VLCC contracting has moved from a relatively subdued market into the strongest ordering wave of the past decade. Global annual contracting averaged about 31 vessels between 2016 and 2023, before rising to 75 in 2024 and 73 in 2025. By 21 July 2026, 149 VLCCs had already been contracted—more than twice the total for the whole of 2025. Owners and financial investors are therefore competing for modern capacity scheduled for delivery toward the end of the decade.

JPMorgan is one of the most prominent entrants in this ordering wave. South Korea’s Hanwha Ocean recently disclosed a approximately $262 million contract with an unidentified North American shipping company for two 320,000-dwt VLCCs, scheduled for delivery by March 2030. JPMorgan is being identified as the shipowner behind the order.

The Hanwha order would take JPMorgan’s reported VLCC programme to ten vessels. The other eight are being built in China for delivery in 2029.

The ordering wave has been accompanied by persistently high newbuilding prices. JPMorgan is paying near the upper end of the current VLCC price cycle for each of its ten vessels. The two Hanwha Ocean ships are the most expensive ($131 million each), compared with an average contract value of about $122 million for VLCCs ordered globally in 2026. JPMorgan is therefore committing capital when both ordering and prices are elevated—not at the bottom of the cycle. The investment case turns on two separate questions: why VLCCs are suited to the changing crude trade, and why it may still be rational to order them now.

Why VLCC?

Crude is travelling farther

Tanker demand is measured in tonne-miles—the volume of cargo multiplied by voyage distance. The recent uplift has been driven more by longer routes than by higher cargo volumes.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 produced one structural shift in crude trade. Europe’s share of Russian crude and condensate exports fell from 51% in 2020 to 11% in the first half of 2025, while Asia’s share rose from 41% to 81%.

Russian barrels that moved to nearby European ports now travel mainly to India and China. Europe, in turn, imports replacements from the Americas, Africa and the Middle East. A Baltic–India voyage can take roughly six times as long as a Baltic–Northwest Europe voyage.

Attacks in the Red Sea added further distance by prompting vessels to avoid the Suez Canal. Rerouting via the Cape of Good Hope adds about 15 days to an Arabian Sea–Europe voyage.

The 2026 Gulf conflict had an outsized impact on the VLCC market. The Arabian Gulf is one of its principal loading regions. Gulf export terminals generate large, regular cargoes, while Gulf–Asia is both a core VLCC trade and a key freight benchmark.

The effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz pushed Middle East–Asia VLCC rates to their highest level since 2005.

Asia had to replace disrupted supplies with barrels from more distant producers. Atlantic Basin crude exports—primarily bound for markets east of Suez—increased by 3.5 million b/d between February and May, led by suppliers including the United States, Brazil and Canada. US crude exports reached a record 5.6 million b/d in April, 21% above the previous monthly record.

This shift increased tanker demand even without a comparable rise in global oil consumption. Crude that would normally have travelled from the Gulf to Asia was increasingly replaced by cargoes moving from the Atlantic Basin, substantially extending average voyage distances.

The combination of higher Atlantic Basin exports and longer voyages to Asia therefore raised tonne-mile demand and strengthened demand for VLCCs, the most economical vessels for transporting large crude cargoes over long distances. A VLCC carries about 2 million barrels—roughly twice a Suezmax cargo—and offers the lowest transport cost per barrel on large, long-haul trades. Major export terminals in the US Gulf, Brazil and West Africa can accommodate these vessels.

The Gulf Remains the Structural Core of the VLCC Market

The Arabian Gulf remains one of the world’s largest crude-export systems and holds most of the world’s spare production capacity. Flows through the Strait of Hormuz remained broadly around 20 million barrels per day from 2018 through early 2025 despite repeated geopolitical tensions. In 2024, the strait carried more than one-quarter of global seaborne oil trade, while about 84% of its crude and condensate flows went to Asian markets.

The market can reasonably view the Hormuz disruption as severe but potentially reversible. A prolonged closure would damage Gulf producers as well as importers, while pipelines can replace only a fraction of normal flows. Historically, repeated threats and attacks did not result in a permanent closure.

