, the source of this news is an Nvidia blog post where they say:
"Huang also provided an update to customers, noting that NVIDIA is filing applications to sell the NVIDIA H20 GPU again. The U.S. government has assured NVIDIA that licenses will be granted, and NVIDIA hopes to start deliveries soon."
Even though the paperwork hasn't been filed yet, the media portrays it as if it were a done deal. Based on a biased source - the company itself.
I searched, and couldn't find similar coverage of the Chip Security Act (a bipartisan bill to address chip smuggling into China) or the Senate Banking Committee probe into Jensen's visit to China. The Senate letter, written by Senator Elizabeth Warren and others, concludes by stating:
“We hope you will agree that it would be deeply irresponsible for an American CEO to meet with companies that violate U.S. law and are actively developing military capabilities that could undermine U.S. national security."
How exactly did Nvidia win assurances from the "US government" when powerful Senators are opposed to Huang even visiting China?
Did these assurances come from officials at the US Department of Commerce, which is in charge of export controls, or someone else?
Why is the media complicit in this one-sided coverage, given that the source is a company blog post and should have been considered biased to begin with?
It started out as a simple case of accounting fraud. Then came the chip smuggling, and now this new angle of media manipulation. Where does it end?
July 16, 2025
Everything is awesome... not!
July 19, 2025
After successfully steamrolling over Slovakia and Hungary, the EU added more sanctions on Russian energy. With oil below the previous $60/bbl price cap, Greek shippers have been making bank transporting Russian crude. The new price cap of $47.6/bbl ends this lucrative trade and/or pushes more tankers into the shadow fleet.
Net impact: higher energy prices for EU residents, lower oil import costs for China and India.
Taking it a step further, the EU has now sanctioned a refinery in India because it is part owned by Rosneft.
How will India respond?
"Europe has to grow out of the mindset that its problems are the world’s problems but the world’s problems are not Europe’s problems." - S. Jaishankar, India's Minister of External Affairs, speaking in Slovakia in 2022.
What are the odds the EU's heavy handedness will be seen as neo-imperialism?
Rare earths & India
In the '50s or '60s, India controlled the rare earths industry, not China. The socialists in power were more friendly with the USSR than the United States and imposed a ban on rare earths exports to the US.
The US, desperate for rare earths for military use, gave India a loan hoping that'll lift the ban. India took the loan, kept the ban.
This little piece of history is long forgotten even by Indian historians, but China knows and understands this playbook. China maintains close ties with Myanmar and thanks to Western sanctions, has unfettered and sole access to rare earths in that country.
Russia is also in the race, with oil giant Rosneft recently acquiring a massive deposit in Siberia.
The DoD's commitment to MP Materials (MP) is a sign the US understands what's at stake. This is the next arms race. If you go back, Texas Instruments became a powerhouse mainly because the military needed chips to guide missiles and Texas Instruments (TXN) won those contracts.
Are rare earths in a bubble, or is this the start of a new trend? The latter. This sector is just waking up.
China blocks Panama ports deal
Last year, Trump flexed by threatening to invade Panama and seize control of the Panama Canal. The reason was Chinese ownership of the ports.
In response, the private Hong Kong billionaire who owned the ports hurriedly struck a deal with BlackRock.
Fast forward a few months, China is threatening to block the deal unless Cosco Shipping, which is currently under US sanctions, gets a seat at the table.
China is flexing on 3 fronts now - maritime, rare earths, and AI chips.
Nobody wins a trade war but China sure is coming out on top.
July 20, 2025
Sawiris was wrong about gold
In 2018, Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris invested half of his net worth in gold, expecting it to go up to $1800/oz.
He was wrong. Gold went to $3350/oz instead.
This is why I dislike price predictions. Is $5000/oz a good price to sell gold? Is $10,000? How high can it really go? Nobody knows!
We look back at Sawiris' investing acumen and think he was a genius. At that time, Wall Street thought he was nuts for predicting $1800 gold, because gold hadn't been that high since 2011.
Fact is, gold is in a multi-year bull market. Unlike stocks, which are prone to management mistakes, gold's potential is unbounded.
Nobody expected cocoa to move from $2581/mt to $12,218/mt (4.7x) in 14 months, but it did.
Bull markets tend to surprise conservative investors and analysts by overshooting to the upside.
July 27, 2025
Cut off your nose to spite your face.
