Ana Sarda Rodrigues @nintingale: "Portfolio Update July 2026: Pricing..."

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Portfolio Update July 2026: Pricing a World Without Hormuz Dear All, Last month I wrote that a ~40% oil crash on a signed-but-not-yet-physical deal looked early. Three weeks later the deal is dead. 📈 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁 𝗛𝗶𝗴𝗵𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝘀 The Deal That Wasn't Tankers were fired on near the Strait on July 6-7, Washington retaliated, and the truce collapsed; this week Tehran quit the Islamabad Memorandum. Hormuz transit: six ships a day versus a normal 120-130. Brent is back near $85. Life Without Hormuz It increasingly looks like the future is a prolonged state of conflict and insecurity in the Persian Gulf. Maybe traffic improves, but I doubt it ever returns to the ~15M bpd of crude (20M with products) and ~20% of global LNG that normally transit the Strait. It isn't just hydrocarbons: about a third of the world's traded urea, over a quarter of ammonia, and nearly 10% of aluminium move through the same chokepoint, out of the refining and petrochemical complex the Gulf built to climb the value chain. It's hard to imagine a world without the Middle East at the heart of energy supply. Maybe we need to start. Follow the construction money. Iraq's Kirkuk-Ceyhan line into Turkey has restarted, Ankara is pushing the "Four Seas" corridor through Syria, and Saudi's East-West pipeline can move ~5M bpd to the Red Sea. Does Saipem book billions building alternative routes? Does Turkey become the new refining and energy hub? And look south: Dangote in Nigeria, 650k bpd, the largest single-train refinery on earth, already tested at 700k and set to double by 2028. A petrochemical hub safely tucked away in the Gulf of Guinea. The Fed held at 3.50%-3.75% with a hawkish dot plot; July 28-29 is roughly a coin flip on a hike. With oil back at $85, higher-for-longer stays my base case. 📊 𝗣𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗳𝗼𝗹𝗶𝗼 𝗔𝗱𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 H1 closed at +8%, versus SPY +10% and QQQ +11.5% YTD. Behind, but positioned for what's coming, not what just happened. Emerging Markets: 23.6% (−3.1) Still the largest book. China thesis unchanged: positive earnings revisions, ~10x multiples with room to rerate. New: Mitsubishi Heavy, on Asian rearmament and energy infrastructure. The only position I am looking to drop when the bounce is finished is $BABA (Alibaba-ADR), I don´t like the fact their earnings continue to be terrible (willing to change my mind if their AI bull case finally translates into profit) Technology: 15.8% (+5.2) Semis finally cracked: ~$1.5T of sector value gone since late June, with SK hynix printing its biggest one-day drop ever. I bought the correction: SK hynix, Entegris, Qnity, Hesai, Quantinuum, Cummins. Someone has to power data centers while the grid catches up. EWY comes back slowly too. And a walk-back I'll own plainly: I added NVIDIA, Meta, and Amazon into the weakness. Several quarters of committed capex are still to flow; no reason not to hold some of the center while it does. Energy: 14.9% (+1.5) Added GE Vernova and Peabody, the electron side of the trade. Oil's round trip back to $85 is why the core never left. Consumer: 10.8% (+6.6) Special situations, not a macro consumer bet: $GRPN (Groupon Inc) Groupon, the turnaround I've been building since spring, plus $JAKK (JAKKS Pacific Inc) Pacific and similar setups. Precious & Industrial Metals: 9.6% (+2.0) The real-asset regime trade: 4%+ inflation, everyone rebuilding supply chains at once. The dollar weakness trade seems to finally be back on track. $PLATINUM and to less extension $GOLD should be clear winners. Finance: 7.0% (+0.2) The golden-era thesis stands. European Banks continue to be in a multi-year bull market and the best part? Nobody talks about it! Let them chase the next AI bottleneck while our european banks continue to buy back shares, increase their loan book in a higher-for-long interest rates regime, profits are at an all-time-high for $BCS (Barclays PLC-ADR), $SAN (Banco Santander SA (US)-ADR) and co. New: $CME (CME Group) and $CBOE (Cboe Global Markets Inc.). Structurally higher rates and vol mean the exchanges clip a ticket on every hedge, the KALSI/Coinbase tokenization is a valid concern but the entry barrier is simple to low, I do not see a casa where existing exchanges simple adapt to the new reality (or buy native crypto exchanges such as $HYPE for in-house knowlodge. Hedges: 6.6% Untouched. Our hedges are basically agricultural ETFs at this point, and with the Strait of Hormuz close I want to keep them at last for 6 months more. The drop vs April is the trim I flagged back then. 🔮 𝗟𝗼𝗼𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗔𝗵𝗲𝗮𝗱 My Stance Indexes look weak because semis drag them: contagion from the most crowded trade in the world, not from mine. Six ships a day cross the world's most important chokepoint while the market argues about memory capex. I stay fully invested in real assets, supply chains, and the infrastructure of rerouting. With oil at $85, banks earning the rate regime, and China still cheap, I expect the portfolio to outperform from here. My own views on positioning, not advice. Size your own risk.

Not investment advice. The author may have financial interests in the mentioned instruments.