Russian sanctions appear more persistent. Enforcement has expanded beyond cargoes to vessels, managers, insurers and maritime services. The EU has extended its economic sanctions to July 2027, with little indication of an imminent return to the pre-2022 trading system.

Gulf cargo flows may recover, but the division between compliant and sanctioned VLCC capacity is likely to persist.

Why Now?

A five-year-old VLCC was valued at about $138 million, $9 million above the average newbuilding price of $129 million in 2026. Buying a secondhand vessel at that premium is a bet that today’s high freight rates will continue. Ordering new vessels is a bet that compliant VLCC capacity will remain scarce later in the decade.

Regulation is accelerating fleet renewal

The IMO’s EEXI and CII requirements became mandatory in 2023. EEXI measures a vessel’s technical efficiency, while CII assigns an annual operational carbon-intensity rating. Ships rated E, or D for three consecutive years, must submit corrective-action plans. Compliance can involve engine-power limitations, slower sailing, operational optimisation or technical upgrades.

These measures disproportionately affect older VLCCs, which generally consume more fuel and emit more carbon per tonne-mile.

They may not automatically forced into demolition: high freight rates can justify retrofits or slower operation. But both options carry an economic cost. Retrofitting requires capital, while slow steaming reduces annual carrying capacity by keeping the vessel occupied for longer. Newer ships therefore gain an advantage through lower fuel consumption, stronger CII performance and broader acceptance among charterers and financiers.

The shadow fleet inflates headline supply

Sanctions on Russian, Iranian and Venezuelan oil have created a parallel transportation market: the shadow fleet. Its vessels typically have opaque ownership, uncertain insurance, frequent flag or manager changes, irregular AIS activity and complex ship-to-ship transfers. They can still carry crude but are less acceptable to mainstream charterers, banks, insurers and terminals.

The shadow fleet now represents a material share of nominal supply. S&P Global estimated in July 2026 that tankers associated with shadow-fleet activity accounted for about 22% of the global fleet. Analyze classified 17% of VLCCs and 35% of Aframaxes as part of the dark fleet in the second quarter. The higher Aframax share reflects Russia’s Baltic and Black Sea trades, while shadow VLCCs are more closely linked to Iran and long-haul Asian routes.

Age will tighten effective supply further. Sanctioned VLCCs averaged 21.5 years in 2026, compared with about 14 years for the overall tanker fleet. VLCCs typically enter their economic retirement window at 20–22 years, although shadow demand can extend operations toward 25 years. Rising survey, repair and insurance costs should increase retirement pressure toward the end of the decade.

The result is a two-tier market. Shadow vessels inflate headline capacity but contribute less to the pool available to mainstream cargo owners. The relevant constraint is therefore not the total number of VLCCs, but the number that remain compliant, properly insured and commercially acceptable.

Shipyard capacity makes waiting costly

A further reason to order now is physical capacity. VLCC construction is concentrated among a limited group of Asian shipyards with the dock space, engineering experience and quality record required to build large crude tankers. The same yards also compete for LNG carriers, container ships and other high-value projects.

As their orderbooks fill, available VLCC delivery slots move further into the future. For an investor that expects to need modern tonnage near the end of the decade, delaying the contracting decision by one year may not simply mean ordering the same ship one year later. It may mean accepting delivery several years later, selecting a less-preferred yard or paying more for the remaining capacity.

The Risks

Old VLCCs may remain in service longer than expected

The central supply assumption behind the newbuilding cycle is that a meaningful number of older vessels will leave mainstream trading as new ships arrive. Yet fleet age indicates only scrapping potential, not actual scrapping.

The shadow market creates the opposite effect from the one described in the investment case. It reduces the pool of vessels acceptable to mainstream charterers, but it also provides an alternative buyer for ageing VLCCs that might otherwise be recycled. A sale into sanctioned trading changes the vessel’s commercial market without removing its physical capacity.