The EU's sanctions on Russian oil have been a boon for oil importing countries. For the last 3 years, they got to buy Russian oil cheap, refine it, and sell the refined products back to the EU for a fat profit. Ironically, a Rosneft owned refinery in India was one of the beneficiaries.
While this increased energy prices in the EU, it kept Europeans insulated from the full effects of the sanctions policy.
Now, the EU has taken it a step further and banned imports of refined products made with Russian oil, ensuring supply shortages and further de-industrialization.
Russia has been dealing with sanctions since 2014. It is the nations imposing the sanctions which will take the bigger hit.
The Dutch have wised up. A Dutch court refused to seize Russian energy assets on behalf of Ukraine. Maybe, just maybe, there is enough pushback to get the European Commission to stop with the self-immolation.
July 28, 2025
In the last 4 years, the EU has:
- bankrupted its industrial sector by forcing a switch from cheap, piped Russian gas to costly US LNG
- vaporized its $5.5 billion investment in Nord Stream 2 by allowing the US to sabotage Nord Stream 1 & 2
- needlessly antagonized Russia by seizing assets of private Russian citizens and imposing 18 rounds of sanctions
- sacrificed manufacturing dominance further on the altar of climate change, with a bizarre emissions trading scheme that serves no purpose
Adding insult to injury, the EU has now agreed to a one-sided tariff deal that will result in tens of billions in lost export revenue and encourage further capital flight from the EU to the US.
The European Commission is not serving European interests.
July 29, 2025
US LNG names are soaring on the EU deal news. But LNG is also a victim of tariffs.
Venture Global (VG), for example, needs to import pre-fabricated modules from Italy and the 15% tariffs will add to construction capex and lower the IRR on CP2.
Dan Ives launches AI ETF
Celebrity analyst Dan Ives is calling for both NVDA and Microsoft (MSFT) to hit $5 trillion in market cap, says the tech bull market is still in its early stages.
Of course he would say that. Ives used his celebrity status to launch the Dan Ives Wedbush AI Revolution ETF (IVES) last month. The ETF has already gathered $413 million in NAV.
Investors are so caught up in this AI mania they forget valuations always mean revert. Cisco (CSCO) never did make it to the $1 trillion market cap. And the Fed isn't printing enough to levitate AI stocks any further.
Dan Ives' predictions are going to become as (in)famous as Dow 36,000.
China one-upping Trump
In 2018, the US got Canada to arrest the daughter of Huawei's CEO on a trumped up charge of violating US export controls. The extradition case was dismissed with prejudice 4 years later.
In June 2025, Taiwan got cocky and added Huawei and SMIC to its export control list, without realizing Chinese diplomacy has come a long way since that incident.
The CCP has internalized the lessons from China's century of humiliation. They refused to bow to Trump in April and instead retaliated, forcing Trump to come back to the negotiating table. And now China is flexing its One China policy on the global stage.
Napoleon Bonaparte said: "Let China sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake the world".
The red dragon is awake.
Canadian lumber
Howard Lutnick wants to retroactively charge duties on Canadian lumber exports to the US during the Biden administration.
Small businesses will rather fold operations than deal with the risk of retroactive taxation. The very threat of such measures makes the US market unattractive for exporters.
July 30, 2025
The AI boom has natural limits dictated by economics
"Using Columbus as an example again, customers are paying an extra $240 per year due to the power demand of AI data centers."
"The upheaval at PJM started a year ago with a more than 800% jump in prices at its annual capacity auction. Rising prices out of the auction trickle down to everyday people's power bills."
July 31, 2025
Trump tariffs miss copper, price tanks
Holy copper! Someone blew up.
Trend following or mean reversion? A matter of timeframes
The dumb trade is betting on parabolic moves to last forever. The smart trade is betting on mean reversion.
Anyone with a short-term time horizon will do well to put on the dumb trade.
Anyone with a long-term time horizon will do well to put on the smart trade.
Valuations always mean revert. Just a matter of waiting.
Chart credit Jason Perz
AI isn't eating the world
Instead of calling it a crypto bubble, MSM said we would all be living and breathing in the Metaverse in 2022. You were supposed to buy digital trinkets on Axie Infinity instead of at the Dollar Store. FTX was the new oil, Roblox was the new neighborhood playground.
The stories change, but the collective delusion stays the same.
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Good Trading!
Kashyap
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