Delays or flexibility in emissions regulation can extend the viable life of older vessels. The IMO Net-Zero Framework, which would introduce a global marine-fuel standard and greenhouse-gas pricing mechanism, was approved in draft form in April 2025. If carbon pricing and fuel-intensity requirements are implemented more slowly than expected, owners may postpone both retrofits and demolition.

The marine-fuel transition creates stranded-asset risk

A VLCC delivered in 2030 may remain in service into the 2050s. Its commercial life will therefore extend well beyond the period for which marine-fuel regulations and technology are currently visible.

The first risk is technological lock-in. LNG, methanol, ammonia, biofuels, synthetic fuels and onboard carbon capture are all being considered, but no clear VLCC standard has emerged. A conventional vessel ordered today could face expensive retrofits, reduced cargo space or limited access to low-carbon fuel.

The second risk is regulatory cost. The IMO Net-Zero Framework has been delayed, leaving carbon prices, fuel-intensity thresholds and implementation dates uncertain.  If stricter rules are later introduced quickly, however, conventionally fuelled newbuildings could face higher fuel costs, carbon charges or premature modification. Regulation can therefore hurt the investment in either direction: slow implementation extends competing supply, while rapid implementation raises compliance cost.

Nvidia is reported to be behind another Ai infrastructure move, leasing $50 billion Texas data center that will uses Nvidia's chips, (The Financial Times, Channel News Asia).

The nearly $5tn company is leasing the entire 1 gigawatt facility that developer Hut 8 is building, which will house hundreds of thousands of Nvidia’s graphics processing units, said five people familiar with the deal.

The move is the latest example of Nvidia’s chief executive Jensen Huang aggressively using the company’s financial strength to keep it at the centre of the fast-growing market for AI computing power.

These efforts have included spending billions of dollars to foster a new generation of AI infrastructure providers, such as CoreWeave, to buy and run its GPUs. The Texas lease goes further, putting Nvidia behind the facilities that will house its chips.

The Texas site has secured access to electricity, something that is increasingly rare as developers compete for grid power. Nvidia wielded its financial muscle to lock in the site for its own chips, said an executive familiar with the deal.

“They have the balance sheet to acquire power, and in doing so, ensure their product is deployed,” the person said, asking not to be named. Once completed, Nvidia could sublease capacity to its “neocloud” partners that buy its GPUs and sell AI cloud computing, the person said.

The arrangement will intensify concerns about circular financing, as the chip group underwrites more of the market for its chips.

Source:

1. The Financial Times; https://www.ft.com/content/685014e7-47dd-471b-a585-1b9b73ce5d6f?syn-25a6b1a6=1
2. Channel News Asia; https://www.channelnewsasia.com/business/nvidia-behind-50-billion-lease-texas-data-center-ft-reports-6282306

Negotiators from Iran and Oman are trying to reach an agreement to restore shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, according to people familiar with the matter.

The two countries, whose territories border the strategic waterway, are continuing discussions after officials met in Tehran over the weekend. A successful agreement could pave the way for Iran and the US to resume negotiations aimed at ending the broader conflict.

One proposal under consideration would reopen the strait’s so-called middle passage. Ships have largely avoided the route since fighting began in late February, instead using either a northern passage close to Iran’s coastline or a southern route near Oman’s Musandam exclave.

US President Donald Trump said Washington and Tehran were engaged in diplomatic talks to end the conflict, although he did not specify whether the negotiations included the Strait of Hormuz. He warned, however, that fighting could resume if the talks failed to produce an agreement.

Reopening the middle passage would still present significant operational risks. The route is believed to contain sea mines laid by Iran and may need to be cleared before commercial vessels can use it regularly. The UK, France and other European countries have offered to lead demining operations, but only once security conditions allow.

At the same time, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is urging his UK counterpart, Wes Streeting, to convene a summit on protecting maritime traffic through the strait, underscoring that any diplomatic agreement will also require a credible security framework for shipping.

Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-27/iran-oman-talks-focused-on-restarting-hormuz-shipping-traffic

The cost of protecting Nvidia Corp.’s debt against default surged by the most on record Monday, after reports of the chipmaker being in conversations on more than $750 billion of artificial intelligence infrastructure deals stoked fears about the company’s obligations.

A partnership with SK Group unveiled late Friday means the companies will be doing more than $500 billion in business with each other, Nvidia said. Nvidia is also in talks to backstop as much as $250 billion to help OpenAI lease computing power from a US data center project in what would be among the chipmaker’s biggest financing deals with a customer.

Nvidia is also having discussions to finance $350 billion of OpenAI’s purchases of its chips for the US project, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Such borrowing would likely require investment-grade ratings, which are difficult for the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic PBC to currently support given they are rapidly burning cash to grow their businesses. Backing from big firms can help debt that funds AI infrastructure spending win high-grade ratings.

Meanwhile, the price of protecting Nvidia's debt against default for five years rose as much as 0.14 percentage point to 0.82 percentage point a year, according to ICE Data Services. That’s the biggest intraday rise since the swaps started to actively trade in November.

“The amount of capex needed to build out the AI infrastructure is massive, and debt markets are being inundated with supply,” said Sal Naro, chief investment officer of Coherence Credit Strategies. “There’s a fear of financial alchemy driven by opaqueness, off-balance-sheet transactions and intercompany relationships, which could result in credit rating downgrades.

The move echoes Oracle’s downgrade to BBB- earlier in July, underscoring how the enormous financing demands of the AI buildout are beginning to strain even the industry’s largest companies’ credit profiles.

S&P Downgrades Oracle to BBB-

S&P Global downgraded Oracle’s long-term credit rating from BBB (Negative) to BBB- (Stable), citing elevated business risk and weaker near-term cash flows.

Predictionmarkets.orgJiayi ZHANG

Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-27/nvidia-credit-risk-jumps-in-swaps-market-on-ai-deal-talk-reports

Cadence registered another strong quarter, according to the financial results and the conference call:

The management's tone was Confident, and notably not shy about competitive positioning — Devgan repeatedly said Cadence's competitive position "has never been better," and pushed back directly on the bear case that LLMs could eventually bypass commercial EDA tools entirely, arguing the "three-layer" framework (agents still need to call physically-accurate engines) will hold regardless of how capable frontier LLMs get. He referenced the Kimi open-source-agent chip design news as validating rather than threatening this thesis.

TL;DR:

Agentic AI as a "demand accelerator." Management's framing (the "three-layer cake": compute/data → physically-accurate simulation engines → AI agents/orchestration) is the core investment thesis. The AuraStack, ChipStack, ViraStack and InnoStack "Super Agent" products are seeing early traction — ChipStack has more than 20 customer engagements already in production, and ViraStack has more than 25 engagements with 2x–10x productivity gains. Devgan was explicit that this is not yet a large revenue line — it's early-stage adoption being sold alongside, not instead of, core EDA seats.

Foundry/customer diversification, especially Intel. Cadence expanded its Intel collaboration through a multi-year engagement on the 14A process, covering EDA, IP and DTCO, alongside deepened Samsung Foundry work on 2nm/3D IC. Management called this incremental revenue, still early in its ramp.

Hardware (Palladium/Protium) still supply-constrained. CFO Wall said hardware remains "supply-constrained by customer demand rather than demand-constrained," i.e., they can't build fast enough to meet backlog — a genuinely strong signal, not a soft one.

Things to Watch:

Margin compression in H2. Management flagged roughly $20–25 million in targeted H2 investment tied to Hexagon integration and the Intel partnership, with second-half operating margins expected to run slightly below first-half levels before improving in 2027. This is framed as deliberate, but it's worth tracking whether "deliberate" investment turns into a pattern.

Export-control assumption baked into guidance. Guidance explicitly assumes export-control regulations remain "substantially similar" for the rest of the year — a real geopolitical tail-risk given active U.S.-China chip-tool tensions (directly relevant given the DUV story we discussed earlier today, see our post).

Global Chip-Equipment Stocks Tumble on China DUV Production Rumor

ASML Holding NV shares slid to the lowest since early June after a report that a Chinese state-backed company has begun mass producing certain chipmaking machines, posing a potential threat to the Dutch firm’s sales.

Predictionmarkets.orgBloomberg

Monetization timing on agentic AI is still unproven. Multiple analysts pressed on this, and management repeatedly declined to quantify TAM or next-year contribution, saying only that "some of the benefit is already there" but that they remain deliberately conservative on forward-year projections.

Source:

Cadence press release; https://investor.cadence.com/news/news-details/2026/Cadence-Reports-Second-Quarter-2026-Financial-Results/default.aspx

A state-backed Shanghai company has begun building immersion deep ultraviolet (DUV) lithography machines, marking China’s first reported move toward small-scale production of the equipment, The Information reported.

Market Rumor - China begins making homegrown DUV chipmaking tools, sources said

China has begun manufacturing domestically developed immersion ​deep ultraviolet lithography machines, a key chipmaking tool long dominated ‌by Dutch supplier ASML, The Information reported on Monday (July 27, 2026).

Predictionmarkets.orgYU GU

The development triggered a sharp sell-off across global semiconductor stocks as investors reassessed the potential threat to foreign chipmakers and equipment suppliers.

ASML shares fell as much as 8.3%, having traded higher throughout the morning in Amsterdam. Jitters quickly spread to chip-equipment peers around the world: ASM International NV dropped as much as 7.3%, BE Semiconductor Industries NV slid 9.9%, Applied Materials Inc. declined 6.7% and Lam Research Corp. fell 7.9%.

SK Hynix dropped as much as 10% to trade as low as $139.01, breaking well below the $149 level where the securities were sold on July 9. 

In Tokyo, shares of fellow lithography equipment makers Nikon Corp. and Canon Inc. tumbled on Tuesday. Canon, which makes more mature equipment, slid as much as 6.3%, while Nikon, which makes immersion DUVs, fell 9.2% — the two companies’ sharpest declines in more than two months. ASML supplier Lasertec Corp.’s stock price fell as much as 12%.

Investors are highly sensitive to signs that China is making progress in semiconductor manufacturing equipment despite US export controls, particularly in lithography, a market long dominated by ASML.

Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-27/asml-slides-after-report-of-china-beginning-duv-tool-production;

China has begun manufacturing domestically developed immersion ​deep ultraviolet lithography machines, a key chipmaking tool long dominated ‌by Dutch supplier ASML, The Information reported on Monday (July 27, 2026, information in-directly sourced from Reuters).

The machines are expected to be delivered this year to leading Chinese chipmakers, including Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp, ​Hua Hong Semiconductor, and ChangXin Memory Technologies, the report ​said, citing people familiar with the matter.

Source:

1. Reuters; https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-begins-making-homegrown-duv-chipmaking-tools-information-reports-2026-07-27/
2. The Information; https://www.theinformation.com/articles/china-starts-mass-producing-homegrown-duv-chipmaking-tools-advance-local-chip-industry

According to a news report from CNBC:

• Nike is planning to cut off thousands of online distributors in China and restructure its online presence to create a more consistent consumer experience.
• Beginning in January, the company will concentrate online sales through its own website and app, as well as official storefronts on Tmall, JD.com and Douyin.
• The strategy shift could lead to a decline in revenue in the region but is designed to create a healthier marketplace overall.

Nike is planning to cut off thousands of online distributors in China beginning in January as the sneaker giant looks to clean up what’s become a messy digital marketplace and get the region back to growth. 

Starting next year, Nike’s online footprint will shift primarily to the retailer’s official website and app, and the storefronts it operates on Tmall, JD.com and Douyin, some of China’s largest online marketplaces and social platforms. 

Currently, consumers can shop Nike through all of those channels as well as thousands of other online storefronts powered by Nike’s brick-and-mortar partners in the region and a network of secondary distributors. While the vast digital network has led to widespread consumer access to Nike’s products, it’s also created an inconsistent branding and pricing experience and hampered the company’s efforts to reverse a sales decline in the region. 

Source:

1 CNBC; https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/21/nike-to-cut-off-thousands-of-online-distributors-in-china.html

A $100,000 edge behind the glass

Gabriel Perez had worked as Donald Trump's teleprompter operator since 2016, and the White House's July 2026 staff report listed him as a "Deputy Assistant to the President and Technical Advisor" on a $175,000 annual salary. He had final eyes on nearly all prepared remarks and received last-minute edits, a position that could expose him to the language of a speech before the public heard it.

According to ABC News, investigators believed Perez used that access to trade Kalshi contracts tied to whether Trump would say particular words, placing bets around more than a dozen speeches over roughly three months and making more than $100,000. The examples included a December prime-time address, a January speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the February State of the Union, a March Medal of Honor ceremony, and an appearance at the Detroit Economic Club.

The most revealing detail is not simply that he may have seen drafts. Investigators found occasions when Perez allegedly exited positions during a speech after Trump skipped a scripted passage containing the target word.

This is useful because Trump frequently departs from prepared remarks. A backstage view of the final script, skipped pages, live edits, and the remaining run of show can therefore be more valuable than a static draft. ABC reported that Perez acknowledged some of the trades when questioned by regulators, while Reuters reported that he was cooperating with the investigation.

Kalshi said its surveillance systems flagged irregular trading in March 2026. The company investigated, identified the trader as a federal employee and teleprompter operator, froze the account with more than $90,000 in profits before those funds were withdrawn, and referred the matter to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

On March 24, the White House Management Office warned staff not to trade on prediction markets using material nonpublic information.

On July 16, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Perez had been placed on unpaid administrative leave at Trump's direction.

CFTC settlement discussions could require Perez to return profits and stay out of similar markets. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan had declined to open a criminal investigation. The CFTC said it could neither confirm nor deny the existence of an investigation, and the cited public record contained no final CFTC order.

How a mention market actually works

A mention market page is a bundle of separate binary contracts. Each listed word or phrase is a separate market with Yes and No contracts, its own order book, and a separate result.

The rules are exact about language. Representative Kalshi mention contracts count the specified word or phrase, including plural and possessive forms, but exclude other grammatical or tense variations and often exclude compounds or uses with a different meaning. One Kalshi example explains that "ICE" meaning Immigration and Customs Enforcement does not count when the speaker merely says "ice water".

Video is the primary resolution source. If no consensus can be reached from the recording, the rules allow an official transcript or another transcription source to be used. The contract is limited to the qualifying live broadcast or stream, not earlier recordings.

Crucially, trading needs not stop when the speaker begins. Representative rules say a market may close early if the target event occurs and otherwise remains open until the stated event-end time. Perez allegedly exited positions mid-speech is direct evidence that live position changes were possible in at least some of the markets under investigation.

In other words, saying the word makes Yes logically certain at that instant, even if the exchange needs time to detect, close, and settle the contract. Not saying it does not make No certain until the qualifying speech or event is over. Therefore, Yes and No are not mirror images.

The scale of the prize

The contracts named in the reporting were not all tiny curiosities. Kalshi's archived event pages show substantial total volume across the mention markets attached to several Trump appearances.

Perez's numbers are striking too. His listed annual salary was $175,000. The alleged winnings are more than $100,000 according to ABC News, while the "more than $90,000" figure reported by Reuters describes profits frozen before withdrawal.

Three kinds of edge for insiders, in one contract

Advance knowledge

Speechwriters, editors, technical operators, and people receiving embargoed copies may know before trading closes whether a target word appears in the prepared text. They may still be wrong if the speaker deviates, but their forecast begins with a private document with plenty of useful information.

Influence over the outcome

Some insiders can do more than knowing/forecasting. A writer can add or remove a word. An adviser can suggest a phrase. A speaker can deliberately say the target. The CFTC's 2026 staff advisory discussed a different Kalshi case in which a political candidate influenced the outcome of a market about his own candidacy, illustrating why event contracts can blur the line between prediction and manufacture.

Real-time observation

Other people may not control the words but can observe the production process faster than the public. They can see skipped pages, fresh edits, a last-minute insert, or the approach of the closing line. The allegation that Perez sold positions after scripted text was skipped is a clean example of this third category.These categories can overlap. A teleprompter operator might see the final text in advance, receive changes during the event, and know that a missing page will never be read. A speechwriter may both know and influence. A speaker can potentially do all three. Traditional insider trading is often described as knowing a market-moving fact before everyone else. Mention markets add two twists: some participants help generate the fact, and others watch the fact being generated from a privileged seat.

The information-aggregation paradox

Prediction markets are usually defended as machines for combining dispersed information. Different people bring different evidence, trade, and produce a price that summarizes their collective view.

Mention markets complicate that story. The people with the best information may be precisely the people who should not trade. Once they are screened out, the remaining traders mainly have public material such as past language, the political agenda, word frequency, and speaker patterns. A careful outsider can model a speaker's habits or recognize that a topic has become salient. But it raises a question: is the market aggregating decision-useful knowledge, or merely organizing a lively guessing game?

Here comes the paradox. Barring insiders is essential for fairness. Yet the more completely a platform removes the only participants with strong private information, the harder it may be to claim that a thinly informed price has major public value. A market can be fun without being a public forecasting instrument. Regulators and exchanges should be honest about which one they are selling.

Disclaimer: The content is for informational purposes only. You should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice. Nothing contained in this article constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer by the author(s) or any third party service provider to buy or sell any securities or other financial instruments in your or in any other jurisdiction in which such solicitation or offer would be unlawful under the securities laws of such jurisdiction. The author(s) report(s) no conflict of interest.

Blackstone, KKR and Brookfield have agreed a $16bn deal to take a stake in Kuwait’s national oil pipelines network in the Gulf state’s largest-ever foreign investment as it raises capital to pay for the cost of Iranian attacks.

The three private equity giants will collectively take a 49 per cent share in a joint venture with Kuwait’s national oil and gas company that will take a long-term lease over the country’s 320km pipeline network and rent back the right to use it, they said in a statement.

The deal will generate nearly $8bn in upfront proceeds for the country and help achieve Kuwait Petroleum Company’s target of 4mn barrels per day of crude oil production capacity by 2035 by boosting its capital expenditure.

Kuwait said that the deal represented a vote of confidence by three of the world’s most influential investors in the region’s long-term economic potential despite the military confrontation between the US, Israel and Iran in which the Gulf states have become embroiled.

“This transaction sends a powerful signal that Kuwait continues to rise as an attractive destination for global capital, even amid a challenging regional environment,” said Shaikh Nawaf Saud Al-Sabah, deputy KPC chair and chief executive. 

In recent months Iran has struck its neighbours’ critical infrastructure assets, including oil and gasfields, ports and refineries. Kuwait has been targeted by nearly 1,400 missile and drone attacks since the conflict began in late February. It has said that Tehran attacked its airport, oil infrastructure and water desalination plants that are vital to its drinking water needs.

In response to the attacks, Gulf states are shoring up their finances and raising fresh capital to absorb the economic shock and to pay for repairs to damaged infrastructure.

Kuwait’s fellow Gulf energy producers Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi have made similar energy infrastructure deals in recent years, raising billions of dollars in foreign capital by selling minority stakes in strategic assets. 

Blackstone, Brookfield and KKR rank among the world’s largest infrastructure investors and have expanded their presence across the Middle East in recent years. Kuwait has a $1tn sovereign wealth fund but is often regarded as one of the Gulf’s laggards in attracting private capital. Recently it has been trying to attract more foreign investment. Last year, firms including BlackRock and Goldman Sachs opened offices in the country.

In a statement released on Saturday, Blackstone chief executive Stephen Schwarzman said Kuwait was “a compelling destination for international capital” thanks to its abundant wealth and efforts to diversify its economy.

Source: https://www.ft.com/content/780bc4bb-1916-4fe2-ad2b-22663c66f16e?syn-25a6b1a6=1

CXMT shares soared almost 500 per cent in their trading debut in Shanghai on Monday as investors flocked to the Chinese chipmaker amid booming demand for AI memory chips.

The stock opened at Rmb49.50 ($7.30), compared with an IPO price of Rmb8.66. CXMT sought to raise nearly $10bn, making it mainland China’s largest initial public offering since Agricultural Bank of China’s listing in 2010. Its debut came just two weeks after South Korean memory-chip maker SK Hynix raised more than $26bn through a US listing.

The strong reception reflects investors’ growing appetite for memory-chip companies, which have become central to the global artificial intelligence infrastructure buildout. CXMT is the world’s fourth-largest producer of dynamic random-access memory, or DRAM, which is used in products ranging from smartphones to AI servers.

The Hefei-based company has also emerged as Beijing’s leading domestic contender in advanced memory chips. Its expansion is therefore closely tied to China’s efforts to reduce its dependence on overseas suppliers, particularly in high-bandwidth memory, a critical component used in AI data centres.

CXMT’s debut was supported by intense retail demand, a comparatively low IPO valuation and renewed expectations of state-backed support for China’s equity markets.

The retail portion of the offering was 212 times oversubscribed. Individual investors submitted 9.4mn orders worth Rmb7.07tn, roughly 10 times the size of the retail order book for SpaceX’s record-breaking IPO.

Part of that demand can be attributed to tightly controlled IPO pricing system. Regulators have discouraged companies from selling shares at aggressive valuations, partly to reduce the risk of immediate losses for retail investors. That approach can leave newly listed companies priced well below prevailing secondary-market valuations, creating the conditions for sharp first-day gains.

CXMT’s debut was further amplified by the surge in memory-chip prices since 2025, which has strengthened expectations for its earnings and reinforced investor enthusiasm for the broader DRAM cycle.

Valuation may remain one of the stock’s main attractions as investors become increasingly cautious about AI-related companies trading at elevated multiples. CXMT’s IPO price implied a price-to-book ratio of 2.4 times. That represented a 56% discount to the average valuation of global DRAM peers SK Hynix, Micron Technology and Nanya Technology.

The discount was even wider relative to Chinese semiconductor manufacturers. CXMT’s IPO valuation was approximately 77% below the average price-to-book ratio of Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. and Hua Hong Semiconductor.

Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-26/china-memory-champion-cxmt-set-to-debut-after-9-8-billion-ipo?srnd=homepage-asia

Federal Reserve officials will enter this week’s policy meeting facing a renewed surge in price pressures, making the decision over whether to hold or raise interest rates unusually close — and potentially contentious.

Escalating tensions in the Middle East have sent oil prices sharply higher, overshadowing a softer-than-expected June inflation report that had appeared to give policymakers room to keep rates unchanged. At the same time, strong demand linked to the artificial intelligence boom and the Trump administration’s latest tariff announcements have added to concerns that inflation could remain elevated.

As a result, Fed watchers see a growing risk of dissent at the July 28–29 meeting if officials once again vote to leave policy unchanged.

Investors have also increased their bets on an immediate rate increase. At one point last week, federal funds futures implied a probability of close to 40% that the central bank would raise rates at this week’s meeting, according to Bloomberg.

A growing number of policymakers have outlined a rationale for why they support higher rates now, or could soon.

Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan earlier this month called for modestly higher rates, citing her view inflation isn’t heading sustainably back to the Fed’s 2% goal. Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack also chimed in recently, saying “there is no conflict” in the Fed’s mandates and inflation is a bigger concern than employment currently. Both will vote on this week’s interest-rate decision and could dissent if officials opt to hold steady.

“It is clear listening to the Fed officials that you have a small group — like Logan, Hammack — who probably are ready to get going,” said Claudia Sahm, chief economist at New Century Advisors LLC. “And then there’s a pretty large group that wants to see more improvement — and soon.”

Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh has reaffirmed the Fed’s commitment to reducing inflation, vowing on Capitol Hill this month to use the central bank’s tools to achieve price stability. But his reluctance to offer specifics on how he plans to use those tools has kept markets guessing about where rates are headed — even in the near term.

Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-26/fed-faces-growing-pressure-to-hike-rates-as-price-risks-rebound